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Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family
Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2025.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
2025
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| _version_ | 1867614081025835008 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Calitz, Vasti |
| author2 | Du Toit, Louise |
| author_browse | Calitz, Vasti Du Toit, Louise |
| author_facet | Du Toit, Louise Calitz, Vasti |
| author_sort | Calitz, Vasti |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | Stellenbosch University |
| description | Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/134560 |
| institution | Stellenbosch University (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:46:21.556Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| publisherStr | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| spelling | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/134560 Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family Calitz, Vasti Du Toit, Louise Roodt, Vasti Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy. Families -- Philosophy -- South Africa Interpersonal relations -- South Africa Social sciences -- Philosophy -- South Africa Communal living -- South Africa Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. Calitz, V. 2025. Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: A philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/items/d393d01c-5542-4bee-9053-a7dd1b10c80d ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis analyses the family as a legal, economic, and social institution, showing the ways the family is made necessary at the expense of other existing and potential intimate or caring relationships in the context of South Africa. I argue that the family is made artificially compulsory, and that our freedom to shape our intimate lives is unacceptably constrained. I argue, moreover, that the legal and social privileging of family relationships and the couple form is unjustified and makes alternative intimate relationships less visible, less valued, and as a result, less viable. It acts as a severe and enduring limit on ability to imagine different ways of being in relation and precludes experiments in living. Only those in legally recognised family forms receive protection from the relational vulnerabilities they incur from being in intimate relationships, excluding many caring relationships that ought to be protected, and incentivising conformity with prescribed relationship forms. The status quo generates unacceptable vulnerability. The family is made the only repository for care, an onerous role that means taking responsibility for the survival and wellbeing of others often means becoming vulnerable oneself. Since we are all of us dependent on the goodwill, labour, and support of others for our safety and survival, having a family who takes responsibility for us can quite literally be a matter of life or death. The family is thus made necessary by a system that manufactures individual and relational vulnerability. In this dissertation I propose alternative legal regulation and state policy that supports caregiving and mitigates vulnerability without requiring that relationships conform to particular relationship structures. Instead of extending recognition to more relationships, I argue we must do away with state recognition of relationships, while at the same time extending state support and protection to more relationships. To this end, I offer an alternative conceptual framework, which I call “nodes in a network”, or a nodal approach, that can be used by the state to identify relationships that ought to be protected but that does not at the same time prescribe what form those relationships ought to take. I argue that, on a social level, the dominance of the ideology of the family obscures the many ways in which people engage in caregiving, cohabiting, and love. Extending the nodal approach to the social realm would allow a greater variety of relationships to become visible and valued. The aim is not to propose alternative relationships that would replace family relationships, but instead to ask how care, resource sharing, intimacy, and energy can be dispersed through multiple relationships instead of concentrated in families. I argue that such a world will ensure the individual freedom to shape mutually supportive relationships without inducing excessive vulnerability. AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar. Doctoral 2025-12-12T12:19:08Z 2025-12-12T12:19:08Z 2025-12 Thesis https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/134560 en Stellenbosch University 252 pages application/pdf Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| spellingShingle | Families -- Philosophy -- South Africa Interpersonal relations -- South Africa Social sciences -- Philosophy -- South Africa Communal living -- South Africa Calitz, Vasti Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| title | Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| title_full | Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| title_fullStr | Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| title_full_unstemmed | Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| title_short | Proliferating care, disaggregating intimacy: a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| title_sort | proliferating care disaggregating intimacy a philosophical investigation into the possibility of relating beyond family |
| topic | Families -- Philosophy -- South Africa Interpersonal relations -- South Africa Social sciences -- Philosophy -- South Africa Communal living -- South Africa |
| url | https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/134560 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT calitzvasti proliferatingcaredisaggregatingintimacyaphilosophicalinvestigationintothepossibilityofrelatingbeyondfamily |