Affective Equality: Care, Equality and Citizenship

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Affective Equality Care, Equality and
Citizenship

• Kathleen Lynch,
• UCD Equality Studies Centre, School of Social
  Justice, Dublin
• www.ucd.ie/esc
• www.ucd.ie/ewi
• WIDE Annual Conference, 18th-20th June, 2009
• We Care! Feminist Responses to the Care Crisis
• University of Basel

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What is Affective Equality About?

• It treats care as an equality and human rights
  issue
• It recognises
• a) the relational character of human beings (we
  live in profound states of interdependence
  economically, politically, culturally and
  socially - as well as environmentally
• b) human vulnerability we are all at some time
  in our life deeply dependent
• It integrates a concepts dependency and
  interdependency into our understanding of
  equality, human rights and citizenship

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Affective Inequalities

• Affective inequality occurs directly when
• people are deprived of the love, care and
  solidarity (LCS) they need to survive and develop
  as human beings
• the burdens and pleasures of care and love work
  are unequally distributed in society, between
  women and men particularly
• those doing love and care work are not recognised
  economically, politically and/or socially for
  that work
• Affective inequality occurs indirectly when
• e.g. We are not educated regarding the theory and
  practice of love, care and solidarity work in
  education
• and when love, care and solidarity work is
  trivialised by omission from public discourse

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How Citizenship is defined Globally Problems for
Carers

• Liberal perspective values citizen as paid
  worker/public figure
• Largely ignores the way race, gender, ethnicity,
  age, disability etc. influence citizenship status
  
• Silent on the reality of dependency and
  interdependency as central to human existence
  (treats loving and caring as private matters, and
  solidarity work as an option within civil
  society)
• Prevailing Neo-liberal Perspective - offers a
  market view of membership of society
• Citizen is defined as a consumer, client with
  the capacity to buy and sell services/products
  caring is only valued on the market
• citizens are defined as autonomous, privatised
  persons, focus is on caring for oneself -
  individual responsibility for failure
  (undermining public goods)
• States role in public service provision and in
  state subvention is seriously circumscribed -
  adversely affects women both as carers and as
  paid workers

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Competing Rational Economic Actors Liberal and
Neo-Liberal model of Citizens
 
X
X
X
X
Visible Political Cultural Relations
X
Economic Relations
X
X
X
X
X
Invisible Affective Relations
(Love, Care Solidarity Work)
O Self interested, Calculating, Competing
Economic Actors. X Competition Between Actors.
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Care-less definition of Global Citizenship

• The Market economy has become the primary
  producer of cultural logic, of cultural value
• The emotional labour involved in caring and
  loving has been discredited and denied
• Primary care and love work seen as a necessity
  but also as a nuisance
• Caring is coloured by the context with which it
  is associated - oppressive
• The coloniser within leads us to distance
  ourselves from caring we learn to emulate the
  idealised self sufficient liberal (male-defined)
  rational citizen
• We need to enable care discourses to redefine
  public discourse, policies and politics so that
  caring can be valorised economically, politically
  and culturally without being romanticised or
  commercialised

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Masculinity is defined as Care-Less

• Feminine identities are assumed to be care-full
  (moral imperative on women to care)
• Masculine identities are equated with dominance
  (R.W. Connell, 1995, 2003)
• Men are assumed be care-less (men see
  breadwinning as caring (Lynch, Baker and Lyons
  Affective Equality Love, Care and Injustice,
  2009)
• Women are cares foot soldiers men are care
  commanders they can assign intimate care work
  (love labouring) to others

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Relational Realities A Care-Full Model of
Citizenship

• Tertiary Care Relations
• solidarity work

Secondary Care Relations general care work
Primary Care Relations love labour
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Challenge for Carers - love labour (caring of
intimately others) is inalienable and
non-commodifiable

• You cannot pay someone else to build or maintain
  your own relationship with intimate others
  mutuality, commitment and feelings for others
  (and the human effort that goes with expressing
  these) cannot be provided for hire as they are
  voluntary in nature.
• Love labouring in particular cannot be assigned
  to others without altering the very nature of the
  relationships involved it is not possible to
  secure the quality of a relationship on a paid
  basis

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Time and Love Labouring

• Love labour time is not infinitely condensable
  you cannot do it in less and less time (Folbre,
  2004). It is not possible to produce fast care
  like fast food in standardised packages. If we go
  the McWorld route in caring what we will get is
  not care but pre-packaged units of supervision,
  attending without intimacy or personal interest
  in the welfare of others (Badgett and Folbre,
  1999)
• The rationality of caring is different from, and
  to some degree contradicts, scientific and
  bureaucratic rationality. There is no hierarchy
  or career structure to relations of love
  labouring they cannot be supplied to order
• The goal is the relationship itself, there is no
  identifiable beginning, middle and end. The goal
  or objective is often diffuse and indefinable.

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Conclusion 1 Care-full citizenship

• Caring occupies a similar structural role in
  relation to emotional life that material labour
  occupies in relation to economic life
• Caring (in the love labouring sense) has to be
  done due to human vulnerability and
  developmental needs
• Need to make caring central to the definition of
  citizenship
• Education about citizenship must include
  education about loving, caring and solidarity

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Conclusion 2 Need to Challenge the way
masculinity and femininity are defined

• Women are morally impelled to care while men are
  defined as dominant and care-less
• Major challenge is to alter definitions of
  masculinity as well as definitions of femininity
• Need for a challenge to how we define what is a
  permissible subject in the public sphere

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Conclusion 3 Creating egalitarian and social
just world 4 Key Contexts for the promotion of
social justice Equality From Theory to Action
(2004) Baker, J., K Lynch, S. Cantillon and J.
Walsh)

• Economic Context - in economic relations
  incomes/wages, wealth etc.
• goal equality of resources no meaningful
  equality of opportunity without equality of
  economic condition
• Socio-cultural Context in cultural relations -
  in systems of representation, interpretation,
  communication (in media, education etc.)
• goalequality of respect and recognition
• Political Context power relations - in formal
  politics, on boards, committees, in paid work and
  family/personal relations
• goalequality of power in public and private
  institutions
• Affective Context (care relations) -wherever
  relations of love, care, and solidarity (LCS)
  operate - personal relationships, paid work
  relations, community and associational relations
• goalequality in the doing of care work and
  equality in the receiving of care