In the twenty-first century, characterized by population aging, family fragmentation and the entry of women into the paid workforce, caring has become a major public issue. This book offers a comparative analysis of the sociology, philosophy and emergent practices of care in the context of the political economy of post-industrial societies.
Promoting care, a sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of others, is one of society's primary moral challenges. A caring society is one in which care penetrates all major social institutions including the family, schools, places of work, and worship. The purpose of this book is to present pragmatic guidelines for individuals and groups who want to enhance the caring quality of the social institutions in which they participate. The authors propose principles whereby care can be infused in routine contexts and give real-life examples to illustrate how they have been successfully applied in a variety of social settings.
This book highlights views on responsive, participatory and democratic approaches to evaluation from an ethos of care. It critically scrutinizes and discusses the invisibility of care in our contemporary Western societies and evaluation practices that aim to measure practices by external standards. Alternatively, the book proposes several foci for evaluators who work from a care perspective or wish to encourage a caring society. This is a society that sees evaluation and care as a continuously unfolding relational practice of moral-political learning contributing to life-sustaining webs. ‘At one level is the evaluator’s immediately responsive and interpersonal encounter with the personal troubles of social actors, most visible, as Mills originally pointed out, in an individual’s biography and in those social settings directly open to the individual’s lived experience. (...) At another level, the sociological and political level, the evaluator operates at what Mills called the arena of public issues where immediate personal troubles are seen not only as problems encountered by individuals but as the result of structural and political arrangements in society (...) evaluation for a caring society is thought to operate at both levels’ (Thomas A. Schwandt, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). ‘The intricate relationship between evaluation and care is hardly addressed by evaluators or caregivers. This book fills a gap, as it focuses on the relationship between evaluation and care and provides a multitude of examples of evaluation as a caring practice (...) the book can serve as an antidote to the present-day haste in social practices, and contribute, in form and content, to developing an evaluation practice which may foster a caring society’ (Guy Widdershoven, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine and head of the Department of Medical Humanities at VU University Medical Center, VU University Amsterdam).
Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.
Americans now face a caring deficit: there are simply too many demands on people’s time for us to care adequately for our children, elderly people, and ourselves.At the same time, political involvement in the United States is at an all-time low, and although political life should help us to care better, people see caring as unsupported by public life and deem the concerns of politics as remote from their lives. Caring Democracy argues that we need to rethink American democracy, as well as our fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. The idea that production and economic life are the most important political and human concerns ignores the reality that caring, for ourselves and others, should be the highest value that shapes how we view the economy, politics, and institutions such as schools and the family. Care is at the center of our human lives, but Tronto argues it is currently too far removed from the concerns of politics. Caring Democracy traces the reasons for this disconnection and argues for the need to make care, not economics, the central concern of democratic political life. Joan C. Tronto is a Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (Routledge).
Who's to blame for the decline of Canada's once-renowned social programs? This book argues that it's not the politicians, not big business (glorifying the free market), but Canadians in general. It provides compelling evidence of our loss of compassion during the last quarter of the twentieth century and our new demands for a harsher approach toward less fortunate Canadians, a harshness reminiscent of the century's early years. In the interim, we supported progressive social policies that set us apart in North America. Today we disown them and have become less attractive Canadians in the process.
Rauner demonstrates a direct connection between caring in face-to-face interactions and caring organizations and a caring society, arguing that such a connection is central to our teaching of and expectations for youth. She also posits caring as a way to conceptualize social justice and recognize the connection between public and private morality. Each chapter opens with an overview of a youth-serving organization and includes at least one case study.
(NEW) Spirit Bear: Honouring Memories, Planting Dreams is the latest addition to the award-winning picture book series written by Order of Canada recipient Cindy Blackstock (Gitxsan Nation) and illustrated by Amanda Strong (Michif)! Spirit Bear is on his way home from a sacred ceremony when he meets Jake, a friendly dog, with a bag full of paper hearts attached to wood stakes. Jake tells Spirit Bear that school children and residential school survivors will plant the hearts when a big report on residential schools called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC for short) is shared. The TRC will have Calls to Action so we can all help end the unfairness and make sure this generation of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children grow up healthy and proud!
A combination of social history, labor history and a history of the New Deal, interweaving stories of migrant workers, laborers and policy makers. One chapter is devoted to the arts of the period and their portrayals of workers. Summaries of several leftist plays are also given, including plays by Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman,, and Erskine Caldwell. Also has several pages of photographs of Depression scenes and leaders of the period.