Development and Change, Special Issue: Seen, Heard and Counted: Rethinking Care in a Development Context, Vol. 42, No. 4

This special issue on care looks at how social policy provision for care has emerged, evolved, and is changing in line with altered political and economic conditions. It focuses on care arrangements in developing countries, which have not received the same level of scrutiny as those in advanced industrialized countries.

Care, especially in the advanced industrialized countries and their welfare regimes, has been the subject of extensive scholarly debate. In the developing world, economic restructuring has raised concerns about social reproduction in general, and women’s increasing burdens of unpaid care work more specifically. While the present may not be marked by a generalized care crisis, systems of care provision are under strain in some contexts and for some social groups.

Furthermore, care has emerged as a legitimate subject of public debate and policy on the agendas of some social movements and other civil society actors, developing country governments and international organizations. Governments are experimenting with new ways of responding to care needs in their societies. However, these have been insufficiently recognized and analyzed — a lacuna that the present collection of papers, bringing together analyses from diverse regional contexts, seeks to address. In an increasingly unequal world, where gender inequalities intersect with ever-widening income inequalities, and where the options for securing good care are limited for the socially disadvantaged, the failure to socialize the costs of care will feed into and exacerbate existing inequalities.


Contents

• Introduction: Rethinking Care in a Development Context, Shahra Razavi
• South Africa: A Legacy of Family Disruption, Debbie Budlender and Francie Lund
• Harsh Choices: Chinese Women’s Paid Work and Unpaid Care Responsibilities under Economic Reform, Sarah Cook and Xiao-yuan Dong
• The Good, the Bad, and the Confusing: The Political Economy of Social Care Expansion in South Korea, Ito Peng
• A Perfect Storm Rising? Welfare, Care, Gender and Generations in Uruguay, Fernando Filgueira, Magdalena Gutierrez and Jorge Papadopulos
• Putting Two and Two Together? Early Childhood Education, Mothers’ Employment and Care Service Expansion in Chile and Mexico, Silke Staab and Roberto Gerhard
• Who Cares in Nicaragua? A Care Regime in an Exclusionary Social Policy Context, Juliana Martinez Franzoni and Koen Voorend
• A Widening Gap? The Political and Social Organization of Childcare in Argentina, Eleonor Faur
• Stratified Familialism: The Care Regime in India through the Lens of Childcare, Rajni Palriwala and Neetha N.
• Going Global: The Transnationalisation of Care, Nicola Yeates

The issue is available online.