Panel from Veronika Prieler and Mariusz Sapieha at the 6th Transforming Care Conference (Web)

Time: 26.-28.06.2023
Venue: Sheffield
Proposals due: 30.01.2023

Description of the panel: Formal long-term care services for the elderly used to be provided mainly by public institutions and/or private, often church-related, not-for-profit organisations. Over the last decades, demographic and societal changes have led to rising demand for elderly care. Many countries, however, expanded public services only hesitantly. Instead, cash-for-care schemes were introduced and new (transnational) care markets emerged. Private commercial actors play an important role in these transitions within the elderly care sector. Ranging from large transnational chains to one-person companies they, e.g., run residential care homes, assisted living projects, or home care services, offer specialized nursing care services, recruit care professionals, broker migrant live-in workers or connect people in need of care with care providers, often operating transnationally.
The session invites papers that deal with private commercial actors and their role in developing and providing long-term care services for the elderly. The organizers welcome submissions from researchers of all career stages that address but are not limited to the following questions:

• Who are these commercial care entrepreneurs? What kind of narratives and aspirations do they mobilize? What links are there to other business sectors such as, e.g., investment, real estate, labor brokerage, or tourism?
• Which services do they provide and which (new) care solutions do they promote?
• How do private actors navigate national and supranational care-related policies and regulations? How do they interact with public and not-for-profit actors?
• What does the implementation of corporate and business logics mean for the elderly care sector, the working conditions, and the way care is experienced?
• How do regional, class-, or ethnicity-related inequalities come into play and which boundaries are (re-)drawn with regard to accessibility of care services?

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Kirsten Heinsohn, Anja Kruke, Katja Patzel-Mattern, Hedwig Richter und Sebastian Voigt in Koop. mit der Reichspräsident Friedrich Ebert-Gedenkstätte (Web)

Zeit: 28.-29.09.2023
Ort: Heidelberg
Einreichfrist: 06.02.2023

Als Louise Rump im Jahr 1894 Friedrich Ebert heiratete, wurde sie Gastwirtin, Hausfrau und Mutter und blieb zugleich Arbeiterin und Sozialdemokratin. Wie so viele Arbeiterinnen musste auch die Ehefrau des späteren Reichspräsidenten mehrere Berufe ausfüllen – ihre Arbeit endete nicht, wenn sie das Wirtshaus verließ, sondern setzte sich in ihren privaten Räumen fort. Ihr Alltag bestand aus der Arbeit im Beruf und im Haushalt. Hinzu kam die Sorge für die Familie und ihre Versorgung. Sie war ständig dieser mehrfachen Belastung ausgesetzt. Nur wurde die weibliche Arbeit im Haus nicht als solche verstanden. Sie galt (und gilt auch heute noch weitgehend) als geschlechtsspezifische Aufgabe von Frauen, die aus Liebe und aufgrund einer Veranlagung erfüllt wird. Zuhause ist die Arbeiterin eine Hausfrau und damit quasi natürlicherweise keine Arbeitende mehr. Dies gilt ebenso für unverheiratete Frauen, die sich nicht um einen Ehemann, aber um andere Familienangehörige kümmern. Daran hat sich bis heute wenig geändert: Noch immer ist die Familien- und Sorgearbeit vor allem die Aufgabe von Frauen.
Diese Beschreibung wirft einige Fragen auf: Wie thematisierten die Arbeiterinnen ihre spezifische Situation und versuchten, sie zu gestalten und ändern? Welche Rolle spielten derartige Kämpfe in den Organisationen der klassischen Arbeiter*innenbewegung und wie beeinflussten sie Familienbeziehungen? Ist die Geschichte von Arbeiterinnen vor allem eine Geschichte ihrer außerhäuslichen Erwerbstätigkeit und damit spezifischer Frauenberufe? Sind Hausfrauen, die in Arbeiterfamilien leben (und arbeiten) also keine Arbeiterinnen mehr? Wie muss der Begriff der Arbeit gefasst werden, um Frauen und Geschlechterverhältnisse besser in den Blick nehmen zu können? Wer leistet wo und unter welchen Bedingungen Reproduktionsarbeit und wie könnte eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte diese angemessen berücksichtigen? Die Tagung thematisiert damit auf einer theoretischen Ebene auch wesentlich die Frage danach, warum Frauen in so vielerlei Hinsicht in der Geschichte unsichtbar blieben. Weiterlesen und Quelle … (Web)

