Private Dependence, Public Personhood: Rethinking “Nested Obligations”

Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Back
Keyword(s):  
Gender Justice ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Care Recipients ◽  
Seminal Contribution ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Tiered System ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory ◽  
Care Relationships

This paper responds to Love's Labor, Eva Feder Kittay's seminal contribution to feminist disability theory, arguing that Kittay's “nested obligations” approach creates a two‐tiered system of justice in which care relationships built around private dependence and private obligation are figured as wholly prepolitical, to the detriment of both gender justice and disability justice. I suggest that centering the civic membership of the disabled person allows us to keep what is valuable in Kittay's contribution, namely her theorization of the nature of care and its political significance, and her call for collective support of care relationships, while omitting the nesting of obligations and resituating care recipients and care workers as equal and interdependent.

scholarly journals Like one of the family? Understanding relationships between migrant live-in care workers and older care recipients in Israel

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1387-1408 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAREN TESHUVA ◽  
JISKA COHEN-MANSFIELD ◽  
ESTHER IECOVICH ◽  
HAVA GOLANDER
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Care Recipients ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Family ◽  
Care Relationships ◽  
Pearson Correlations

ABSTRACTFrail older people worldwide are increasingly being cared for in their own homes by migrant live-in care workers; however, extant literature on care relationships in this care context is sparse. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore the quality and the nature of care relationships between full-time, live-in migrant care workers and older people in Israel. Quantitative and qualitative data were drawn from a 2014 survey of 116 migrant care workers and 73 older care recipients. Mean scores for four quantitative items relating to care relationships were examined and independent samples t-tests and Pearson correlations were performed, whereas qualitative data were examined using thematic analysis. Credibility of qualitative findings was checked by peer review. Most older people and migrant care workers gave high ratings to the four items. Significant correlations between the two groups were found for their responses on all four relationship items assessed, with only one item (‘get along well’) producing significant t-test differences. Qualitative data provided a deeper understanding of the quantitative ratings of care relationships. Four major qualitative themes emerged as inextricably tied with both groups’ perceptions of positive care relationships. These were: an emotional connection; reciprocity; effective communication; and meeting the older person's care needs. Study findings were interpreted through the theoretical lens of relationship-centred care. Implications of the findings for theory, practice and further research are discussed.

scholarly journals Intersectionality: Mapping Critical Relations for Quality in Long-Term Care Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 39-39
Author(s):  
Katie Aubrecht ◽  
Ivy Bourgeault ◽  
Tamara Daly
Keyword(s):  
Long Term Care ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
Care Relationships ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Status Of Care

Abstract Intersectionality is a useful method (Lutz, 2015) for interdisciplinary long-term care (LTC) research to advance a more critical understanding of how experiences of quality are shaped by mutually reproducing social divisions, identities and relations of power that shape LTC. This paper discusses insights from the “Mapping Care Relationships” stream of the Seniors – Adding Life to Years (SALTY) project, a pan-Canadian program of research examining clinical, social and policy perspectives on quality in LTC. “Mapping Care Relationships” mapped how promising approaches to care relationships are organized and experienced in LTC. From January 2018-August 2019 our team of nine researchers conducted rapid ethnographies in eight nursing homes, two in each of four provinces across Canada. We purposively observed and interviewed workers from a wide variety of positions and backgrounds, informed by an intersectionality approach. We traced how promising approaches in person-centred dementia care (PCDC) in particular may reify the subordinated status of care workers (some more than others) and reinforce inequities within LTC systems. In multiple LTC homes, front-line care workers described experiencing physical and emotional harm in care relationships with residents which caused them distress. However, consistent with a PCDC approach, the harm was attributed to ‘behaviours’ clinically symptomatic of dementia. In framing power differentials from a medical perspective, PCDC makes it possible to interpret harmful experiences as 'part of the job’ and something workers should know to expect, prevent, avoid, redirect, or ignore. Lutz, H. (2015). Intersectionality as method. DiGeSt. Journal of diversity and gender studies, 2(1-2), 39-44.

The “Batty” Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body

Hypatia ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Janell Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women Artists ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory

I assess representations of black women's derrieres, which are often depicted as grotesque, despite attempts by some black women artists to create a black feminist aesthetic that recognizes the black female body as beautiful and desirable. Utilizing a black feminist disability theory, I revisit the history of the Hottentot Venus, which contributed to the shaping of this representational trope, and I identify a recurring struggle among these artists to recover the “unmirrored” black female body.

scholarly journals Managers, Consumers, Visitors: Roles of Caring Relatives in Emerging Home-based Eldercare in the Czech Republic

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Tereza Hronová ◽  
Adéla Souralová
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Care Recipients ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
High Level

Each culture has a deeply rooted understanding of what constitutes the ideal foreldercare organization. This article investigates the role of family members in the delegation and provision of eldercare by private for-profit agencies in the Czech Republic. In this post-socialist country with a high level of intergenerational solidarity, a new market for eldercare has emerged in recent decades. We are interested in how the dominance of the family in eldercare provision is inscribed in the functioning of forprofit agencies and their caring practices. We examine how the role of family members whose elderly relatives receive paid care provided by private for-profit agencies is conceptualized by those who sell the care services, those who provide these services, and the care recipients themselves. We draw upon interviews conducted with the owners of private agencies, ethnographic observations, and informal interviews with paid care workers.

