Caring Democracy

Markets, Equality, and Justice

Joan C. Tronto

• Editorial: NYU Press
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814770344
• Categoría: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Categoría: Política

Americansnow face a caring deficit: there are simply too many demands on people’s timefor us to care adequately for our children, elderly people, and ourselves.At the same time, political involvement inthe United States is at an all-time low, and although political life shouldhelp us to care better, people see caring as unsupported by public life anddeem the concerns of politics as remote from their lives. Caring Democracy argues that we need to rethink American democracy,as well as our fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. Whatit means to be a citizen is to be someone who takes up the challenge: howshould we best allocate care responsibilities in society? Joan Tronto argues that we need tolook again at how gender, race, class, and market forces misallocate caringresponsibilities and think about freedom and equality from the standpoint of makingcaring more just.The idea thatproduction and economic life are the most important political and humanconcerns ignores the reality that caring, for ourselves and others, should bethe highest value that shapes how we view the economy, politics, andinstitutions such as schools and the family. Care is at the center of our humanlives, but Tronto argues it is currently too far removed from the concerns ofpolitics. Caring Democracy traces the reasons for this disconnection andargues for the need to make care, not economics, the central concern ofdemocratic political life.

PART I

Envisioning a Caring Democracy

1

Redefining Democracy as Settling Disputes about Care Responsibilities

A Tale of Two Deficits

Scholars have begun to talk about a “caring deficit” (Bennhold 2011; Llana 2006), using the same economic language that other scholars have borrowed to describe a “democratic deficit” (Borooah and Paldam 2007; Nye 2001; New Statesman 2000; Durant 1995). The care deficit refers to the incapacities in advanced countries to find enough care workers to meet the needs of people, their children, elderly parents and relatives, and infirm family members. The democratic deficit refers to the incapacities of governmental institutions to reflect the real values and ideas of citizens.

What no one seems to have recognized, however, is that these deficits are two sides of the same coin. This chapter aims to demonstrate how they arise out of the construction of a public/private split that is an outdated inheritance from Western political thought that misses important dimensions of both contemporary caring and democracy. The goal is not to abolish any separation between public and private life, but to reconfigure in a dramatic way what counts as public and what counts as private.¹ Only caring democracy, a democracy that emphasizes “caring with,” can address both of these problems.

Such a synthetic approach requires justification. Even if people agree that caring is an important value, and one that should be included in thinking about political life, why connect caring with democratic theory, life, and practice? Questions about care are widely discussed, but why would it be better to frame these questions in democratic terms? Questions about democracy are widely discussed, but how are these discussions enriched by framing them in terms of care?

A first answer to these questions turns them around and asks instead: Why does a connection between care and democracy seem strange? Throughout most of Western history, care seemed beyond the reach of political life because it was private, or necessarily about dependency, or non-political in some other way.² Both because democracy makes demands for the equality of all citizens and because the nature of care has changed, it is no longer possible to rely upon the myth of a public/private split as a way to assign responsibilities for care. This book makes the case for conceiving of care as a public value and as a set of public practices, at the same time recognizing that care is highly personal and in this regard, “private.” This is so not only because without more public care equality is impossible, though this is true, nor because without more public care some are not well cared for, which is also true. The larger case I want to make here is that without a more public conception of care, it is impossible to maintain democratic society.

This chapter explores what is at stake in the current understandings of the relationship between care and democracy. Although public life has required some way to account for the provision of care, the presumed “natural” or necessary splits between public and private life have functioned to simplify these choices. After exploring the nature of caring and of democratic caring, it will become easier to see why the current “neo-liberal” assumptions disguise the problematic relationship that already exists between care and democracy. After this explanation, it should be clear why the care deficit will only be solved when caring becomes more democratic, and the democracy deficit will only be solved when democracy becomes more caring.

The Meaning of Care and Caring

One of the larger problems for all theorists of care has been to define the term. “Care” is a complicated term, with many meanings and connotations in English. One can say “I care for you,” meaning something like “I love you.” On the other hand, “cares and woes” makes care synonymous with a burden that weighs upon one’s soul. Care refers both to dispositions and to specific kinds of work. Care seems natural, and is often believed to be feminine. It bears a family resemblance to Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical notion of alterity, it was a central category in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, and yet, in its most daily meanings, it is associated with aspects of life that Hannah Arendt linked with “animal laborans,” the least distinctively human of human activities.

