Doing care and doing economy: On the ecology of social and economic life 3658380705, 9783658380700

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Wolf Rainer Wendt

Doing care and doing economy On the ecology of social and economic life

Doing care and doing economy

Wolf Rainer Wendt

Doing care and doing economy On the ecology of social and economic life

Wolf Rainer Wendt Fakultät Sozialwesen Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Stuttgart, Germany

ISBN 978-3-658-38070-0    ISBN 978-3-658-38071-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 This book is a translation of the original German edition „Sorgen und wirtschaften“ by Wendt, Wolf Rainer, published by Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH in 2021. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany

Preface

Doing care and doing economy interpenetrate. It does not take a pandemic to recognize this. In the complex world of today and tomorrow and in the dynamics of its change, social intercourse and the circulation of goods, market activity and personal relationships, production, and consumption and their own ratios cannot remain independent. What is worrying are the contexts in which it is necessary to act and the consequences associated with our choices. How doing care and doing economy interpenetrate in an ecological frame of reference is the subject of this treatise. Caring action is described in its economic potency. Economically and socially, we are concerned about nature and society – and therein about ourselves. World-care takes hold of self-care. Ecologically, the course and extent of the crisis is ahead of us. It results from human behaviour in the way we do business, in general, and in the way we live, individually. In relation to this, it is not worry as the mental state of people that is the topic, it is not our personal worries in the crisis that are to be dealt with, but the caring that happens – and in a narrower and broader sense is mediated in doing economy. Concern for health determined economics during the Covid-19 pandemic. The carers adapted themselves and their economic actions. In the world as life has evolved in it, we are full of care everywhere. Increasingly, the climate crisis, the loss of biodiversity and, most recently, the pandemic demand shifts in doing economy. In our political, economic and social actions, we must care about the preservation of our common existence. In the large contexts of concern and economic activity, each individual has to manage their own life on a daily basis. Caring is existential. In their caring actions, people participate in the processes to which they simultaneously feel themselves exposed. How to exist in them and how to master them? v

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Preface

The author has a practical and theoretical background in the social and human service processing of difficult life situations and advances argumentatively against this background of individual and public welfare to its and care’s economy. It takes place in the home, in the state and in business. What is undertaken in a caring manner has its frame of reference in the welfare of the community, both individually and globally. The recent pandemic taught us how business economy has to submit to concerns about health. The climate crisis demands even more. The adaptation of the economy affects social life, which in turn needs an economy in which it can hold its own in the challenges and crises of the present and the future. What can economic action be based on if it is to be ecologically compatible – compatible for people and nature? This book advocates for an ecologically framed economy in the social, which is filled with caring action. Contradicted thereby is the view, usual in sociology and social professions, that economics is a functional system of society, which is market-driven and with its own logic, and that social care belongs to another functional system according to its logic. Undoubtedly, business differs here and there. But in purpose and aim, care in life and care for life are prior and superior to any business. He who does business in the service of life and welfare also cares. And the caring person thinks ahead in their economic activity about what is being done. We are ethically moved by how we live and how we want to live – and can live in the future. After all, in ecological terms, Daseinsvorsorge in the sense of securing existence is without alternative. Sustainability is another word for it. In the continuum of care and in the continuum of doing economy, it requires a careful use of resources. Only together are the three pillars of sustainability – ecological, economic and social – viable. Care includes an economy and it includes caring for the endurance of common existence. In the Anthropocene, we cannot remain unconcerned anywhere, and economic activity is necessary everywhere and in every situation. For a long time, however, caring has not been perceived uniformly in the various fields of action and as a task affecting all actors. Neither is doing economy. The sphere of caring extends from an individual’s self-reference to the institutions of general interest and social security. Social care and healthcare, as they are set up, engage many people, and the whole population uses them in one form or another. The economy, where money and goods are the object, is usually spoken of in a different and divorced sphere from care supply. Both spheres, the structures of institutional provision and “the economy” as the world of work and business, are external to personal life. One seeks them out in order to get along in life and in the world. This needs to be taken care of. In this endeavour, caring thought and action reach into economic processes and beyond into the condition of the world of common life.

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Doing care and doing economy are determinants of human existence and a basic requirement of ecological action. The aim of this book is to bring together the essence of caring and the essence of doing economy within an ecological frame of reference, and to link doing economy to the caring of individuals and communities. It is argued on the basis of the ecosocial theoretical discourse in which the household of living together and caring economic activity in it are put in the centre of consideration. With it, responsibility. Economy is what Wirte, hosts, undertake as household actors. From ecological concerns, one must look at economic activity in general and at the private households that are predisposed to it. On the levels of its organization and order, the transition is made from caring action in the personal sphere of life to globally sustainable economic activity, and thus both are linked across their extensions in the ecological frame of reference. Stuttgart, Germany

Wolf Rainer Wendt

Contents

1 Introduction ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  1 1.1 Doing Care Inside: And Doing Economy Outside? �������������������������  4 1.2 Leading Categories���������������������������������������������������������������������������  6 1.3 What Comes Together�����������������������������������������������������������������������  8 1.4 Ecosocial Orientation����������������������������������������������������������������������� 11 1.5 The Structure of the Treatise������������������������������������������������������������� 14 References ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17 2 Extensions of Care ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 19 2.1 Caring Action ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 24 2.2 Care Work and Its Distribution��������������������������������������������������������� 31 2.3 On the Economics of Caring������������������������������������������������������������� 33 References ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 37 3 The  Beginning Is Socially and Economically the Provision of Subsistence ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39 3.1 Subsistence in Place and Time ��������������������������������������������������������� 45 3.2 Doing Economy in and Around Business Life��������������������������������� 48 3.3 Economy in Reflection of Caring����������������������������������������������������� 54 References ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 57 4 Economy  “Started at Home”, Politically and Globally Considered ��� 59 4.1 The Exodus of the Economy Out of the Domestic Space����������������� 65 4.2 Doing Economy Becomes Business and Goes to Market����������������� 68 4.3 Households in a Personal, Community and Global Context������������� 72 4.4 Doing Care and Doing Economy in the Interest������������������������������� 76 References ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 81 ix

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Contents

5 The  Caring and Economic State������������������������������������������������������������� 85 5.1 The State as Host������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 86 5.2 Caring for Welfare����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 91 5.3 Nurturing Economic Ecosystems����������������������������������������������������� 93 References ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 96 6 Business  and the Caring of Companies ������������������������������������������������� 97 6.1 The Frame of Reference of Transactions in the Economic Space ��� 99 6.2 Economic Units in Conjunction with Each Other�����������������������������104 6.3 Ventures Between Home and State���������������������������������������������������106 References �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������109 7 Care  Supply in Its Structures and Processes�����������������������������������������111 7.1 On the Development of Social Care�������������������������������������������������114 7.2 A Different Division of Labour���������������������������������������������������������116 7.3 Supply Is Not Equal to Welfare���������������������������������������������������������119 References �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������123 8 Solidarity  in Care and Social Economy�������������������������������������������������125 8.1 A Recourse into the History of Social and Solidarity-­Based Economy�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 8.2 What to Do: The Horizon of Challenges������������������������������������������132 8.3 What to Care About: Positions of Social Economy Theory�������������136 References �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������139 9 Prosperous  Development: Well-Being Under Ecological Guidelines���143 9.1 For the Common Good���������������������������������������������������������������������146 9.2 The Commune Reason ���������������������������������������������������������������������149 9.3 In the End, Global Livelihoods are Provided for �����������������������������152 References �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������156 Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159

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Introduction

Abstract

There is more reason in human care than in the businesses driven. Care is ahead of them and surrounds them. Before all that is done, we care, and every day we care. In the management of one’s own and common life, in social arrangements of existence, and also in private and public undertakings, there is reason enough to care about our world. In the double perspective of human life on the one hand and the world of life on the other, we encounter the world of business, whose events claim life in both directions and can be claimed for it in the ecosocial transformation before us. It introduces an ecologically oriented conception of the multifaceted and complex connection between doing care and doing economy.

It may be demanded doing economy in a caring way. There is more reason in human care than in the businesses driven. Care precedes them and surrounds them. Before all that is undertaken we care, and everyday we care about managing our own and our common lives, and have reason enough to care about our world. In the double perspective of the lives of people on the one hand and the world of life on the other, we encounter with what is undertaken the economy whose happening claims life in both directions and can be claimed for it.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_1

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1 Introduction

Economic activity is intruding into the everyday actions of individuals and encompassing the whole world of life. With consequences of which we have currently become more aware in the global crises. Economics extends into all spaces of common existence. This does not refer to the economy as a seemingly anonymous process, but to the way in which goods are handled and resources used. Economic events are the responsibility of the actors involved in them. In their actions, they have to take care of the development which takes their existence and which affects life in the world. In the connection of caring and doing economy we can do justice to the preservation and progress of common life. It is in this assumption that the present treatise has its motivation. In theory, discourses of care and economic discourses have their fields far from each other. In practice, it is people’s concerns that determine their economic activity, and in the economy people are cared for. But how and to what extent may be asked. The study considers the internal and external, direct and indirect relationships of economic activity to care and of care to the economy. These relations are derived in three ways: • Firstly, it assumes an original unity of caring and economic activity in pre-­ modern households, from which unity domestic caring and economic business have historically separated in an internal-external differentiation. • Secondly, the thesis is taken up that care is economically relevant in itself and constitutes a major part of the economy as a whole. Accordingly, caring in its life-serving and welfare-serving practice is accorded primacy in the doing economy. • Thirdly, ecologically the preservation and the future of common life demand a caring economy or an economic care, which is why the modern separation of economy in the logic of the market and care in a social logic and both opposite the ecology of life contexts cannot remain and a transformation to their renewed linkage must take place. The three lines of argument are visibly interconnected. They bridge the gap between caring and doing economy and back – and further – from the economy to caring for common life in the world. An ecological agreement in a global frame of reference is conceptually linked to the notion of domestic care, which is what the bridge concept of the household stands for. Its broad shaping in public care can claim to take economic action into an ecologically responsible practice of social and economic shaping of existence.

1 Introduction

3

Care is taken in many ways. It happens on several levels. Caring extends from the basis of common and individual existence to the securing of material and social well-being in political projects and through party and ideological disputes about what should be done and what should be left undone, to the dimension of the living conditions of the world in the climate crisis, in the loss of biodiversity and in times of a pandemic. World problems are closing in on us. What concerns us and what we care for moves us personally in our feelings and thoughts, determines our actions at every level and is the subject of social and political consultations and economic calculations. The topos of care, in German Sorge, first designates a mental state, a basic attitude of attention. The associated transitivum sorgen in German designates the practice of caring. In the positive sense of the word, to be explained in more detail, in which we shall henceforth speak of caring, we are sensibly concerned with our own well-being and that of common life, and in so doing we are concerned with people and things and the circumstances in which they occur. Care is relational; it extends in self-care, other-care, and world-care to situational realities of life. Actors are oriented toward them, engaged in them, affected by them, and prudently urged to care. Doing economy is primarily, as will be shown, an expression of this care. For a subject, caring can be associated with an oppressive feeling of worry – and subjective worry is often appropriate in the face of existential vulnerability and the manifold problems in our own and common lives and in the world around us. It may remain with worry as a sensation and concern; but as soon as care is to be taken and must be taken in practice, economic decisions have to be made. With or without distress, action is to be taken in consideration of available forces, means and possibilities. Care as concern may remain in a state of the subject; caring action means a devoted commitment; it has an objectively economic character in its execution. Care binds economy. Certainly, there is an economic activity that is independent of care. Historically, the economy has unfolded in modernity in an interplay of individualism in self-­ determination and the free market. Transactions in markets – the subject matter of standard economics – take place largely without constant regard to livelihood and well-being, unless and until events are tamed in small and large, personal and public households and by its hosts. They grasp it and determine it in the extension of their concern.

