Counting on Care Work: Human Infrastructure in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, as in every other place in the world, all children need to be cared for and educated, everybody has physical and mental health needs that require attention, and some individuals need assistance with the daily tasks of life because of illness, age, or disability. The labor of meeting these needs – which we call care work – is a complex activity that has profound implications for personal, social and economic well-being. Care work is not just a cornerstone of our economy – it is a rock-bottom foundation. Care work provides the basis for our human infrastructure, and we need it to navigate through life as surely as we need our roads and bridges. This report measures the role of care work in the Commonwealth in 2007 by examining in detail three intersecting spheres: paid care work, unpaid care work, and government investment in care. We include in the care sector the labor and resources devoted to the daily care of Massachusetts residents, especially children, the elderly and those who are disabled; the provision of K-12 education; and the administration of health care to both the well and the sick, regardless of age

MAPPING THE DISPOSSESSION: SCANDINAVIAN HOMESTEADING AT FORT TOTTEN, 1900-1930

Once Spirit Lake Dakota Reservation was opened to white homesteading in 1904, the turnover of land from Dakota to Euro-American hands was rapid. Scandinavians, the largest foreign-born group in the state, took advantage of this land-taking opportunity and moved onto the reservation in great numbers, acquiring approximately 25% of the land within six years. In effect, while the Scandinavians lived as neighbors with the Dakota, they also became the harbinger of the dispossession of Dakota land. Using quantitative analysis oflandownership specified in plat maps of the reservation in 1910, this article analyzes the gender and ethnicity of the landowners. Oral histories contextualize the processes of land taking and land dispossession. The article then takes stock of landownership in 1929, finding that Dakota landownership declined 50% in less than two decades

“Counting Care Work: The Empirical and Policy Implications of Care Theory

The provision of adequate and quality care to the elderly, children, and those who are ill or disabled is one of the pressing social problems of our time. Despite the far-reaching formulations of care in the theoretical realm, advocacy and policymaking efforts around care work remain largely atomized. Translating the wide-ranging insights of care scholarship into tools for public policy solutions requires a practical application of the concept as well as empirical measurement. In this study we integrate the insights of care theory with feminist economic analysis to conceptualize care as a single sector at the foundation of the state’s human infrastructure. We then measure the scope of care work across paid work, unpaid labor and government investment in one US state. We find that the care sector in Massachusetts is substantial in its scope and human and economic impact: 22 percent of the paid labor force, 20 percent of the average resident’s daily time, and 57 percent of state and local government spending. Data such as this gives policymakers and advocates an empirical foundation to build on in framing a broader vision of care policy. Strengthening the human infrastructure in Massachusetts and elsewhere is an economic and ethical imperative, and our goal has been to provide both empirical data and a practically useful conceptual frame that can be used as tools by those working towards the social transformation of care

Counting on Care Work: Human Infrastructure in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, as in every other place in the world, all children need to be cared for and educated, everybody has physical and mental health needs that require attention, and some individuals need assistance with the daily tasks of life because of illness, age, or disability. The labor of meeting these needs – which we call care work – is a complex activity that has profound implications for personal, social and economic well-being. Care work is not just a cornerstone of our economy – it is a rock-bottom foundation. Care work provides the basis for our human infrastructure, and we need it to navigate through life as surely as we need our roads and bridges. This report measures the role of care work in the Commonwealth in 2007 by examining in detail three intersecting spheres: paid care work, unpaid care work, and government investment in care. We include in the care sector the labor and resources devoted to the daily care of Massachusetts residents, especially children, the elderly and those who are disabled; the provision of K-12 education; and the administration of health care to both the well and the sick, regardless of age

Why and How to Build Universal Social Policy in the South

In Confronting Dystopia, a distinguished group of scholars analyze the implications of the ongoing technological revolution for jobs, working conditions, and income. Focusing on the economic and political implications of AI, digital connectivity, and robotics for both the Global North and the Global South, they move beyond diagnostics to seek solutions that offer better lives for all. Their analyses of the challenges of technology are placed against the backdrop of three decades of rapid economic globalization. The two in tandem are producing the daunting challenges that analysts and policymakers must now confront. The conjuncture of recent advances in AI, machine learning, and robotization portends a vast displacement of human labor, argues the editor, Eva Paus. As Confronting Dystopia shows, we are on the eve of—indeed we are already amid—a technological revolution that will impact profoundly the livelihoods of people everywhere in the world. Across a broad and deep set of topics, the contributors explore whether the need for labor will inexorably shrink in the coming decades, how pressure on employment will impact human well-being, and what new institutional arrangements—a new social contract, for example, will be needed to sustain livelihoods. They evaluate such proposals as a basic income, universal social services, and investments that address key global challenges and create new jobs.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Sociales::Facultad de Ciencias Sociales::Escuela de Ciencias Política

Race and feminist care ethics: intersectionality as method

Gender has been the privileged optic through which care ethics has been theorised. However, a long line of theorists has argued that gender intersects with other vectors such as race, class and disability in the social world, including in caring practices. This paper contributes to the emergent literature on intersectionality and care ethics by focusing on how racialised difference affects care practices and therefore care ethics. It argues that slavery and colonialism have underpinned racial hierarchies marking contemporary racialised care encounters. As a result, racially marked people’s skills are often undervalued and their competency questioned even as race becomes an increasingly important difference between who cares and who receives care. Secondly, racial hierarchies in who gets care and what that care looks like can make care so distinctive as to be unrecognisable both to the care giver and those who need care. Lack of care is as productive of subjectivities as care so that care needs simply may not be articulated. Finally, given these differences in what care means, caring can become risky. The paper concludes by suggesting that thinking through intersectionality as method allows us to focus on moments and events where care can become unsettled. Care ethics should learn not only from its successes but also from instances when care has failed. We need a feminist care ethics that responds to the distance and difference that race brings to care. That is the promise of good care