Arising out of a long discussion about the nature of care and its possible relationship to moral theory, a large international body of scholarship has now emerged about the ethics of care.³ This literature concerns the moral implications of care from the most local—we might even say most minute—forms of care to the broader social and political institutional settings of care in the modern age, and from caring attitudes to caring behaviors and practices. The ethics-of-care framework has been adopted for use by sociologists, social workers, lawyers, psychologists, political scientists, political theorists, philosophers, geographers, anthropologists, and in such disciplines as business, communications, education, literary studies, bioethics, urban studies, postcolonial studies, social work, theology, and even engineering. What sort of concept can be so flexible and widely adapted and yet remain valuable?

In 1990, Berenice Fisher and I offered this broad definition of care: “On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (see also Tronto 1993, 103; Fisher and Tronto 1990, 40). This broad concept of care is still the best one from which to begin this investigation. Even though this definition is often criticized for being too broad (Held 2006; Groenhout 2004), it contains within itself a response to this criticism. In arguing that care is an activity, a kind of practice, we left open the possibility that there might be other forms of care that are not on this “most general level.” Thus, it is possible to think about other ways to understand the meaning of care as more specific caring practices that are nested within this larger practice of care. By this account, some more narrow definitions of care are useful in more narrow contexts.

For example, many sociologists conceive of care as a “labor of love” in which private or intimate activity is performed in a particular emotional state. For example, Francesca Cancian (2000, 137) follows the pioneering British sociologists Janet Finch and Dulcie Groves in offering this definition: “A combination of feelings of affection and responsibility, with actions that provide for an individual’s personal needs or well-being in a face-to-face interaction.” As a sociologist, Cancian is eager to situate caring as activity and feelings in a particular locus, and so presumes that care is always face-to-face. By Cancian’s definition, then, a social worker employed by a hospital to find placements for aged patients who cannot be sent home does not qualify as engaged in caring. For an economist who is trying to measure the costs of health care for society, though, such a worker would count within the calculus of care.

Every distinct account of care brings with it a particular focus, and it is desirable to have many such accounts. Tamara Metz’s (2010b) definition of “intimate caring,” for example, consists of three elements: (a) intimate caring is not monitored by outside parties; (b) the parties have worked out deep, diverse, particular terms, ties, and motivations; and (c) intimate caring is not characterized by relations of exchange. Intimate caring characterizes the care that members of a household provide to one another—both the unequal relations among parents and children and the more equal relationships that exist among adults. Her point in offering this definition is to allow scholars to distinguish the household from other kinds of caring institutions without having to resort to “marriage” to describe what constitutes the household.

Philosophers of care often stress that care is relational. Virginia Held points to several characteristics of care in her book The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global, including that “the focus of the ethics of care is on the compelling moral salience of attending to and meeting the needs of the particular others for whom we take responsibility” (2006, 10). Held also argues that care involves emotion as well as reason, shows concern for particular others, and entails a different ontology in which people are understood relationally. Held’s definition presumes that care duties are focused on particular others. This is useful for some purposes, but it leaves out a way to discuss self-care or public forms of care.

These more specific meanings of care achieve particular purposes and emphasize and highlight some of the attributes and problems in care. But they also miss some other dimensions of caring. Mignon Duffy (2011) distinguished “nurturant” and “nonnurturant” caring. Nurturant caring is directed at the relationship with a particular other person, whose wellbeing is improved through the caring. But, as Duffy observes, nonnurturant caring—that is, caring directed at the physical world, which is a prerequisite for nurturant caring—is also care. Hospitals could not run without a cleaning staff and laundry. Furthermore, Duffy points out, in the United States, nonnurturant care is often performed by people of lower class, racial/ethnic, and gender standing. If one excludes “the dirty work” (Glenn 2010; Roberts 1997), from care, then there is a different view of who is doing care work than if such work is included. And if one only defines care as Held does, then one is not so likely to think about the philosophical qualities of nonnurturant care.

