Portraits of Women’s Paid Domestic-Care Labour

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shalini Grover ◽  
Thomas Chambers ◽  
Patricia Jeffery
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Care Economy ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Domestic Care

Our introduction to this Special Issue draws out themes from all four articles which focus on India’s domestic-care economy: women’s paid domestic labour, care work and surrogacy. Through fine-grained ethnographic detail, all the articles nuance questions around agency and resistance, and actively challenge the ‘passive victim’ stereotype that continues to be the primary imaginary in many representations of domestic-care workers. We describe how the articles detail the intimacy, emotional labour and complex spatial dynamics inherent within a sector that often involves working in the homes of others, caring for children, and complex relationships with employers. Additionally, we show how care workers encounter quotidian forms of bodily control, distancing, segregation, authority, stigma, coercion, punitive sanctions and exploitation embedded in the intersections of class, race, caste, gender and ethnicity. To provide a wider framing for the articles, we utilize this introduction to situate them within broader historical and geographical contexts. Thus, we consider how global care chains (GCCs), labour markets, migration, and colonial/postcolonial considerations interplay in shaping the everyday lives of domestic-care workers in contemporary globalizing India.

Civil sphere and democracy in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
The Everyday

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.

Culture, institution and diverse approaches to care and care work in East Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ito Peng
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Family Responsibility ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Family ◽  
Private Market ◽  
Care Economy ◽  
Policy Incentives

This article describes two broad approaches to care and care work within a spectrum of approaches that are evident in East Asia: one that accepts care as a core public policy agenda, and tries to leverage it as a potential engine to activate the incipient care economy; and the other, that sees care as strictly private family responsibility, and hence opts to partially underwrite the familial care with a mix of tax and policy incentives through the private market – including creating channels for families to outsource care to foreign migrant care workers. The author uses elder care policies to illustrate ways in which socio-cultural ideas and institutional history shape national policies, and how these policies in turn shape ways in which care is delivered, and care work organized within the family and in the market.

Employing Migrant Domestic Workers in Urban Yemen: A New Form of Social Distinction

Hawwa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina de Regt
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
New Form ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Middle Class Families ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractThis article argues that employing migrant domestic workers has become a new form of social distinction in urban Yemen. The rapid social, economic and political changes of the past forty years have altered Yemen's system of social stratification. Formerly, one's racial descent and economic background determined the work they performed. Manual and service professions had a very low status and were only performed by the lowest social status groups. Nowadays other forms of social distinction have emerged. Although the economic situation in Yemen has deteriorated since the 1990s, the demand for paid domestic labour has increased. Yemeni women are reluctant to take up paid work as domestics, and middle and upper middle class families in urban areas employ migrant and refugee women, in particular from the Horn of Africa.

scholarly journals When biological scientists become health-care workers: emotional labour in embryology

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 1289-1296 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P. Fitzgerald ◽  
M. Legge ◽  
N. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Care Workers

scholarly journals Streamer-Interface-Viewer Entanglement

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (70) ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Zhen Ye
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Interface Design ◽  
Live Streaming ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Two Stages ◽  
The Ideal

In China, the live-streaming industry has a distinctive model of cultural production: showroom live-streaming. It is often adopted by social media platforms to complement other social networking activities. This study reveals the ways in which social media platforms (specifically, Douyin and Momo) design their showroom livestreaming interfaces and aff ordances to normalise and commodify the aff ective interactions between female streamers and their male viewers and to establish a gendered power relationship. Using the walkthrough method during two stages of the apps (entry to live-streaming chatrooms and the everyday use of live-streaming chatrooms), this study analyses various aff ordances regarding their functional, sensory, and cognitive impacts on users. This research thereby demonstrates that the live-streaming interface design constructs two types of subject positions. The ideal user is constructed as a heterosexual male, who is empowered through the consumption of virtual gifts; in contrast, the interface nudges the female streamers to conduct emotional labour and deliver implicitly sexualised performances to maintain an aff ective relationship with viewers.

scholarly journals The Fight for Land, Water and Dignity in Lindsey Collen’s The Malaria Man and Her Neighbour

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-77
Author(s):  
Felicity Hand ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Agricultural Workers ◽  
Access To Water ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Land Water

The novels of South-African born Mauritian writer and activist Lindsey Collen expose a historical continuum of class exploitation, ranging from the slave past of the country including both pre-abolition African slavery together with indentured labour from the Indian subcontinent to post-independence sweat-shop toil, ill-paid domestic labour and exploited agricultural workers. Her latest novel to date, The Malaria Man and Her Neighbours (2010) probes this continuing class conflict and queries mainstream notions of heteronormativity. Access to water and land will be seen to lie behind the murder of the four main characters and the subsequent popular reaction. Collen insists that the underprivileged can become empowered through union, that participation and joint, communal effort can still make a difference.

scholarly journals Engaged yet excluded: The processual, dispersed, and political dynamics of boundary work

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (11) ◽  
pp. 1504-1536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludo Glimmerveen ◽  
Sierk Ybema ◽  
Henk Nies
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Work ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Work Processes ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Local Engagement ◽  
Temporal Sequences

What happens when people try to ‘transcend’ organizational boundaries and engage with so-called outsiders? Current boundary-work literature does not fully account for the processual, dispersed, and political dynamics triggered by such efforts. To address this shortcoming, this article builds on an ethnographic study of a professional care provider’s attempts to engage local citizens within one of its care homes. We analyze how actors negotiate the parameters of outsider engagement – that is, how they interactively (re-)erect and (re-)efface boundaries between actors (Who is engaged?), issues (What is their engagement about?), and positions of authority (Does local engagement affect central decision-making?). We contribute to extant theorizing by, first, explicitly scrutinizing boundary work’s temporal and spatial dynamics. Testifying to the importance of analyzing temporal sequences, we show how attempts at transcending boundaries intensified boundary work on multiple organizational platforms. Paradoxically, inclusionary efforts evoked exclusionary effects (and vice versa) as actors came to contest and, eventually, redefine ‘appropriate’ insider–outsider relations. Second, our analysis highlights how the political effectiveness of an inclusive and non-hierarchical approach still, ironically, depends on ongoing hierarchical support and managerial enforcement. Third, our article makes a case for the adoption of long-term, multi-sited methodologies when studying the everyday dynamics of boundary-work processes.

scholarly journals Personality Research and Assessment in the Era of Machine Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clemens Stachl ◽  
Florian Pargent ◽  
Sven Hilbert ◽  
Gabriella M. Harari ◽  
Ramona Schoedel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Personality Assessment ◽  
Latent Variables ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Personality Research ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Machine Learning Models

The increasing availability of high–dimensional, fine–grained data about human behaviour, gathered from mobile sensing studies and in the form of digital footprints, is poised to drastically alter the way personality psychologists perform research and undertake personality assessment. These new kinds and quantities of data raise important questions about how to analyse the data and interpret the results appropriately. Machine learning models are well suited to these kinds of data, allowing researchers to model highly complex relationships and to evaluate the generalizability and robustness of their results using resampling methods. The correct usage of machine learning models requires specialized methodological training that considers issues specific to this type of modelling. Here, we first provide a brief overview of past studies using machine learning in personality psychology. Second, we illustrate the main challenges that researchers face when building, interpreting, and validating machine learning models. Third, we discuss the evaluation of personality scales, derived using machine learning methods. Fourth, we highlight some key issues that arise from the use of latent variables in the modelling process. We conclude with an outlook on the future role of machine learning models in personality research and assessment.

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