Care Economies

To Measure and to Narrate: Paths Toward a Sustainable Future

Citation:

Berik, Günseli. 2018. “To Measure and to Narrate: Paths Toward a Sustainable Future.” Feminist Economics 24 (3): 136–59.

Author: Günseli Berik

Abstract:

This contribution engages with the question of measurement of economic well-being from a feminist ecological perspective. It starts from the dual premises that it is necessary to recognize and value as important the economic, social, and environmental contributors to economic welfare and desirable for ecological and feminist economists to collaborate in moving toward a sustainable future. The study examines the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), formulated and developed by environmental-ecological economists, as a potentially useful measure that responds to both feminist and ecological economic concerns by making visible unpaid care labor and the environment. As an accounting framework that applies the monetary imputation approach, the GPI is objectionable to some ecological and feminist economists. Reviewing debates among feminist and ecological economists, this study argues that the goals and potential objections of both groups may be addressed by complementing GPI with a narrative approach in a plural and conditional policy-input process.

Keywords: Genuine Progress Indicator, unpaid care work, sustainability, ecology

Topics: Economies, Care Economies, Ecological Economics, Feminist Economics, Environment, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Livelihoods

Year: 2018

Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives

Citation:

Bauhardt, Christine, and Wendy Harcourt, eds. 2018. Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: In Search of Economic Alternatives. New York: Routledge. 

Authors: Christine Bauhardt, Wendy Harcourt

Annotation:

Summary:
This book envisages a different form of our economies where care work and care-full relationships are central to social and cultural life. It sets out a feminist vision of a caring economy and asks what needs to change economically and ecologically in our conceptual approaches and our daily lives as we learn to care for each other and non-human others.
 
Bringing together authors from 11 countries (also representing institutions from 8 countries), this edited collection sets out the challenges for gender aware economies based on an ethics of care for people and the environment in an original and engaging way. The book aims to break down the assumed inseparability of economic growth and social prosperity, and natural resource exploitation, while not romanticising social-material relations to nature. The authors explore diverse understandings of care through a range of analytical approaches, contexts and case studies and pays particular attention to the complicated nexus between re/productivity, nature, womanhood and care. It includes strong contributions on community economies, everyday practices of care, the politics of place and care of non-human others, as well as an engagement on concepts such as wealth, sustainability, food sovereignty, body politics, naturecultures and technoscience.
 
Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care is aimed at all those interested in what feminist theory and practice brings to today’s major political economic and environmental debates around sustainability, alternatives to economic development and gender power relations. (Summary from Routledge)

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Conversations on Care in Feminist Political Economy and Ecology
Wendy Harcourt and Christine Bauhardt
 
2. Nature, Care and Gender: Feminist Dilemmas
Christine Bauhardt 
 
3. White Settler Colonial Scientific Fabulations on Otherwise Narratives of Care
Wendy Harcourt 
 
4. Environmental Feminisms: A Story of Different Encounters
Karijn Van Den Berg
 
5. Climate Change, Natural Disasters and the Spillover Effects of Unpaid Care: The Case of Super-typhoon Haiyan
Maria S. Floro and Georgia Poyatzis
 
6. Care-full Community Economies
Kelly Dombroski, Stephen Healy and Katharine McKinnon 
 
7. Care as Wellth: Internalising Care by Democratising Money
Mary Mellor 
 
8. Diverse Ethics for Diverse Economies: Considering the Ethics of Embodiment, Difference and Inter-corporeality at Kufunda
Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya and Andrea J. Nightingale 
 
9. Striving Towards What We Do Not Know Yet: Living Feminist Political Ecology in Toronto’s Food Network
Carla Wember 
 
10. ‘The Garden has Improved My Life’: Agency and Food Sovereignty of Women in Urban Agriculture in Nairobi
Joyce-Ann Syhre and Meike Brückner 
 
11. Transnational Reconfigurations of Re/Production and the Female Body: Bioeconomics, Motherhoods and the Case of Surrogacy in India
Christa Wichterich
 
12. Menstrual Politics in Argentina and Diverse Assemblages of Care
Jacqueline Gaybor 
 
13. Bodies, Aspirations and the Politics of Place: Learning from the Women Brickmakers of La Ladrillera Azucena
Gollaz Morán 
 
14. Towards an Urban Agenda from a Feminist Political Ecology and Care Perspective

Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the 'Green Economy'

Citation:

Harcourt, Wendy, and Ingrid L. Nelson, eds. 2015. Practising Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the 'Green Economy'. London: Zed Books.

