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One of the most engaging claims of Patel and Moore’s book is that abstract ideas have played a powerful role legitimating the exploitation of swathes of humanity, through distinguishing ontologically and epistemologically between nature and society. As most women, and indigenous people, were defined as part of nature, their labours and lives, including their care labour, were deemed to be part of nature and thereby legitimately exploitable. The authors claim that the cheapening of care arose from the separation of spheres between care work and paid work, between home and the economy, arising from the development of enclosures and the demise of the commons. What the book does not address, however, is how the exploitation of women’s domestic and care labour was not only beneficial to capitalism: men of all classes were and are beneficiaries of women’s unpaid care labour. The authors also suggest that the primary purpose of caring is to reproduce people for capitalism. But caring is not undertaken simply at the behest of capitalism. Nurturing and caring for others are defining features of humanity given the lengthy dependency of humans at birth and at times of vulnerability. The logic of care is very different to market logic.

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The crisis in community development in Ireland has been discussed by community workers, academics and equality experts. This article contributes to this analysis with empirical research encompassing the voice of people living with inequality, including a number of community activists. The research shows how affective relations take precedence in women’s discussions about social class inequality and activism at a community level. Yet, this everyday concern with the affective is not given a legitimate status in academic and political discourse about community development. It is argued that this depoliticization of affective relations is part of the crisis in community development when it fails to incorporate a political analysis of what matters most to people at a community level.