Challenges to Creating a Caring Democracy

摘要

Whatever else may have emerged from the global pandemic of COVID-19, we should recognize it as a brief moment when concerns for people's health displaced concern for the growth of the political economy. While there were many negative effects of this shift of attention, especially for those who were already the most vulnerable people everywhere, it was a remarkable shift in focus.Will such a concern for care continue to guide policies and people's lives? At the moment, there are indications around the globe that the idea that care—both as practices of care and as an ideal central value for society—should be at the center of political life has gained momentum. But movements for progressive change have historically had only fleeting opportunities for success and we can see the forces of backlash taking shape.Care is a powerful concept, but it is only a concept. In fact, insofar as we can argue that all humans (and perhaps we should say all life forms and others?) require care, it is, as I have argued for decades, a central concept that should inform our scientific investigations. But care takes its meaning, as do all concepts, from the theory within which it is embedded. In some ancient societies, care work was done by slaves, and it seemed a necessary part of the way the world existed that slaves did drudgery work to free others (Williams 1994). European colonial discourses—from the fifteenth through the twentieth century—gained their legitimacy from arguments about the caring needs of those they subjected to their rule, often explicitly using the language of saving souls or “civilizing” people (Narayan 1995). And just as surely as feminists claim to understand something about the nature of care, so too do fascists. Just invoking care is not enough.Indeed, if traditional political moorings no longer seem to apply, the appeals for care will probably be shaped by many new political claims. The question becomes: How can we try to ensure that people lean in the direction of more democratic, that is, more equal and inclusive, rather than less inclusive, more hierarchical and unequal harmful discourses of care?This article proceeds through the following steps: First, let us consider the nature of care and the remarkably progressive thoughts about using care to center political life that are currently circulating. Second, the nature of the backlash needs to be made clear. Third, we explore the compelling case for caring democracy.I have long worked from the broad definition of care that Berenice Fisher and I devised: 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. (Fisher and Tronto 1990, 40)While this definition has been subject to debate—some arguing that it is too broad, and others that it is too narrow (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017)—it was a bold claim about the centrality of care to be seen in many human practices.1 Can such a broad concept be useful? This concept, like all concepts, will take its more specific meaning as it is applied from within a theoretical framework to address a particular question. Thus, Fiona Williams has suggested that we can think of care as operating on a micro-, meso-, and macro-level within sociological thinking (Williams 2018). My concerns in this essay are mainly at a political level, that is, thinking about care collectively in its meaning for society, which corresponds perhaps most closely to Williams's macro-level.2Recent work around the globe points toward greater concerns for care. Many have begun to write about the need for a more caring world; an excellent summary is in the Care Collective's Care Manifesto (2021). Oxfam, UN Women, and the UK Women's Budget Group have all made proposals for creating more