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1 Introduction

1.1 Doing Care Inside: And Doing Economy Outside? The access from care to economy needs to be justified. As a thesis, it can be formulated heuristically, detached from ordinary doctrine: Economy is what a host creates. In German: Wirtschaft ist, was ein Wirt schafft. In German, this may at first be read as a mere play on words. The thesis links economic action to the caring actions of actors who are responsible for it as host or hostess. Serving the needs of people is what a host or hostess is competent to do in a caring and economic way. Also to be a “host” in a place of shelter and encounter. The thesis assumes even more: those who act in a caring manner create and maintain economic conditions that are conducive to life and welfare. In this way, the economy can be shaped ecologically. The assertion to be founded in the ecological framework, namely in the life contexts in which economic activity takes place, becomes clear only after all further explanations. In the sphere of action that is created and maintained economically, and from the starting points of economic action, much can be undertaken that genuinely constitutes the events of the economy. In it, the title “host” or “hostess” (see for word usage Sect. 1.2) belongs to those who care. They are the subjects who dedicate themselves to objective tasks by acting. Doing economy range from their own provisioning to the scenery of enterprises to strategies for the preservation of life on our planet. The fact that the disciplinary economy at both ends – at the individual self and at the world as a whole  – has so far hardly been attributed any competence, that rather economy is conventionally only supposed to mean the measure of the entrepreneurial production and circulation of goods, this fact in turn gives cause for concern: it is an economy that does justice neither to the criteria of an appropriate way of life nor to the criteria of the preservation of the biosphere. Here, as there, a different kind of economy is needed, one that is careful and economical. It ranges from individual and communal provision for the common good to the care of the world of life as a whole. Doing care and doing economy are not only conceptually related to each other in the explanations of this book. The relationship is found in the practice of life. One can observe how people care and manage individually, collectively and in an organized way. In the economic use of means and opportunities that arise, a broad horizon of tasks is open, which caring action has to fulfil with prudence in the nearer and further term. Argumentatively, however, the relationship of caring and doing economy to one another must first be established, as long as both are ­undefined.

1.1  Doing Care Inside: And Doing Economy Outside?

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Disciplinary and political discourses usually keep gainful employment and care work apart; they separate what happens in the market from what happens “in the home”, contrasting enterprises and households. In fact, people care for themselves and are active in caring for others, first and foremost within their (private) circle of life. Orthodox economics, on the other hand, allows the economy to take place in the external sphere of personal or communal living. If we do not consider the market to be preexistent, but rather the human’s living of life, it takes precedence: something is done in it and from it. With the Bremen merchant motto “binnen un buten – wagen un winnen” (inside and outside, dare and win), the busy person is at home in the world. The outside of trade and commerce is at the same time the environment and nature in which we are – ecologically speaking – included and in which our existence has its common circle of life. Doing business outside and taking care of things inside – when the boundaries fall, this is ecologically congruent. This statement is presuppositional; it cannot remain so short-circuited. A linguistic remark might be appropriate: Already the linguistic phrase “inside and outside” is ambiguous. The choice of words, which have a special conceptual function in the argumentation of this treatise, matters insofar as they have a certain semantic horizon in the English as in German language in which they are compatible with each other. The linguistic expression carries with it secondary meanings and captures with them an extended content. The connotations of the chosen terms help to grasp ecological contexts in their versatility. In the secondary sense of thoughtful planning, caring entails doing economy, and economic management has to do with householding or budgeting in the disposal of resources: A budget can also be used to “make the state”, at least in an old sense. The semantic references are found more or less in many languages. In the case of care in English, this is particularly clear. Otherwise, however, an appropriate translation would first have to be sought in each case. Doing care is ahead of doing economy. Care comes from where and is directed towards a where. The temporal constitution of care gives the present discussion of the relationship between caring and economic activity, in temporal retrospect and foresight, the historical dimension in which it is possible to progress from the earlier unity of caring economic activity in a household based on the community of life, via its modern splitting and dispersion in the stream of industrial and commercial transactions, to a new linkage in global ecological responsibility.

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1.2 Leading Categories For the purposes of this book, the central terms are briefly described in the particular sense in which they are used. They are terms with different semantic connotations. The ambiguity has the advantage of being able to link up with various social, political, economic and ecological points of view in the contexts to be discussed. • Caring is understood as acting and being active for the well-being of persons, a community and non-human life. A distinction is made between the practice of caring for and caring as an inner state of being concerned (caring about). In processes of caring, means and forces are used, the involvement and use of which must be assessed economically, socially and ecologically. • Livelihood comprises the basic need of goods for the self-preservation and the continuous living of people. They work for their livelihoods and use resources, time and energy, including skills, knowledge and cultural orders. As resources, the stocks are the object of doing economy. Livelihood also means what is done for it. • Household is used as a frame of reference for doing care and doing economy of persons or a community. The term is to be grasped concretely in the materially equipped living together (in a manner of domesticity) and abstractly as a framework of the (householding) disposal of means. There are personal households, business and public households, the state budget and the (global and local) natural household, in whose debt we stand. • The shaping of existence (Daseinsgestaltung in German) is a purposeful influence on an extended process of life on the individual level as the shaping of the life of persons alone or together, socially in partnership, in the economic event through its regulation especially in the shaping of markets, on the political level through the shaping of developments according to social and ecological objectives. • Services of general interest (Daseinsvorsorge in German) are defined as the provision of goods and services by the public authorities and their agents to meet the needs of the people which they are unable to meet themselves or which they are unable to meet adequately. Public and social services of general interest are responsible for the infrastructure of supply. Individual caring activities remain unaffected and are also necessary as a complement to those provided by the public sector. • Doing economy (wirtschaften in German) is primarily the form of action in which the needs of a concrete household are met. The economic allocation of

1.2  Leading Categories

•

•

•

•

•

•

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means and forces and the distribution of goods provide for the continuous maintenance of life. In general, economy refers to the dispositional process in the use of means and forces for specific purposes. What is undertaken in business and unfolds in transactions on markets finds its framework in a household and in doing economy in it. The overall economy usually means the sum of all individual economies (i.e., enterprises as producers and households as consumers in the sense of economics) existing in a national territory. It appears as a statistical quantity. As an event to be controlled, the economy as a whole or “the economy” is to be drawn into the ecological frame of reference of a household. Ecosystem is the name given in biology to a complex community of life in the structurally and functionally given interrelationship of the organisms belonging to it, but it also refers here, as has become customary in economic policy debates, in the sense transferred from the framework of thinking in biology, to the dynamic set of relationships between conditions and actors which, through their interaction, are able to nourish and promote a stock or a development in the economic area. Supply or care provision (Versorgung in German) is understood as an organised sphere of action in which infrastructural facilities are set up, made available and carried out which cannot be provided by the individual or by certain groups of people themselves in order to cover elementary material, social and health-­ related needs. As a continuous process, care supply is the provision of general interest services. Institutionally, human service provision is located in the areas of social welfare and health care. Care work, as distinguished on the one hand from professional services in care and on the other hand from gainful employment, refers to the activity of caring, educating, helping and supporting as well as everyday domestic care of relatives or other people. Care work is partly paid and largely unpaid. Welfare means to get along in a satisfactory manner. It is an experience in its course form (not merely a static well-being) and results in the personal conduct of life and supra-individually in the comfort of the community, the economic activity in it and with the provided care. Host (Wirt and Wirtin in German; the English term is gender neutral) should be called a person who is in charge of and responsible for a room or task area (ideally a household). It is the field of action of her procuration. (Roles of entertaining and facilitating here may be ignored.) The host manages for the stock of value and the maintenance of life in his area of resonsibility. In social networking, the person can be the “host” of concerns of connected participants.

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1 Introduction

• Hostly (wirtlich in German) is the term used to describe the quality of an environment, a condition or place that is perceived as inviting, pleasant and beneficial for a subject and in general. This can be ensured in the house, in another field of responsibility or in the place of coexistence through economic activity (the activity of a host in responsibility for a valuable stock). In the actions of a host, caring coincides with economic activity in the ecological sense: The actors act in accordance with their competence in a context of life that wants to be preserved or promoted with available means. From an ecological point of view, care is directed at this context, which is remedied by economic decisions. In real and discursive terms, caring action brings dynamism into the statuary relationship between the three “pillars of sustainability” of economy, social affairs and ecology.

1.3 What Comes Together The three pillars of ecology, economy and social affairs, which are juxtaposed in the global strategy for sustainable development, do not in themselves drive this development. The concepts linked to the guiding principle of sustainability only come together in a conceptual transformation. The concept of ecology then does not remain related to nature “outside”, i.e. to the environment, the economy is not left to the market, and the concept of the social finally refers to an economic togetherness in which we live, work, communicate and experience togetherness. Ecologically conceived, all of this is provided for in participation in common existence, and if participation is assumed, all actors can be expected to take economic responsibility for their respective behaviour under ecological considerations. Active participation entails disposition, that is, deciding on time, forces and means. One has a stake in what one participates in. Caring and sharing care in everyday life does not consist in single acts, but in processes in which practices follow one another. Caring finds its expression in social activity with and for one another, in the manner of personal and communal economic activity, and in ecological prudence. However, the processes and structures of social provisioning, the gainful economy and efforts to protect the environment and nature are hardly connected in practice and in theory, and they contradict each other in parts. It is a social and an ecological and ultimately an economic desideratum to bridge the gap between these formations of action and thought. This happens when social concern, sustainable management and the ecosystem of life in our world are mutually inclusive.

