6. Care

Definition

Care refers to a species activity including everything that humans do to maintain, continue, and repair the `world´ so that they can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which humans seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web. All are care receivers – the quality of being needy is shared by all humans. 

Care refers to a caring process encompassing 5 phases: 

  • Caring about: noticing unmet caring needs    
  • Caring for: someone has to take responsibility to make certain these needs are met 
  • Care-giving: actual care-giving work is done    
  • Care-receiving: when done, there will be a response from the person, animal, plant… that has been cared for; then observing the response and making judgements: was the care given sufficient? successful? complete? etc.    
  • Caring with: this final phase of care requires that caring needs and the ways in which they are met need to be consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality, and freedom for all.   

Context

While authors like Fisher & Tronto or other feminist scholars take a broad take on care, other definitions are narrower in scope, like the International Labour Organization (ILO) definition: care work as consisting of activities and relations involved in meeting the physical, psychological and emotional needs of adults and children, old and young, frail and able-bodied; care work consisting of two overlapping activities: direct, personal and relational care activities, such as feeding a baby or nursing an ill partner; and indirect care activities, such as cooking and cleaning; care work encompassing both paid and unpaid care work. 

In Dices

DICES approaches care as both a field of social economy activity and a set of social relations shaped by governance, inclusion and working conditions.  WP2 conceptualises care and examines its links with the social economy, economic democracy, organisational democracy and social inclusion.  WP3 maps social economy organisations involved in care (long-term care and services to refugees) and explores their contribution to social inclusion across European contexts. WP4 examines how organisational democracy, social dialogue and working conditions shape the organisation and quality of care. WP5 and WP6 focus on care in left-behind places, assessing existing initiatives and developing and testing innovative, inclusive and democratic care practices. 

See also

Economic democracy · Organisational democracy · Social inclusion

Key reference

Fisher, B., & Tronto J.C. (1990). Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring. In E. K. Abel, M.  

Nelsen (Eds.). Circles of Care (pp. 35-62). New York, USA: SUNY Press.

 Tronto, J. C. (2013). Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. NYU Press.