Careful economics : integrating caring activities and economic science / by Maren A. Jochimsen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jochimsen, Maren.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social service--Economic aspects.

Social service.

Economics.

Physical Description:

xiv, 136 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, [2003]

Summary:

The caring services performed for dependent persons by professionals, family members, and friends are crucial for the functioning of the economy. Yet economists' notions of caring, its basic elements, and structural characteristics remain fragmentary. In this timely study, Maren A. Jochimsen presents an innovative analysis of caring, systematically integrating existing approaches and proposing a new concept for caring in economic theory. The author identifies the three components that make up a caring situation: motivation, reflecting the need and the responsibility to care; work, the hands-on caring activity; and resources, the material/financial basis and time to sustain a caring relationship. Complemented by a detailed analysis of hitherto neglected asymmetries in caring and their impact on economic theory, Jochimsen's concept lays bare the structures of care, defining central categories for its analysis and locating major coordinates for its social and economic organization.

Contents:

Sketching the ground 3

The importance of caring as a subject for economic theorizing 4

2 The analytical frame of reference 11

Basic characteristics of caring activities 11

3 Caring as the result of preferential choices 25

The conceptualization of caring in the utility-based concept of altruism 25

The concept of "household or family commodities" 31

4 Caring as the result of other-regarding choices 43

The conceptualization of caring within the economic concept of commitment 43

5 Caring as the result of a caring motivation 49

The conceptualization of caring derived from motivation 49

The concept of integrative product 54

6 Caring conceptualized as the result of an effective caring situation 75

The three components constituting an effective caring situation 75

Basic structures of caring situations 80

The analysis of caring institutions 82

7 Asymmetries and dependencies in caring situations as central categories of analysis 85

Asymmetry in capabilities and existential dependency 86

Asymmetry in resource control and material dependency 89

Caring motivations and motivational barriers to exit 94

8 Guidelines for the analysis of caring situations in economics 101

The integrated frame 101

Sensitive points in the coordination and institutionalization of caring situations 110

Directions for policy 119.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-131) and index.

ISBN:

1402074670

OCLC:

52056706