{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025145067698259187, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.982658959537572, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
“Please call my daughter”: Ethical practice in dementia care as an art of dwelling

This article aims to extend the current understanding of ethical practice within a dementia context, in which people living with dementia are often taken for granted as mere beneficiaries of care, rather than as co-producers in day-to-day care practice. Building on a decade of voluntary work and a year of fieldwork (including six weeks’ intensive observation of nightlife) at a Jewish care home in London, I pay attention to the affective dimension of ethical practice at the moment of sleep disturbance of a resident with dementia. Inspired by Heidegger’s concept of dwelling, I understand the episode not as pathological, but as a process through which ethical subjects emerge in the making of ongoing, entangled ethical endeavors. I argue that ethical practice is neither predetermined nor random: rather, it is the way in which those involved continuously respond and attune to the ever-changing circumstances: what I call an ‘art of dwelling’.