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The Care Crisis:What Caused It and How Can We End It?
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From self-care to healthcare; how austerity and financialisation decimated our care systems
Every one of us will need care at some point in life: social care, healthcare, childcare, eldercare. In the shadow of COVID-19, care has become the most urgent topic of our times. But our care systems are in crisis. Concern for the most vulnerable has been overtaken by an obsession with profits and productivity. How did we end up here?
In an era of economic turmoil, lower birth rates and increased life expectancy mean a larger proportion of the population than ever before is of retirement age. As a result, more people need care, and their numbers are rising. Yet, despite the demand, public services continue to be cut and sold off. Those most in need are left to fend for themselves.
In this groundbreaking book, Emma Dowling charts the multifaceted nature of the care crisis. Telling the stories of those on the frontlines through conversations with paid and unpaid carers, doctors, social workers, parents, and eldercare workers, she exposes the devastating impact of financialisation and austerity. The Care Crisis reveals a system that places profits before people and shows that privatisation has been key to producing a state of disarray.Dowling maps the new economy of abandonment, raising the unavoidable question: how do we end the crisis?
Reviews
Emma Dowling has written a book for our times: a meditation on care, its burdens and its possibilities. Dowling deftly weaves together theories of care with empirical interviews in order to understand how and why we care and the ways in which care can be the basis for radical politics in this time of crisis.
The Care Crisis is unique in threading together the many different sites across society where paid and unpaid caring takes place. The book demonstrates how a long-standing subjugation of caring bodies and feelings is entering a new phase. With a focus on the UK context and with relevance to debates beyond it, Emma Dowling offers a powerful analysis of the politics and economics of care, making evident the urgent need to transform the material conditions of our lives.
A compelling tour de force of the ways our lives are underpinned by radical inequalities in care and caring: from care as wealth extraction to commodified cuddling. This is a highly readable book about how our whole economy is organised, how we are all drawn into fixing widespread system failure, yet only manage to displace problems even further.
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Emma Dowling brilliantly combines theory, statistics and on-the-ground experience to argue that contemporary British culture is using inadequate and destructive capitalist âcare fixesâ to solve its social problems â social problems which have themselves emerged from the systematic erosion of our socialised care infrastructures. It is a lucid and eye-opening account which will be extremely useful for lay readers, policymakers, academics and activists.
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An absolutely brilliant if devastating analysis of our current care crisis and the grotesquely inadequate âcare fixesâ presently on offer. In precise and accessible language, Emma Dowling expertly details the economic and political forces that have converged to produce such an uncaring state. This book is an urgent clarion call for a radically transformed society, where care not profit is placed front and center and where human thriving is prioritized. An essential read for everyone committed to envisioning a better, more caring future
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Dowling presents an astute insight on what our capitalist economy looks like from the perspective of care, brilliantly piecing together the many facets of the current crisis. Emma Dowling reveals what happens when a society's capacities for care are eroded, and issues an electrifying warning against false solutions.
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Lays bare the current crisis in care and the wages of austerity, Emma Dowlingâs work shows us just how far we still have to go. A brave call to arms.
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This book provides a compelling and compassionate analysis of the care deficits engulfing the United Kingdomâand the global economy in generalâeven before the Covid-19 pandemic. Emma Dowlingâs detailed critique of the financialization of adult social care deserves attention from activists and policymakers around the world.
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Health care policymakers and medical consumers alike will find [Downling's] arguments urgentâand in dire need of solution.
Kirkus Reviews -
This is a sharp and incisive book on one of the most pressing issues of our time â care work and its organization. Through a close examination of the material conditions that shape this work, and through engagement with the workers providing it, Dowling has produced a vital study of the dynamics of care after austerity. I highly recommend it.
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A lucid and alarming picture of how political decisions have created roadblocks to better care. ... [A] passionate and persuasive call for reform.
Publishers Weekly -
Accessible, rigorous, and thoughtful. [The Care Crisis] seamlessly weaves theory, statistics and on-the-ground experiences in order to generate a convincing analysis of how and why care has been devalued and increasingly exploited in contemporary Britain.
, Sociological Review