Care, with Bev Skeggs

Rosie Hancock: 0:05

Hi, and welcome to Uncommon Sense from The Sociological Review, where we seize the taken-for-granted and see it afresh through a sociological lens. I'm Rosie Hancock in Sydney, Australia.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 0:17

And I'm Alexis Hieu Truong in Ottawa, Canada—recording here as the sun comes up, just as it goes down where you are Rosie.

Rosie Hancock: 0:24

Yeah, I guess you would have just gotten out of bed, and I'm pretty much ready to get into bed. So, now, I usually work on religion and activism, and Alexis here looks at young people and mental health, right, Alexis?

Alexis Hieu Truong: 0:36

Yeah.

Rosie Hancock: 0:37

So, although those two things are pretty different, and although Alexis and I are in different sides of the world, we, along with the team at The Sociological Review, believe sociology is for everyone. It shouldn't be hidden in dusty libraries, or buried in dense journal articles behind paywalls. So, Uncommon Sense steps away from the university, and looks at stuff that affects us all.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 0:58

Yeah, and crucially, you don't have to be a sociologist to think like one. So, wherever you are, whoever you are, this podcast is for you.

Rosie Hancock: 1:12

Today, we're talking about Care. It's a word that's become especially powerful, or you could say a little bit hollow in the past couple of years in the context of COVID-19. It's also something we might be quick to associate with, I don't know latex gloves, care homes, and also problematically women, right? Alexis, if I said "care" to you, what comes to mind?

Alexis Hieu Truong: 1:36

Hmm, becoming an adult! So, I have a small son, and when I think of care, I think of taking care of him when he was born and since then. Also, I think about the uncertainties around taking care of my parents as they get older.

Rosie Hancock: 1:51

Yeah, me too, actually. Well, today, we're talking to someone whose work really bust the idea of care right open, tying it to big things like inequality and gender. And that's been the case for years, whether in her landmark '97 study of working class young woman in the north of England, which is called"Formations of Class and Gender", or in her more recent work on solidarity, care, and yep, COVID-19. She's the feminist sociologist Professor Bev Skeggs. Hi, Bev, welcome.

Bev Skeggs: 2:21

Hi!

Rosie Hancock: 2:22

That's so great to have you on.

Bev Skeggs: 2:24

Thank you for inviting me.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 2:25

Hi, Bev. So, we shared an office before. But when you started out, you did research on working class women in northeast England, touching on questions of care. Tell us a bit about that.

Bev Skeggs: 2:36

Well, interestingly, it didn't begin to be about care. It was about wider working class women get working class jobs, which was kind of in parallel to Paul Willis's study of why did working class boys get working class jobs. And so, his was very much a study of masculinity. And I wanted to see how it all played out in terms of class and gender. And so, I started studying with, researching with a group of women who were doing care and health courses in a further education college. And I realised how significant care was as a form of value to them, as something that actually really mattered both morally and also kind of economically; it was where they would get jobs because they often didn't have qualifications. And it was one of the things they did that actually made them feel good about themselves, good about other people. And it was one of the things they could do very, very well, because it's actually quite rare to find a working class woman who hasn't been educated to care for others, or their families and relatives and whatever else. So, it was really about class to begin with. And then it turned into care, because I realised how significant it was. And so, it became a study of gendered subjectivity, as in: How do people become particular people over a period of time? So, it was ethnographic; it was a long study. And it studied how they came into formation as people and people who were subject to quite a lot of daily denigration, you know, they were being put down regularly by different authorities, by education systems. And so, it was about how they became subjects of value.

Rosie Hancock: 4:25

Bev, that study came out in '97, but you've continued to care about care. So, in 2017, you wrote a really moving piece about the lack of care that your parents experienced in later life. That piece is called "A Crisis in

Humanity: 4:41

What Everyone with Parents Is Likely to Face in the Future", and you can find it on The Sociological Review website. As someone with fast ageing parents, for me it's a reminder that care affects us all throughout all life stages. So, there are times when we might be the carer; there are other times in our life when we will be cared for. And how complacent we are about how care functions in society probably depends on where we see ourselves when we think about the word "care".

