University of Victoria
Caring at The Edge: Care Workers: Identities, Culture, Meaning
What is care and how do we investigate it? This panel starts with the assumption that care is more than the performance of tasks, more than an expression of concern, more than duty, an ethic or a labour of love. Care involves distinct ways of being and relating to others. It involves its own specific styles of knowing and judging. It requires particular forms of institutional and social organization. Yet care also marks off contested terrain. Care is shaped by – and in turn shapes – inequities in power, divisions of labour, affective relations and discursive constructions. Care is deeply implicated in the social relations of gender, race, class, sexuality, age and ability. Caring @ the Edge calls us to delve into the tensions and limits of care. It raises challenging questions around policy priorities and the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth and human resources. Can a sociology of care contribute to a way forward? We invite papers that advance our understanding of care as a social process and as a politics, that probe tensions, and/or strive to produce knowledge in support of a more caring society.
This session is cross listed with the Society for Socialist Studies.
Chair: Albert Banerjee
Lean Care and Worker Identity: The Role of Outcomes, Supervision and Mission
Donna Baines, McMaster University, bainesd@mcmaster.ca
Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government contracts and various forms of managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mission, client population served and immediate supervisors remain centrally important to workers’ identity and willingness to continue working in social care in a context of ongoing restructuring and growing fragmentation. With the exception of one study site (where targets were jointly resisted by managers and staff), outcome measures were seen by workers to detract from the quality of care and the quality of the job. This paper argues that agency mission and various levels of supervision can buffer the impact of poor wages and conditions in the sector, while outcome measures undermine workers’ identities as caring people and contributing to discontent and contemplation of job leaving. Various strategies that agencies, workers and unions have used to challenge the hegemony of lean caring and outcome-oriented funding and management models will be explored.
Thursday June 6, 2013 01:30 PM - 03:00 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-062
Why care about those who care? Residents’ voice on the issues of facility workplace culture
Deanne Taylor, University of Calgary, deanne.taylor@fraserhealth.ca
This paper contributes to the growing research recognizing that the conditions of work within residential care facilities are also the conditions of care. This paper presents the preliminary findings from a study investigating the characteristics of workplace environments that are important to residents living in four publically owned and operated residential care facilities in British Columbia, Canada. The study uses a staff survey and resident interviews to characterize workplace cultures and then resident interviews to assess its impact on residents. Early findings suggest that aspects of workplace culture influences residents’ experience. This paper explores some of these effects from the perspective of residents. Residents, for instance, notice changes in worker-to-worker dynamics when staff are working short, when a new employee attempts to gain acceptance among peers, and when there is a difficult situation with other residents. This paper concludes by reflecting on how these initial findings may contribute to the development of positive work place culture as a means of enhancing not only the conditions of work for workers but also the conditions for care for residents.
Thursday June 6, 2013 01:30 PM - 03:00 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-062
Care Work on the Server Screen: Experiences and Meanings Facilitating the Production and Consumption of Mainstream Care Work Films
Brian Bantugan, Independent Scholar, briansbantuganphd@gmail.com
The study was pursued in response to the fast-increasing population of Filipino care workers that is now feeding the national economy and overtaking the number of male overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Care workers from domestic helpers and nannies, to caregivers, to nurses and other health care workers, have recently become subjects of films that feature major film superstars in the country, underscoring the growing OFW market that could keep the movie industry alive and sustain related industries. The use of superstars has a role in connecting to this emerging movie market. This study investigated the dynamics of care work film production and consumption by probing experiences and meanings that are attached to major film stars, and care work attached to drama films. Using Bakhtin’s “dialogism,” Foucault’s “discourse,” Gramsci’s “hegemony,” and Gladwell “tipping point,” and implementing in-depth interviews with the films' writers and directors, semi-structured interviews with overseas and local Filipinos, analysis of articles from Philippine Daily Inquirer, and film viewing, results revealed that the care work film production is facilitated in different ways by the news, producers, and celebrities. The care work films take-off from themes coming from more general Filipino experiences that facilitate wider resonance with care work films.
Thursday June 6, 2013 01:30 PM - 03:00 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-062
Every morning is different when you wake up, if you got any sleep”: Time and biography in the experiences of caring for a spouse with Parkinson’s Disease
Rachel Barken, McMaster University, barkenre@mcmaster.ca
This paper engages interactionist theories of time, the life course, and biography to examine the experiences of people caring for a spouse with Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating chronic illness. Biographical disruption and biographical work are guiding frameworks among researchers studying chronic illness, but few studies explore the biographical experiences of spouses who are caregivers. Drawing on Mead’s non-linear theory of time and an understanding of fluid and malleable biographical trajectories, this paper describes how caregivers cope with the daily challenges and long-term uncertainty associated with chronic illness. It finds that shifting interpretations of the present, past, and future are components of the biographical work caregivers do as they assign meaning to disrupted life circumstances. This paper is based on qualitative interviews with eight older adults who are caregivers and participant observation with a Parkinson’s support group.
Thursday June 6, 2013 01:30 PM - 03:00 PM Building: Elliott Building, Room: E-062
© Canadian Sociological Association ⁄ La Société canadienne de sociologie