Radical Spotlight: The Economics (and Politics too) of Care

Datum
30. Okto­ber 2024 

Sem­i­nar of the Rad­i­cal Spot­lights series, a col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Soci­ety for Eco­nom­ic Anthro­pol­o­gy (SEA) in the AAA and the Net­work Anthro­pol­o­gy of Econ­o­my in the EASA.

Rad­i­cal Spot­light: The Eco­nom­ics (and Pol­i­tics too) of Care
Sec­ond sem­i­nar of the Rad­i­cal Spot­lights series, a col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Soci­ety for Eco­nom­ic Anthro­pol­o­gy (SEA) in the AAA and the Net­work Anthro­pol­o­gy of Econ­o­my in the EASA. 

Octo­ber 30th, 2024, 4–5.30pm Cen­tral Euro­pean Time (Berlin)

https://unisg.zoom.us/j/62561524798?pwd=GJyMwqzzD7AIjfwGdny6agmJXiRhNd.1

Theme
Care rais­es ques­tions about labour, val­ue, biog­ra­phy, kin­ship, and respon­si­bil­i­ty that are at the heart of eco­nom­ic anthro­pol­o­gy. Look­ing at and through care reveals ide­olo­gies and prac­tices of what a soci­ety is and ought to be, and who should be respon­si­ble for its repro­duc­tion. This con­cerns eco­nom­ic ide­olo­gies about state, kin­ship or mar­ket rela­tions and the respec­tive inequal­i­ties in access­ing care and pro­vid­ing it. These inequal­i­ties con­cern human rela­tions to nature and the var­i­ous clas­si­fi­ca­tions of gen­der, race, sex­u­al­i­ty, and oth­er forms of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and rule.

Care is an indi­ca­tor of rad­i­cal changes of the con­tem­po­rary. Some of these are the finan­cial­iza­tion and mar­ke­ti­za­tion of health­care on a glob­al scale; val­ue fron­tiers that ren­der some care labour paid and some unpaid; demo­graph­ic changes such as age­ing and urban­iza­tion; famil­ial ide­olo­gies, and the avail­abil­i­ty of ever more expen­sive med­ical treat­ments that cre­ate new hopes for longer lives.

How are chang­ing care prac­tices anchored in eco­nom­ic ide­olo­gies that offer scripts about who is deserv­ing of or respon­si­ble for care? How do peo­ple ‘price’ the val­ue of care and life itself, and strug­gle over eco­nom­ic and oth­er val­ues when orga­niz­ing care? How does care fea­ture in forms of vio­lence in and of social repro­duc­tion? And more gen­er­al­ly, what does eco­nom­ic anthro­pol­o­gy have to offer to our under­stand­ing of the eco­nom­ics of care?

These are only some of the ques­tions that the three speak­ers of this sem­i­nar will engage with. The aim of this sem­i­nar is to stim­u­late a con­ver­sa­tion and our think­ing about the direc­tions and ques­tions that are cen­tral to the eco­nom­ics of care.

Speak­ers
Erd­mute Alber, Pro­fes­sor of Social Anthro­pol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bayreuth, Ger­many: „Car­ing for future life chances in high­ly diverse kin­ship net­works: Chang­ing inter-gen­er­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ties in moments of eco­nom­ic transformation”

Cati Coe, Cana­da Research Chair of Migra­tion and Care, Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty, Ottawa:„The com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of care: Does pay­ing for elder care matter?”

Eli­jah Adiv Edel­man, Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­o­gy, Rhode Island Col­lege, Unit­ed States: „Necro­cap­i­tal­ism and the val­ue of life: Rad­i­cal care and queer and trans vital­i­ties in a time of dis­pos­able life”

Orga­ni­za­tion
Andreas Streinz­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Gallen and Insti­tute for Social Research Frank­furt and Erik Bähre, Lei­den University
Thanks to the “Mor­al­iza­tions of Inequal­i­ty” project at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Gallen for the finan­cial sup­port to the seminar.