Bev Skeggs: 5:13

That's such an important point, Rosemary, because I think one thing that never stops astonishing me is how our society rewards the most care-less, those who can and do care less about other people. So, I think that that piece in The Sociological Review really"wrote me" because I had been relatively complacent about the amount of care that had been put into me – I just took it for granted – by my parents over the years. And I think we do take our parents for granted. But I also think we take everybody who puts care into us for granted – all of our friends. If you, if you just think about how many people have invested in you through their caring: just really nice things, like Alexis once sorting out all the heating system for the whole of the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, we were freezing. That sort of act of kindness we take for granted often and that those things are really, really important. So, the piece for The Sociological Review was because I was confronted by the complete lack of care that was available for both my parents. The first example was my father, who was subjected to the privatisation of the NHS and was left to die in agony, because [of] privatised ambulances, privatised services, shortage of nurses, shortage of beds, privatisation of beds even. And for me, as a sociologist, it was just shocking. I think until we come to face it, we don't actually know in the UK how much has been privatised. For instance, there's seven areas in the UK that have absolutely no social care support for the elderly. You can't get provision; you can't, it's not there. So, for my mother – she was disabled, she was blind, 90% blind – she couldn't get any support. And she go into hospital and they try and throw her out, because that performance measures were based upon stopping people doing what they call "bed blocking". But if you're blind and you can't get the care you need, you fall over a lot, you break a lot of things, you're in hospital constantly. And so, for me, it became really, really sociological, as well as totally and absolutely heartbreaking. I had to find services. Now I'm a researcher – I will spend a lot of time working out who to speak to, how to speak to them, where provision is, what to do, what the structures are – and I just found this devastation of social care in a way I could not believe. So, I was both trying to deal with looking after my mum, with the help of I had to find private caring agencies. And that was horrific, because the way they treat their carers is extraordinary – the surveillance, this object to the lack of zero contracts and things – oh, it's just unbelievable. I mean, it's a whole story of gig employment. And when people talk about "gig employment" they usually talk about Deliveroo, but actually, for me, care is one of the most horrific forms of employment, mainly for women, but also for migrant workers for men as well. So, I was in this dilemma of trying to find help for my mom – impossible to get, I couldn't get any overnight, and you can't leave somebody who can't feed themselves, can't walk properly, can't see; you have to look after them. So, I was kind of confronted by that. But that very personal confrontation was also a sociological

confrontation with: 8:56

Where are the services? What's happened to them? What's happened to unemployment? Why, why has the care home being completely financialized by a private equity hedge fund? You know, what is going on? So, in the midst of trying to keep my mum alive, which was ... it became impossible. I not only kind of found this whole new area of destruction, I'd say, destruction of people's lives, the workers' lives, the carers' lives, the elderly people who weren't getting care – at that point, it was estimated there was 40,000 people dying annually from lack of care. It was just terrific.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 9:42

So, starting to look at care and understand care really opened up the window on, on how we was sometimes taking for granted all of the care that we've received, but also how deeply sociological those questions were: as a society, how we take care of each other and how we're all so dependent on each other, and some really broader questions around institutions, financial questions, and so forth. And you mentioned, like, your parents, friends, and so on. Another fascinating thing about care is that it automatically makes us think about relationships, about the connections between us. And in that way, it's a pretty ripe territory for sociology, which automatically acknowledges society, acknowledges that we're all dependent on one another.

