Abstract
Getting by in times of austerity often requires intricate tapestries of care, carefully woven fabrics of familial and extra-familial relationships, or what I describe as ‘everyday social infrastructures’. In this chapter I start to apply the relational framework outlined in Chap. 2 and weave these ideas together with more detailed empirical accounts. To situate these ethnographic findings, feminist concepts of care, particularly care ethics and social infrastructures of care, are applied and extended. I illustrate the extent to which austerity transforms relational geographies of care (who does what, for whom and where), whether inter- or intra-familial, within friendships and other intimate relationships. While proponents of care ethics typically prioritise where care takes place or how care changes over time, I advocate a closer look at the relational qualities of care: how care is embedded within, and has the potential to shape, everyday social infrastructures. Starting with an overview of literature on feminist politics of care, gendered labour and social infrastructures, the chapter is arranged around three key themes that emerged from analysis of the empirical data: intergenerational and gendered infrastructures, tangled, knotty and textured infrastructures of care, and fieldwork as care work.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Anderson, B., & McFarlane, C. (2011). Assemblage and Geography. Area, 43(2), 124–127.
Askins, K. (2014). A Quiet Politics of Being Together: Miriam and Rose. Area, 46(4), 353–354.
Askins, K. (2015). Being Together: Everyday Geographies and the Quiet Politics of Belonging. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(2), 470–478.
Barnett, C., & Land, D. (2007). Geographies of Generosity: Beyond the “Moral Turn”. Geoforum, 38, 1065–1075.
Bowlby, S. (2011). Friendship, Co-presence and Care: Neglected Spaces. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(6), 605–622.
Bradley, H. (1986). Work, Home and the Restructuring of Jobs. In K. Purcell, S. Wood, A. Waton, & S. Allen (Eds.), The Changing Experience of Employment: Restructuring and Recession (pp. 95–113). London: Macmillan.
Braun, B. (2006). Environmental Issues: Global Natures in the Space of Assemblage. Progress in Human Geography, 30(5), 644–654.
Conradson, D. (2003). Geographies of Care: Spaces, Practices, Experiences. Social & Cultural Geography, 4(4), 451–454.
Daly, M., & Lewis, J. (2000). The Concept of Social Care and the Analysis of Contemporary Welfare States. British Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 281–298.
Devault, M. (1991). Feeding the Family: The Social Organisation of Caring as Gendered Work. London: The University of Chicago Press.
Duffy, M. (2011). Making Care Count: A Century of Gender, Race, and Paid Care Work. London: Rutgers University Press.
Dyck, I. (2005). Feminist Geography, the “Everyday”, and Local-Global Relations: Hidden Spaces of Place-Making. The Canadian Geographer, 49, 233–245.
Ellegard, K., & De Pater, B. (1999). The Complex Tapestry of Everyday Life. GeoJournal, 48(3), 149–153.
Emmel, N., & Hughes, K. (2010). “Recession, It’s All the Same to Us Son”: The Longitudinal Experience (1999–2010) of Deprivation. Twenty-First Century Society, 5(2), 171–181.
England, K. V. L. (1994). Getting Personal: Reflexivity Positionality and Feminist Research. The Professional Geographer, 46, 80–89.
England, K. (2010). Home, Work and the Shifting Geographies of Care. Ethics, Place & Environment, 13(2), 131–150.
England, K., & Dyck, I. (2011). Managing the Body Work of Home Care. Sociology of Health & Illness, 33(2), 206–219.
Fisher, B., & Tronto, J. (1990). Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring. In E. Abel & M. Nelson (Eds.), Circles of Care (pp. 36–54). Albany: SUNY Press.
Fodor, E. (2006). A Different Type of Gender Gap: How Women and Men Experience Poverty. East European Politics and Societies: And Cultures, 20(1), 14–39.
Greer-Murphy, A. (2017). Austerity in the United Kingdom: The Intersections of Spatial and Gendered Inequalities. Area, 49(1), 122–124.
Gregson, N., & Rose, G. (1997). Contested and Negotiated Histories of Feminist Geographies. In Women and Geography Study Group (Ed.), Feminist Geographies: Explorations of Diversity and Difference. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman.
Hall, S. M. (2014). Ethics of Ethnography with Families: A Geographical Perspective. Environment and Planning A, 46(9), 2175–2194.
Hall, S. M. (2016a). Everyday Family Experiences of the Financial Crisis: Getting by in the Recent Economic Recession. Journal of Economic Geography, 16(2), 305–330.
Hall, S. M. (2016b). Moral Geographies of Family: Articulating, Forming and Transmitting Moralities in Everyday Life. Social & Cultural Geography, 17(8), 1017–1039.
Hall, S. M. (2017). Personal, Relational and Intimate Geographies of Austerity: Ethical and Empirical Considerations. Area, 49(3), 303–310.
Hall, S. M., & Jayne, M. (2016). Make, Mend and Befriend: Geographies of Austerity, Crafting and Friendship in Contemporary Cultures of Dressmaking. Gender, Place & Culture, 23(2), 216–234.