Paid and Unpaid Care

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Brake
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Caring Relationships ◽  
Unpaid Care ◽  
Care Recipients ◽  
The People ◽  
Relationship Types ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Paid Caregivers

This paper argues that relationships between paid caregivers and care recipients should be eligible for equivalent legal protections as other adult-caring relationships. Care workers (or intimate workers, or domestic workers) are a vulnerable group; in law, they are not fully protected as workers or as family members, although they often form close, reciprocal-caring relationships with the people they care for. While some legal theorists have recently addressed their rights as workers, this paper considers their eligibility for rights as family members. It extends my earlier arguments for marriage equality, that marriage law (or a marriage-like law with reduced legal entitlements which I call ‘minimal marriage’) should protect a wider variety of relationship types than law currently does, on grounds of equal treatment. After reviewing these earlier arguments, I make the case for their application to care workers, addressing both theoretical and practical objections.

The Silenced Voices of Hidden Survivors: Addressing Intimate Partner Violence Among Women With Disabilities Through a Combined Theoretical Approach

Affilia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 088610992094455
Author(s):  
Caroline L. Muster
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Complex Trauma ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Women With Disabilities ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory

As one of the world’s most vulnerable populations, women with disabilities are frequent victims of physical, emotional, sexual, and financial abuse. Indeed, they experience abuse at higher rates than women and men who do not have disabilities and men with disabilities. They are also more likely to experience intimate partner violence (IPV) than any other adult group. Yet there is not one psychosocial intervention tailored to the needs of women with disabilities who have experienced IPV that facilitates their recovery from complex trauma. This is largely the result of limited (albeit growing) research on the risk factors for IPV, barriers to leaving abusive relationships, and trauma-related issues that women with disabilities face, especially among racialized women with disabilities, 2SLGBTQ+ women and gender nonconforming persons with disabilities, older/aging women with disabilities, and other subgroups. In order to develop the most culturally competent, effective interventions and policies to address the prevalence of IPV among women with disabilities, an approach that is informed by a combination of critical disability theory, feminist disability theory, and complex trauma theory is recommended. IPV among women with disabilities is a global injustice; therefore, this concern is highly relevant to the field of social work and its mission to advance social justice.

scholarly journals Designing Collective Access: A Feminist Disability Theory of Universal Design

2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimi Hamraie
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Universal Design ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Human Variation ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory

<p>Universal Design (UD) is a movement to produce built environments that are accessible to a broad range of human variation. Though UD is often taken for granted as synonymous with the best, most inclusive, forms of disability access, the values, methodologies, and epistemologies that underlie UD require closer scrutiny. This paper uses feminist and disability theories of architecture and geography in order to complicate the concepts of "universal" and "design" and to develop a feminist disability theory of UD wherein design is a <em>material-discursive</em> phenomenon that produces both physical environments and symbolic meaning. Furthermore, the paper examines ways in which to conceive UD as a project of collective access and social sustainability<em>,</em> rather than as a strategy targeted toward individual consumers and marketability. A conception of UD that is informed by a politics of interdependence and collective access would address the multiple intersectional forms of exclusion that inaccessible design produces.</p><p>Keywords: universal design; collective access; interdependence; built environment; feminist theory</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

Education for Women and Girls with Disabilities in Ghana : A Powerful Tool for Change

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sefakor G.M.A. Komabu-Pomeyie
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Negative Experiences ◽  
The Public ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Feminist Disability Theory ◽  
Education In Ghana

Women with disabilities (WWD) from countries around the world, including Ghana, are often deprived of public education. The World Report on Disability in 2011 estimated that literacy rates for WWD may be as low as 1%. This study employs critical feminist disability theory, combined with a phenomenological lens, to explore the educational experiences of ten Ghanaian WWD who have received public education in Ghana, and have had both positive and negative experiences. The results of these interviews yield policy and practice recommendations to improve access to, and success in education for more WWD in Ghana. These recommendations include the need to advocate and to implement Inclusive Education (IE) Policy in Ghana, to introduce disability studies in all school levels, to counteract negative cultural beliefs about people with disabilities, and to educate the public for changes in attitudes, especially teachers, students, and the community.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document