1.3  What Comes Together

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Economic action, when it happens for acquisition and in business, and social action in sympathetic attention to other people – in the ordinary understanding they each have their own sphere and are differentiated according to tasks and goals. In their proprium, as understood in disciplinary stubbornness, they repel each other like oppositely charged poles. Social concern is denied calculation, and economic thought and action are denied compassion. How one thinks and acts socially and how one thinks and acts economically usually diverge and each has its own framework. In professional social work, and not only in it, the actors do not want to be measured by the criteria of the money economy. Wherever possible, professional helpers defy “economization”. On the other hand, the demand for “socialisation” is not out of the world. Because entrepreneurs are out to make a profit, they are threatened with socialisation if they run the risk of losing their motivation. Merchants, it is said, are only interested in the social aspect of their actions to the extent that it promotes sales or contributes to a good image. But the distance that “the social” and “the economy” traditionally keep from each other is not enough in the crises of the present. We are challenged economically and socially to persevere in them. In the narrower, personal circle of life as well as in the wider circles of the common world. In their interrelationships, ecologically sustainable action must be considered everywhere. Human welfare will not be possible in the future without an interpenetration of economic development and social care in consideration of natural conditions. In economics, as it is usually conceived and taught, more correctly: in the economic process, we have in view the profit-oriented business life and what happens (outside) in markets. In the social, as it is the object of social science and professional concern, we move within a space of interpersonal relations “in society” and deal with community-related concerns. The dichotomy of the economic and the social is confirmed when theoretical discourses move from one side to the other and social behaviour is explained in microeconomic terms, for example, or when social standards are applied to an economic calculation. The logics on both sides remain separate. Functionally, the differentiation of action systems is well founded. In the organised social system and in health care and education, in the economic sectors of industry, trade, finance, construction, crafts, transport and logistics, agriculture, etc., different tasks are fulfilled and different services provided. There are operational and technical characteristics. The turn towards people in personal services is contrasted with the turn towards the qualities of material products, including digital products, which can be created and exchanged.

10

1 Introduction

However, there is also agreement in the functionally differentiated areas of action. From a high point of view it can be discerned: A good life is the goal of social efforts; it is, viewed from above and very broadly conceived, on the other hand, the goal of economic activity. Finally, in the extension of the contexts of life, it is the ecological goal. With it, in the remarks on the subject in this book, one can progress from caring to economic activity as a whole – starting from personal care via service provision and social-economic organization to entrepreneurial agility. Or, conversely, the path of thought is taken from the economy to care, starting in the broad space (of a national economy) via its sectors (including social and health-­ related) and via a spectrum of services to the individual economic and domestic space of care. Careful economic activity is directed towards good succeed of the subjects who participate in it. What is done can be measured by the criterion of the welfare it promises to achieve or maintain. It is not to be had selectively, but only in a spatial and temporal extension. Welfare is understood as an event that takes place in the midst of life and makes it flourish in subjective and objective perception. The mere supply of individual goods and the provision of them does not guarantee this quality. In the context of life, caring requires its own economy in order to meet a need in the dispositions to be made. It uses given means and possibilities and seeks to do justice to the ecology of precisely those wider contexts of life in which prudent care is taken. Thus, in contrast to the neo-liberal “economization” of areas of care in the past decades, economic activity in general is now understood from the point of view of the care in them. Economic activity should do justice to life, which is the object of concern. This can only be achieved with prudence in the multifaceted circumstances of life. With the ecological view of life contexts, economic processes and social activities are placed in a common new framework – a broad ecological frame of reference. In this framework, social concern as we know it, and the market-based economy as we know it, are put back into the process of a thoroughly busy welfare-serving livelihood. In this deferral or re-embedding, economic activity is given a social and ecological purpose at the same time. It is thus accorded a central significance for the performance and success of social and ecological endeavours. This new positioning has long been a demand of feminist economics. The context to be understood here has been discussed in the feminist debate on the recognition of female care work in the economy as a whole. Care is economic activity in the immediacy in which the needs of our lives are met. Because doing economy takes place in order to satisfy needs and because care is also taken, a broad concept of care can be identified with a life-serving economy by recourse to the old ­meaning

1.4  Ecosocial Orientation

11

of oikonomia. This has also been done in the feminist discussion – with the recommendation to “conceptualizing and establishing care as the center of a new economics oriented toward its original definition” (Praetorius 2015, p. 50). Care in the mode of active concern (caring for) takes place in the (domestic) internal relationships of social coexistence and it takes place environmentally “outside” in the provision of maintenance for human and non-human life. In one respect as well as in the other, doing economy is not removed from nature, but always referred to the natural foundations of life. In this way, a different understanding of economy could no longer be justified “by nature”. Caring economic activity expands in a world-related way to ecological decision-making and action. This is the direction of the thinking, design proposals and action projects of many activists. Recently there has been a network of committed people who, in their “concern for the world” and for collective well-being, follow the guideline “Economy is Care” and have formed a Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll). It plans a global redirection of economic activity for the good of common life. Others want to realise a “People’s Economy”, such as the New Economy Coalition founded in 2012 in the USA or the People’s Economy Lab in Seattle since 2016. Founded as early as the 1990s, the Community Economies Collective (CEC) by Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, as part of the feminist critique of the prevailing economics, has placed the economy in an ecological framework that is genuinely its own – as we will see below.

1.4 Ecosocial Orientation Underlying the present treatise is the ecosocial theoretical approach that the author has developed to social work and presented in detail in several publications (Wendt 1982, 1990, 2010, 2018, 2021). From the (traditionally) ordered coexistence and its householding provision (in the sense of the ancient oikonomia), the (modern) unfolding of economic activities and social occurrences in their relationship to each other is pursued. The ecosocial approach addresses multifaceted action that serves individual welfare, common and social problem solving, and the acquisition of livelihood. The theory discusses this action in the ecology of its occurrence and in the perspective of its future shaping. The social is ecologically reshaped and interpreted, and economic activity is ecologically integrated. Caring is done within a household; outside of it, social providing can be done – with relation to other and larger households. Within them and between them, economic activity takes place. “Ecology is a science of synthesis” (Keller and Golley 2000, p. 1); it brings together the dimensions of living, caring and managing.

12

1 Introduction

It is not a diametrical relationship between man and the environment or society and nature that is the subject of ecosocial consideration. As if we were standing opposite and out of nature and its ecology. Ecology is rather to be thought of as the economy of living together. Ernst Haeckel, the founder of the term, understood ecology as “the study of oeconomy, of the household of animal organisms” (Haeckel 1870, p. XV). Ecosocially, the household of common life is brought into focus. Not only human life is meant, but in connection with it the system of all life. With Bruno Latour we have to abandon “the false conceit that ecology has anything to do with nature as such. It is understood here as a new way to handle all the objects of human and non-human collective life” (Latour 1998, p. 221). The ecologically comprehensible interrelationships of common existence and life extend horizontally and vertically over several levels. Individuals care for themselves and for each other in the narrower circle of life in which they live, work, organise their everyday lives and have their social relationships. • Doing economy at the micro level of individual households, individual and collective action within them, is contrasted with what is happening in economy at the meso level. • Organisations, companies and services at the meso level manage their business relationships and have to take care of the needs of their clients, customers and employees. Whereby the latter, with the connection of home and office, include domestic errands in the business management. • At the macro level of territorial authorities, of the state and municipalities, there are far-reaching budgetary responsibilities in social life, for the fate of the population and for environmental conditions in their local and global contexts. The multidimensionality of the references requires in their treatment again and again the change of the consideration between the levels of “house and state” with the intermediate areas of social institutions, enterprises and media. The ecosocial perspective of understanding allows us to look from caring in relation to oneself and in relation to others and to the community, in domestic and communal existence, via publicly and socially organised provision for the public good, to the provision of sustainable welfare as a whole. In its processes, it is the subject of social economy theory, which takes up various approaches to cooperative work organisation (see Sect. 8.3). Social economy is understood in this doctrine as a social way of providing services that directly contribute to the well-being of people. In an extended understanding of the social economy, the discourse of care includes all forms of informal and formal care work. The theory of the social

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economy (Wendt 2002) brings together various historically evolved lines of discourse from political economy to feminist science in caring for well-being. The ecosocial paradigm entails a shift in the horizon of thought in which social action or work in the social field is conceived. In other words: What is in question is how to household social realities and to be a host in their processing. Complementary to this change of perspective in dealing with the social, the ecosocial approach also moves the economy, which is directed towards acquisition, into a horizon in which market-economic thinking does not usually stay. It looks at personal and communal conduct of life and the values that guide this conduct. The management of processes that directly contribute to welfare by creating and maintaining value, whether in the private sphere of life or in an organized and institutional framework, goes beyond the sphere conventionally assigned to them by economics. Then we find the gainful economy included in the care of livelihood in the ecological sense. The development in which the strands of social thought and action and economic thought and action become intertwined in an ecosocial way can refer back to a pre-modern texture in which facts were not considered separately social because they were already understood in an old economic sense. They belonged to domestic and communal coexistence or to the practice within it. In it, care is shared and the economic togetherness determined by it includes social togetherness – in such a way that it does not appear separately as social. This coherence existed until the era of the European Enlightenment. From then on, the differentiation of the social and the economic, which began in the eighteenth century, repeatedly led to discursive bridge-building. This was the case in the French économie sociale from 1830, in Thomas Chalmers’ work in Scotland, and in the German historical school of economics. The extent to which “the” economy meets social demands and the extent to which social services have to be shown in their economic efficiency, however, remained controversial. Today, the guiding theme of sustainability under ecological auspices calls for a new commonality in economic and social strategies. Isolated social projects are usually self-referentially circularly justified, namely that they are intended to have a social effect with regard to one or another disadvantaged group of people or stratum of the population to be benefited. In this intention, the discussion of economic interrelationships is forbidden. They only reappear in the framework in which the living conditions of people are ecologically subjected to the dynamics of economic processes in society. In reality, individual social projects do not remain immune to these processes. From an ecological point of view, the problems that are to be tackled by social measures are inherently more complex than functional differentiation allows them to be.

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1 Introduction

The ecosocial theoretical approach to the complex of individual and common existence draws on contributions from feminist economics in many respects in the expositions of this book. As noted earlier, it has uncovered the reproductive basis of the gainful economy in the performance of the caring role assigned to women. To say lightly that caring has a feminine connotation and that economic activity is masculine is refuted in the connection of caring and doing economy. Feminist economics establishes this connection. It understands care economically. Feminist discussions of women’s domestic and care work, the breadth of care in its informal and formal structures, the life-serving nature of preventive action and its link to ecological sustainability (cf. Knobloch 2019) are consistent with an ecological theory of the social and its management. If we do not stop at the social: what does the everyday worrying of people have to do with the world problems of the crisis of nature and climate? In the feminist discourse on an expanded understanding of care, reference is often made to the well-known definition, formulated by Joan Tronto, that care is “a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-­ sustaining web” (Fisher and Tronto 1990, p. 40). The definition does not draw a line, but dissolves it. Addressed in the transition from human behavior to the ecological states of the world is a comprehensive process of life-sustaining. “Earth in Our Care” (Maser 2009), bioecologically can be called the great social and political mandate. It is ethically based in answer to the question of how we want to live and ecologically oriented in answer to the question of how we can live.