Hall, S. M., McIntosh, K., Neitzert, E., Pottinger, L., Sandhu, K., Stephenson, M.-A., Reed, H., & Taylor, L. (2017). Intersecting Inequalities: The Impact of Austerity on Black and Minority Ethnic Women in the UK. London: Runnymede and Women’s Budget Group. Retrieved from www.intersecting-inequalities.com.
Hanisch, C. (1970). The Personal Is Political. In S. Firestone & Koedt (Eds.), Notes from the Second Year (pp. 76–78). New York: Published by Editors.
Held, V. (1993). Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society and Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Holmes, H. (2018). New Spaces, Ordinary Practices: Circulating and Sharing Within Diverse Economies of Provisioning. Geoforum, 88, 134–147.
Horton, J., & Kraftl, P. (2009). Small Acts, Kind Words and “Not Too Much Fuss”: Implicit Activisms. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(1), 14–23.
Jarvis, H. (2005). Moving to London Time. Time & Society, 14(1), 133–154.
Jensen, T., & Tyler, I. (2012). Austerity Parenting: New Economies of Parent-Citizenship. Studies in the Maternal, 4(2), 1–5.
Jones, M. (2009). Phase Space: Geography, Relational Thinking, and Beyond. Progress in Human Geography, 33(4), 487–506.
Jupp, E. (2017). Home Space, Gender and Activism: The Visible and the Invisible in Austere Times. Critical Social Policy, 37(3), 348–366.
Langley, P. (2008). The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lawson, V. (2007). Geographies of Care and Responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(1), 1–11.
Longhurst, R., Ho, E., & Johnston, L. (2008). Using “The Body” as an “Instrument of Research”: Kimch’i and Pavlova. Area, 40(2), 208–217.
MacLeavy, J. (2011). A “New” Politics of Austerity, Workfare and Gender? The UK Coalition Government’s Welfare Reform Proposals. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 4, 355–367.
Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of Responsibility. Geografiska Annaler B, 86(1), 5–18.
McDowell, L. (2012). Post-Crisis, Post-Ford and Post-Gender? Youth Identities in an Era of Austerity. Journal of Youth Studies, 15(5), 573–590.
McDowell, L. (2017). Youth, Children and Families in Austere Times: Change, Politics and a New Gender Contract. Area, 49(3), 311–316.
McDowell, L., Ray, K., Perrons, D., Fagan, C., & Ward, K. (2005). Women’s Paid Work and Moral Economies of Care. Social & Cultural Geography, 6, 219–235.
McEwan, C., & Goodman, M. (2010). Place Geography and the Ethics of Care: Introductory Remarks on the Geographies of Ethics, Responsibility and Care. Ethics, Place and Environment, 13(2), 103–112.
Millar, J., & Ridge, T. (2013). Lone Mothers and Paid Work: The “Family-Work Project”. International Review of Sociology, 23(3), 564–577.
Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., Basu, R., Whitson, R., Hawkins, R., Hamilton, T., & Curran, W. (2015). For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance Through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University. ACME, 14(4), 1235–1259.
Nelson, G. D. (2018). Mosaic and Tapestry: Metaphors as Geographical Concept Generators. Progress in Human Geography. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518788951.
Pearson, R., & Elson, D. (2015). Transcending the Impact of the Financial Crisis in the United Kingdom: Towards Plan F—A Feminist Economic Strategy. Feminist Review, 109, 8–30.
Popke, J. (2006). Geography and Ethics: Everyday Mediations Through Care and Consumption. Progress in Human Geography, 30(4), 504–512.
Pottinger, L. (2017). Planting the Seeds of a Quiet Activism. Area, 49(2), 215–222.
Pottinger, L. (2018). Growing, Guarding and Generous Exchange in an Analogue Sharing Economy. Geoforum, 96, 108–118.
Power, A., & Hall, E. (2018). Placing Care in Times of Austerity. Social & Cultural Geography, 19(3), 303–313.
Smith, S. (2005). States, Markets and an Ethic of Care. Political Geography, 25, 1–20.
Strong, S. (2018). Food Banks, Actually Existing Austerity and the Localisation of Responsibility. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.025.
Tarrant, A. (2010). Constructing a Social Geography of Grandparenthood: A New Focus for Intergenerationality. Area, 42(2), 190–197.
Tarrant, A. (2018). Care in an Age of Austerity: Men’s Care Responsibilities in Low-Income Families. Ethics & Social Welfare, 12(1), 34–48.
Tronto, J. (1993). Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. London: Routledge.
Twigg, J. (2000). Carework as a Form of Bodywork. Ageing and Society, 20(4), 389–411.
Volger, C. M. (1994). Money in the Household. In M. Anderson, F. Bechhofer, & J. Gershuny (Eds.), The Social and Political Economy of the Household (pp. 225–262). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hall, S.M. (2019). Everyday Social Infrastructures and Tapestries of Care in Times of Austerity. In: Everyday Life in Austerity. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17094-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17094-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17093-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17094-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)