Bev Skeggs: 10:31

Absolutely, and The Care Manifesto that's just been published by The Care Collective is so good on this. It is about the politics of interdependence. You know, we cannot live without other people. We need other people all the time. We are social beings. You know, look at the effect lockdowns had on people – devastating mental health impacts. We need other people and we also want to care for other people. So, not obviously in circumstances that are really dramatic and horrific, but we, most of the time, we are actually caring for our friends, for people around us, for our students. We do a huge amount of care that is completely and totally unrecognised. And it is about all relationships are social – it's practically impossible to be anti social, it's very, very difficult.

Rosie Hancock: 11:28

So, so far we've been speaking about care, and this idea that cares implicitly about relationships in what sounds like quite an, in a way, an individual sense, right? So, the way that we might care for our parents, or we care for children, or we care for each other. But we could also think about care at a more systemic level. So, is paying our taxes care, or is reducing carbon emissions care for future generations? Can care be about policy and climate change and foreign aid budgets?

Bev Skeggs: 11:59

Yep, care is about it. It is I would argue very, very strongly, it's kind of the infrastructure for everything. You couldn't have capitalism without care. Because, who is replenishing the worker, who is reproducing the labour? So, you can't have our basic economic structure without the infrastructure of all the care – what we call social reproduction, all the work that goes into enabling the whole motor of society to operate. If we don't understand its fundamental relationship, I think we lost, which is why kind of policies on alternative economics just make no sense if you don't include care. And what's really important, Rosemary, that you point to, is that care isn't just an industry of finance a form of relationship. It's also about a disposition towards others. It's about how we treat other people and other things. So, how do we treat the planet? You know, do we just, you know, let the planet burn and let people die as a result? Or do we actually try and nurture it? Do we treat people as if they just are a labour to be extracted? Or do we enable them to flourish? You know, that is a way we operate in the world, and I think it's really important that we think about it structurally, institutionally and as a personal disposition.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 13:27

Please, define "personal disposition".

Bev Skeggs: 13:34

"Attitude towards others." So, it comes from a sociologist, probably Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that we embody very different attitudes towards different things through our socialisation, and socialisation is a form of care. So, it's about how we relate to other people, but how we embody that relationship. So, some people are really, really kind. Alexis, you're a very kind person, you will always help people, you'll always support people. And you'll always do it in a very selfless way. That's very different to people who are completely selfish, don't care, irresponsible, expect other people to do all their work for them.

Rosie Hancock: 14:16

So, we've been talking about care as a notion that's been a little bit sidelined, especially given how a mess of a concept it really seems to be. But let's move on now to talk about something that's really brought care into the spotlight, which is COVID-19. No doubt a lot of people are tired of talking about the pandemic, but I think we can find a new way of doing so. A way to say something different via this notion of care. Bev, what is the pandemic taught us about care so far?

Bev Skeggs: 14:47

Again, I think one of the key things is about the sheer irresponsibility of people who have power. They have attempted to transfer, in the UK, responsibility to the individual whilst taking very, very little governmental responsibility for the pandemic. I think it's been shocking. I, I've been shocked. I wrote a paper on it, I was so shocked. Now, what I also think it's taught us is the kind of return to, I would say, three really significant legacies, historical legacies that shape the approach to COVID that we now see in England, and I'm saying England very specifically. So, if we go right back to history, and if we look at very, very forms of early necrospeculation – making money from death, basically – we see how that was a form that was practised throughout slavery, how it had to be controlled by governments. But what we see through this pandemic is how the English government has actually made a huge amount of money from COVID. It's obviously using taxpayers money to fund lots of things, but all those PPE contracts have been given out to Tory funders. The levels of corruption, the way they've line, their own pockets has been astonishing. That is the legacy of necrospeculation. The other one is the legacy of thanatocracy, which is about the use of labour without any protections, the idea that anybody can be used and abused to do things. So, putting people back to work in very unsafe conditions is a form of thanatocracy. I mean, we're going to experience that very dangerous conditions for lecturers entering a lecture theatre with 500 people and no air, so, a variant factory effectively. So, no protection for labour has become really, really significant. Look at the bus workers, look at the people who've died, NHS staff care workers. The protections weren't in place for them at the beginning of the pandemic. And then the third legacy that I think is really important is social reproduction, so, care itself. Who's had to do all the work of care when the government has literally passed over the responsibility? While the Women's Budget Group is brilliant on documenting who's doing most of the work of care. So, they've been, you know, women have been educating at home whilst doing all the domestic work as well. Now, that's obviously race and class cut through, all this, and we see how it kind of ... a lot of the work of care was done by a whole, what Sara Farris calls,"migrant army of labourers". But what's significant, I think, that we can see through COVID is how those very, very old historical legacies shape the present, and all the restraints on government, on protection. And for me, it's become a battle between protecting people and using and extracting value from people. So, I think that's what I've learned from COVID.