Authors: Wendy Harcourt, Ingrid L. Nelson

Annotation:

Summary:
Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies explores the latest thinking on feminist political ecology. Included is a collective critique of the “green economy,” an analysis of the post-Rio+20 UN conference debates, and a nuanced study of the impact that the current ecological and economic crisis will have on a diverse range of women and their communities. By including such well-known contributors as Dianne Rocheleau, Catherine Walsh, and Christa Wichterich, along with an upcoming generation of new activist scholars, it fills the gap in the literature on the relationship between the environment and gender.
 
This timely and important book launches the Zed Books’ Gender, Development and Environment series and puts feminist political ecology securely on the map, making it an important new contribution to environmental studies. (Summary from The University of Chicago Press)
 
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Are We ‘Green’ Yet? and the Violence of Asking Such a Question
Wendy Harcourt and Ingrid L. Nelson
 
1. A Situated View of Feminist Political Ecology from my Networks, Roots and Territories
Dianne Rocheleau
 
2. Contesting Green Growth, Connecting Care, Commons and Enough
Christa Wichterich
 
3. Life, Nature and Gender Otherwise: Feminist Reflections and Provocations from the Andes
Catherine Walsh
 
4. Feminist Political Ecology and the (Un)making of ‘Heroes’: Encounters in Mozambique
Ingrid L. Nelson
 
5. Hegemonic Waters and Rethinking Natures Otherwise
Leila M. Harris
 
6. Challenging the Romance with Resilience: Communities, Scale and Climate Change
Andrea J. Nightingale
 
7. A New Spelling of Sustainability: Engaging Feminist-Environmental Justice Theory and Practice
Giovanna Di Chiro
 
8. The Slips and Slides of Trying to Live Feminist Political Ecology
Wendy Harcourt
 
9. Knowledge About, Knowledge With: Dilemmas of Researching Lives, Nature and Genders Otherwise
Larissa Barbosa da Costa, Rosalba Icaza and Angélica María Ocampo Talero
 
10. World-Wise Otherwise Stories for our Endtimes: Conversations on Queer Ecologies
Wendy Harcourt, Sacha Knox and Tara Tabassi

Topics: Development, Economies, Care Economies, Ecological Economics, Feminist Economics, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Justice, Political Economies

Year: 2015

Critical Perspectives on Financial and Economic Crises: Heterodox Macroeconomics Meets Feminist Economics

Citation:

 Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko, James Heintz, and Stephanie Seguino. 2013. "Critical Perspectives on Financial and Economic Crises: Heterodox Macroeconomics Meets Feminist Economics." Feminist Economics 19 (3): 4-31.

Authors: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, James Heintz, Stephanie Seguino

Abstract:

This contribution brings together various strands of analysis about the causes, consequences, and policy ramifications of economic crises, with a specific focus on distributional dynamics. It aims to facilitate a conversation between macroeconomic theorists of crises and instability and feminist economists and scholars of intergroup inequality. Macroeconomic analyses of the Great Recession have centered on the causal role of financial deregulation, capital flow imbalances, and growth of income and wealth inequality. That work tends to be divorced from research that analyzes broader distributional impacts, prior to the crisis and subsequently, transmitted through economic channels and government responses. This study's framework emphasizes the role of stratification along multiple trajectories – race, class, and gender – in contributing to economic crises and in shaping their distributional dynamics. The study underscores the long-run effects of the 2008 crisis on well-being, highlighted in feminist economists’ research on social reproduction and often missed in the macroeconomics literature.

Keywords: stratification, financialization, macroeconomics, Crisis

Topics: Class, Economies, Care Economies, Economic Inequality, Feminist Economics, Feminisms, Gender, Race

Year: 2013

Measuring Care: Gender, Empowerment, and the Care Economy

Citation:

Folbre, Nancy. 2006. "Measuring Care: Gender, Empowerment, and the Care Economy." Journal of Human Development 7 (2): 183-99.

