A road not taken? A brief history of care in economic thought

Abstract

Care is central to the human experience and part of the social provisioning process. Adam Smith recognised this, associating care with sympathy. Later contributions in the political economy tradition also provide scope for an analysis of care, but none as developed as Smith’s. With the emergence of the current mainstream, care is marginalised. Kenneth Boulding’s analysis provides an opportunity to interrogate care in the economy, but he fails to explicitly acknowledge care. It is left to feminist economics to highlight the centrality of care. An implication is that it challenges the conventional rubric of economic organisation predicated on self-interest.

Keywords:

• Care
• Smith
• feminist economics
• Boulding
• social provisioning

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• B10
• B54
• I00
• Z00

Acknowledgement

We wish to acknowledge the highly insightful guidance and friendly criticisms of the editors and three reviewers of this journal. We have no doubts that they greatly improved the paper’s analysis and argument. We are also grateful the participants at a session of the 2019 Japanese Society of the History of Economic Thought conference at Fukuoka University. Finally, we acknowledge the financial support of the Scottish Economic Society, which enabled the authors to progress with the writing of the paper. Of course, the standard disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Power identifies five components to what she views as a common methodology in Feminist economics: (1) caring and unpaid labor as “fundamental”; (2) the application of well-being as a measure of economic success, and intrinsic to interrogating economic reality are: (3) power relations in economic, political and social processes; (4) ethical goals and values, (5) differences in race, class, gender, and other group characteristics. Power (2004, 7) observes that the concept of social provisioning is “classical” rather than “neoclassical” in origin. We agree in that neoclassicism (nor the current mainstream) does not incorporate (1), (3), (4), or (5) in its analysis. In our view, standard economics embraces a form of (2) founded on utilitarianism.

2 Evensky’s article misspells Smith’s birthplace. “Kirkaldy” is not “Kirkcaldy”. As far as we are aware, there is no “Kirkaldy” in Fife, Scotland. There is, however, a “Kirkcaldy”.

3 Samuels identifies four domains to Smith’s approach to moral philosophy: natural theology; ethics; justice, and concern for wealth (expediency). TMS explored ethics, and WN plutology.

4 We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for bringing Boulding’s view on this to our attention.