This special end-of-year seminar brings together three researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds whose research draws attention to the limits and ethics of autonomy and choice in older people who require assistance with everyday personal care, particularly transgressive intimate care. The researchers present findings from their individual programs of research that illuminate cultures of care in institutional care settings that privilege practices of containment, restriction, and restraint and inadvertently undermine the autonomy of people who are care-dependent. Using continence care as an exemplar, they will argue for an ethic of care that recognises the reciprocity inherent in caregiving relationships and reframing the concept of autonomy to accommodate the needs and dependency of the care-dependent individual and upholds their dignity.
