About Care Talk
Welcome to Care Talk!
This blog was founded by Nancy Folbre to engage researchers, students, journalists, and others interested in the “care sector”– an important part of our economy devoted to the direct care of others through the family, the community, the market, and the state. In collaboration with Jocelyn Olcott and the Revaluing Care in the Global Economy network, the blog now features posts by researchers working in the quantitative and qualitative social sciences as well as the humanities to explore the problems of:
1) how to measure economic contributions made by families and communities;
2) the shortcomings of the standard “business model” based on profit maximization and consumer choice as a means of delivering effective care services through the market;
3) poor institutional design in the U.S. public sector, which often fails to deliver equitable, efficient, or politically sustainable systems of care provision; and
4) the analysis of alternative models for ensuring equitable access to and valuation of both paid and unpaid care.
When a Commodity is Not Exactly a Commodity
Every week, the journal Science complements its published articles with one or more “Perspectives” offering a brief and informal summary of research on an important topic. I was thrilled to be invited to submit one of these recently, and chose to focus on the impact of personal interactions and emotional connections on the economics of care services.
Justin Care
Most debates over family policy in the U.S. focus on comparisons with Europe, Canada, or Australia. But so much is happening in East Asia! The rapidity of fertility decline in Korea –combined with the mobilization of women’s groups there–has led to major new government initiatives.
Lands of Possibility
The social democracies of Northwestern Europe offer many varieties of inspiration for the United States.
Buying Care
At a Women’s World conference in Korea two years ago some community artists laid out a large piece of canvas on smooth ground, along with pencils, markers, and paints for passersby to express themselves. The resulting piece of collective art was tapestry-like, with a layered intricacy exceeding that of most renegade graffiti.
What is Care?
My all-time favorite popularization of care issues is the comic book Adventures of Carrie Giver, but I think there’s a serious problem with this proposal as it now stands
What’s the Economy For, Anyway?
Sometimes its hard to see through that almighty dollar. We need to stop and ask what the economy is FOR, anyway. This question is the focal point of a campaign being organized by filmmakers John de Graaf and Laura Pacheco, an outgrowth of the Forum on Social Wealth, described in my last post.