Care, Work, and Citizenship

Award Year: 1999	Investigator: Deborah Stone	Budget: $249,336	Categories: Social Support
Abstract: The modern welfare state is shifting its emphasis from assuring income security to addressing needs for direct physical and emotional care through a variety of laws, policies, and institutions. Given the widespread need for care and the fragmented nature of previous efforts to understand and respond to it, Dr. Stone redefines care as a political issue and views it as a civic responsibility and act. To explore the place of care in a democratic society, she investigates: 1) the legitimacy of dependence and care in American political culture; 2) the treatment of dependence in the assignment of citizenship rights; 3) how caregiving responsibilities affect political and economic rights; 4) the tensions arising from the incorporation of caregiving work into bureaucratic and professional models of labor management; 5) cooperation and conflict between care users and caregivers; and 6) how rules and resistance to them shape the quality of caregiving and affect care workers' moral attitudes.