Rosie Hancock: 17:58

Bev, can I just quickly ask who are the Women's Budget Group?

Bev Skeggs: 18:02

There are a fantastic group in the UK who are made up of lots of feminist economists, who regularly write reports, check their website, on the conditions of women; not always just women, but of different forms of gendered work.

Rosie Hancock: 18:21

Oh, they sound, they sound very cool.

Bev Skeggs: 18:22

They're absolutely wonderful. They're an incredibly important source of information.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 18:27

Bev, you've been involved in something called the Solidarity and Care platform at The Sociological Review, which you can find if you head to our episode notes. Tell us briefly what that's about and also why sociology should even care about COVID? Shouldn't we leave those questions to medical doctors,"proper" scientists or even bankers, maybe?

Bev Skeggs: 18:51

That's a really interesting thought, because I started ... I was in a conference on care recently, and

somebody said: 18:57

"Why we now are relying on medical journals instead of lots of other journals?" So, we now all read the BMJ, which is really hard – British Medical Journal – and the The Lancet and Nature. So, we are, we are looking at lots of scientific reports. I think if we don't understand the social relationships that underpin the major crisis in the world, we won't understand anything. And I set up that site, and Erica Lagalisse has been the editor of it – she's done a fantastic job. I set it up because I thought we need to have an archive of what happens during this pandemic. Now, sociology has been quite sidelined in a lot of, obviously, a lot of government work; we've got quotes saying how much Boris Johnson dislikes sociologists, great. But what we have with that is an archive of people who are doing the work of social reproduction, who are caring. And what was absolutely fantastic is that it's very global. We extended into ... we've got lots of reports from India, from Latin America, and what you see ... And it's, it's really kind of heartwarming, because what you actually see – and I don't want to romanticise this, because this is about transferring labour and exploiting people and extracting from them, giving them the really hard work to do when the government should be doing it – but what we're seeing is that, you know, people will support

each other: 20:28

huge numbers of kind of mutual aid across the world, lots of support, sex workers in India have been exemplary in protecting each other. And so we come back to the word"protection" again, and I, at the beginning, I used"solidarity" because I thought that's the nice kind of more political way of seeing things. But I'm now, I'm now returning to the word "protection", because I think with something like a pandemic, protecting labour, protecting life, protecting vulnerable people, the elderly – who have just been, you know, laid to waste really in the pandemic – protecting them has become really important. So,"Solidarity, Protection and Care", it should be, but it's just been a really good example of what people can do, do do and the politics of interdependence.

Rosie Hancock: 21:16

I think it's, it's so interesting, because in Australia, I feel like we've seen two sides to the coin of this idea of solidarity in relation to COVID. At the beginning, in 2020, of the pandemic, all of these mutual aid groups – you mentioned them, I know that so they're in the UK, they definitely sprung up in Australia as well – and it was this amazing sense that people were caring for other people in their communities that they didn't really know. And were able to meet with people. So, I was doing some research with an organisation and, you know, there were connecting people in different suburbs across Sydney, who didn't have the opportunity to meet before the pandemic, and we were all stuck at home. But somehow, we were more connected and caring more for people in our local communities than we had been previously. That doesn't really seem to have continued into 2021, which I think is really interesting. And actually, I feel like there's almost a failure of solidarity that's coming up, that's starting to come up with extended lockdowns or new lockdowns in Australia, where people aren't willing to make sacrifices for other people anymore, it seems.

