Towards a Research Agenda That Progresses Key Debates: Example I—Unpacking More-Than-Human Assemblages of Person-Centred Care

This chapter explores the potential for a more integrated and central geographical contribution to mainstream professional practice debates. As an example it describes how geography might play a fuller and more embedded role in understandings of ‘person-centred care’ (PCC). After reviewing traditional research areas on PCC, it describes how PCC might be understood as a ‘more-than–human’ spatial production. Specifically it describes how a posthumanist theoretical orientation might recast some humanistic concepts central in PCC (identity and meaning, emotions, difference and oppression, agency and communication). Then, using a three-part posthumanist typology, it considers how PCC might; (1) emerge and express within material social assemblages; (2) be enacted and performed affectively by vital bodies and vibrant objects; (3) be conducted in immediate, pre-personal, more-than-representational spacetimes.