The Care Collective

The Care Manifesto

The Care Collective was formed in 2017, originally as a London-based reading group aiming to understand and address the multiple and extreme crises of care. Each coming from a different discipline, we have been active both collectively and individually in diverse personal, academic and political contexts. Members include Andreas Chatzidakis, Jamie Hakim, Jo Littler, Catherine Rottenberg, and Lynne Segal

Notes on the Care Manifesto - the Care Collective

Carelessness Reigns:
Our society structures are not based on caring,
Many people live in poverty and cannot access privatised health care i.e. Community and social welfare have been cast aside and replaced with self-care industry, you have to buy your care.

'The undermining of care and care work, however, has a much longer history. Care has long been devalued due, in large part, to its association with women, the feminine and what have been seen as the "unproductive" caring professions.' (pg 3)

Defensive self-interest

What if we were to begin to put care at the very centre of life?

Care as a social capacity and activity involving the nurturing of all that is necessary for the welfare and flourishing of life.

'A neoliberal economic growth policies have become dominant in so many countries, the inherently careless practice of 'growing the economy' has taken priority over ensuring the well-being of citizens'. (pg. 8)

Carewashing: They (carewashing corporations) go further by trying to capitalize on the very care crises they have helped to create

Kinships are encouraged to compensate for society's lack of care, this leads to radical right wing notions 'we only care for our own' (George Lakoff, and my mother)

Universal care: care as a priority

Caring Politics:
- caring for: physical hands-on care
- caring about: feeling invested in the well-being of others
- caring with: how to mobilise politically to transform our world
Care should be understood as broadly as possible.

Those who need help (care), like the chronically ill, are made to feel bad about it.

Manhood: Autonomy and independence
Men have been punished for being less masculine, rather than encouraged to care and acknowledge their own dependencies.

The double burden of paid labour and unpaid domestic work which many working-class women have always carried.

Nancy Fraser:
'male breadwinner'
'universal breadwinner': both parents are compelled to overwork full-time
'universal caregiver': both parental care and equal opportunities in the paid workspace are valued

Caring can be challenging and exhausting
Ample resources and time is a necessity to work through some of the negative emotions tied up with care, whether in giving or receiving it.

We need to break the destructive linking of dependency with pathology and recognise that we are all formed, through and by our interdependencies.

Caring Kinships:
'promiscuous care', that would enable us to multiply the numbers of people we can care for, about and with, permitting us to experiment with the ways that we care.

'blood mothers' and 'other-mothers', 'families of choice', 'strangers like me'

Limitless hospitality to 'the stranger'
Radical egalitariansim?
We must not descriminate when we care.

Caring Communities:
-mutual support
-public space
-shared resources
-local democracy

Sharing skills and things helps create
local jobs & money through municipality

Caring States:
All education and vocational training needs to emphasise care and caretaking practices, developing the capabilities of each person to hone their caring skills, while insisting that learning is about enhancing old as well as discovering new ways to nurture life and the world - whether in the sciences, humanities, carpentry or cooking.

Mutual Thriving

Caring for the World

Capability approach: redifining poverty in terms of the deprivation of the capacity to live a good life, while broadening the notion of development beyond the economic to include expanding the capabilities of people wherever they live, to participate in social life.

New Source: Oxfam's Time to Care


Every billionair is a policiy failure.

Grassroots Resistance?

Being cosmopolitan means being at ease with strangeness, knowing that we have no choice but to live with difference, whatever differences come to matter in specific times and places.

(I think most of us have lost sight of the why, we learn and work)