Careful Economics

Integrating Caring Activities and Economic Science

Much like their authors, the ideas behind books can grow and change on the way from proposal to manuscript. I originally planned to join the discussion on care and economics at a different, more policy-oriented level, hoping to identify the conditions under which caring services are taken to the market. In approaching the task, however, I realized that economic science lacked an overall concept of caring. Economists' notions of caring and their knowledge of its basic elements and structural characteristics were fragmented. Caring activities were treated in the context of household work, unpaid work, or subsistence and informal work. None of the different approaches shared a common frame of reference. This has made it impossible to study caring activities across the various realms of the economy, independent of whether provided in a family setting, purchased on the market, or supplied by the state or society. I therefore found I had to begin my questioning earlier, at the level of basic understandings and concepts.