1.5 The Structure of the Treatise The context in which care and economy are done exists in small and large circles of life. This is what this book deals with chapter by chapter. The line of argumentation begins with the concerns of the individual person and her caring activity for himself and others in the social space to which she belongs. The means and opportunities available in the field of action are used to do economy. The caring activity participates in economic activity in the broader sense, which, close to caring, serves subsistence and, far away from it, has developed its own dynamics in markets in streams of business interaction. The state-organized community seeks to regulate these processes. It takes global interrelationships with their social, economic and ecological dimensions into account in order to achieve sustainable action. In turn, all individual actors are involved in this project, and their actions are

1.5  The Structure of the Treatise

15

directed towards the requirements of livelihood and common well-being. In the end, global concern brings together what seems economically necessary to do and what can be expected from the behaviour of all those involved. Self-care proves itself in world-care. The strand of the argumentation thus makes an arc from human caring via doing economy to the common care of life. The concept of care allows for a broad interpretation. What all belongs to care, conceptually and practically, is the subject of Chap. 2. The distinction that is made is important: There is, on the one hand, care or worry as a mental and emotional state of a person, and, on the other hand, action, caring in turning to others in their neediness and in caring activity in general, by which a need is met, values are preserved, tasks are accomplished, and goals are pursued. Caring action requires the use of forces and means economically – not in momentary care, but over time. The integration of care and provision of care into economy and ecology is existential at every level. Therefore, in Chap. 3, the theoretical reflection on economics begins with the substantial maintenance of life, for which care is taken and for which means and ways are used. With the distinction between economy in the substantial sense and economy in the formal sense, as Karl Polanyi made it (Polanyi 1977, p. 19), – and thus contrary to the standard economic conceptions of economy – the economy that precedes and includes the transactions of acquisition is discussed. With business and in the economy, society has historically progressed from mere subsistence to a welfare that, in the end, cannot be had and cannot be preserved without the maintenance of life in general in its diversity on earth. Chapter 4 focuses on the key category of the household. In the ecosocial theory concept, the category of the household is the conceptual bracket in which caring and economic activity are placed. Households are care-giving and economic – in the life circle of individuals, in and by organisations and institutions, in the state and, at least in good intentions, globally. Households are the frameworks in which goods, means, forces and time can be rationally disposed of and kept in order, starting from a stock and leading to a design worth living for. Historically, a three-step process can be assumed. Whereas economic activity was once enclosed in the “whole house” with care, after its release it unfolded dynamically, growing without end, in order now to be embraced anew by care in the global household. What is the role of the main caretaking and economic actors in this framework? A major household actor is the state. Chapter 5 deals with it. The body politic of the state occupies the macro-level at which supra-individual economic activity is kept in order and people’s concerns are met with a set of rules for resource allocation. The nature of publicly arranged services of general interest can be studied in the welfare regime, in which the state fulfils its function as steward of the population in a differentiated way.

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1 Introduction

The role of enterprises in the community is discussed below. Businessmen and businesswomen engage in economic activity from individual households in a market. At the same time, however, entrepreneurs are also actors on whom the state relies in its welfare function. Enterprises dare to do new things. This can be done recklessly or considerately. We look at how far and to what extent corporate responsibility extends in social and ecological terms. The counter-image is caring in households. In the ecological crisis, large commercial enterprises find themselves involved in the demands that the endangered and damaged natural balance places on all actors. The social side of responsibility in living together characterizes public services of general interest. The “Daseinsvorsorge” is responsible for the maintenance of welfare, for which a large amount of money is spent in a social security system and in the infrastructures of the social and health care system. In this system, care in form of service provision takes place, partly in monetary form, partly in the form of human services for the population, and in individual areas of need the supply is linked to their concerns in a personalised way and can enter into a productive relationship with them. Social provision occurs in a dialectical relationship to the commodity economy. Before its enforcement, the provision did not need to be extra organized. Care supply negates the principles of commodity exchange, tied to ability to pay. Although the financing of social provision is directly or indirectly tied to the yield of gainful employment, the state transforms this yield in the welfare system: it takes away its commodity form. With social benefits in the welfare regime, people’s subsistence is “decommodified” (Esping-Andersen 1990, p. 35 ff.). In the first period of the Covid pandemic, supply requirements became the benchmark for the commodity economy – what it had to restrict itself to in terms of needs and what it had to provide as a matter of priority. With the management of social care (cf. Wendt 2015), there is a direct transition from doing care to doing economy: In the sphere of the social economy, an organized cooperation towards self-determined coverage of needs has been taking place for a long time. In the construct and practice of the social economy, the leap from the internal sphere of one’s own caring to the business operations on its doorstep can be observed. In cooperatives and other forms of association, those who care define their own economic activity. In the social and solidarity economy we encounter ways of providing in collective self-care, increasingly also with a decidedly ecological task. Politically, this field of action is simultaneously expected to innovate in the world of work, to increase employment and to perform in terms of social cohesion. In the broad field of caring economic activity, the social economy discourse connects to the process in which the pursuit of welfare fits into the ecology of

References

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s­ ustainable global development. It involves companies with their innovations, public services in a balancing and safeguarding function, and civil commitment to quality of life and justice for people and nature at the local level. Globally, concern for one’s own and the common world is becoming the determining factor for all economic activity. It increasingly governs economic activity, in which attempts are made to remedy this constant concern through adaptation, flexibility and innovation. In its change, the economy has the chance to prove itself.

References Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fisher, Berenice, und Joan C. Tronto. 1990. Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring. In: Circles of Care. Work and Identity in Women’s Lives. Abel, Emily K., und Margaret K. Nelson (eds.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. S. 35–62. Haeckel, Ernst. 1870. Biologische Studien. Erstes Heft: Studien über Moneren und andere Protisten, nebst einer Rede über Entwickelungsgang und Aufgabe der Zoologie. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. Keller, David R., und Frank B. Golley (eds.). 2000. The Philosophy of Ecology. From Science to Systems. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Knobloch, Ulrike (Hrsg.). 2019. Ökonomie des Versorgens. Feministisch-kritische Wirtschaftstheorien im deutschsprachigen Raum. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa. Latour, Bruno.1998. To modernize or to ecologize? That’s the question. In: Remaking Reality. Nature at the Millenium. Castree, Noel, und Bruce Willems-Braun (eds.). London: Routledge. S. 221–242. Maser, Chris. 2009. Earth in Our Care. Ecology, Economy, and Sustainability. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Polanyi, Karl. 1977. The Livelihood of Man. Edited by Harry W.  Pearson. New  York: Academic Press. Praetorius, Ina. 2015. The Care-Centred Economy. Rediscovering what has been taken for granted. Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 1982. Ökologie und soziale Arbeit. Stuttgart: Enke. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 1990. Ökosozial denken und handeln. Grundlagen und Anwendungen in der Sozialarbeit. Freiburg i. Br.: Lambertus. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2002. Sozialwirtschaftslehre. Grundlagen und Perspektiven. Baden-­ Baden: Nomos. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2010. Das ökosoziale Prinzip. Soziale Arbeit, ökologisch verstanden. Freiburg i. Br.: Lambertus. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2015. Soziale Versorgung bewirtschaften. Studien zur Sozialwirtschaft. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2018. Wirtlich handeln in Sozialer Arbeit. Die ökosoziale Theorie in Revision. Opladen: Barbara Budrich. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2021. Ecology of Common Care. The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service. Cham: Springer.

2

Extensions of Care

Abstract

Care is a condition of being human and applies to existence in all its aspects. The anthropological category of care spans the gap between the self-reference of an actor and the world-reference that the individual carer shares with other actors. The concept of care, analogous to Sorge in German, is ambiguous. There is caring, co-caring, private care, public supply and professional care provisioning. Worrying as an emotional state is distinguished from caring as an activity that entails economic activity when resources are used in a purposeful way. Caring is specifically designed in coping tasks and as carework has predominantly female connotations. Its economic significance is increasingly being recognised. Recently, the pandemic and, even more clearly, the climate crisis have shown how far care extends, how much it determines politics and involves the economy.

Care is a condition of being human. Existence in all its moments can be the object of care. In the perspective of personal life, it reaches far and out in all directions. Man must engage with existence as being in the world. It inevitably gives rise to worry and care. The anthropological category of care spans the gap between an actor’s self-reference to his or her everyday worries and the world-reference that the individual who cares shares with other actors. To be in the world oneself, to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_2

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belong to it in existence and to be challenged in it in a temporal duration, is an extended motivation for caring action. The inter-est (to be in between) linking the subject and the world (see Sect. 4.4), an interest we have in each other, in the common world, in the diversity of life and things in it, takes us in for it and gives us cause to care. As interest in all this is positive, so care can be positive; by contrast, a noticed lack, a paucity, an impending loss, or simply uncertainty about what may come, may be a negative reason for it. The interest, and thus the potential and possible extension, of concern in the world extends far beyond a concern for a person’s well-being. Human care is ethical in nature. It is a basic attitude towards the common life in which we live and to which we are attached. How it flourishes, what fails in it, and what future it has concerns us. The ethical attitude is one of striving to succeed, to preserve, to heal, or simply to be satisfied, satiated, and in agreement in various situations of life (cf. Wendt 2013, pp. 92 ff.). Recognizably, this conception of the ethical character of caring implies the call to a thoughtful conduct of life and to an appropriate treatment of one’s fellow human beings in caring for them and for one’s fellow world. In antiquity, Stoic philosophy charged cura (worry) with mastering life and bringing about the good in being human (Seneca, ep. 124). Cura has the double sense of a burden and the virtue in which care is exercised. Existence continually exposes man to a future open in space and time. The individual cannot remain unworried in a present. He must fear evil and expect loss. Worrying and caring lift man out of his crude existence. Every day there is reason to take precautions, to care for others: in sympathy, out of concern for others, for the sake of preserving the goods of life in the world around us. The uncertainty of what is to come and the contingency of all that has already occurred or can occur and endangers and impairs life’s sustenance gives rise to forward-looking carefulness. Care and concern thus accompanies a variety of undertakings with regard to their success and at least as much with regard to their effects. Anxious, indefinite preoccupation (Latin sollicitudo) is what the Stoics sought to overcome. It represents a state of mind in which a person is in disquiet but remains passive, emotionally affected by actual or imagined circumstances and bad prospects. Worrying and brooding can also cause one to lose oneself. Care in the sense of caring activity, on the other hand, happens in a person’s external relationships and circumstances. The double meaning of being mentally concerned and actively caring has always been inherent in the concept of care in English as well as in the term Sorge in German. In caring, the human being perceives his participation. He is disposed to be concerned (caring about); to take an interest and to care for someone or something (caring for). The concept of care as Sorge is the subject

