Universal basic income, services, or time politics? A critical realist analysis of (potentially) transformative responses to the care crisis

ABSTRACT

Using an (eco-)feminist Marxist-Polanyian theoretical lens, this article explores the diverse relations between contemporary care-crisis symptoms in Western Europe and its generative structures. It investigates the potential of three possible responses to the crisis to transform rather than reproduce these structures: (un)conditional cash transfers, universal basic services, and time politics. Drawing upon critical realism and the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention, we seek to make sense of the dynamic between competing crisis construals and their effects on actuality. To answer our research question What are the transformative potentials of different responses to the contemporary care crisis in Western Europe?, we move from meta-theoretical abstractions to a theoretically grounded, concrete application of critical realism in the social sciences. We conclude that a symbiosis of time politics and universal basic services together with a universal, but not unconditional, guaranteed (minimum) income offers substantial transformative potentials.

KEYWORDS:

• Care crisis
• critical realism
• universal basic services
• time politics
• social-ecological transformation
• Polanyi

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the valuable help and advice with previous drafts from Ann-Christin Kleinert, Andreas Novy, Mikael Stigendal, Birte Strunk, Hans Volmary, Sarah Ware, and two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 These shifts are often paradoxical and follow a logic of parallel market internalization and externalization. For example, Oksala (2018, 226) points out that ‘[c]apitalism externalizes the costs of reproductive labour by expecting women to take care of their homes for free, as well as internalizing them by creating new markets for care work.’

2 Counter-movements have the potential to be, but are not necessarily, progressive/emancipatory (Bärnthaler, Novy, and Stadelmann 2020), e.g. expanding reciprocity and/or householding strengthens communities and families, creating a potential for solidarity but also for patriarchal, heteronormative, or racist traditions and customs (Fraser 2014b).

3 Polanyi underestimated this possibility of stabilization, remaining victim of a linear understanding of progress, which led to his erroneous assumption of ‘the end of market society’ (Polanyi 1944/2001, 260) (see also Bärnthaler, Novy, and Stadelmann 2020).

4 This idea has been developed extensively in French Regulation Theory (Aglietta 1979/2015).

5 This ‘fix’ was based on the ideals of a family wage and the caring housewife, while also ‘enlisting state power on the side of reproduction’ (Fraser 2016, 108), assuming public responsibility for social welfare, and promoting ‘working-class familial consumerism’ (ibid., 109) at the core. Postcolonial scholars have pointed out that these social welfare regimes rested upon (neo-)colonial exploitation of countries in the Global South (Bhambra 2021).

6 Since the world is pre-structured at any given moment, actors reproduce and/or transform structures, but never create them ex nihilo (Bhaskar 1998, 214)

7 These have been explored as central strategies for changing wage relations and redefining work in the field of care (Dengler, Lang, and Seebacher 2022).

8 This is, among others, because current proposals for CI are not directly linked to hours spent in care work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Bärnthaler

Richard Bärnthaler is a University Assistant at the Department of Socioeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). His research focuses on potentials for social-ecological transformations and strategies, including possibilities for alliance building, to actualize them. He completed his PhD in Social-Ecological Economics in 2023. Prior to that, he studied business administration (BSc), Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy (MSc), and History and Philosophy of Science (MA) in Vienna, Boston, and Tokyo. From 2017 to 2019, he worked at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna on topics related to transdisciplinarity. In 2019, he received the Kurt Rothschild Award for Economic Journalism and Research for his work on Karl Polanyi (together with Andreas Novy, Brigitte Aulenbacher, and Veronika Heimerl). Recent publications include A Polanyi-inspired perspective on social-ecological transformations of cities (Journal of Urban Affairs 2020, with Andreas Novy and Basil Stadelmann), The Foundational Economy as a Cornerstone for a Social–Ecological Transformation (Sustainability 2021, with Andreas Novy and Leonhard Plank), and Towards eco-social politics: a case study of transformative strategies to overcome forms-of-life crises (Environmental Politics 2023).

Corinna Dengler

Corinna Dengler works as an Assistant Professor (ntt) at the Department of Socioeconomics (Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development) at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna). In 2020, she graduated summa cum laude with a cumulative PhD on feminist degrowth from the University of Vechta. Prior to her PhD, she studied economics (B.Sc.), development studies (B.A.), and Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy (M.Sc.) in Vienna, Moscow, and Quito. Her research focuses on heterodox economics with an emphasis on feminist economics, ecological economic, and global political economy and she has a strong research interest in combining critical realism with feminist and postcolonial critiques of science. Recent publications include the Feminist Economics article Commoning Care: Feminist Degrowth Visions for a Socio-Ecological Transformation (2021, with Miriam Lang) and the IJPEE article Critical Realism, Feminisms, and Degrowth: A Plea for Metatheory-Informed Pluralism in Feminist Ecological Economics (2022).