As caring beyond the family moves to the market, inequality in caring can intensify. A righteous care network must be formed through solidarity among citizens. Getty Image Bank
“I will only live until I can open the spoon with my hand.” Next, he is unwilling to say that not being able to eat rice with one’s own hands is not a human life. Whenever I hear a word like that, it comes to mind. The elderly relatives of the elderly who are still in a nursing home with bright eyes, and co-workers with severe disabilities who have never eaten with their own hands in the first place. And I think of young and sick bodies whose functions are rapidly changing (losing) due to disease. Of course, that statement is not an expression of the will to hate’such bodies’, but rather from the fear of being unable to control the body with one’s own will. The fear of becoming such a’shameful body’ in a society where the body that needs to be actively cared for by others is regarded only as helplessness and shame makes life more fearful than death. This hate is only the necessity of a health-centered society that sets only a healthy standard body as a correct body, and the stronger the praise for a healthy body, the stronger the shadow of the sick and weak body is inevitable. A reality that has nothing new, so what we are going to talk about today is not a culture that hates a body that needs care.
A society that hates’body in need of care’
It was seven years ago that I felt that saying was problematic. At a seminar on the theme of caring, a colleague gave a presentation emphasizing the importance of caring and the transition to a caring-oriented society. And on the way home after the seminar, the colleague poured out hateful remarks about a body that needs active care, saying that it is not a human life, saying that he will only live until the spoon is opened with my hand. On that day, I continued talking with my colleague about the meaning of those words until late. In a society where the hatred of the body that needs active care is prevalent, how can the value of care work be properly evaluated and the transition to a care-oriented society is possible? Isn’t it a contradiction to say that human vulnerability is universal and’normal’, but at the same time send a disgusting glance to the body in which the vulnerability is actively expressed (a body in need of active care)? In fact, I also didn’t speak out at the thought that those words weren’t correct, and I wasn’t very different from my colleagues. How on earth can this complex fear of our bodies in need of active care be resolved? At the very least, when we become a’shameful body’, we need to trust that we will be able to receive stable and quality care. However, my colleague and I are both unmarried women who are close to the poor, and in the reality that the marketization of care is accelerating, the prospect of minimal care rather than quality care was a fair prospect. It is because of the tragedy that the’socialization of care’ that feminists have so advocated has become the’marketization of care’. Of course, it is difficult to avoid the socialization of care to a certain degree in a capitalist society. However, the socialization of care did not mean marketization. Socialization of care means not dedicated care performed by the’nature’ of’mother’ in the family according to the’nature’, but rather socially just, democratically distributed and interactive care. However, the current care market formed by low-wage employment of middle-aged women has further hierarchized women’s internals and has resulted in inequality in care based on income. In the end, the gender nature of caring labor was virtually untouched. Not a few argue that the society should intervene in the appropriate wages and working environment of caregivers, and the problems of the turbulent market, such as nursing care workers dispatching companies, should be coordinated with public supply to some extent. That’s right. However, that alone does not allow the socialization of care to work properly. If we think of care work only in such a way that responds to capitalism, the society where the just care that firmly supports our daily lives flows will become farther and farther away.
So that the family does not go to the market
If so, what do you need? Care that comes out of the family must be care that doesn’t get stuck in the market again. In other words, it is necessary to be able to imagine post-market care as well as post-family care. A caring model based on citizens’ reciprocity and solidarity. For example, the form that I have been claiming since 6-7 years ago is the health door (care door). A caring door is a group of citizens who can take care of each other. This includes going to the hospital together, asking about the speed of recovery for a fractured leg, worrying about whether it’s okay to stay alone when you’re sick, and looking for alternatives together. Five years ago, I explained about the health door, and I said this. “Healthy Doore provides active care to those in need of care and those who can take care of them, and through the process, it is possible to question the boundaries of me, others, and us. It is possible to prove socially that just because a relationship is not connected with blood or affection, it is not only possible to care for money through money. In fact, there is no inevitable or justifiable reason for caring without money to be carried out only within blood or love relationships. The experiment on the head of health can be a stepping stone in making the term’a society that cares together’ become a reality.” Of course, this model of mutual care has also been tested in some village movements. However, most of these activities tended to be carried out by full-time housewives or middle-aged and elderly women under the banner of’caring for their neighbors like a family’, and mainly taking care of children and the elderly. In addition to that, recently in Seoul, under the name of Time Bank, there is a project that promotes mutual sharing and caring among single-person households based on volunteer activities. Although there were not many published data, it was not possible to review them in detail, but I am concerned about what kind of relationship will be formed and care will be possible, and that care will not be re-gendered only by the common point of single-person households. This is because, if the gender of caring is questioned and appropriate devices are not put in place, it can contribute to the reproduction and reinforcement of gender norms. The care door I think is not a community that’restores’ an individual atomized by neoliberalism into an existing’family-like’ relationship. So, I often suggest that those interested in caregiving should start with a focus on single-person women or unmarried women in their 30s and 40s. This is due to the condition that it is a single-person family that is prone to being vulnerable to caring in a society designed around multi-family members, and is a woman who is highly likely to be trained in caring. This is because it is suitable for attempting care based on mutual solidarity among citizens without expanding familialism or reinforcing the gender of care. While practicing caring, you can study how to properly care for it and how to accept it well, or you may develop a relationship in a different way that is difficult to establish between family members or those who exchange care in the marketplace. Things like a democratically circulating caring relationship. Therefore, through this, we can form a caring ethic that is never produced in the market. Caring may be a work that you want to avoid as much as possible, depending on the relationship and manner in which it is performed, or it may be close to an ethical activity that deepens human relationships. Caring in a reality where the duty of unilateral care is imposed like a family is easy to suffer. On the other hand, caring in an open-access relationship based on the identities that autonomous individuals prefer, such as the caring door, can be quite different, and we pay attention to the possibility. So, if caregiver is the absolute alternative to marketed care, it is not. If the socialization of caring in Korean society has advanced to marketized caring through the government’s initiative, it is now very important to create and expand a niche in the areas of post-family, post-market, and post-national care led by citizens. In other words, it is necessary to establish a non-market order for caring and a structure of production and distribution of’care labor’ that is different from the market order, but the imagination that our society currently has is poor. If so, could it be an experiment that regards human vulnerability as normal, restores the value and joy of care, and organizes a righteous network of dependence? Could atomized individuals become a field of ethical practice that crosses the reality of marketized care?
▶ Post-colonial feminists working across movements related to women, peace and disability. He wrote a political and social approach to the experience of fighting disease after health damage in international field solidarity activities. There is a co-author. He is active in other bodies of the new organization. It deals with the socio-economic and political issues surrounding a sore body.