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of profound reflection in Goethe’s “Faust”, in Kierkegaard and in Heidegger (Reich 1995, p. 319 ff.). In care, the person finds his objects and tasks, self-referentially also himself in his existence in the world. The relationship of care as an inner state to care (taking care) outside in the world is a dialectical one: in care there is much to consider out of caution and in the uncertainty of a situation. Positively, it results in thoughtful action; negatively, worry leads to restraint in action. Life is planned proactively and personal as well as common existence is shaped. Proactively, this can also happen in the state with sufficient determination to govern. However, in society and at the political level, openly expressed and concealed, actual and suspected concerns of people result in a mixture that parties and interest groups of all kinds undertake to sort out and discuss on an ongoing basis. Care, in its relational nature as to be concerned about, has a binding force. Someone is worried and cares, that cannot simply be dismissed. The phrase often heard in political rhetoric, that people’s concerns must be taken seriously, sticks even without content. In the public sphere, we find an asserted collective concern, after it has been dealt with politically, enshrined in institutionalized form in the administration. With its regulations, it sometimes proves beneficial and often obstructive in everyday life and economic activity. For example, the imposed data protection limits possibilities of use and innovations in many areas. On the other hand, concerned governance drags down administration. In Germany, for example, concern forced the energy turnaround after Fukushima in 2011. In the pandemic, many measures could be adopted that would not have passed in an unworried situation. Whatever worries the legislator is guided by in each case: There are differences between the concerns of the political representatives, the concerns that are present in the media and the concerns of the population, which in turn are taken into account at every level of action. Care and concern is an existential disposition of the human being in the world – a disposition to act in it. On the individual level, the person takes a stand in his existence with his condition. She strives in it and in doing so has a lot to think about and a lot to do for it. Acting sorrowfully, we are beyond the dull state of mind of worry and help it off in task-related activity. This was already known about the keyword “Sorge” in Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon in 1743: Sorge, Lat. Cura is a diligent attention and concern for a thing, in which one consults with oneself and ponders how one should approach a matter properly, so that one has no inconvenience, harm, or danger from it, but that everything may gain a desirable outcome: As parents for their children, authorities for their subjects, teachers and preachers for the congregation, and also every Christian must be concerned that he does not miss the purpose of salvation. Although the worries are many: They can

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2  Extensions of Care nevertheless be easily divided into three classes. 1) Necessary and God-commanded cares are those that each person should have in his office, profession, or occupation. 2) Unnecessary and carnal cares, which arise from distrust and doubt of God’s grace, or which are directed to sinful things. 3) Narrow and mixed sorrows are when a man does what he ought to do, but still doubts God’s blessing and grace, and becomes impatient when things do not go right as he thinks. (Zedler 1731–1754, vol. 38, pp. 935 f.)

Care, so the tenor of the text, is taken in responsibility, at that time well Protestant: before God, whose presence makes every anxious worry unnecessary. What is to be worried about results from the existential relationship of man throughout his life in the world in which he has his place and his responsibility. Caring is, with reference to ancient teachings, a virtue. Care is taken for one’s own survival, for the security of one’s existence, for relatives and dependents, and in accordance with the tasks assigned to a person by virtue of office or profession. In prudent, intelligent care, action is advisably directed towards a good, be it one’s own or that of others or the common good. It is not at all times in his life that the individual cares and acts in care. The state of carelessness, if it does not consist merely in unwariness, is quite desirable and can be a happy state. But one only admits to not having to care about anything else if the necessary has been done beforehand. One is content and lets oneself go well. Or one practices frugality, as recommended by the Stoics. However, one does not become undemanding without concern for this (sine frugalitas cura, Seneca, ep. 17, 5). In modern life, a state of being without worry can have a place and its right only in between. Worry is the habitual correlate of risk and crisis. Worry remains as a state of mind; care is on the way. But what worries us concretely calls for action. To care for something is an activity (However, the word worry, likewise care, is also used to denote being active in its duration). Persons care in a set of activities; these extend in several directions and into different areas of life. Caring is not tied to a state of mind (anxious) concern. It may originate from it, have its motive in it, but detaches from it in many situations of being busy with objective tasks (and at transition into an economy, see below). The definite distinction of active care from mental worry is emphasized here, because this distinction is important for further discussions. Caring action has its object sometimes more in material livelihood, in earning a living, sometimes more in professional success, in maintaining health, socially in a successful coexistence. Politically, it has its object in the nearer and wider states of the world. Factually present, i.e. made, are the divisions between the subject areas in which actors take care of their concerns – or concerns agreed on by them or for them. There is private caring in the life circle of individuals and public caring in the

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community. Caring activities overlap particularly in the design and management of social and health provision, that is, in welfare concerns (White 2000) and, less visibly, in the political and private design of economic activity. The dimensions of care are care for oneself, care for others and care for the environment (Henkel et al. 2016, p. 19 ff.). A person’s self-care applies in taking care of her existence, her health, her family and other relatives, her economic situation and, in all indeterminacy, her future. Fears may come along and weigh a person down. Not infrequently a burdening grief results, even the mental state of depression, which also darkens the world around the person. In this situation, it is impossible for those affected to manage. But if the depression is helped medically, therapeutically, socially caring, this is also an economic success. As in the negativity of worry, the positive care that positions the person in life and the action that results from it extends to the circumstances in which one lives and to the prospects offered by the view of the future. One does not know what is to come, but one takes care. Care for other people, as an outdoor activity, can be distinguished from the dimension of self-care, although compassion through the identification of one’s own life situation with the fate of other people already includes it in personal concern. Whether privately bound or publicly interested, the human being is continually exposed to dynamic life contexts which are or can also become his own and which cause him concern. The human being is taken along, in every sense of the word. In “Being and Time” (§§39–44), Martin Heidegger has determined care ontologically “as the being of Dasein”. Human Dasein is temporally constituted. For man, as he is existentially constituted, anxiety is the state of mind in which his being-in-the-­ world is disclosed. In the world in which he always already is, he must “be beyond himself” in the time horizon of what he encounters, and in the inner world he must take care of the goods that are needed in the course of life. With prudent circumspection, we can make use of the means and possibilities available in the given. In caring, one cannot stop at the remark that there must be a cause or a reason for it. In the guiding concept of caring, it is not the personal attitude of worry in relation to a “why” of worry that is the subject of discussion, but being as care itself. Whatever inner attitudes may be given in each case as a psychological condition in the individual, external dispositions are made as (economically relevant) decisions. They can be based on existing own and common dispositions, but cannot be made independently of present and expected circumstances. Every decision entails a change. Where this may lead – in the person herself, for other people or in the environment – is the subject of concern. In the larger context of a community and the polity, the concern to be found therein is a condition of future viability.

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Instead of everyone mindlessly living off what is already there, concern among them encourages forward-looking action. Caring does not start with the worry of a single person or with an isolated worry that is troubling him or her. In order to explain the connection between care and doing economy, it is important to distinguish the event of care from the state of mind of one worry or another. It is not its inner basis, not its psychology, that is to be discussed, but its external cause. A child, when he grows up, takes care of all the errands as execution of concern that are part of everyday life. His parents care for his food, for his health, for his safety, for his education, and so on (this is the ongoing parental care by law) and in the child’s social environment concerns are discussed in which income problems, employment, housing, health problems, social conflicts and political crises are topics. The care process is determined by these issues and considerations. Consequently, a person does not make the decision to care from now on and at all. She participates from the outset in socially given caring. With communication and orientation in the world, the subject is presented with a scenery that is full of apparently necessary actions and in which there is consequently much cause for care. However, a claimed shared concern does not yet imply shared caring. In the Covid pandemic, general health care was the responsibility of the relevant agencies in the state and at the local level. Individuals as well as all economic actors were included in it. In the process, many opposed or remained inwardly uninvolved because they thought they had nothing to fear and nothing or just different to worry about. Even without being perceived together, objective demands can cause general concerns – and, at the same time, with general care an economic activity, no matter how different the individual participation in it may be.

2.1 Caring Action We care for ourselves, for other persons, for other life and for conditions in which the individual person and in which we live together. We care for conditions or situations to which our own and common life or a person is exposed, which may negatively affect them or positively promote them, and we care for conditions which are positively or negatively significant for the well-being of people and the preservation of nature. In thoughtful and prudent care, we find circumstances and behavior interacting and moving with it in pursuit of change or preservation. Worrying and caring fulfill a security function in relation to the person. Security (lat. securitas) is a state in which one is “without worry” (se cura). Mere existence, exposed to what is to come, does not provide security for the individual. It takes

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many external precautions to achieve some measure of external security. The individual relies on other people for this, and collectively one adheres to institutions. They reliably provide security. The state in particular is called upon for this purpose. The modern state has its reason in the very task of guaranteeing security. The publicly organised system of social security and care supply is set up for this purpose – and in one for the maintenance of social welfare. Care arises in living together. In it, care is shared. One cares in life situations which need to be dealt with. They are situations which one person gets into, or situations which other people get into. The situations in question are of the kind one knows in the life one shares with others. That I care presupposes that something is “close to me,” and I can act in a caring way only in life situations that are not completely remote or foreign to me. The distress that is widespread in some countries does not “concern me” and I do not become concerned. Unless the distress is brought close to me and I recognize that it also has weight for our and my existence in the common life on our planet. Living together, as it is socially structured, causes contemporary concerns as such. One is in competition, wants to distinguish oneself, to advance in a career, not to succumb. The individual person has a social status in society. He can rise socially in relation to other people and he can fall. Sociology discovers a widespread status concern in the middle class of society (see Schöneck and Ritter 2018). In the upper echelons, the preservation of power is a cause for concern. Loss of assertiveness and authority threatens. However, those who have power are able to care well and are more likely to be obliged to do so than someone who lacks power. A different social status does not prevent shared concern in living together among those who are close to each other. It is also the source of the special care that people give to one another. It begins with the small child who grows up in parental care, is taken into care by others, receives all-round attention and thereby becomes aware of its self-worth. Parental care naturally includes the physical and material maintenance of the child, the care of his social relations and his education in every respect, and is thus demanding. Parents do not always meet the demands that the upbringing of children places on them. In direct coexistence, at the individual level, in the perception of “interpersonal interdependence” (Brückner 2011), not only parents are claimed for children, but persons in general are claimed for each other. Caring by and for people is ethically justified, is connected with emotion and consists, on the one hand, in direct personal attention, be it private and familial or professional, and, on the other hand, in the obligations of society – a caring society – in interpersonal relationships. The private task has moved into public concern (Fine 2007, p. 6 ff.), which has become

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structurally differentiated in the social benefit system. Care in this sense includes everything “we do to help individuals to meet their vital biological needs, develop or maintain their basic capabilities, and avoid or alleviate unnecessary or unwanted pain and suffering, so that they can survive, develop, and function in society” (Engster 2007, p. 28). Beyond the private and family sphere, the concept of personal care is narrower in the service system than the concept of personal concern, which is generally related to maintenance and well-being. Discursively, it is often assumed to be used in situations of need of protection and assistance, disability, illness or need for nursing care, and generally of human vulnerability. The nature and variance of nursing, therapeutic, educational and social care is the subject of many social psychological studies, moral and anthropological discussions and, in the case of disorders, conflicts and crises, the subject of professionally treated practice. In the broader ecosocial context, shared care, including selfcare, characterizes human existence in general, in which it is constantly exposed to tasks of coping with existence. Expert action in the human professions, together with informal action in a context of care, treatment of illnesses or help with disabilities, is part of coping with what has to be cared for in life. It takes shape in systems of care provision (see Chap. 7). The assumption of human vulnerability is a foundation of the theory of human service provision. The practice in it, if successful, leads to healing in persons. This, and the complex of cure and care in general, will not be dealt  with further here in the discussion of the connection between doing care and doing economy. Personal care, however, is exhausted when a person has nothing else to do but care for a relative or a ward. Caring for oneself, caring with others and caring together encompasses from the outset more than the direct dedicated “work on the person”. The disciplinary and professional discourse of the nursing and social professions is bracketed in the coverage of caring in general. That is, it is not excluded, but it does not determine the conception of doing care and doing economy to be advocated here. For medical, nursing or pedagogical caring is a professional and service specification of general caring, in which existence is managed and it is necessary, among other things, to heal, help and educate. Meanwhile, those who have children to bring up, relatives to care for, or who require prolonged medical treatment, provide for a livelihood under the very circumstances that the tasks of bringing up and caring for children entail and calculate them economically in their budgets. Caring in life in general brings special errands in it. In the field of life management, well-being is indirectly ensured by someone taking care of the things that need to be available, kept in order, used and ­maintained in the physical environment on a daily basis. In our private, public and professional