The 2023 Association of Social Anthropologists Conference (Web)

11.-14.04.2023
Venue: University of London
Proposals by: 07.01.2023

Longstanding feminist debates about the undervaluing and exploitation of caring labour came into focus in 2020, as the Covid pandemic closed schools and workplaces across the globe, and placed the lowest paid care workers on the frontlines of harm. This renewed and amplified interest in the politics, economics and social repercussions of care has moved beyond critique to alternatives conceptions of how care should be centred and interdependence celebrated.
This panel for the 2023 Association of Social Anthropologists Conference will focus in particular on the caring labour involved in looking after children, from the perspective of those providing the care. Looking at the recent and more distant past, we invite ethnographic and historical contributions that address the life-worlds agency and well-being of those who care for children. The organizers are particularly interested in how shifting forms of remunerated childcare – domestic and institutional; informal and professionalised; for cash or in-kind payments – enact or produce different norms, relations and reciprocities. For example, if workers become autonomous commercial providers of care, rather than being incorporated into households as junior dependents, what effect does this have on gendered, racialised and class-based hierarchies? Do different types of attachments, interests and subjectivities become possible in different child caring arrangements, and are others curtailed?
In the spirit of the call for repair over critique, the organizers are calling for papers that address future solutions and imagined alternatives, despite the challenges involved in formalising and organising this intimate form of work.

The conference will take place from 11-14 April 2023 at SOAS, University of London. The submission deadline for paper proposals is 7 January 2023. Paper proposals should be submitted to the panel organisers via the conference portal: (Web)
The organizers are happy to answer any questions in advance of the formal submission deadline. Sarah Howard and Sacha Hepburn (Birkbeck, Univ. of London, sarah.howard@bbk.ac.uk, s.hepburn@bbk.ac.uk)

Source: H-Net Notifications

Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at TU Dresden (HAIT) (Web)

Zeit: 26.-28.09.2023
Ort: Dresden
Einreichfrist: 15.01.2023

Up to today the post-1989 transformation has had long-lasting effects on lives and biographies in postsocialist societies. The biographical disruptions caused by the postsocialist reconfigurations created many so-called ‚losers‘ of the transformation, who have not had the chance or were unable to create biographical coherence across the systemic divide. Many of these so-called ‚losers‘ tend to, or are judged to, express their anger about the long-term inequalities caused by the reunification process with an increasing skepticism towards democracy and a new openness towards authoritarianism. But who are these so-called ‚losers‘? Can we determine members within a certain age group as particularly receptive to the authoritarian temptation? What is the connection between individuals‘ former age during the time of the postsocialist transformation and their political identities today?
The proposed conference starts from the observations that there are indeed no uniform experiences of ‘the’ transformation. Be it in East Germany or the countries of East Central Europe the various age groups experienced and responded differently to the political and social transformation in the past and remember and speak about it today in different ways. Certain ages, such as adolescence – which is in itself a period of rapid physical and mental transformation – are for instance more receptive to experiences of abrupt change than others, which has had implications for their attitude towards this historical event and its long aftermath. Thus, when looking at the various age groups one can detect various degrees of harmony/disharmony of certain biographical stages with the postsocialist transformation. This requires paying special attention to the dimension of age when it comes to understanding the political, social and biographical implications of the postsocialist transformation. So far, much research has been devoted to the separate study of the experiences of either childhood, adolescence, or old age. Yet, these studies have not contrasted the response of the various age groups to the transformation. Read more and source … (Web)