Buying and Selling Care?

Abstract

The documentary Care Factory by Kim Brand (2009) depicts ‘a typical day in an elderly care facility, where bureaucracy and efficiency are increasingly what matter’ (IDFA). Within the portrayed institution, care is organised and evaluated by the minute and according to pre-specified needs, which are linked to financial remuneration of the so-called client. Accordingly, managers fulfil an increasingly important role in these places by introducing business logic — skills, techniques and jargon — into work practices. The documentary tries to show how ‘this commercial approach seems difficult to reconcile with the social nature of the work and runs contrary to the motivation of the nurses, who want to help people in the most human way possible’ (IDFA). A contradiction is depicted between the bureaucratic, marketised production of care services and the idealised notion of helping people. Care as a product that is bought and sold also features in Arlie Hochschild’s book, The Outsourced Self (2012), in which she describes various fields traditionally characterised by personal, intimate and emotional relations that have become part of the logic of the market.