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lives we expect the things we need to be available, in good condition and functioning. All of these can be cared for. Mignon Duffy has distinguished “nonnurturant care” from “nurturant care” in this sense (Duffy 2011, p. 9 ff.). In caring work, one kind of “work on people” is often combined with housekeeping or subsistence work. Before times, the relationship was reversed: caring attention arose in the context of householding care. It could not stop at the feeling of having to do something, but required a rationality that was once called economy and cannot be denied to care in modern times (Waerness 1984, 2000). Caring turns into work and into doing economy wherever someone becomes active beyond an inner state of concern, takes on situational circumstances and needs ways and means and makes dispositions about them in order to reach his goal. First of all, caring activity in one’s own circle of life can be thought of economically without barter and commodity transactions (and is ignored in mainstream economics for this very reason). Active care does not look at money. It does not haggle. Caring is not about a commodity. It is always already ahead of it and its supply. In this process, a good can be put to use. In the absence of a rationale in the context of what one wants to care about and what one has to care about, commodities that one buys may for a short time deter one from caring. They dazzle and pretend a fulfilment, of which then, however, when one reflects sorrowfully, only emptiness remains. The work of care, even without having to claim the circulation of goods, produces goods for the well-being of people, or maintains and contributes to their well-being, which is not tradable and uncommodified remains without a market. However, care connects social, economic and ecological references, because it is care in life contexts. In them people have to cope; in them they are exposed to burdens and crises; in them they are structuring and conduct their life. One needs knowledge in it and therefore provides for education. When knowledge is possessed, many paths of development are possible and creativity is required on them. Life contexts of people and in the community can be shaped beyond self-reference in participation, which is why it is necessary to provide for them and for means of communication. Moreover, institutions are necessary and in need of care, which constantly stand up for and guarantee care. The spheres of private, civic and public, commercial and environmental care overlap. In the private sphere, people are expected to cope with life competently in everyday existence and to do what is necessary for this alone or together. They can also appear publicly or at least partially publicly with their coping practice; however, the public has its own theme on a supra-individual level. There is public concern in a civil political form, i.e. related to conditions in the community and to intentions to change conditions in the state and society. In this respect, the world of

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culture can also be publicly effective as a scene in which creative forms of expression of human existence are found and their meaning is provided. In the spectrum of caring, various forms of charity have a hybrid character, which is either performed informally and quasi-privately in a personal environment for people in need, or which is performed on a voluntary basis on behalf of the public or within the framework of social purpose associations. This area of caring is particularly valued morally and civilly, as the action seems to be characterised by “selflessness”, from which provision German tax law derives charitable status. In fact, the variance of voluntary helping in caring and sharing relieves the organized and professional care in the social and health care system to a considerable extent. It would be overburdened without the complementary free and independent activity. In general, the aforementioned spheres of action of caring and providing – in nurturant care – distinguish themselves from the sphere of the capitalist economy, in which goods are exchanged on markets and in which products are produced and provided for commerce. The distancing of charity, of professional as well as voluntary helping, from the economy is, however, difficult to maintain, and not only because of the expansion of entrepreneurial activity into the areas of social and health-related services. Being there for other people in a hostly way allows relaxation from burdens and generates improvement and relief in life. Those who care are co-creators of living conditions. This effectiveness is equal to economic productivity in any other sphere of endeavour. Human action is everywhere aimed at bringing something about. The productivity of caring can be seen as the basis of economic productivity in general. Caring parents become productive with the investments in their children. For this purpose, they make purposeful dispositions about the use of means and forces. As a result, the mature caring adolescent makes a lot of allocative decisions when he sets out for the world of work, trains for it, and engages himself professionally. The industrial system feeds off this commitment. Someone starts a business either on the basis of pre-produced tangible and intangible assets or family and other security, or because none is available and concern for one’s own or one’s family’s livelihood makes the business necessary. The acquisitiveness may take on a life of its own, but it can at any time relapse into existential concern. Every kind of work has a reason in the existence of people who are able to do one or the other kind of work or who have to do it. It is permeated by human care. Of the people who devote themselves to caring for others privately or professionally, the performance aspect of caring is experienced directly. And those who experience this caring can appreciate what it brings about. As mentioned above, care and caring have long been terms used primarily in the social and health pro-

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fessions, especially in nursing. Caring is seen as the core of professional self-­ understanding (cf. Smith et al. 2012). This location remains unaffected if, beyond professional action, the much broader practice of caring is understood, in which we all informally seek to meet the demands of existence on an everyday basis. Women shoulder a large part of the care work to be done both privately and formally. Feminist analysis has highlighted their importance and promoted an understanding of how the care of those in need of care, whether in the family or through a specialist service, fits into a series of care tasks to be performed at the individual level and which, at a higher level, belong in the organisation of all that is to be provided for in social and public services. In a multidimensional extension, personal care in the social and health care sector is increasingly linked to economic activities and political control beyond its immediate subject area. On the organizational level, direct human service activities are followed by various industries that also want to be seen as providers and supply the services with medical products, for example, or equip them with rooms for care, education and recreation. At the individual level, care is budgeted for and a choice is made among offers to shape one’s life. Individuals can make use of their material and immaterial assets in self-care, but throughout their lives they need to be equipped with the skills to participate in ongoing developments in the world around them. In concern for their livelihood, people are gainfully employed. To this end, they manage their time and the paths they take in social and professional life. A family shares resources and energies in the effort to see its members prosper and advance in the world of work. In a larger community, a plurality of aims and purposes will have to negotiate their priority or subordination and the provision of means for them. Care and doing economy are carried out at every level of human coexistence – individually, collectively, organizationally, administratively and politically. For people however, this is not the case everywhere and all the time. Individuals do not demonstrate caring behavior with empathy and prudence at all times. Often there is a lack of mindfulness at all. Some people do not just occasionally act recklessly and shamefully. Institutionally, an organized care takes place to limit and counteract such behavior. This begins with education in the family and school and continues in institutions for the protection and safety of the population, in the functionality of social care and civic attention. In many places it is again persons who act with their concerns in the institutional structure, supported by a constitutionally anchored ethic or public morality. The institutional structure is complex; it needs to be operated, differentiated, well equipped and able to cope with changing and growing challenges and thus to survive economically.

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The connection between caring and doing economy requires a discursive exploration in every area. It hardly becomes clear in everyday practice, in which scenery we lead a private life and do our errands and in which, on the other hand and apart from that, business is conducted in “the economy” and the view is directed towards the key figures of one or the other company. Also, those who carry out social tasks in the help and support, in the promotion or in the care of people in poor circumstances, usually do not have before their eyes the extended events in which the respective situation and the actions in it are embedded. In matters of caring, one thinks in a professionally and disciplinarily differentiated way, in sections depending on the field of activity  – social, health-related, pedagogical or nursing. Such action has its own quality; it is self-sufficient. In any case, if “social” is only used to describe action and thinking that is dedicated to problems of inequality and the tasks of balancing justice, there is no place in it for economizing. If, moreover, ecology is ascribed only the treatment of environmental problems, it cannot contribute anything to the “social” either. Only in a transdisciplinary perspective do the subject areas of economics, ecology and theories of the social find their way to each other. Scientifically, the paths of social, economic and ecological thought and action have long been separate and they are therefore still far apart today. It is common from the social or social advocacy point of view (especially social work) to find the cause of social problems in the prevailing capitalist way of doing business. Environmental problems are also attributed to this type of economic activity. From the disciplinary economic point of view, on the other hand, social design intentions appear less rational and detrimental to the welfare as a whole. The salvation of entrepreneurial economic activity is lost in the social, one says. In contrast to both, there is thirdly the ecological perspective, in which neither antisocial nor uneconomic sustainable problem solving can be expected. The need to get along with demands from the natural environment in social and economic activities has recently become clear in the pandemic. In the face of the health threat, society has learned to distinguish in the business of life what is relevant and urgently needed and has to happen, and what concerns have to take a back seat. In this way, public services of general interest set the framework for what happens in society. The personal prevention follows the guidelines or gives itself its own rules of measure, right down to everyday housekeeping. In an emergency, all the goods on the markets are of no concern to us if we are worried about our existence. Economy is done privately with what is necessary and in the state for the preservation of potentials, with which the further development can be disputed. The support of trades is part of this and the safeguarding of employment

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r­ elationships and the material maintenance of people. Business activity on markets may be left to its own devices, but it is not the focus of dispositive decisions in society. The Covid pandemic was added to the ongoing climate crisis. Climate change requires far more adaptation. And it gives new impetus to the many projects in theory and practice that attempt a different way of living and working. But in most cases they are initially realized only at the lower level of a collaboration of people. Cooperation in alternative movements lacks an institutional superstructure, the establishment of structures at the level of society and state. So far, the economic system has hardly followed the concerns of the protagonists. However, the changes brought about by the pandemic and required by the climate crisis have affected social and economic events in equal measure. The supply of the population must be ensured and the economic fabric must be maintained. In the pandemic, actors at every level participated in the concern. In one way or another, those who kept things going and those who held on without employment (“on short-time work”) found themselves dragged along. In the crisis, being social and showing solidarity no longer means just helping those in need, but is a requirement for everyone. Whether mandated or voluntary, general social participation sustains economic getting by. In a sense, one commitment coincides with the other. The subjective perceptions of individual actors do not necessarily coincide. After all, actors’ concerns are as varied as their economic opportunities.

