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Contribution type: New Concept
Concept: ihtimam
Name of the contributor: Gizem Kendik Önduygu
E-mail of the contributor: gizem@ihtimam.org
İhtimam is a Turkish word, originating from Arabic ihtimām, that carries meanings of care, attentiveness, consideration, and careful regard. While it overlaps with bakım (care), ihtimam points beyond care as a task or service toward an orientation to how we live with and attend to one another. At its core is the recognition that human beings are relational, vulnerable, and mortal. None of us is fully autonomous or self-sufficient: throughout our lives we depend on others, give and receive care, and participate in networks that sustain life. İhtimam understands this vulnerability and interdependence not as exceptional conditions, but as fundamental aspects of being alive. Care and attentiveness emerge from this shared condition. In this sense, ihtimam can offer a language for imagining collective life beyond individualism, extraction, competition, and the invisibilisation of care. It asks us to notice the human and more-than-human relations that sustain life, to recognise dependencies and vulnerabilities that are often rendered invisible, and to organise these relations more justly. In Türkiye, İhtimam Derneği is reclaiming and developing the concept as a living praxis through care-network mapping, collective care practices, care-centred organising, participatory approaches to care governance, and other experiments that make the infrastructures and relationships of care visible. We propose ihtimam as a concept that can speak across worldview and praxis: a way of understanding ourselves as relational, vulnerable and interdependent beings, and a practice of attending to, caring for, and taking responsibility for the relationships through which life is sustained.
www.ihtimam.org