On the question of cheap care: Regarding A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Raj Patel and Jason W Moore

Abstract

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.

Professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners: Working conditions in Ireland

“…However, ECEC in Ireland is for the most part a private enterprise based on a neo-liberal imaginary of consumer choice and aligned to the global quality reform movement, rather than a holistic, organic, nurturing, agentic notion of relational care and pedagogy (O’Regan et al, 2019). Moreover, Ireland has a cultural historical context where, until relatively recently, all women, and especially poor women and more recently women of colour, were deeply embedded in a patriarchal society where care work was cheapened and (un)seen as ‘women’s work’ (Lynch and Crean, 2019). The Final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes , examining the period 1922–1998, reveals the extent of this patriarchal society up to and including the mid 1970s:Ireland was a cold harsh environment for many, probably the majority, of its residents during the earlier half of the period under remit.…”