Coproducing Care in Everyday Life
摘要
We have framed care as a collaborative interaction between caregivers and care recipients. Drawing on Ostrom and Cahn, we conceptualized care as coproduced, that is, as an active and broadly reciprocal project of initiators and joiners, whose committed participation is constitutive of care. Care can be coproduced in many contexts and scales; it can be formalized in government programs, or informal and dyadic: Ostrom analyzed coproduction involving bureaucrats and citizens, where Cahn focused on informal and often small scale timebank interactions. Coproduced care can address crises and challenges, as in emergency services, or it can build resilience and coherence, strengthening strengths. Coproduction activity can be additive, pooling and better leveraging shared resources, or transformative, changing and refactoring problems and solutions simultaneously. In this section, we reflect on the coproduction of care in everyday, intimate social interactions, drawing on our own studies of domestic couples, friends and families, local neighborhoods and communities. We were particularly intrigued by how these caring interactions are reciprocal and how they illustrate and leverage the distinction between additive and transformative coproduction.