The importance of practices of collective care: Exploring directions for an alternative productive paradigm fitting our times’ social,economic and ecological requirements

Abstract

The Anthropocene is characterized by multiple crises associated with the infinite accumulation of growth on a planet of finite resources. Productive labour and the 8-h working model contribute to this contradiction. We argue for the reduction of productive labour in favour of reproductive labour accumulated through practices of collective care. The latter can heal the damage capital accumulation produces. Collective care brings into light various social practices often invisible to production, allows for a new understanding of nonhuman agency, and challenges the dominant ethical disposition around work. We advocate for a new power equilibrium between productive and reproductive labour.

Keywords

Anthropocene practices of collective care (re)productive labour nonhuman agency democratization of work

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barck-Holst

Nilsonne

Åkerstedt

, et al. (2022) Reduced working hours and work-life balance. Nordic Social Work Research 12(4): 450–463.

Barron

Hess

(2020) Non-human ‘labor’: The work of earth others. In: The Handbook of Diverse Economies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 163–169.

Battilana

Yen

Ferreras

, et al. (2022) Democratizing work: Redistributing power in organizations for a democratic and sustainable future. Organization Theory 3(1): 263178772210847.

Budd

Miller

Manning

, et al. (2020) Digital technologies in the public-health response to COVID-19. Nature Medicine 26(8): 1183–1192.

Castoriadis

(2010) A Society Adrift: Interviews and Debates, 1974-1997 (eds E Escobar, M Gondicas, and P Vernay). 1st ed. New York: Fordham University Press.

Chamberlain

(2018) Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work. Ithaca: ILR Press an imprint of Cornell University Press.

Clough

Halley

(eds) (2007) The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham: Duke University Press.

Collective TC and Recorded Books I (2020) The Care Manifesto the Politics of Interdependence. S.l.: Verso. Available at: https://rbdigital.rbdigital.com (accessed 7 September 2020).

Corry

(2017) The international politics of geoengineering: The feasibility of plan B for tackling climate change. Security Dialogue 48(4): 297–315.

10.

Crespy

Munta

(2023) Lost in transition? Social justice and the politics of the EU green transition. Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research 29(2): 235–251.

11.

Crutzen

Stoermer

(2017) ‘The ‘Anthropocene’’ (2000). In: Robin

Sörlin

Warde

(eds) The Future of Nature. Connecticut, USA: Yale University Press, 479–490. Available at: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300188479-041/html (accessed 5 July 2023).

12.

D’Alisa

De Maria

Kallis

(eds) (2015) Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

13.

Deckard

(2024) Social reproduction, struggle and the ecology of ‘women’s work’ in world-literature. Feminist Theory 25(2): 222–241.

14.

Desai

Smith

(2018) Kinship across Species: Learning to care for nonhuman others. Feminist Review 118(1): 41–60.

15.

Diprose

(2017) Radical equality, care and labour in a community economy. Gender, Place & Culture 24(6): 834–850.

16.

Dowling

(2021) The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It?, First edition paperback London; New York: Verso.

17.

Dryzek

Pickering

(2019) The Politics of the Anthropocene, First edition Oxford, United Kingdom; New York: Oxford University Press.

18.

Eckersley

(2017) Geopolitan democracy in the Anthropocene. Political Studies 65(4): 983–999.

19.

Eckersley

(2018) Anthropocene raises risks of Earth without democracy and without us. Available at: https://theconversation.com/anthropocene-raises-risks-of-earth-without-democracy-and-without-us-38911 (accessed 22 November 2019).

20.

Eckersley

(2020) Ecological democracy and the rise and decline of liberal democracy: Looking back, looking forward. Environmental Politics 29(2): 214–234.

21.

Engel-Di Mauro

(2018) Urban community gardens, commons, and social reproduction: Revisiting Silvia Federici’s revolution at point zero. Gender, Place & Culture 25(9): 1379–1390.

22.

Fagertun

Vike

Haukelien

(eds) (2024) The Political Economy of Care: Welfare State Capitalism, Universalism and Social Reproduction. Norwegen: Scandinavian University Press.

23.

Federici

(2012) Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland, CA: Brooklyn, NY: London: PM Press. Common Notions: Autonomedia; Turnaround [distributor].

24.

Federici

(2014) Caliban and the Witch, 2., rev. ed. New York, NY: Autonomedia.

25.

Föllmer

(2022) Capitalism and agency in interwar Germany. In: Föllmer

Swett

(eds) Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 31–57. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781108985192%23CN-bp-2/type/book_part (accessed 23 April 2024).

26.

Gerold

Hoffmann

Aigner

(2023) Towards a critical understanding of work in ecological economics: A postwork perspective. Ecological Economics 212: 107935.

27.

Gibson

Dombroski

(eds) (2020) The Handbook of Diverse Economies. Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

28.

Gomez-Baggethun

(2022) Rethinking work for a just and sustainable future. Ecological Economics 200: 107506.

29.

Gorz

(2005) Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society. Repr. Cambridge: Polity Press.

30.

Graeber

(2019) Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. London: Penguin Books.

31.

Haraway

(2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Experimental futures: technological lives, scientific arts, anthropological voices. Durham: Duke University Press.

32.

Hartigan

(2017) Care of the Species: Races of Corn and the Science of Plant Biodiversity. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Available at: https://academic-oup-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/minnesota-scholarship-online/book/14260.

33.

Harvey

(2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

34.

Head

(2016) Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene: Re-conceptualising Human-Nature Relations. Routledge research in the Anthropocene. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

35.

Henley

(2015) Greece’s solidarity movement: ‘it’s a whole new model – and it’s working’. The Guardian, 23 January. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/23/greece-solidarity-movement-cooperatives-syriza (accessed 17 July 2018).

36.

Himmelweit

(1995) The discovery of ‘unpaid work’: The social consequences of the expansion of ‘work’. Feminist Economics 1(2): 1–19.

37.

Hoffmann

Paulsen

(2020) Resolving the ‘jobs-environment-dilemma’? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research. Environmental Sociology 6(4): 343–354.

38.

Honig

(2017) Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair. First edition. Thinking out loud. New York: Fordham University Press.

39.

Huf

Rees

Beggs

, et al. (2020) Capitalism in Australia: New histories for a reimagined future. Thesis Eleven 160(1): 95–120.

40.

IPCC (2022) Global Warming of 1.5°C: IPCC Special Report on Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels in Context of Strengthening Response to Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty. 1st ed. Geneva, Switzerland: Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781009157940/type/book (accessed 18 April 2024).

41.

Jackson

(2021) Post Growth: Life after Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

42.

Johnson

(2020) The end of high culture and the Anthropocene. Thesis Eleven 160(1): 84–94.

43.

Kallis

(2017) Economics Without Growth. In: Another Economy Is Possible. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 34–54.

44.

Kapitsinis

(2023) The 2007/08 capitalist crisis evolution in Greece: A geographical political economy perspective. Human Geography 16(1): 3–16.

45.

Kapitsinis

Gialis

(2023) The spatial division of precarious labour across the European Union regions: A composite index analysis of the 2008/2009 global economic crisis effects and COVID-19 initial implications. European Urban and Regional Studies 30(4): 380–403.

46.

Kapitsinis

Poulimas

Emmanouil

, et al. (2022) Spatialities of being a young NEET in an era of turbulence: A critical account of regional resilience across the Mediterranean EU south. Journal of Youth Studies 27(1): 1–22.

47.

Kittay

(2020) Love’s Labors: Essays on Women, Equality and Dependency, Second edition New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

48.

Lawrence

(ed.) (2010) Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations, 1. paperback ed Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

49.

Ley

(2023) Care ethics and the future of work: A different voice. Philosophy & Technology 36(1): 7.

50.

Marx

(1992) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (ed. E Mandel; tran. D Fernbach). Reprinted in Penguin Classics. Capital. v. 1: Penguin classics Vol. 2. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review.

51.

Mazzucato

(2018) The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, First US edition New York: Public Affairs, an imprint of Perseus Books a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group.

52.

Pease

Vreugdenhil

Stanford

(eds) (2017) Critical Ethics of Care in Social Work: Transforming the Politics and Practices of Caring. 1st ed. London, UK: Routledge. Available at: https://www-taylorfrancis-com-443.web.bisu.edu.cn/books/9781315399171 (accessed 23 April 2024).

53.

Plumwood

(2007) A review of Deborah Bird Rose’s ‘Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation’. Available at: http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2007/08/01/a-review-of-deborah-bird-roses-reports-from-a-wild-country-ethics-for-decolonisation/ (accessed 23 July 2020).

54.

Power

(2019) Assembling the capacity to care: Caring-with precarious housing. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44(4): 763–777.

55.

Puig de la Bellacasa

(2015) Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science 45(5): 691–716.

56.

Puig de la Bellacasa

(2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. Posthumanities 41. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

57.

Randalls

(2011) Climate change pathology. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 43(6): 1242–1247.

58.

Rigkos-Zitthen

(2023) Commoning in the Anthropocene: Responding to large-scale mining through practices of collective care. The case of Skouries, Halkidiki, Greece. Macquarie University, p. 269.

59.

Rigkos-Zitthen

Kapitsinis

(2024a) Exploring commoning in the Anthropocene. Introducing the concept of the election commons as a response to socio-ecological crisis. The case of Skouries, Greece. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space: 1–17.

60.

Rigkos-Zitthen

Kapitsinis

(2024b) Studying a women’s collective from a politics of commoning perspective: The case of skouries, Greece. Journal of Cultural Geography 1(27): 1–28.

61.

Rigkos-Zitthen

McGregor

Williams

(2024) Commoning in the Anthropocene: Exploring the political possibility of caring with in Skouries of Halkidiki, Greece. Political Geography 111: 103089.

62.

Robinson

(2018) A feminist practical ethics of care. In: Brown

Eckersley

(eds) The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 558–572. Available at: http://oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198746928.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198746928-e-41 (accessed 28 July 2020).

63.

Rockström

(2017) 5 reasons why the economy is failing the environment, and humanity. In: World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/5-reasons-why-the-economy-is-failing-the-environment-and-humanity/ (accessed 18 November 2019).

64.

Rockström

Kotzé

Milutinović

, et al. (2024) The planetary commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding earth-regulating systems in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121(5): e2301531121.

65.

Ruddick

(1989) Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace. Boston: Beacon Press.

66.

Scoones

(2021) Pastoralists and peasants: Perspectives on agrarian change. The Journal of Peasant Studies 48(1): 1–47.

67.

Serntedakis

(2017) ‘Solidarity’ for strangers. Etnofoor 29(2): 83–98.

68.

Smessaert

Missemer

Levrel

(2020) The commodification of nature, a review in social sciences. Ecological Economics 172: 106624.

69.

Summerfield

(2013) Women Workers in the Second World War: Production and Patriarchy in Conflict. Routledge library editions. Women’s history Volume 36. London New York: Routledge.

70.

Tronto

(1993) Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. New York: Routledge.

71.

Tronto

(2013) Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York: New York University Press.

72.

Tronto

(2015) Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics. Ithaca: Cornell Selects, an imprint of Cornell University Press.

73.

Tronto

(2017) There is an alternative: Homines curans and the limits of neoliberalism. International Journal of Care and Caring 1(1): 27–43.

74.

Tsing

(2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

75.

Vercellone

(2015) From the crisis to the ‘welfare of the common’ as a new mode of production. Theory, Culture & Society 32(7–8): 85–99.

76.

Voglino

Savatteri

Gualano

, et al. (2022) How the reduction of working hours could influence health outcomes: A systematic review of published studies. BMJ Open 12(4): e051131.

77.

Weber

Baehr

Wells

(2002) The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism and Other Writings. Penguin twentieth-century classics. New York: Penguin Books.

78.

Weeks

(2011) The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. A John Hope Franklin Center Book. Durham, N.C. London: Duke University Press.

79.

Williams

(2016) Justice and care in the city: Uncovering everyday practices through research volunteering. Area 48(4): 513–520.

80.

Williams

(2018) Urban commons are more-than-property: Urban commons are more-than-property. Geographical Research 56(1): 16–25.