2.2 Care Work and Its Distribution In everyday life it is observed that people often care very little about the things and people around them. They do not behave socially, do not show consideration, do not pay attention to environmental protection and hardly think about their own health and even the well-being of other people in their actions. Self-centered, many stick to their self-interest. Their behaviour may be due to the precarious situation in which they find themselves, or to a lack of education or role models. After all, the lack of social participation is publicly discussed and in the particular situation of the Covid pandemic it was shown that a general concern could also demand the consideration of most of the population. Care arises from perceived responsibility. Children, though they may be anxious, are not, of course, expected to be actively caring. They are to be cared for. Caring about themselves and in the world gradually grows on them. Adolescents, too, are allowed a respite from their own responsibilities and have scope for social experimentation in their behaviour. They often care little, especially if they live in circumstances in which it is already ensured that they can behave so carelessly into

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the day. Not only they, but basically all of us rely on the fact that our existence is sufficiently secured and that everything is done that maintains our existence and its continuity. In everyday life we hardly consider how much work has already been done for the common existence before we take over our part ourselves. Those who have to provide for their own circle of life must make decisions about their commitment, their means, their time and their possibilities. If a task of care is carried out by several people and in the community, decisions have to be made about the distribution of the fulfilment of tasks. Institutionally, this has always been done: in functional differentiation, authorities, services and institutions have a certain range of tasks. They and their employees look after the interests and needs of the citizens and the community. For all institutions to function, it is necessary that people behave appropriately. In the household of a territorial authority, the population belonging to it constantly participates in the institutional economy in so far as it adheres to orders and rules and thus avoids disturbances and damages which are very costly to repair when they occur. In addition to passive involvement, there is also active involvement: caring and economic participation can take the form of voluntary service, as has been introduced in many places for young people. It is economically significant in the form of an ecological or social year. Volunteer work is indispensable in many areas of community life. For example, the care for fire protection is carried out by a voluntary fire brigade, as far as a “compulsory fire brigade” is not introduced obligatorily for all inhabitants. Their joint care becomes necessary in this way, if it cannot be achieved otherwise. This is decided economically by the municipality. What is not required institutionally can be advanced through the initiative of individuals or groups. Civil society is moved by concern for the community and for the needs of its members. The commitment begins in the neighbourhood and can reach far into the political sphere. Conceived in the interest of a vibrant democracy, civil society has for several decades brought together a broad spectrum of civic engagement between the political level and the individual level, where groups meet for communal self-care. Here, the commitment becomes economically relevant when, for example, senior citizens agree to swap time in the service of one another or make provisions in a senior citizens’ cooperative for communal living and care in the event of a need for long-term care. In general, civil society groups or non-­ governmental organisations, for example in matters of environmental protection or migration, ensure that interests and needs for action are perceived which will sooner or later be met in the economy. What remains inconspicuous in the back of social movement is what occupies people socially and economically in everyday life. In the private household, the activities of caring are manifold. They are performed for the sustenance of life – in

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cooking, washing, cleaning, repairing in the household, in bodily self-care, in the exchange of advice, in the administration of what has to do with authorities and other agencies outside the home, in childcare and for the care of relatives in case of illness, disability or infirmity. All this is care work. The term therefore refers not only to care work in the narrower sense, but to active caring with all its effort. Insofar as it is seen as a family effort on behalf of relatives, it can be named “love work” with its emotional qualities from a feminine perspective (Finch and Groves 1983). Caring work is done informally in person households, among friends, among neighbors, and in voluntary help. It is traditionally unpaid. It is contrasted with formally organized, professionally performed and paid work in human service supply. In it, care work takes on the form of gainful employment, but retains its special character. In the debate about care and in the striving for its upgrading, there is a tendency in professional policy to declare not only professional nursing and care for the elderly, but also social and pedagogical professions from childcare to social work to be care professions. The term care work came into use in feminist discourses in the last decades of the twentieth century (Abel and Nelson 1990). This initially brought into the light what had remained obscured in economic doctrine. Much of the informal, domestic care work is done by women – taking it away from men or a male-dominated capitalist economy. Professional care workers are also overwhelmingly female. The asymmetrical distribution of care work in gender relations (gender care gap) was and is the subject of the care debate in the women’s movement. Their efforts were initially directed at recognising that female domestic work has a productive character and that without it gainful employment cannot be sustained. In order to reproduce the labour force for the gainful economy, care work is constantly in use on this side of it in the private sphere. It is therefore demanded, among others by Marxist-oriented authors, to abolish the separation of the privately performed reproduction from the commercial production and to value both equally, if not to pay them equally. According to this, care work belongs treated in an economic theory that is appropriate to real events.

2.3 On the Economics of Caring The translation of caring action into a care economy and a sustainable economy has already been undertaken in various feminist economic circles (Perkins 1997; Eisler 2007; Madörin 2010). One can treat care in the perspective of standard economics and demand from it to integrate caring into economic theory and to educate it to “careful economics” (Jochimsen 2003). A first step towards this is again the

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r­ ecognition and revaluation of caring activities, which are the precondition for all other economic activities (Jochimsen 2003, p. 4). A further step is the consideration of all care work in the national accounts and in macroeconomic dispositions as to which areas should be invested in to support and strengthen care work. The claim of feminist economics extends from informal caring and providing far into the economic process. It should be acknowledged that the economic process can only be kept running in the context of care. The care that is provided in the domestic and informal environment of industry and market activity as the core of the gainful economy constantly feeds it with the resources of natural and human assets provided in its “rest, restoration, and recreation” components (O’Hara 2013, p. 37 f.). They are used to procure all activities in life, including the business of earning a living, which is considered economic in practice and theory. All that activities are in fact “embedded” in caring work. In this broad understanding of care, economics is offered a framework in which it can be socially and ecologically grounded. Care expands with the contexts of life. Transdisciplinarily, it is possible to move from a feminist-accentuated domestic science via ecology to a new economy and to mediate between lifestyles and economic practices. In their discussion of precautionary economics, a group of women has since 1992 addressed the issue of “economics as a life science” (Busch-Lüty et  al. 1994). It ties in with the approaches of ecological economics, is guided by the principle of sustainability and demands normatively that in doing economy what is necessary for life “as a whole” should be done. This is an ethical demand and corresponds to an understanding of the economy as a vital process that is carried out by people with and for people (Nelson 2018, p. 5). The subject matter of an economic science that grasps it must be correspondingly broad. A caring and precautionary economy aims to shape a “good life” (Biesecker et al. 2000). It can only be good for people if it also extends to the preservation of the natural foundations of life in the fellow world (Biesecker and Kesting 2003, p. XV). In their detailed presentation of a microeconomics “from a social-ecological perspective”, Adelheid Biesecker and Stefan Kesting derived the concept of “precautionary economics” from caring actions in the domestic circle of life. “While ‘caring’ initially refers only to the members of the family network, ‘providing’ involves all those affected by the action, especially future generations and the natural fellow world” (Biesecker and Kesting 2003, p.  169). While caring is internally subject to the norms of familial affiliation among relatives, its social extension is externally socially discussed and socio-politically regulated. It embeds economic market activity in the economy of care of collectively connected people and in their lifeworld. Precautionary action and economic activity is “action that retains care as

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a basic orientation, but extends it to the entire space of the economy and in doing so detaches itself from the traditionally normative basis for action” (Biesecker and Kesting 2003, p. 178). At the organizational level, according to Biesecker and Kesting, it is not individuals but groups of people who shape the institutional space in which economic activity takes place. In it, social-ecologically based microeconomics can refer to existing approaches to a circular economy, an expanded concept of work and to practice in the nonprofit sector (Biesecker and Kesting 2003, p. 393 ff.). The social-ecological approach to the substance of the economic subject area builds a bridge from the caring activities of women in the household to the work and production in all other areas of the economy. Whereas Adam Smith once based “the wealth of nations” on the division of labour in economy, now “the real wealth of nations” (Eisler 2007) can be identified from the economy of domestic care: Riane Eisler describes it in terms of its foundation on partnership caring, in which people become productive with and for each other. The private household, she argues, is at the heart of the economy and its productivity. Neoclassical economics had excluded it with its whole range of benefits. According to Eisler, caring economics, an economics of partnership, integrates the contributions made by private households, nature, local authorities and the state, civil commitment and commercial enterprises to meeting people’s needs and thus to their well-being. Feministically, the derivation of economic activity from care can certainly be argued dogmatically. In an essay entitled “Wirtschaft ist Care”, English version: “The Care-Centred Economy” (Praetorius 2015), the theologian Ina Praetorius, following many other authors, linked care to the human relationship to nature and claimed care for a needs-oriented economy. However, the more detailed elaboration on the formula “economy is care”, namely how the economy relates to care and caring, has been omitted. At first, only the importance of care for the satisfaction of needs is emphasized, and care is placed at the center of economics. Since 2015, the Swiss association “Economy is Care”, founded by Praetorius and other women, has been actively campaigning – also in conjunction with other initiatives such as Care.Macht.Mehr or the Wellbeing Economy Alliance WEAll – for a reorganisation of the economy around its core: the satisfaction of human needs. Care activities should be recognized in their fundamental role in the economy and finally be appreciated accordingly in economics. In fact, the whole economy is care, if it serves the humane satisfaction of needs. However, a care-centred economy does not yet make it clear how the economy should actually be embedded in care, or how doing economy should be embedded in caring. The prerequisite is a broad understanding of care, as conceived in this treatise (avoiding a gender-­ specificity of care, as if only women are close enough to life, nature and its ­ecology,

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cf. MacGregor 2006). A conception of doing economy that is distinct from standard economics can be connected to this broad understanding of care. The conceptual shift may be accomplished ecologically: Like Riane Eisler (2007) and other authors, Praetorius argues from the ancient oikos as a household for the satisfaction of human needs (Praetorius 2015, p. 9) Accordingly, women’s household economy, along with care, primarily constitutes the economy and so it is able to be in the big house of planetary coexistence. Praetorius asks how, in the end, our existence in the habitat Earth could be organized for a “frugal-enjoyable living together.” The concern about how we want to live, and the concern about how we are able to live, includes the economic management of life. One concern is the subjective and intersubjective concern for ourselves; the other concern has its objective reason in the ecological state of the world. In extended care, our belonging and affiliation is perceived comprehensively and thus also the space of economic activity is perceived inclusively. In this perspective, the authors of the Care Manifesto (Chatzidakis et al. 2020) argue for a transformation of governance, social interaction and economic activity in the world. The authors start from the observation that carelessness has prevailed in all of this up to now. In recognition of an extended interdependence and in awareness of the capacity of care, it is necessary to create a “more caring world”, “one capable and nourishing all forms of life” (Chatzidakis et  al. 2020, p.  85) with equitable distribution and sustainable use of resources. For such a world, caring infrastructures, communities, caring states, transnational organizations, global networks and alliances are needed, and in these connections cosmopolitically oriented people, global citizens who are able to look far enough in their caring sense. They have good reason to start from their self-care. They are affected by the crises; they are insecure because the circumstances are insecure; they are overwhelmed in the stress of an acceleration that does not advance them in their lives. They gain the resilience they need when they are resistant – in Fridays for Future or in other ways – and push for change in the world and for themselves. Radical care (Hobart and Kneese 2020) means transforming self-care into a collective movement in which extended caring is discursively and practically articulated socially, economically, and politically. At every level of engagement, organized action, management and governance, caring goes beyond the existing problematic state of things. Anticipation is what may come for good or ill. One must use means and forces to preserve or achieve good and to prevent a bad outcome. The dialectic is essentially inherent in caring, that it does not remain with the status of being in worry. Whoever acts in a caring manner is already beyond his state of being. Worry is, in Hegelian terms, annulled by the fact that it loses itself – creatively – in the activity of caring. With it, there is a purposeful transition to doing economy for the sake of success.