Author: Nancy Folbre

Abstract:

How should “care” be defined and measured in ways that enhance our understanding of the impact of economic development on women? This paper addresses this question, suggesting several possible approaches to the development of indices that would measure gender differences in responsibility for the financial and temporal care of dependents.

Keywords: Gender, care, empowerment, dependents, unpaid work, Time use

Topics: Development, Economies, Care Economies, Gender, Livelihoods, Political Economies

Year: 2006

The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global

Citation:

Held, Virginia. 2005. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Virginia Held

Annotation:

Summary:
Virginia Held assesses the ethics of care as a promising alternative to the familiar moral theories that serve so inadequately to guide our lives. The ethics of care is only a few decades old, yet it is by now a distinct moral theory or normative approach to the problems we face. It is relevant to global and political matters as well as to the personal relations that can most clearly exemplify care. This book clarifies just what the ethics of care is what its characteristics are, what it holds, and what it enables us to do. It discusses the feminist roots of this moral approach and why the ethics of care can be a morality with universal appeal. Held examines what we mean by "care," and what a caring person is like. Where other moral theories demand impartiality above all, the ethics of care understands the moral import of our ties to our families and groups. It evaluates such ties, focusing on caring relations rather than simply on the virtues of individuals. The book proposes how such values as justice, equality, and individual rights can "fit together" with such values as care, trust, mutual consideration, and solidarity. In the second part of the book, Held examines the potential of the ethics of care for dealing with social issues. She shows how the ethics of care is more promising than Kantian moral theory and utilitarianism for advice on how expansive, or not, markets should be, and on when other values than market ones should prevail. She connects the ethics of care with the rising interest in civil society and considers the limits appropriate for the language of rights. Finally, she shows the promise of the ethics of care for dealing with global problems and seeing anew the outlines of international civility. (Summary from Oxford University Press)
 
Table of Contents: 
1. The Ethics of Care as Moral Theory
 
2. Care as Practice and Value
 
3. The Caring Person
 
4. Justice, Utility, and Care
 
5. Liberalism and the Ethics of Care
 
6. Caring Relations and Principles of Justice
 
7. Care and the Extension of Markets
 
8. Civil Society, Rights, and the Presumption of Care
 
9. Power, Care, and the Reach of Law
 
10. Care and Justice in the Global Context

Topics: Economies, Care Economies, Feminisms, Justice, Political Economies

Year: 2005

Transformed Territories of Gendered Care Work in Ecuador’s Petroleum Circuit

Citation:

Cielo, Cristina, and Nancy Carrión Sarzosa. 2018. "Transformed Territories of Gendered Care Work in Ecuador's Petroleum Circuit." Conservation and Society 16 (1): 8-20.

Authors: Cristina Cielo, Nancy Carrión Sarzosa

Abstract:

This article explores the transformation of indigenous women’s care work in the Ecuadorian Amazon, as their communities are increasingly integrated into petroleum industry activities. Care work activities–not only for social reproduction, but also to sustain cycles of fertility, growth and waste interdependent with nature–constitute affective ecologies. In development sites of Ecuador’s petroleum circuit, such activities are domesticated and devalued, and the territories produced by women’s care work are progressively delimited. Once aimed at social and natural reproduction, their care practices now focus on household and familial reproduction. This article is based on two years of ethnographic and qualitative research in indigenous communities of the Amazonian provinces of Sucumbíos and Pastaza. We bring feminist economic approaches to the study of affective ecologies to show how fundamental changes in inhabitants’ historically shaped relationships to, and conservation of, nature both depend on and produce gendered ecological and socioeconomic relations.

Keywords: care work, petroleum, gender, territories, indigenous communities, Ecuador, Amazon

Topics: Economies, Care Economies, Environment, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender Roles, Women, Indigenous, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Ecuador

Year: 2018

The Monetized Economy Versus Care and the Environment: Degrowth Perspectives On Reconciling an Antagonism

Citation:

Dengler, Corinna, and Birte Strunk. 2018. “The Monetized Economy Versus Care and the Environment: Degrowth Perspectives on Reconciling an Antagonism.” Feminist Economics 24 (3): 160–83. 