Bev Skeggs: 22:28

I think it's going to be a "watch this space", I really do. Because I think at different moments people can give and want to give and want to help and want to support, and food banks have been really important things like the campaigns for feeding children, organised by footballers in Britain – Marcus Rashford, what a hero, he should be the prime minister. And so, what we see is different moments, I think, of people coming together and coming together around different issues as well. And that that might not sustain, and I don't think we should believe that they will sustain, because people get exhausted. People get absolutely, you know, used up by doing all these things. I mean, if you look at the massive increase in food banks in Britain, it's totally astonishing. So, lots of people are giving money to food bank, but not doing the work there. But they've expanded they've become really significant. Now, again, this takes us back historically, because it was charities that actually stopped people dying, often horrific charities, but sometimes really, really good ones. So, again, it's about the protection of life when it's needed. And I'm not sure all those mutual aid groups are needed all the time. But it's good to see people recognising their interdependence, I think, and then where do we go with that? I think once people have recognised it, that's a really important move, but I'm not sure where we take it after that. And I don't want to romanticise, you know, the idea of the community, because I'm not sure it works like that.

Rosie Hancock: 24:03

I feel like we've kind of hinted at this throughout the conversation, but COVID seems to remind us of the fallacy that we can ever really be islands separate from each other. And whether that's at the individual level, because even when we're self isolating in our homes, we still need other people, including the key workers or people doing our deliveries, or at the level of the state as well. And I reflect on this coming ... based in Australia, where we've had this fortress mentality, which has been successful in what some respects, but it's just not sustainable.

Bev Skeggs: 24:37

Absolutely. I mean, there was a question about why should we expect the state to look after us? Well, I think we should. That is its role, there is a social contract, and so, we should afford some level of protection. But as you say, Rosemary, what's key is we've seen how global it is. There's no point in vaccinating their rich northern nations when the rest of the world is actually dying.

Rosie Hancock: 25:00

Exactly.

Bev Skeggs: 25:01

The pandemic moves around the world. It's like, it's a bit like climate change, you know, short term one policy thinking is not going to get anybody anywhere. You know, we really need to think globally. And if we look at things like the care industry, it's global; care workers, they're global; the pandemic, it's global. And we really, really need to see. We can see how things contextualise but they are really global.

Rosie Hancock: 25:28

So, we've just talked about some quite difficult stuff. But the Solidarity and Care pages on The Sociological Review site do so of hope, as it says there,"COVID has shown us that a future centred on collective care is possible". It also says that cruelty, greed and exploitation got us into this, but that it will be care that gets us out. That's a nice idea to hold on to, I think.

Bev Skeggs: 25:53

You just have to keep hoping. You've got to believe that the world can be a better place, you've got to believe that it can be a place where people can flourish, not be used, abused, spat out and blamed for their own problems. So, I think it's important that we hang on to the idea. And I think you have to have hope, to believe that we can have a better world, and to have a better world we actually need to care for other people.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 26:23

In a moment, we'll be talking about a buzzword that's become especially popular in recent

year: 26:28

self-care. But first, a word from our producer, Alice.

Alice Bloch: 26:35

Hi, that you're listening to Uncommon Sense from The Sociological Review, where we take a sideways look at the ideas that shape our worlds. And we do it by grabbing concepts that we think we know, things like home or care, and shaking and stretching them a bit with guests who cast them in a whole new light. We're about challenging everyday assumptions about how we live and intervening in the crises that shaped all of our lives today. And if you like what you're hearing, please do hit pause in whatever app you're using and tap subscribe. It takes just a couple of seconds. And it really helps us to bring this podcast to you. And why not share this episode with the questioning critic in your life. Remember, you don't have to be a sociologist to think like one, you will find recommended reading and much more besides at thesociologicalreview.org. Thanks for listening.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 27:23

Okay, so, when we set out to make Uncommon Sense, one of the things we wanted to do was get our teeth into language to consider the words and ideas that have become so commonplace that we don't really stop to think about them. And today, we want to ask you, Bev, about a buzzword that's

kind of stuck: 27:41

self-care.

