Recentring care: interrogating the commodification of care

The complications of ‘hiring a hubby’: gender relations and the commoditisation of home maintenance in New Zealand

“…By recognizing that we are all recipients of 'care', we expose our interdependence and reject conceptualisations of care that situate it in the private family or intimate relationships alone and which denigrate those perceived as receivers of care (Green and Lawson 2011;Hall 2011;Lawson 2007).…”

“…As Edward Hall (2011: 592) notes the home is weighted with 'complex and embodied familial relations' and care workers will often need to negotiate challenging relationships with those being cared for, their family members and co-habitants. The imagining of the home as a place where care is 'naturally' provided means that care workers in private homes often struggle to be treated as workers and find instead that their labour is interpreted as akin to that of unpaid family members (Bakan and Stasiulis 1997; Green and Lawson 2011;Gregson and Lowe 1994). Care exists within and can reinforce existing hierarchies and inequalities (Tronto 2002(Tronto , 2006) and when care is commoditised its unequal distribution can be even more pronounced.…”

Planning for an (un)certain future: Choice within English end-of-life care

“…Globally, care is increasingly commodified within market logics of choice (Green and Lawson, 2011). In turn this is changing the nature of the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients (Mol, 2008); patients are expected to take more responsibility for their health and now even their deaths, choosing from a variety of services and treatment options.…”

The business of care

“…On a more fundamental level, the use of markets to organize and deliver care as a social good has been contested (Green and Lawson, 2011;Lawson, 2007;Lloyd and Penn, 2010). Stemming from this work is a questioning of the viability of a childcare market at all, given the deeply competing logics at work (Folbre and Nelson, 2000;McDowell et al, 2005).…”