So the broad definition of care offered by Fisher and Tronto suits a particular general account of the place and meaning of care in human life. Care needs to be further specified in particular contexts. The Fisher/Tronto definition requires that care not be left on this most general level, but that the context of care be explored. How do we specify such contexts? As in Duffy’s example, one way to distinguish a particular type of care is by its purpose. And such purposes might be nested within one another; that is, laundering clothes in the hospital is part of the larger goal of helping patients to recover from illness. On the other hand, the contextual meaning of care might arise from the purpose of the individual engaged in any particular caring activity. Laundering clothes might have a different meaning when performed in a household—for example, if one’s partner has a big interview tomorrow and so an extra load of laundry is done to prepare a particular item of clothing—than in a large commercial laundry that provides clean uniforms to a hospital, and where the worker actually hates the work and does it only because it is a job.

Caring practices can be nested in several ways. First, drawing upon the way in which Aristotle described ends, we can imagine caring practices as nested within one another, from more specific to broader purposes. Thus, maintaining one’s medical equipment is a caring practice nested within the broader practice of using that equipment, which is nested within the broader practice of medicine, which is nested in the broader practice of pursuing health. Second, one can reverse this process in order to think about the ways in which different caring practices rely upon other caring practices in order to succeed: if one supplies a doctor but no medical equipment, then one has not adequately provided medical assistance. Thus, to understand the different directions in which caring practices “nest” is to see their complex interrelationships, and not to create the conditions to challenge hierarchies among caring ends.

Power constitutes another important dimension of the context of particular kinds of caring. For some, care is always a dyad between one more powerful caregiver and a weaker care receiver (Noddings 1984). But the power dynamics are more complex in many other circumstances of care. Kari Waerness (1984a, 1984b) actually identified three forms of care: spontaneous care, necessary care, and personal service. Spontaneous care is a kind of good Samaritan act in which no ongoing relationship of care is established, but in which a person provides necessary care to another not expecting any reciprocal relationship to develop. Necessary care is care that the recipient could not provide for him or herself. As an example, doctors provide necessary care to patients. Not all of the care we call necessary care is highly skilled; young children need their diapers changed, but the skill level required is not very exalted. “Personal service,” Waerness’s third category, is the care that one could provide to oneself but someone else provides instead. One could wash one’s own car but one takes it to the carwash; one could do one’s own manicure but prefers to go to the nail parlor. Waerness’s example is that husbands who expect their wives to clean up the house receive personal service. Notice that the difference between care and service is not the act performed, nor the intimacy of the relationship of the work, nor the nature of the relationship established by the care work. Within the Fisher/Tronto definition, all of these forms of care count as care, but Waerness’s distinction between care and service captures an important element of caring. What is different is that in “service,” the actors who command the care work that is provided by care workers are the ones with greater power, whereas in “care,” the more powerful, actors provide the care work for less powerful or more vulnerable recipients. The care workers in both cases might have expertise, or they might be performing care work that is more routine and doable by everyone. The difference is in who appears to be in command.

Caring, as conceived by Fisher and myself, is also a complex process. We identified four steps in the processes of care:

1. Caring about. At this first phase of care, someone or some group notices unmet caring needs.

2. Caring for. Once needs are identified, someone or some group has to take responsibility to make certain that these needs are met.

3. Care-giving. The third phase of caring requires that the actual care-giving work be done.

4. Care-receiving. Once care work is done, there will be a response from the person, thing, group, animal, plant, or environment that has been cared for. Observing that response and making judgments about it (for example, was the care given sufficient? successful? complete?) is the fourth phase of care. Note that while the care receiver may be the one who responds, it need not be so. Sometimes the care receiver cannot respond. Others in any particular care setting will also be in a position, potentially, to assess the effectiveness of the caring act(s). And, in having met previous caring needs, new needs will undoubtedly arise.

In order to think about democratic care, which is not on this level of generalization but a more particular kind of care, it now seems to me that there is a fifth phase of care:

5. Caring with. This final phase of care requires that caring needs and the ways in which they are met need to be consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality, and freedom for all.

