Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit: Zur Ganzheitlichkeit und Rationalisierung des Sorgens und der Sorgearbeit

The economic shift and beyond: Care as a contested terrain in contemporary capitalism

“…Exploring the causes of this contradiction, Regina Becker-Schmidt (2014: 89) ascribes it to Abstraktionsprozesse in der kapitalistischen Ökonomie (processes of abstraction in the capitalist economy). Homologous with the androcentric and Eurocentric visions of humanity and life, which credit the modern subject with self-care capability rather than care needs (Aulenbacher and Dammayr, 2014), capitalist economic systems ignore reproduction needs if they are fulfilled to the functionally necessary extent. As a precondition and consequence of this, care and care work are dealt with in separated, relatively autonomous, yet interdependent, interrelated sectors.…”

“…Which brings us to the second aspect of the subordination of social reproduction: care and care work can be valorized by private enterprise and market criteria – for example, the development of care robots aimed at using science and technology to meet the challenges of demographic change. In this case, the framework within which this life-serving purpose is organized includes the capitalist growth imperative, the profit motive and ideas of progress, which are built on androcentric and Eurocentric orientations underlying capitalism and modernity (Aulenbacher and Dammayr, 2014).…”

“…Since the financial crisis of 2008 the organization of care and care work, even in wealthy countries like Austria and Germany, is contested anew (Winker, 2015). This extends to how care and care work are organized in the context of the social division of labour and sectoral division of functions, and consequent inequalities (Aulenbacher and Dammayr, 2014; Fraser, 2016, 2017). We pursue this development drawing on some of the ideas of Karl Polanyi.…”

Between dystopias and alternative ideas of caring

“…Concepts like "caring democracy" are inspired by the ethics of care or moralphilosophical discussions (Tronto, 2011) and at the same time build a bridge to the analysis of capitalism and to perspectives for social change by turning capitalist thinking upsidedown. They think about society from the viewpoint of the care services that are overlooked by capitalist economics in its intrinsic "structural carelessness", whereby it proceeds to ignore, suppress or threaten the interests of life (Aulenbacher and Dammayr, 2014). All other oppositions and inconsistencies notwithstanding, this radical change of perspectiveadopting care requirements as the starting point for the analysis of societyties in these ethically inspired concepts with approaches in care research which are more indebted to political economy perspectives yet which, like Gabriele Winker (2015) for example, identify transformative potential from an economic, political, social and cultural perspective in the societal reorganisation of care.…”

Capitalism goes care

“…The international Sociology of Care diagnoses primarily three interwoven tendencies essentially characterising and driving the current societal organisation of social reproduction, care, and care work: their forced marketisation; the transnationalisation of labour and policies; the transformation of the welfare state and new forms of governance (Anderson and Shutes, 2014;Klenk and Pavolini, 2015;Kofman and Raghuram, 2015;Mahon and Robinson, 2011).These tendencies are pushing and influencing the organisation of care and care work in all societal spheres, but this does not mean that they do it in the same way. If we only have a look on the commodification of the social reproduction, a wide range of capitalist access to care and care work appears; just to give a few particularly salient examples: "care extractivism" in the case of surrogacy or egg freezing and further access to the body treating it as a natural resource (Wichterich, 2016); capitalist Landnahme of social reproduction acquiring care and care work directly or indirectly by accumulation driven dynamics (Dörre et al, 2014); industrialisation and technologisation like the digitalisation and robotisation of care and care work in transnational research, development and production networks (Aulenbacher and Dammayr, 2014); the human-capital-oriented paradigm of social investment substituting welfare through workfare (Atzmüller, 2014) or "social impact bonds" encouraging private investment in social services (Dowling, 2016) in the OECD; the enforced commodification of domestic work and care in the context of inter-and transnational migration (Anderson and Shutes, 2014). Such forms of marketisation and quasi-marketisation of social reproduction cannot be understood sufficiently if they are only interpreted in the frame of the ongoing capitalist commodification of nature and labour and the relations of class.…”