Confronting capital’s care fix: care through the lens of democracy
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose to expand the political economic understanding of a “fix”, that is, capital’s ability to overcome crises of profitability through a displacement of its crisis tendencies, to include an analytical attention to the gendered, sexualised and racialised unwaged and underpaid (caring) labour that reproduces labour power within a capitalist economy.
Design/methodology/approach
A “care fix”, the author argues, involves attempts to manage a crisis of care in ways that do not resolve but merely displace the crisis, perpetuating the systemic imperative of capital to off-load the cost of social reproduction and care, thereby constituting a crucial dynamic of capitalist development and restructuring and resulting in the reorganisation of gendered and racialised class relations and historically contingent regimes of reproduction.
Findings
The maceration of the Fordist regime of reproduction under neoliberalism has given way to a new post-Fordist arrangement that, having exhausted its care fix, is now once again in crisis. A new care fix is currently under way, while at the same time it is being contested and redirected by the contemporary struggles over social reproduction, care and democracy.
Research limitations/implications
Consequently, the author discusses the emergence of the notion of “caring capitalism” and contrasts this with proposals for democratising care, in turn investigating these developments in the context of an ongoing crisis of political representation in Europe and offering a notion of “care municipalism” as a possible way forward.
Practical implications
The practical implications concern the possibility of democratising the care sector.
Social implications
The social implications pertain to the questions of how social, political and economic institutions shift when care is placed on their agenda.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is to make a theoretical contribution to the analysis of changing configurations of care, social reproduction and society in relation to questions of democracy.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Research Group “Post-Growth Societies” at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena for engaging discussions, feedback and critique during the author fellowship in autumn 2016. Thank you also to Johnna Montgomerie and colleagues for the opportunity to discuss some of these ideas in a workshop on feminist theory and social reproduction in the autumn of 2015 at Goldsmiths, University of London. Thank you to two anonymous reviewers for feedback and comments that helped to significantly improve the paper. A special thank you to Donatella Alessandrini, Helena Reckitt, Imogen Tyler and Christa Wichterich for invaluable feedback on earlier versions of the paper. Responsibility for the argument and any errors remain the author’s own.
Citation
Dowling, E. (2018), "Confronting capital’s care fix: care through the lens of democracy", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 332-346. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-02-2017-0032
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited