Show notes
The discourse around today's crisis of care responds to the shredding of America's social safety net, but leaves out the most vulnerable almost entirely. In episode 170 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss how this works with Premilla Nadasen, author of Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. They discuss how gender fits into the care industry, the harms of associating care work with emotion, and how the practice of care has been commodified.
Highlighted moments
the care crisis is not only about how do we afford child care and elder care, but it's in fact about things like food insecurity, housing insecurity, family separation, incarceration, the climate crisis.
“I think part of the problem with framing this work as care is an expectation that the people who are doing the labor are going to be emotionally invested in the work, that they are going to go above and beyond the call of duty.”
“They actually rejected the term care workers. They rejected the term even household workers or maids or servants, and they were frequently called servants in the 1970s. And they wanted to be called household technicians.”
“if you look at the top 10 Fortune 500 companies defined by revenue today, four are part of the care economy. Whereas in contrast, in 1980, the top 10 included six oil and gas companies, two tech firms, and two auto manufacturers.”
Transcript
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