Reclaiming Networks of Care under Conditions of Data-Capitalism (original) (raw)

‘Homemade’: Building, mending, and coordinating a care network

Social Science & Medicine, 2019

In recent decades, longer life expectancy, the consequent greater number of patients with often concurrent diseases, and the need of healthcare institutions to reduce the costs of services, have engendered changes in all European healthcare systems. On one side, healthcare systems increasingly rely on the self-management skills of patients, who undertake a growing amount of 'sickness work' from which they are relieved only in the case of severe illness. On the other, the inability of public healthcare systems to satisfy the increased demand for care has led to the growth of private healthcare organizations as well as cooperatives of health professionals who offer their services privately. The care of citizens, therefore, is increasingly distributed across networks of actors with very different objectives, logics of action and professional backgrounds (public and private healthcare organizations, community medical services, voluntary organizations). Despite the attention devoted by social studies of medicine to the work done by citizens in supporting the work of clinicians and nurses, the work performed in connection to the management of care networks have been only marginally investigated. Drawing on a qualitative research carried out in the Province of Trento (Italy) and focused on the different ways in which elderly people with chronic conditions manage their conditions outside the healthcare and welfare institutions, in this paper we are interested in deepening the understanding of the invisible work citizens perform in connection to the management of care services and professionals. That is, the work needed in order to activate, mend and coordinate complex networks of care.

Sociotechnical systems of care

Companion of the 2018 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2018

The goal of this workshop is to bring together CSCW audiences who engage in studies and interventions related to care work. Our aims are to understand how care has been conceptualized in the extant CSCW community, identify core issues and concerns, and formalize how CSCW concepts could be used as a lens to inquire into this domain. We will explore the following themes: the invisibility of care work; the evolution of care labor; how care can often be sentimentalized, formalized, or infantilizing; and how we can attend to—and design for—the multiple experiences of care. Participants of this workshop will be invited to participate in future journal special issues and external grant writing activities.

Towards care-centred societies

Frontiers in Sustainability, 2024

Care work, often considered economically non-productive, is undervalued and professionally underpaid. This short perspective paper develops a holistic understanding of care, including paid and unpaid care work. It contributes to identifying pathways towards socially and environmentally sustainable, low-consumption societies. Based on archetypical definitions from feminist literature and gender studies, political science, sociology, psychology, ecological economics, and our own work in consumption analysis, we define care work as comprising activities and practices in relation to someone or something (e.g., the environment), which are nurturing and cultivating land, plants, animals, humans, and social groups to support wellbeing and quality of life. They do so by providing many of the "services" that enable people to participate in society and sustain objects of ethical, emotional, and relational value. The definition covers a broad spectrum of care work, including both professional paid care and unpaid, more or less voluntarily provided care (social norms constitute the "less voluntary" case). We differentiate amongst different types of care work and use this more fine-grain approach to have a closer look at the relation between paid and unpaid care and the relation of care to sustainable development.

Towards Becoming an Ecology of Care

Performance Reseaerch - ON CARE, 2023

Thinking about care in the organization of an ecology is central to the interdisciplinary research group Care Ecologies; found during a lockdown in the spring of 2021 and hosted by ARIAS Platform for Research Through the Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. In Towards Becoming an Ecology of Care group members Valentina Curandi, Inte Gloerich, Ania Molenda, Maaike Muntinga, Natalia Sanchez Querubin, Nienke Scholts and Marloeke van der Vlugt, offer an initial articulation on their approaches and principles – performative practices, reflection, speculations - of what an ecology of care could be. While each bringing in different understandings of care, staying with those differences shaped the ways in which the agenda of the research group has been (un)settled. To exchange knowledge and experiences, the group uses various on- and off-line frameworks, like presentations and practice sessions. Exploring how activities that sustain a research group – coordinating, meeting, writing and documenting – may be done with care, this paper attempts to present a speculative proposition for functioning as a research ecology on and around care. Bringing into focus what care can do, while being attentive to what is neglected. This is not only done in writing but also becomes visible in the accompanying images compiled of material and immaterial memories. It is an ongoing process, for which the writing of this paper became a catalyst for reflection. While not aiming for clear answers the authors invite themselves and others to become more aware, devising and testing work strategies for care-based practices.

Care at a Distance : On the Closeness of Technology

2012

Care and welfare are changing rapidly in contemporary welfare states. The Care & Welfare series publishes studies on changing relationships between citizens and professionals, on care and welfare governance, on identity politics in the context of these welfare state transformations, and on ethical topics. It will inspire international academic and political debate by developing and reflecting upon theories of (health) care and welfare through detailed national case studies and/or international comparisons. This series will offer new insights into the interdisciplinary theory of care and welfare and its practices. (eds.): Policy, People, and the New Professional. De-professionalisation and Re-professionalisation in Care and Welfare, 2006 Cover design: Sabine Mannel, NEON graphic design company, Amsterdam Lay-out: JAPES, Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 8964 397 1 e-ISBN 978 90 4851 301 7 (pdf) e-ISBN 978 90 4851 629 2 (ePub) NUR 882

Co-Lecture @Relations of Care Across and After Worlds May 13-14, 2021 University of Wisconsin

Conference Website: https://careconference.squarespace.com/ Care Workshop Website: https://uwethicsofcare.gws.wisc.edu/ About the Conference Questions of care—practices addressing the fundamentally interconnected needs, abilities, and responsibilities of embodied others and selves and our environments—are at the very heart of this moment. The brutally uneven impacts of COVID-19, police violence, incarceration, accelerating hunger, houselessness, poverty, unpaid and underpaid care labor, environmental destruction, and ongoing Indigenous dispossession name only a few of the converging crises impinging on relations of life, kinship, community, reciprocity, and solidarity with humans and more-than-humans alike. These crises both perpetuate and reveal the fundamental co-constitution of capitalism, anti-Black racism, settler colonialism, White supremacy, imperialism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and ableism. At the same time, care also marks horizon-shifting analyses and praxes with powerful purchase for this moment and beyond. Growing numbers of scholars, artists, and organizers are taking up urgent questions of care, among them relations of tending and attention across time, space, generations, and species; responsibility and interdependency; narration and listening; labor; kinship; and intimacy. Care in its many senses threads through a wide range of intellectual and artistic work, particularly in sites joining theory and practice. This international conference, hosted by the Ethics of Care Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, takes an interdisciplinary approach to care as an organizing concept across the humanities, arts, social sciences, policy studies, STEM disciplines, and health services with a particular emphasis on emerging practices toward just and livable futures. We invite participants to consider care as a framework for addressing cross cutting and pressing local, national and global crises and a means of resisting systems of violence and oppression. We ask, how is care given and received, denied and demanded, exhaustible and renewable? How can it reveal transformations toward relations of justice, acknowledgment, repair, and liberation? This conference builds upon a two year Ethics of Care Workshop (see https://uwethicsofcare.gws.wisc.edu/) funded by a Borghesi-Mellon grant from the UW Center for Humanities. We are deeply grateful for this support. We also want to thank the Anonymous Fund and Holtz Center for providing additional funding for this event.