Care is work

A few unprocessed reflections on attending the Carework Summit just now.

• It was great to see real people in person — to get a tactile feel for who is doing care studies. Unsurprisingly, it’s mainly women. There are some Africans in the US (men and women) doing interesting work. There’s a strong representation of trans people — both doing the work and as the subject of study.
• Attending the conference confirms my interest in care: care as an economic driver, care as ethics, care as work, care as a lived experience, care as politics, care as a prism and focus of policy.
• The field of study is advancing, but remains thin in many respects. This comment was repeated by many participants. We’ve come a long way in understanding and exploring care, but still have a long way to go. And, while the field is growing, it’s still marginal and the level of effort limited. It wasn’t discussed, but I had the sense that funding is quite limited.
• The attacks from the right-wing are not directly on care or studies. But they are adjacent and create dangers and set-backs. Several scholars had trouble getting visas for the conference and many noted they have to speak euphemistically, especially when writing grants or official documents.
• It’s exciting to see how international care studies are. In fact, it’s clear that other regions and cultures are ahead of the US. Latin America in particular has both policy and scholarly advances ahead of anything in English-speaking world. East Asia — especially Japan and Korea — also doing a lot. I had great conversations with Colombians.
• The interface with policy and especially politics remains weak. There were few policy practitioners or advocates at the conference. The expression of care studies into policy was often missing or rudimentary at best. Latin America has more initiative and innovation on care policy than most regions, especially Colombia, Uruguay, and Brasil.
• There was a reflection on how the field is in tension between economists — who want to simplify and distill things, create models, test hypotheses — and sociologists who want to explore nuance, specificity, retain diversity and narrative.
• Duke University seems to have a strong interest. Nancy Folbre has many fans, but there weren’t so many economists. Maybe they show more at other venues like on feminist economists.
• I’d never been to Duke, nor Durham. It was cool to see. Duke’s campus is beautiful and feels lush. Seems like it would be a good place to go to school. Durham is a bustling, progressive, college-y town built on the excavated ruins of a segregated tobacco and cotton empire. Good restaurants, some new tech, nice, busy downtown. Lots of old converted mill and tobacco buildings. Strangely, no water focal point — like a river, bay or lake.
• I have a bunch of notes on presentations and papers and plan to follow up and might write more on some of them. Also some great contacts.

ENDS///