Who takes care of ‘care’?

Abstract

We meet at Professor Paula-Irene Villa Braslavsky's office at the Institute for Sociology in the LMU, Munich. Our conversation begins with the issue of intellectual motherhood; over the course of almost two hours, it ranges from the personal to the political, switching from philosophy and ethics to everyday topics such as childcare and tax distribution within the family.Professor Paula-Irene Villa Braslavsky, a German-Argentine sociologist, is a leading researcher in her field. She is also the co-spokeswoman of ForGenderCare, an interdisciplinary research network of 11 Bavarian research institutions investigating theoretical and empirical connections between care and gender. She is an elected board member of the German Sociological Association (DGS), and served as an elected board member of the German Association for Gender Studies between 2010 and 2014. Her key research topics are care and gender, biopolitics, cultural studies, and science-academia and gender (Villa, 2014(Villa, , 2017a. Her recent work is focusing on the German care crisis (Villa, 2017b).On first reading Villa Braslavsky's academic résumé, I was immediately struck by the fact that it references the births of her son and daughter. For me, this was an eye-opening feminist statement. Affirming the importance and significance of motherhood in a usually staid document was a revelation. For one thing, it demonstrates that traditional and rigid structures can be changed; it also highlights that a reader of this résumé can be moved by this inclusion, which puts front and centre the understanding that caring is a form of work and cannot be overlooked.Inbar Livnat How did your work contribute to the understanding of care?Paula-Irene Villa Braslavsky Care is a fundamental aspect of human life. It is a biosocial activity and need, thus it is of existential dimension at the individual and social level. No person, and no society can survive without care. The question is, how do we as societies and as individuals organize care? This is a paramount question, and there is much excellent research already out there.My perspective is to understand how our contemporary condition re-enforces autonomy exclusively as a social and political value, while devaluing care and vulnerability. This is especially intriguing, since a main driver in emancipatory politics (such as feminist movements) is the fight for autonomy. While

COVID‐19, ethics of care and feminist crisis management

“…In a conversation between Inbar Livnat and Paula‐Irene Villa Braslavsky (2020) that appeared in Gender, Work and Organization ’s ‘Feminist Frontiers’, a theme emerged regarding who or what ‘takes care of care’ (p. 270). The conversation progressed to consider the ‘crisis of care’ in capitalist economic settings, and the ways in which ‘everyday caring have to be taken care of by somebody, somehow; an arrangement, an organization, by other people’ (Livnat & Braslavsky, 2020, p. 272). These notions of care as solution, and care as liability, resonate with how the COVID‐19 crisis has been managed.…”

The care crisis: a research priority for the pandemic era and beyond

“…This inequity was further compounded by expectations from employers and the workplace. Consistent with pre-existing notions of men as 'ideal workers' unencumbered by care responsibilities (Livnat and Braslavsky, 2020;Williams et al, 2013), most employers seemed to expect that home-based workers would deliver the same output as before the pandemic. The special difficulties of working and caring for children simultaneously in the same physical location were considered by employers as family matters, not requiring workplace support (Craig and Churchill, 2020).…”

“…Crises can challenge prior thinking and allow new ideas to emerge (van Barneveld et al, 2020). The neoliberal approach that underpinned the pre-existing care deficit (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002;Livnat and Braslavsky, 2020) was challenged and stress tested during the pandemic. As the health crisis unfolded, the Australian government was temporarily willing to make childcare free to parents, subsidise aged care homes to help retain workers and give allowances to families who took elders out of facilities to be cared for at home (Craig and Churchill, 2020).…”

Who Provides Resilience to the Community Resilience Providers?

“…In response to the social problems induced by the pandemic, there has been a surge in civic engagement and activity by social service NPOs. This has included high volunteering rates in NPOs for marginalized populations and more than 100 new social initiatives developed by nonprofits and social entrepreneurs to help excluded populations and vulnerable communities [30].…”