Review Corner: “The Care Manifesto”
A look at The Care Collective’s “politics of interdependence”
A quick read at only 100 pages, The Care Manifesto recognizes the areas where care is lacking in both Western society and the current global landscape. It explores this deficit at various scales: from the family unit and communities, to state and even global levels. Scarcity due to neoliberal policies creates a paranoid and selfish mindset in individuals, making it harder to imagine caring for anyone beyond your own family or “people like us,” which in turn stokes racism and xenophobia.
Caring professions and care itself has long been delegated to a low level of value and respect in our society, often associated with or assigned to women, particularly BIPOC, making it more difficult to do some of the most essential work of a society.
The Care Manifesto asserts that bringing the concept of care into a respected position for all and by all, in the form of “promiscuous” care, will reinforce itself by providing security at the family or kin level, leading to more capacity for care and engagement at the community level and beyond, with resources and emphasis provided by the state itself. It uses examples of cooperatives and grassroots organizing, notably the massive community care efforts in Greece after their financial collapse post forced neoliberal makeover. It also draws largely from the template of indigenous kinship — which recognizes and respects a personal relationship with all living things including our environment.
This provides a useful angle against the conservative (or sometimes liberal) argument in favor of bootstrap theory and the “welfare state creating dependency.” The Care Collective asserts that the nature of humanity and all life is INTERDEPENDENT, and that dependency and autonomy are in fact two sides of the same coin, referencing studies and assertions from disabled communities.
The pandemic is a particularly effective time to alert others to the uncaring nature of capitalism and to our interconnectedness. The sooner that we can recognize and embrace our inherent dependence on one another, the sooner we can use it to our advantage to create a society that prioritizes flourishing, stability, and as a result, autonomy.
“What didn’t you do to bury me
But you forgot that I was a seed!”
-Dinos Christianopoulos, Greek poet