From this standpoint, the Fisher/Tronto definition is meant to provide a way to analyze when and how caring is done, and to be able to make assessments about care. It is not meant to be romantic or perfectionist. Sadly, within human existence and the larger global environment there are more needs for care than can be met. But some caring needs do get taken seriously and do get met, while others are ignored or met only in desultory fashion.

Adopting the broad Fisher/Tronto definition for the broadest possible discussions does not preclude the use of a more particular way of thinking of care in a particular setting. For example, the practice of caring for someone else’s children requires some different competences than caring for one’s own children. If a nanny sees her own child’s first steps, she will be delighted. But if she sees her charge’s first steps, she may not reveal it to the parents, who would be saddened to have missed this event. Knowing how to negotiate such issues is part of the caring practice of being a good nanny, which is different from the practice of being a good mother. Cancian’s definition of care, which emphasizes these intimate emotional matters, might be a more useful definition to use in this situation. Nevertheless, there is a danger in adopting a narrower account of care before looking to the purposes and power relationships in a particular set of care practices. To do so might leave out some of the more important dimensions of care.

A criticism that is sometimes made against the Fisher/Tronto concept of care is that it does not provide an account of what constitutes good care (Schwarzenbach 1996). While this is valid, it presumes that concepts necessarily denote their normative frameworks. Looking back at the various concepts we have already described, it is clear that Held’s definition contains a normative dimension, but Cancian’s does not. We might draw normative implications from Duffy’s distinction between nurturant and non-nurturant care, or from Waerness’s distinction between personal service and necessary care, but neither concept is normative in itself. And indeed, the Fisher/Tronto concept works as well to describe bad or dysfunctional care as to describe good care.

It is important, though, not to follow the philosophers’ lead and to define all care as good care. For to do so is to allow ourselves to be misled by the ways in which care can function discursively to obscure injustices. Consider, for example, Uma Narayan’s (1995) account of British colonialism in India, which points to a darker side of care discourse. Colonialism, Narayan observed, did not attempt to justify itself to the imperialist population by claiming to be a system of the exploitation of others’ goods, property, and labor. Instead, the narrative of self-explanation was a discourse of care. The natives would be Christianized, civilized, made better by their encounter with British, Western, and Christian ideals. Women also were brought into the discursive spread of good colonialism in this way. Narayan’s example does more than simply show that “care” can be deployed discursively to bad as well as to good purpose. It also points to the limits of relying upon a concept, like care, for making judgments about the world.

Care from Concept to Political Theory

Concepts are intellectual tools. They are designed for and serve particular purposes. Thus, to have a concept of care is not yet sufficient for discussing care’s place in the world. For care, like any concept, can be situated in a number of theories, and depending upon the theory within which it is placed, it will have different meanings. The normative adequacy of care does not arise from its conceptual clarity, but from the larger political and social theory within which it is placed. Thus, it is possible to talk about care in a feudal society, in which case hierarchies of care will be prominent, and good care will, among other things, preserve the hierarchical relationships of lords and serfs. Or, it is proper to talk about care in a Confucian theory of the good, and there care will stress certain relationships as basic to human flourishing (Herr 2003). Or, as Narayan argued, care is a discourse that provided a critical support to colonialism. Thus, simply to have a concept of care is useful, but we do not yet know to what ends this conceptual tool will be put.

Every political theory, explicitly or implicitly, contains an account of care. Sometimes—for example, in modern utopias—there are very explicit accounts of how caring work should be done. From Thomas More through Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier to B. F. Skinner and Ursula Le Guin, utopian writers have concerned themselves with the details of how, in reorganizing society, they needed as well to reorganize caring duties. These included not only nurturant caring duties (as when Plato and Aristotle described the education of citizens), but also, in some cases, the nonnurturant “dirty work.” Fourier, for example, left dealing with bodily waste to the toddlers who seem fascinated with it. More usually, modern political theorists have simply left working out the details of care work to households or to a general conception of police power (which is explored at great length in chapter 3). One of the ways in which Michel Foucault’s concept of “biopower” is a challenge to liberal theories of the state is that it suggests some ways in which, through state and non-state actors alike, the details of living—sanitation...