From the nice work to the hard work: “Troubling” community‐based CareMongering during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

AbstractCareMongering is a virtually organized community‐based response to COVID‐19 formed in Canada in March 2020, in response to growing concerns about the pandemic. The goal of CareMongering is to care for community members, particularly those experiencing social exclusion, by organizing groups at a local level to support access to basic necessities, services, and resources (e.g., providing groceries and childcare to frontline workers). Following from feminist calls to “trouble” care, we explore the uncomfortable relations that emerged while practicing CareMongering through a case study of a group in Ontario, Canada. Using semi‐structured interviews with group members and organizers and ethnographic content analysis of Facebook group activity, we examine (1) difficult interactions on the group's public Facebook page, (2) strategies used to moderate the group, and (3) the affective and embodied experiences involved in virtually organizing CareMongering. We illustrate our findings through vignettes of one of the author's experiences as a CareMongering group member and composite narratives of social media interactions. We argue that by enacting critical community care, CareMongering groups have the potential to practice care that goes beyond simply caring for or about community needs to also care with communities. The hard work of critical community care involves an intersectional, reflexive, and relational approach that addresses underlying inequalities and promotes actions aimed toward making structural and collective change.