Caring as Emotional Labour

As a final point of note in this introductory summary of care theory, we end this lesson by drawing attention to the fact that affective engagement and emotional labour are integral to practicing an ethics of care (see e.g. Held 2006; Rummery & Fine 2012). Indeed, it is with these aspects especially that particular affinity can be found between theories of care and embodiment (see, e.g. the embodied researcher)

Similar to the observations made already about care and conflict, the emotional labour of care by no means only constitutes “positive affectivity”. As Puig de la Bellacasa (2017, p. 5) explains, such affectivity can take the form of “oppressive burden, joy or boredom”. It can be extremely energy consuming and problematic to professionalise: “genuine emotional caring ‘about’ cannot be bought or forced” (Rummery & Fine 2012: 330). Moreover, if we are to realise a form of “sustainable collective caring” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017: 163), such as that envisages in the species definition put forward by Fisher and Tronto, we need to maintain resources including one’s own energy:  

Cultivating joy is part of the doing. In a conception of care as a collective good, care has to be shared, distributed, the “surplus” of life and energy that it produces returned to the carers in order to avoid affective and material burnout” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017: 163)

The emotional and affective engagement of care doings is presented by Moriggi et al (2020) as holding transformative potential. These authors (drawing also on Pulcini (2009)), contend that insufficient attention has thus far been afforded to these embodied emotional and affective dimensions by scholars of sustainability transformations (for some exceptions see e.g. Grenni et al., 2020; Ives et al. 2020; Giambartolomei et al. 2021). For Moriggi et al. emotions and emotional awareness can act both as a “compass of morality” and as a trigger for action.

QUESTIONS:

• How do care-full scholars create opportunities for those they engage to be active and responsive in the process?  
• Which mechanisms for feed-back and feed-forward are created and which ones are not, and if so, why?  
• In which ways is the care-full process oriented towards mutual learning, co-becoming and transformation of all sides involved?