Lynch, Kathleen and Crean, Margaret (2019) On the question of cheap care: Regarding A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Raj Patel and Jason W Moore. Irish Journal of Sociology, 27 (2). pp. 200-207. ISSN 0791-6035

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Abstract

One of the most engaging claims of Patel and Moore’s book is that abstract ideas have played a powerful role legitimating the exploitation of swathes of humanity, through distinguishing ontologically and epistemologically between nature and society. As most women, and indigenous people, were defined as part of nature, their labours and lives, including their care labour, were deemed to be part of nature and thereby legitimately exploitable. The authors claim that the cheapening of care arose from the separation of spheres between care work and paid work, between home and the economy, arising from the development of enclosures and the demise of the commons. What the book does not address, however, is how the exploitation of women’s domestic and care labour was not only beneficial to capitalism: men of all classes were and are beneficiaries of women’s unpaid care labour. The authors also suggest that the primary purpose of caring is to reproduce people for capitalism. But caring is not undertaken simply at the behest of capitalism. Nurturing and caring for others are defining features of humanity given the lengthy dependency of humans at birth and at times of vulnerability. The logic of care is very different to market logic.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Care; capitalism; patriarchy; gender; exploitation;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Applied Social Studies
Item ID:	19028
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1177/0791603519835432
Depositing User:	Dr Margaret Crean
Date Deposited:	16 Oct 2024 10:25
Journal or Publication Title:	Irish Journal of Sociology
Publisher:	Sage
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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