Revaluing Care in the Global Economy, Duke University

The Value of Love: Global Perspectives on the Economy of Care (2019-2020) is an international, interdisciplinary project and network led by Drs. Jocelyn Olcott (Duke University) and Marija Bartl (University of Amsterdam) that brings together scholars from around the world to think critically about the value of care labor and care economies.

Care labor, or the work of providing care for others, is ascribed value in many ways, whether in uncommodified forms such as motherhood and community service, semicommodified forms such as informal labor and servitude or hypercommodified forms such as the emergent platform of gig economies. Amid this diversity, care – or “love” – labor remains structurally undervalued in economies. Despite many decades of data collection, research and writing about this critical issue, debates remain fixed within paradigms of commodification either through the private sector or state-run welfare programs. https://www.valuingcare.net/