What good is anthropology? Mkhwanazi, Nolwazi
American ethnologist,
February 2024, Letnik:
51, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I ...suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors.
This thoughtful book provides a refreshing, comparative perspective on the future of care homes in our post-pandemic world. Building on more than a decade of collaborative international and ...interdisciplinary research in Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US, it employs a feminist political economy framework to address the key challenges facing care homes in this turbulent era.
Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I ...suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors.
Claims of becoming the first, the best, and the most digitized are standard rather than outstanding in most public-facing digitalization agendas and strategy documents of countries in the Global ...North. These grand narratives of digitalization need translation through concrete practices by sometimes unexpected actors—in this case, librarians. This article develops the notion of digital care work based on 18 book-chapter-length essays by active librarians based at Swedish public libraries. It illustrates that librarians are central to the process of translating digitalization into reality; they have become ambassadors of digitalization not only by fostering digital skills and competences in workshops and official training sessions but also, we argue, through a specific form of digital work, namely, digital care work. This kind of gendered work, which is typically carried out alongside the official tasks and assignments of librarians, is of low prestige and often involves affective aspects, such as emotions of shame and uncertainty.
This article explores the interaction between understandings of learning, knowledge, and problems in elderly care. The study is based on five focus group interviews with care work trainees, ...internship supervisors, and care workers in Danish nursing homes. Combining Ellström’s understanding of learning logics and Dewey’s understanding of knowledge forms, the study finds that reproductive learning and theory-based knowledge are privileged over developmental learning and experience-based knowledge. As the analysis shows that some tasks in care work require complex problem solving, the article discusses the problematic nature of this imbalance. We argue for more attention to be paid to the developmental learning environment, with the inclusion and qualification of experience-based knowledge. The article proposes a model for analyzing links between learning, knowledge, and problem understandings, and discusses the implications for understanding quality in elderly care.
Abstract This study investigates two concurrent trends across Europe and North America: the increasing instability of parental unions and men’s rising contributions to household work. Because ...children have almost universally resided with their mothers and it is difficult for non-residential fathers to maintain any levels of care work, union dissolutions have potentially slowed societal increases in gender equality. A new family form—50/50 living arrangements—has begun to challenge our understanding of the consequences of union dissolution. Since 50/50 residence requires fathers to take full care responsibility for the child half of the time—something few partnered fathers do—it may even push parents into a more egalitarian division of care work. We have studied care work using Swedish administrative data on parents’ leave from work to care for a sick child. We have created a panel of leave-sharing for children aged 2–11, and use an event-study design to estimate the causal effect of dissolution on the sharing of sick-child leave. The results show that in parental unions dissolving today, the dissolution leads to an increase in fathers’ share of sick-child leave. Whereas union dissolutions have for decades been slowing the gender revolution in Sweden, they are now accelerating it.
While women were already doing most of the world's unpaid care work prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging research suggests that the crisis and its subsequent shutdown response have ...resulted in a dramatic increase in this burden. It is likely that the negative impacts for women and families will last for years without proactive interventions. What we commonly refer to as "the economy" would not function without the (often unrecognized) foundation of work provided by the "care economy": the reproduction of everyday life through cooking, raising children, and so forth. The paid economy has slowed not only because people are physically not allowed into workplaces, but also because many families currently need to raise and educate their children without institutional support, which is reducing remunerated working hours and increasing stress. It has long been recognized that gross domestic product ignores the care economy and heterodox economists have promoted alternative economic systems that could value care work and facilitate a fairer sharing of domestic labor while promoting environmental and economic sustainability. This policy brief builds on recent work on the care economy to explore implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and opportunities for addressing the burden of unpaid care work.
There has been rapid growth in professional certifications in the health care sector, but little is known about the rewards to workers for attaining professional certifications, especially in low ...social closure occupations where the barriers to entry (e.g., higher education, degrees, licensure) are relatively limited. In this study, we focus on the attainment and rewards for professional certifications in four health care occupations – personal care aides, medical transcriptionists, medical assistants, and community health workers – where certification is generally not required by state or federal regulation but may be attractive to employers. Using the Current Population Survey (IPUMS CPS) from 2015 to 2020, we find that workers of color have significantly lower odds of attaining a certification, while women are 1.2 times more likely than men to an earn a certification. On average, workers who have earned a professional certification have weekly earnings that are 4.8% higher than workers who do not have a certification. Men experience the largest increase in weekly earnings (11.3%) when they have a professional certification as compared to those without, while women experience lower gains from professional certification (3.8%). Black and Hispanic workers experience modest rewards for certification (weekly earnings that are 1.2% and 5% higher, respectively) that are lower than the rewards gained by white workers (6% higher weekly earnings). Our findings suggest that professional certifications may have modest benefits for workers, but professional certifications often come with significant costs for individuals. Strategies for reducing inequality in the return to credentials and for improving job quality in the care sector are discussed.
•Measure attainment and rewards for professional certification in health care jobs.•Women are more likely than men to earn a professional certification.•Workers of color are less likely than white workers to attain certification.•Men experience larger gains weekly earnings (11.3%) compared to women (3.8%).•Black and Hispanic workers earn lower rewards for certification than white workers.
This article contributes to discussions on the gender dimensions of disease outbreaks, and preparedness policies and responses, by providing a multi-level analysis of gender-related gaps, ...particularly illustrating how the failure to challenge gender assumptions and incorporate gender as a priority at the global level has national and local impacts. The implications of neglecting gender dynamics, as well as the potential of equity-based approaches to disease outbreak responses, is illustrated through a case study of the Social Enterprise Network for Development (SEND) Sierra Leone, a non-government organisation (NGO) based in Kailahun, during the Ebola outbreak.
PDF
