Book Review: Care and Capitalism

Kathleen Lynch’s Care and Capitalism presents on the diversified dimensions of the manifold relationship between care and capitalism. The study demystifies the main theoretical aspects of care issues; the study focuses on the care practices within dominant neoliberal capitalism, which it considers not only as an analytical category but as a normative framework that constructs atomized and isolated individuals. Moreover, it encompasses the possibilities of caring societies with more egalitarian, peaceful, and fewer violence rates as an alternative to the neoliberal order.

The book consists of four parts covering 10 chapters. Chapter 1 unravels and criticizes the ontological assumptions embedded in the mainstream social science traditions that exclude, trivialize, and ignore the importance of caring works. Contrary to conventional approaches that reduce care to the issue of affection and private space, based on binary conceptualizations such as reason/emotion and fact/value, Lynch introduces its multi-layered political and social aspects. Chapter 2 tries to deepen our understanding by illuminating gendered and racialized care, which are intertwined with capitalist accumulation. The author argues that women who reluctantly migrate from relatively poor areas meet the supply of cheap care labor in Western/Northern countries by subjecting them to precarious and irregular working conditions (pp. 39–41). The patriarchal codes and hegemonic masculinity contribute to the reproduction of the unequal division of care labor in families. Chapter 3 discusses the complex nature of love labor, which has a significant role in the production and reproduction of social life. Love labor can be distinguished from other care work forms in that it requires more intense commitment, mutuality, energy, and affection (pp. 66–68). Chapter 4 sheds light on the relationship between the organization of time and care practices. In addition, the chapter uncovers the possible limitations of assistive technologies that have been developed to resolve the lack of time by emphasizing the priority of human contact and intimacy in the care process (pp. 89–90).

Chapter 5 is devoted to criticizing liberalism/neoliberalism’s ideological premises that shape care policies and discourses. Methodological individualism’s neglect of the relationality, solidarity, and dependency among social subjects leads to misrecognition of care. At the same time, due to its tolerance for reactionary and subversive ideologies and limited reformism, which cannot produce radical progressive policies, liberal tools are primarily insufficient to improve a new understanding of the care that can contribute to alleviating some structural inequalities (pp. 102–105). Chapter 6 reinterprets the relationship between individualism and capitalism by revealing the historical transformation of the concept of individualism. Although there are essential variances in Christian traditions, individualism has a considerable place in the salvation route of Catholicism and Protestantism, which is one of the integral parts that gives its form to secularized Western democracy (pp. 118–120). Chapter 7 analyzes other ideologies of capitalism that can potentially harm a care-based culture. The author asserts that competition, meritocracy, and measurement articulated by neoliberalism infiltrate everyday cultural practices, causing valorized economic hierarchies and increased distrust and anxiety in social relations.

Chapter 8 resonates with the voice of non-human animals by stressing the systematic violation-based relationship that the capitalist logic of production establishes with them. Although animal exploitation did not begin with the market economy, contemporary capitalism’s view of animals as property has increased people’s dominance over them. As an alternative to the limited regulatory measures that try to promote the well-being of animals based on anthropocentric assumptions, Lynch proposes a renewed paradigm of social justice that contains non-human actors (pp. 160–164). Chapter 9 unearths the assorted institutional and organized violence means, mechanisms, and regimes created by capitalism. The indirect violence methods of capitalism, such as undermining livable environmental conditions, and legal regulations protecting capital accumulation and social isolation, allows marginalized people to die (pp. 179–183). On the other side, having the disciplinary means of direct physical violence monopolized in the nation-states continue to be among the defining features of institutionalized capitalism (pp. 184–185). Chapter 10 and concluding remarks clarify the possibilities of care-oriented resistance to capitalism and the potential lessons drawn from the Covid-19 experience. The study evaluates the increasingly widespread animal rights, feminist and disability rights activism as movements against capitalism that support carelessness, as well as claiming that the adverse working conditions in the home care sector in Western countries create a resistance atmosphere among workers (pp. 208–210). Furthermore, the impact of the pandemic underlines the need for a care-based perspective on social justice, given the number of people suffering from lack of social contact, especially the elderly (p. 219).

One of the key contributions of Lynch’s book to care studies literature is that it uses care as a critical category to reconsider the foundations of neoliberal capitalism, rather than just treating it as an insipid descriptive concept used to explain service between individuals. Another crucial contribution of the book is that it furnishes the chance to scrutinize some social problems in the Covid-19 period in the light of the concept of care. On the other hand, it can be said that some suggestions will strengthen the main arguments of the book. One of the possible suggestions for the work is that it would be more fruitful to develop a dynamic perspective that takes cognizance of the possibility of conflicts and negotiations between the groups with various interests regarding care policies within the state and the capitalist class, rather than a reductionist approach that treats them as homogeneous political units. However, it is proper to contemplate this suggestion as a nuance that does not overshadow the robust points of the book.

In a nutshell, Care and Capitalism is a critical and inspiring study that offers readers a vital opportunity to re-examine the fundamental components of the hegemonic neoliberal capitalist comprehension by considering the theoretical and practical issues associated with the concept of care. Considering the Covid-19 epidemic, the effects of which are still discussed, it is appropriate to line up that it is a deep and rigorous book that can be recommended not only for specialized social scientists researching care but also for anyone who believes in imagining alternative ethical understandings against the harming facets of neoliberalism.