At the limits of care: How women negotiate moral, gendered responsibilities in our aging society

Registration: https://bit.ly/32YEZzW

While much has been written about tensions in care or about the costs and consequences of caring for others, my research is distinct in its focus on withdrawing from care. With the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been more and more accounts of care workers leaving or walking off the job, which has even been dubbed a mass exodus (Gilchrist, 2021). In this presentation, I ask, how might we learn from the practices and perspectives of paid and unpaid carers stepping back? In what ways do they contribute to revising care politics, pointing to other ways of understanding and organizing care? Drawing on feminist sociological research, I analyze and contextualize former paid and unpaid carers’ stories of “stepping back” from caring roles and responsibilities in Ontario, Canada. Stepping back, as I illustrate, involves a range of practical and conceptual work, including to reorient to one’s sense of self and self-expectations. Looking closely at this work contributes both to reshaping the ethic of care (Tronto, 1993, 2013) and to deepening understandings of care’s social organization (Armstrong & Braedley, 2013). My research holds invitations for remaking ‘care’ in more expansive ways, rethinking what we expect of ourselves and others as we make up our lives in an aging society.

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Janna Klostermann is a feminist sociologist exploring the politics of care through narrative, ethnographic and arts-based research. “What about the limits of care?” is a question central to her work. She recently completed a Ph.D. in Carleton’s Department of Sociology, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Brock’s Department of Sociology.