Bev Skeggs: 27:43

Ah.

Rosie Hancock: 27:45

Yeah, right? Like, when I think about self care, it makes me think of this night in the previous, in a previous lockdown in 2020, where my partner and I bought face masks, and I drink some wine, and we sit on the couch. And it was this kind of idea of taking time out for ourselves and really cocooning ourselves and retreating, you know, and when I did a search online self-care seem to lead us to self-care journals and spa treatments and really strange diets. And there's this whole industry, which is apparently worth around 450 billion US dollars. And according to Stylus Magazine, there are more than 50 million Instagram posts out there tagged with "self-care". But, Bev, what does the word mean to you? And is the word itself actually that new? Or are we just talking about something old in a different guise?

Bev Skeggs: 28:39

We're talking about something old that's been really, really commoditised. And absolutely, as you say, become a huge industry, and has also, by becoming so commodified, has eclipsed all sorts of different forms of care. It's almost as if it's eclipsed the interdependence of care that every form of care really relies on. So, it's impossible just to be self-caring. But yes, the size of the industry should alert us to the fact that this is one great big con, but there is a sociological history to this. And probably the most ... like, the source of the word itself would be Michel Foucault, French philosopher, who talks about how power and control is not just directed through repressive forms of the state but become transferred to the individual. And we are expected to produce ourselves, men through self-mastery and women through self-care. That's, that's actually making this argument very vulgar, but it kind of works in terms of the industry itself. And how that becomes ... self-care often becomes the responsibility of women. So, there's a fantastic article by Eva Illouz, one of my favourite sociologists, who looks at how self-care becomes a way of understanding the individual as completely and totally atomized, as subject to what's called individualization. So, all the different policies that say "you are an individual, you are not social", which is ridiculous, because you can't just be an individual. But if you think about yourself as an individual, you become far less political, you become far less connected, and you think about yourself, not other people.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 30:43

Why has self-care become so prominent?

Bev Skeggs: 30:47

I think, what we see over the last 30 years is many different governments, the interests of capital, the media, all focusing on not thinking socially. You know, Margaret Thatcher's "there's no such thing as social class", Tony Blair using all sorts of euphemisms for the word "social class". So, it's kind of a movement away to stop people thinking about the structures they inhabit, the inequality they inhabit, the exploitation they're exposed to, but everything becomes about the tiny individualised atom. So, everything that happens to people is meant to be their responsibility, it is a transfer of responsibility for the social to the individual. Again, great psychologist Valerie Walkerdine has written about how we used to speak in the grammar of social structure – we would talk about economies, we talked about how institutions work – and now we talk, our predominant language is the language of psychology. So, we've had this move from how we actually understand the world that's great for politicians, that's great for people with power, because it means they don't have to take responsibility. We saw this playing out during the pandemic, where responsibility is given to

