Paper short abstract:

Studies of care often attribute a positive value to care. What gets lost are the negative sides of care as (re)producing power differentials and marginalisation. In my talk, I stress these counterintuitive effects of care, arguing for a broader conceptualisation that allows for critical insights.

Paper long abstract:

Care increasingly has been used as a concept of critique - critique of neoliberalisation, of migration policies, of gendered and global inequalities. These studies often operate with strong dichotomies that ascribe a positive value to care. For example, Mol (2008) starkly contrasts care to the (neo-liberal) logic of choice and in regard to ethics, Tronto (1993) places all human pursuits that aim towards a better world as care. What gets lost in these depictions are the negative sides of care as (re)producing power differentials and marginalisation (Thelen 2015). Precisely because care plays a key role in articulating moralities it is central to classification of difference. Although the underlying categories in these processes are fluid, their iteration tends to stabilize and reproduce inequalities. In my talk I will stress these counterintuitive effects of care at empirical examples from Hungary and Austria, arguing for a broader conceptualisation that allows for critical insights.