Authors: Corinna Dengler, Birte Strunk

Abstract:

This paper addresses the question of how the current growth paradigm perpetuates existing gender and environmental injustices and investigates whether these can be mitigated through a degrowth work-sharing proposal. It uses an adapted framework of the “ICE model” to illustrate how ecological processes and caring activities are structurally devalued by the monetized economy in a growth paradigm. On the one hand, this paradigm perpetuates gender injustices by reinforcing dualisms and devaluing care. On the other hand, environmental injustices are perpetuated since “green growth” does not succeed in dematerializing production processes. In its critique of the growth imperative, degrowth not only promotes the alleviation of environmental injustices but also calls for a recentering of society around care. This paper concludes that, if designed in a gender-sensitive way, a degrowth work-sharing proposal as part of a broader value transformation has the potential to address both gender and environmental injustices.

Keywords: degrowth, gender inequality, sustainability, work sharing, gender working time equality, caring economy

Topics: Economies, Care Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Livelihoods, Political Economies

Year: 2018

Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods: Spaces Lost, Spaces Gained

Citation:

Harcourt, Wendy, ed. 2012. Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods: Spaces Lost, Spaces Gained. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Wendy Harcourt

Abstract:

Annotation:

Summary: 
This volume highlights women's work sustaining local economies and environments, particularly in response to the current food, fuel and climate crises. It includes women's role in the green entrepreneurship, women's reproductive and productive work in the care economy, and a further examination of eco feminist debates. (Summary from Palgrave Macmillan)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Redefining Sustainable Livelihoods 
Sumi Krishna
 
2. Women Advocating for Sustainable Livelihoods and Gender Equality on the Global Stage
Irene Dankelman
 
3. Towards Gender Equality in Global Sustainable Consumption and Production Agreements 
Kathleen Sexsmith
 
4. Gender Equality in Certified Agricultural Value Chains 
Noortje Verhart and Rhiannon Pyburn 
 
5. Global Agricultural Policies, Institutional Interventions, and Women's Livelihoods 
Rao Aruna 
 
6. Global Institutions Try to Get it Right: An Insiders Perspective 
Gretchen Bloom
 
7. Your Caring Sharing Co-op: Women, Work and Sustainability in a Polanyian Paradigm
Molly Scott Cato
 
8. Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods in India: 'Side Stream'/'Mainstream'
Sumi Krishna 
 
9. The Dream Merchants Have No Clothes: Women's Rights and Empowerment in the Microfinance Regime 
Soma Kishore Parthasarathy 
 
10. The Cost of Peace: Exploring Opportunities for Women's Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Settings 
Sabrina Aguiari
 
11. Sustaining Women's and Community Livelihoods in Rural Tanzania 
Mwajuma Masaiganah
 
12. Sustainable Livelihoods and Gender in the Marginal Alpine Communities of Trentino
Micdiela Zucca
 
13. Indigenous Women Claiming Their Land 
Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius
 
14. Biocapital, Biopolitics and Biosocialities: Reframing Health, Livelihoods and Environments with New Genetics and Biotechnology
Liliana Acero
 
15. Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods in Urban Honiara
Anita Lacey
 
16. Gender and Climate Justice 
Ana Agostino and Rosa Lizarde
 
17. Epilogue: Green-Washing Warnings 
Wendy Harcourt

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Care Economies, Environment, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender Roles, Gendered Discourses, Indigenous, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights

Year: 2012

Feminism, Fairness, and Welfare: An Invitation to Feminist Law and Economics

Citation:

Hadfield, Gillian K. 2005. “Feminism, Fairness, and Welfare: An Invitation to Feminist Law and Economics.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 1 (1): 285–306.

Author: Gillian K. Hadfield

Abstract:

In recent years there has been a renewed effort to ground conventional law and economics methodology, with its exclusive focus on efficiency and income redistribution through the tax system, in modern welfare economics (Kaplow & Shavell 1994, 2001). This effort raises a challenge to the possibility of a feminist law and economics: Is it possible to be a good (welfare) economist and still maintain the ethical and political commitments necessary to address feminist concerns with, for example, rights, inequality, and caring labor? In this review, I argue that modern welfare economics, rather than supporting the ethical minimalism of conventional methodology advocated by Kaplow and Shavell, ratifies the need for an ethically and politically informed economic analysis. Feminists can, and should, use the tools of both positive and normative economics to analyze feminist issues in law.

Keywords: welfare economics, care, justice, efficiency, normative, ethics

Topics: Class, Economies, Care Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, Rights

Year: 2005

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