people: 32:13

"it is your responsibility to stop this global pandemic." Really, how would you do that? So, we see that transfer all the time, and we see it in language. And people talk about themselves as if they are atomized individuals with a unique social makeup, where in fact, so much pattern, so much repetition, so many social structures are part of that. And you use the word earlier, Alexis,"socialisation", that whole process of education is about becoming socialised to fit into a society not to be an atomized individual. So, all these things are working together, and self-care is a phenomenal form of profit. As you say, Rosemary, you know, massive billions of pounds globally is made from people trying to find out why they've got so many problems, when in fact, if they read a sociological textbook, it'll probably explain it. But there is, there is some great feminist work on marriage guidance – that's a really interesting one. How instead of thinking about, you know, what are the social conditions that people exist in? Why do we have so much domestic violence? And femicide? Why, why are we looking at this as a psychological problem? You know, it's a problem of gender structure, power and responsibility. So, I think it's in the interests of power to make us think of ourselves as completely atomized and it stops us connecting to people, and we spend all our money, you know, trying to please ourselves instead of thinking about other people. So, I think it's really problematic. But Audrey Lorde, Audrey Lorde argues we can have radical self-care. And that's when you've been doing lots of political organising against horrific structural forms, like institutional racism, that you need to look after yourself.

Rosie Hancock: 34:05

It sounds like heaps of the really mainstream self-care stuff is very, I think you used the word commoditised, Bev. So, this idea that something you can buy, something you can consume, right?

Bev Skeggs: 34:16

Yeah.

Rosie Hancock: 34:17

So, popular magazines, like Psychologies; there are heaps of mindfulness apps out there that you can sign up to – I know, I've got one on my iPhone – festivals dedicated to well being, adult colouring books. There's just, there's so much.

Bev Skeggs: 34:32

Yeah.

Rosie Hancock: 34:32

And it all seems very harmless, I guess when we talk about it. But it's important to ask: what it's replacing? And I think that's what you're getting at, right, like the gap that this is filling.

Bev Skeggs: 34:41

Yeah, because of course we all have problems. You know, we all do suffer, we all struggle. We all have issues, but we always turn, you know, instead of turning to our friends, we turn to a book that tells us that we're just not behaving correctly. And we do that for everything. We do that for our relationships, we do it for our families, we do it for our work. And you know, the advice industry is extraordinary. And some of it is really horrific because what it does is say that a lot of the work that needs doing, the labour of self-care is actually allocated to women, particularly. So, they've got to become kind of "nice" and"passive", in order that they can have a partner. You know, so the gendering. And again, Lisa Blackman looks at this, how the media discourse that genders self-care is really, really key. But what it avoids is the power relationships that make us feel so horrific in the first place. You know, we've got to think: why do we feel so bad? It's not us. It's the conditions we live in. We need a sociological explanation.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 35:51

Going back to the question of, like, mental health, I guess here too, when young adults, for example, are experiencing mental health related issues, there's a lot of this. It goes around like "you have to take care of yourself", kind of "isolate and like do things on your own". The responsibility is on you to control kind of how you go about your daily life, and doesn't really pan out into more state-driven strategies for social insertion. And it ties up to other important themes or concepts in sociology like that of shame, stigmatisation. It seems that today, we're expected to demonstrate this self-care, that it makes us respectable. I guess that's a notion you explored in some of your early work, I believe.

Bev Skeggs: 36:40

Yeah, I mean, it's, again, you have to perform your self-care. I think we've moved into an era where performing yourself as a responsible individual has become so much more significant. We saw that through the research we did on reality TV, you know, the people were punished for not performing their self-care, but they have to perform their moral value across every domain. So, things like respectability becomes really significant. But mental health kind of throws a spanner into this because it's so difficult, if you're a young person at the moment in lockdown, it's just really, really difficult. You know, how do you connect to other people? You're at that moment in your life where you really need to connect, and you aren't being forcibly contained. So, it's not surprising that things are, you know, producing really difficult mental health problems. Also, things like you ... everybody is so anxious. So, all these things should not surprise us that people are feeling remarkably anxious in very insecure conditions. But our own individual psychology is not going to explain all of that, we need a much bigger picture.

Rosie Hancock: 37:52

Thanks for that, Bev. I should just quickly say that we're recording this in mid 2021. And who knows where we're going to be by the time this goes to air. We're really hoping that it's not going to be still more lockdowns, but it's hard to say. So, it's almost time for us to go. We've talked today about care as this huge concept that is so much more than just the domestic realm or the care home or the hospital. And, Bev, we wondered what you would point us to in terms of films or music, art, literature; something, something kind of a cultural thing that says something important about care?

