DisCO Principle 5: Carework is the Core
DisCOs are centered on carework: Here we refer not only to the caring practices and mutual support among the members of a DisCO, but also to the many activities that keep the collective healthy and thriving. This includes administrative tasks, commitments, management and other material inputs. DisCOs function as living organisms that need to be cared for, discussed, and periodically adjusted.
In short: Care is the blood that pumps through DisCO’s heart, care among its members and care towards the DisCO itself.
Overview
Care and affective labour, so often invisibilized and taken for granted by the traditional economic logic, are acknowledged as essential in DisCO and thus supported and embedded in its very structure. Feminist Economics invites us to value things that are not valued in the market, such as care, nurturing, invisible work, unpaid organizational and community-oriented work and mutual support. Conventional economic rationality is profoundly “male-centric” and promotes behaviors like competition and individualism. In contrast, solidarity, care & reciprocity are considered extra-economic and feminine.
Definitions of care abound in Feminist Economic literature. One way to look at it is as a disposition on how we engage with people and activities, including economic ones.
Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto offer the following take in Toward a Feminist Definition of Caring:
On the most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue and repair our "world" so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web. This effort to keep life going does not assume that certain people (women rather than men) have a special ability to sustain our world or that some efforts (healing rather than house building) make a more important contribution to sustaining life on earth. Nor does this notion of caring assume universal standards concerning what is needed to maintain and repair our world. We know that human "needs" change with the historical, cultural, class and other contexts. We also know that such contexts involve power relations that affect the content, definition, distribution, and boundaries of caring activities. Thus, the caring process is not a gracefully unfolding one, but contains different components that clash with each other. By identifying these components we should come to understand the rich and knotty texture of our caring experience, why caring can be both so rewarding and so exasperating.
Approaching relationships and actions with care presupposes awareness of and sensitivity towards the needs of others. It encourages interdependence and a sense of purpose that transcends the individual self. This expanded notion of the self as a living process forged in communities and in concert with nature stands in stark comparison to the myth of the "self made individual" and standard western economic rationality. Contrast that with the rationality of Ubuntu, a term originating in various Bantu languages from South Africa that refers to the deep interdependence between self and other in a community context.
The following is extracted from Free Fair and Alive: the Insurgent Power of the Commons:
Ubuntu Rationality describes a logic of human interaction that recognizes the deep connections between a person’s interests and the well-being of others. It points to a dynamic where a person’s unfolding requires the unfolding of others, and vice-versa. The term is a counterpoint to the conventional idea of economic rationality, which is defined as self-interested, calculative, acquisitive behavior which tends to be at the expense of others. When people can see themselves as Nested-I's embedded in a Pluriversal set of relationships, they begin to exhibit Ubuntu Rationality.
Care transcends the self and puts us in touch with a larger reality more in line with social and environmental realities. None of this is new: care-based dynamics are (nearly) universally evident in the raising of children, care for the elderly and attentive empathy toward friends. Unfortunately in many cases they are both invisibilized and/or exclusively ascribed to women. Highlighting the prevalence of care as a the building block of our relation to the world and each other helps us recognize the vitality of decommodified work and its value.
DisCOs are organizations that create things to share: objects, ideas, services, solutions, systems, or art, culture and music, and they do it with love, care and purpose. This means that DisCO is specifically focused on carework within the workplace. It's not for DisCO to determine what carework takes place beyond the workplace, but we feel that this revaluation of care within work can then naturally spill over in other areas of life.
In DisCO we define Carework as any kind of work that supports the health of the collective without generating income per se. Within this overall definition, we then distinguish between two mutually supporting types of carework:
Caring for the DisCO and its mission:
First, there is carework for the health of the collective as a system and entity (what we refer to as the DisCO CAT). This means any kind of administrative or behind-the-scenes productive work that keeps the collective running and functional. Rather than demoting these tasks or outsourcing them to a separate managerial class, actively caring for the DisCO's mission ensures it isn't met in mechanistic, heartless or purely profit oriented ways, but with love, due process and attention. Remember, that DisCOs want to build things that last and can be used and tweaked by others. To do this right, we need to build them with care from the get go.
Caring for the people who work in the DisCO:
Second, there is the carework of supporting the humans in the collective. This very important aspect of carework recognizes that every DisCO is made up of individuals who each need emotional support, understanding, special consideration and a sense of belonging and purpose. Happy, supported individuals who feel they can express themselves creatively will, by nature, produce better work. This isn't unknown to the corporate world and it's evident in concepts like Ikigai or a wellness culture oriented towards performance in the workplace. The twist in DisCO is that this balance isn't a compromise between individual fulfillment and productivity for absentee shareholders, but a meeting ground between individual, societal and environmental needs.
Finding the balance between caring for the DisCO's mission and the people bringing it to life is essential. If you only care for the mission and see the people fulfilling it as subservient, you will fall into a "means justify the ends" logic. In such a case care for the mission would start to feel hollow and devoid of joy. If you only care for the people and lose sight of the vision, it will wither and decay, which can increase inter-group conflict, dissatisfaction and ultimately the dismemberment of a space where both individual and group needs can be met with care.
The Community Rhythms we propose in DisCO can help ensure that communication runs in an open, honest, transparent and respectful way, expressing observations and criticisms about the workings of the group. This makes space for stronger interpersonal bonds and better trust-based communication, employing healthier and more emancipatory conflict-resolution tools. It also satisfies the need to take care of the DisCO's mission, by evaluating work done and future needs.
Extending the notion of care work beyond individuals and towards the collective as an entity empowers group members to reframe, undertake, or at least understand, what would usually be considered bureaucratic or administrative work. Upkeep of any DisCO’s social mission is the responsibility of working circles or self-organized teams which collectively manage specific needs (e.g., building community, following leads for livelihood work, evaluating potential members) to ensure that the DisCO is healthy and able to fulfill its values ongoing.
Another way in which a DisCO cares for its members is the mentoring process, through which dating members learn the ropes of the workflow. Mentoring is always bi-directional and peer-to-peer. Although there’s always something that someone can teach others, special attention is paid to those members going through the Dating Phase (who have recently onboarded the team).
DisCO Principle Five is about acknowledging, understanding and applying care to our mission-oriented workplaces, or DisCOs. Beyond the care extended towards the members of the group and its goals and values, DisCOs also do things with care. Rather than seeking efficiency and immediate results, we encourage groups to enjoy their productive processes, bringing back notions of artisanship, craft and the benefits of human production to materials that inspire us. When we say that DisCO is oriented towards social and environmental ends, we are really talking about care. There is deep kinship with the human and non-human worlds.
Examples
Guerrilla Media Collective is explicitly feminist in its orientation. Members’ emotional well being is prioritized daily. Work is organized around these needs, not in spite of them. Every member has a dedicated mutual support buddy and the collective is cared for through various circles dedicated to community, sustainability, outside peers and more.
Care work is closely tied to Laneras’ own origins, worldview and development. Their project has an ecofeminist nature which prioritizes care towards oneself, others and the environment. Community support networks are essential to their mission and the relationships that members form are strongly grounded in trust, mutual support and interdependence.
Why this is important
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Tensions
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Interactions with other principles
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Related Elements
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More Resources
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TLDR
- We reinforce care among members through a series of community rhythms and mutual support practices. - We believe in the power of care as an inspiring alternative to current and dominant patriarchal, capitalist models. - We take care of each other, and we believe this is the pillar that sustains the health of the collective.