Solidarity economy of caring: politicization and socialization of the hidden work of the women

This work is based on an Action Research process about networks of economic collaboration in irregular urban settlements, “campamentos” or shantytowns, in contemporary neoliberal Chile. The research was done in... [ view full abstract ]

This work is based on an Action Research process about networks of economic collaboration in irregular urban settlements, “campamentos” or shantytowns, in contemporary neoliberal Chile. The research was done in collaboration with a traditional foundation that works on the regularization of urban settlements, and that wanted to explore the potentialities and viability of solidarity economy strategies to improve their intervention approach. The study was organized through a set of workshops developed with women in three shantytowns, using a culturally contextualized version of the methodologies proposed by Gibson-Graham´s approach for community economics. During those workshops the variety and density of local economic practices were problematized in order to project alternative economic imaginations. The development and results of those workshops allow a discussion about the possible relationship between two literature and political corpuses:  solidarity economics and feminist economics of care.

The feminist discussion of economics of care recognizes the economic dimension of the set of activities developed mostly within households to care for dependents -children, elderlies and  sick people- and to reproduce life.  More in general, it acknowledges the enormous amount of invisible work developed around reproductive and domestic labor, including from breastfeeding to vegetable and landscape gardening; mainly developed by women mostly through unpaid labor.  Efforts to measure it, through time use surveys, show that the economy of care represents up to 40% pf GDP. In a more political and analytical vein, it can be argued that the economy of care produces the actual expanded tissue of life; and as such it is structurally before, and a precondition for capitalist and public economy. Moreover, it organizes itself through non capitalistic values.  The theoretical and political project of solidarity economy, in turn, has aimed to make visible and promote forms of production, exchange and consumption that rooted economic behaviour in an ethical, and political framework. In other words, it is a heterogeneous form of economy that prioritize work and the community over capital accumulation.  This framework includes from classical sectors of the social economy, such as trade associations, cooperatives, social enterprises, etc., to various expressions of the popular economy, such as barter and collective savings systems.

 The solidarity economy project, in its agenda of visibility and articulation of other economies, has made little systematic effort to recognize the economic density of care in households. This is paradoxical because although household works is certainly trespassed by the power dynamics of patriarchy; it also certainly represents an area of the economy organized not though self-interest, but by cooperation and affect. Furthermore, there has not been a systematic effort to politicize and develop cooperative systems to reorganize the work of caring.  We believe that a discussion of the economy of care through the lenses of solidarity economy, can enrich both, as its opens new political and economic possibilities to feminism –in terms of making public, valuable and political the domestic activities- and the social economy movements, as it opens another economic area for their political discussion.

The study, was developed –with elements of a PAR approach- in three “campamentos” in the Biobío Region. The social analysis of “Campamentos” in Chile, has changes over time. In the ’80, in a dictatorship context, they were seen as places that foster active organization and solidarity economy. In the neoliberal democratic context in which eradication processes are an important trend of a public housing politic, they are seen as a terrain of political clientelism and individualistic behaviour, given by little territorial roots due to the precariousness and temporality of the settlements. The study showed important differences among the studied “campamentos”, in which one of them was certainly individualist and dependant on clientelistic networks, but the other two maintained important solidarity economic networks. More importantly, those spaces of economic creativity and associativity were assembled almost exclusively by women who, through cooperation, seek to improve, alleviate and organize their family care work. As a result, they constitute fluid networks of collective saving, insurance, and child attention that socialize their domestic economy organization. Despite this, women still do not recognize those actions as valuable economic activities, as they are not seen as part of the monetary economy.

These results raise the question of whether popular promotion of solidarity economy in vulnerable contexts, instead of promoting productive economic processes with the cooperativist model in view, should really begin by politicizing, socializing and valuing those activities developed in an invisible, gratuitous and generous way by women.