Bev Skeggs: 38:30

I was reminded of my PhD student Diane Railton, who did this fantastic PhD, on how young women listen to music that treats them with respect, loves them and cares for them. So, one of the examples of the period is Take That, you know, "I want you back for good", all this kind of stuff, and it really kind of loves the women. It's very heterosexual obviously. And she looked at how, in order to become a mature modern woman, so not to be thought of as a child or adolescent anymore, you had to learn music that treated women really badly. So, Oasis.

Rosie Hancock: 39:14

No way!

Bev Skeggs: 39:16

Yeah, really, really horrible music that treated women as objects. And for me, it was one of the most stunning PhDs because you think, yep, but we all have to learn that we're not adored, loved and honoured and treated with respect. We have to learn that we're just objects. So, for me, that was a key sociological understanding. But in terms of comfort, again, it's an old reference. I remember when I first watched the TV series "Tales of the City" (Armistead Maupin) about queer communities in San Francisco, I just wanted to be in that hilariously fun, interesting, challenging community and it was another way of living. And I think that's really important. We need to think about other ways of doing care that aren't restricted to our traditional forms. So, I could think of "high art", but I think I'll go with those two.

Rosie Hancock: 40:08

Yeah. I mean, you Bev, we're just at the beginning there, talking about how songs shape our idea of what it means to be a woman. And I want to point to Adrienne Rich's work on motherhood, as both experience and institution. Although, I have to say, I read these essays of hers, just before I became a mother for the first time myself, which was only a couple of months ago, so, I'm actually going to have to stop there because I'm struggling to remember. What was in the essays that speak to me, sleep deprived?

Bev Skeggs: 40:40

That's great, actually.

Rosie Hancock: 40:43

What about you, Alexis?

Alexis Hieu Truong: 40:45

So, initially, this is going to sound very corny, but hear me out. So, my suggestion would be Robin Williams' "What Dreams May Come", which is a story of a man who dies and goes to heaven, but his partner is in hell because she took her own life. So, he goes back to try and find her. And actually, I have a brother that passed away when I was 18, in similar conditions, and that movie really captured all of the challenging emotional work around care, I'd say. So, some of the beautiful moments, but definitely also that the turmoil and the hardships that's associated with that. But yes, I definitely suggest that.

Rosie Hancock: 41:24

Yeah, I think Alexis, what you bring up here is so great, because we can talk really abstractly about care. But actually, it's something that touches each of us in very deeply personal ways. Well, that's it from us for today. And, Bev, thank you so much for your time and coming on the show. We'll say goodbye to you here.

Bev Skeggs: 41:46

Thank you for all your labour, care and attention.

Rosie Hancock: 41:53

If you want to see what everyone here at The Sociological Review has recommended on care, alongside pieces on everything, from love to medicine, to addiction and recovery, you'll find it all in our show notes and over at thesociologicalreview.org. Alexis, what would you take away from today? I know that for me, I'm going to be thinking about the fact that care isn't just about small things that we do for an individual, like making my partner a cup of tea, but it's paying my taxes or it's taking climate action to care for future generations.

Alexis Hieu Truong: 42:26

Yeah, definitely. Some of the points that Bev talked about; how we focus on the individual, but it's really about the social, like, that's what's most important. Power, money like these, these, these things that we wouldn't really think are connected with care. Another thing with Bev, which she points out, like, the hope, right, you always have to have hope.

Rosie Hancock: 42:48

Yeah, there's so much more that we could talk about. And if you've enjoyed listening, do subscribe and give us a review in whatever app you're using. It takes a few seconds, but it helps us make more episodes for you. We'll be back soon with more Uncommon Sense. Our producer was Alice Bloch. Thanks for listening, or should I say take care of yourself! Bye.