Crisis of care: a problem of economisation, of technologisation or of politics of care?

Abstract

This chapter identifies three disconnected scientific fields and discourses about care ethics, economy (marketisation/outsourcing), and technologies in care. The offered remedies for the crisis of care are mainly technological and techno-material in nature, and based on digitalisation, technological efficiency, surveillance, and AI-based algorithmic solutions. Meanwhile, the remedies that relate to the politics of care are left untouched in these technological discourses, practices, and realities. The chapter proposes that the crisis of care should be analysed contextually as a process. Technologies of care are partially a governance solution of the economisation of the crisis of care and because of that they need to be addressed mainly as part of the political problem, and not solely as a technological solution.