References

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References Abel, Emily K. und Margaret K. Nelson, 1990. Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives. New York: State University of New York Press. Biesecker, Adelheid, Maite Matthes, Susanne Schön, und Babette Scurrell (Hrsg.). 2000. Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften. Auf dem Weg zu einer Ökonomie des guten Lebens. Bielefeld: Kleine-Verlag. Biesecker, Adelheid, und Stefan Kesting. 2003. Mikroökonomik: eine Einführung aus sozial-­ ökologischer Perspektive. München: R. Oldenbourg. Brückner, Margrit. 2011. Zwischenmenschliche Interdependenz – Sich Sorgen als familiale, soziale und staatliche Aufgabe. In Karin Böllert & Catrin Heite (Hrsg.), Sozialpolitik als Geschlechterpolitik, hrsg. Böllert, Karin, und Catrin Heite, S. 105–122. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Busch-Lüty, Christiane, Maren Jochimsen, Ulrike Knobloch, und Irmi Seidl (Hrsg.). 1994. Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften. Frauen auf dem Weg zu einer Ökonomie der Nachhaltigkeit. Politische Ökologie, Sonderheft 6, München: Ökom. Chatzidakis, Andreas, Jamie Hakim, Jo Littler, Catherine Rottenberg, und Lynne Segal. 2020. The Care Manifesto. The Politics of Interdependence. London: Verso. Duffy, Mignon. 2011. Making Care Count. A Century of Gender, Race, and Paid Care. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Eisler, Riane. 2007. The Real Wealth of Nations. Creating a Caring Economics. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Engster, Daniel. 2007. The Heart of Justice. Care Ethics and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finch, Janet and Groves, Dulcie (eds.). 1983. A Labour of Love. Women, Work and Caring. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fine, Michael D. 2007. A Caring Society? Care and the Dilemmas of Human Service in the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Henkel, Anna, Isolde Karle, Gesa Lindemann, und Micha H.  Werner (Hrsg.). 2016. Dimensionen der Sorge. Soziolgische, philosophische und theologische Perspektiven. Baden-­Baden: Nomos. Hobart, Hi’ilei Julia K., und Tamara Kneese. 2020. Radical Care. Survival Strategies for Uncertain Times. Social Text, 38 (1). S. 1–16. Jochimsen, Maren. 2003. Careful Economics. Integrating Caring Activities and Economic Science. Boston, Kluwer. MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2006. Beyond Mothering Earth. Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care. Vancouver: UBC Press. Madörin, Mascha. 2010. Care Ökonomie  – eine Herausforderung für die Wirtschaftswissenschaften. In Gender and Economics. Feministische Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, hrsg. Christine Bauhardt & Gülay Çağlar, S. 81–105. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Nelson, Julie A. 2018. Economics for Humans. Second ed., Chicago: Chicago University Press. Perkins, Ellie. 1997. Introduction: Women, Ecology and Economics. New Models and Theories. Ecological Economics, 20 (2), S. 105–106.

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Praetorius, Ina. 2015. The Care-Centred Economy. Rediscovering what has been taken for granted. Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation. O’Hara, Sabine. 2013. Everything Needs Care. Towards a Context-Based Economics. In: Counting on Marilyn Waring. New Advances in Feminist Economics, eds. Bjørnholt, Margunn, and Alisa McKay, 37–55. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press. Reich, Warren T. 1995. History of the Notion of Care. In: Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Vol. 5, S. 319–331. New York: Simon & Schuster. Schöneck, Nadine M., und Sabine Ritter (Hrsg.). 2018. Die Mitte als Kampfzone. Wertorientierungen und Abgrenzungspraktiken der Mittelschichten. Bielefeld: transcript. Smith, Marlaine C., Marian C.  Turkel, and Zane Robinson Wolf (eds.). 2012. Caring in Nursing Classics. An Essential Resource. New York: Springer Publ. Waerness, Kari. 1984. The Rationality of Caring. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 5 (2), S. 185–211. Waerness, Kari. 2000. Fürsorgerationalität. Zur Karriere eines Begriffs. Feministische Studien, 18. S. 54–66. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2013. Ethos als Erstreckung Sozialer Arbeit. In: Zuwendung zum Menschen in der Sozialen Arbeit, hrsg. Wolf Rainer Wendt. Lage: Jakobs Verlag. S. 89–116. White, Julie Anne. 2000. Democracy, Justice, and the Welfare State. Reconstructing Public Care. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Zedler, Johann Heinrich. 1731–1754. Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, welche bishero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden und verbessert worden. Halle und Leipzig: Zedler.

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Abstract

Where does economic activity begin? It has its basis in existential concern for the sustenance of life. In the transformation of the logic of caring into the rationale of doing economy, the old understanding of the domestic acquisition of subsistence is taken as a starting point. In a livelihood system a basic need of material means and of immaterial regulation and cultivation of common existence is always to be provided for. In relation to place and time, man can dispose of the means and possibilities at his or her disposal in a caring manner. This also happens through participation in the larger economic process, in which individuals and communities can act as consumers and producers and move about in an entrepreneurial way.

When something is needed, there are ways and means to obtain it. Man becomes active and considers how to proceed. This is not only necessary once; there is constant cause for concern that what is actually or supposedly necessary for life is found, developed, created and achieved. In this concern, economy comes about in a subject-based way (cf. Wendt 2015, p. 64 ff.). Its ratio connects to the logic of caring for subsistence. Initially, it does not matter to people who make their dispositions for their own and common sustenance whether means are scarce and needs

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_3

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boundless. Human existence rather leaves time and forces (including intellectual ones) scarce and neediness limited. In human existence, doing economy begins with the provision of subsistence and the necessary dispositions. It can be understood bottom-up from them. Economic dispositions are made by people who have to do with each other and with the things around them. In the work they share, they arrive at goods of which they have need. At first, these are not arbitrary goods, but commodities as a means of living. How this is to be done, in terms of place and time, needs to be considered, coordinated and ordered. Doing economy (wirtschaften in German) grows and is primarily practiced in the household of common life and work. Let us again consult Zedler’s Universal Lexicon for the traditional understanding: “Wirtschaft means in general, to take and spend things for the necessities of life, or to carry on business because of it; but in common life, and especially today, it is taken quite variously …”

When the Lexicon appeared in the mid-eighteenth century, economy was just moving away from its original purpose. After referring to the relevant keywords “Haushalten” and “Haushaltung” (housekeeping) in the dictionary, the article continues on the different meanings of the word economy: “Wirtschaft is taken either for an epitome of much economic business, e.g. economy in general, rural economy, farming economy, or for only one economic business, e.g. economy of outgoings, host-economy, economy with the butter, cooking, brewing. Yes, one often says in this sense of an entirely simple activity in the inn: What is that for an economy? Furthermore, in regard to the persons who engage in an economy, one understands by this either individual economy, e.g. a student, a soldier, an unmarried person, have their own special economy; or one calls that which is carried on in marital and domestic community  economy, and which is actually and accurately called housekeeping. ….” (Zedler 1731–1754, Vol. 57, pp. 1130)

In terms of households, a village or a town consisted of a number of “Wirtschaften”. Traditionally, however, one does not mean those in the cities, but those in the countryside: As a food procurer, the farmer or also an innkeeper is considered a good Wirt or host. His activities are distinct from other businesses, which are discussed in detail and critically in the following article of the encyclopedia. Science is hardly necessary for these businesses, but the encyclopaedia deals with economics in a separate article. The text comes from a time in which, for the enlightened, the new economy of the market is replacing the old economy of the house and farm (this distinction will be discussed in the following).

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Until then, the concept of economy was sensual. It might be a place where food was prepared and drinks served. There and everywhere else the economy stood for an order; if the order was lacking, one could ask, as quoted, “what is that for an economy?”. In the country, arable land could be cultivated, and in the city, a craft. One knew how to put the yields to further use. One had means at hand and with them one could economize. The condition of having means is not a given in nature. As long as the means of subsistence can be procured directly – without householding – there is no need for doing economy. Whereas hunter-gatherers could once rely on nature to give them what they needed, the situation changed fundamentally with the advent of agriculture. A field has to be cultivated continuously; action has to be set in relation to the requirements in it. The existence of crops in the field requires constancy in its cultivation. Provision becomes necessary, a separate organization of work and the allocation of time, a management in care of the soil and the forces to cultivate it (Suzman 2021, p. 175 ff.). There is thus cause enough for concern, and it remains at that time being close to the natural foundations of life in the ecological sense. – Thereafter, in advanced history, it can be generally asked: What does man need and what is available to him for it? In modern disciplinary discourse, economy may be understood abstractly as the disposal of scarce resources for their use. In concrete terms, it consists of dispositions that are made about the use of time, energy and useful means. People do not act haphazardly and do not leave what happens to chance as it occurs. Contingency cannot be ruled out anyway; the expectation of the unexpected is as much a part of economic activity as it is of concern. The common and the individual existence is exposed to risks. Those who act in a caring manner reckon with them and prevent them with organisation and planning. In agriculture, farmers’ knowledge and skills include the ability to sow and harvest in good time, to cope with the adversities of weather or soil conditions, to prepare the possible sequence of operations and to organise the farm accordingly. It is done economically nowadays in an agro-­ industrial way or in an environmentally friendly way in organic farming. Economically, it is not only in the countryside that one has an extensive field and trades in a certain area of use in agriculture and livestock. In each occupational field, craft or free trade one draws what is needed. In it, someone is a host in his or her business, is in charge, and is engaged in economic activity. If the matter of economy is linked to people, it is also linked to their concerns and caring and is not simply left to market events and the mechanisms of the exchange of goods within them. Certainly, social organizations also do business for the sake of their existence and as profit enterprises; but it is their management which, in its concern for the enterprise, disposes of the factors of production in it and makes appropriate ­dispositions.

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Whoever manages a household must ensure that not only just now the livelihood is available. Care begins with and has its task in ensuring that a livelihood is secured over time. Care – and with it economic activity – is essentially provision. People who live with each other and share the care of their livelihoods agree on how their efforts for their own and common maintenance are to be made, using the factors available for this purpose. In a system of livelihood, allocation and distribution decisions have to be made. In the historical course from antiquity to modernity, they do not have a decidedly social character as long as binding and domination relations determine the dispositions and no negotiation takes place in free association or in a “society” of equals. Such democratic deliberation is not a prerequisite for the livelihood of individuals. What is included in subsistence is initially grasped simply by the fact that hunger and thirst are felt by every person, and shelter and clothing are needed. For mere subsistence it may be enough for the caring person and a caring community to confine themselves to meeting a basic need for food, water, clothing, shelter, social companionship, and external protection, and not to strive for additional equipment. How much and in what quality it is sufficient in the aforementioned goods is not determined. The conditions of life are too different individually, socially and locally for a uniform, even permanent determination, even though there is a general call for restriction in view of the global resources, critical of growth. In addition to the material things that are needed to earn a living and to carry on a life, there is the immaterial knowledge (handed down and always to be gained anew) of how to obtain them. Moreover, knowledge is a treasure from which one can draw and gain further knowledge by dealing with it. It forms advice – the intangible counterpart to material household goods (Hausrat is a form Rat in German). With advice one gets ahead in care. The broadening of horizons through knowledge and advice contributes in many ways to the conduct of life and to the maintenance of common existence. Knowledge is part of the cultural equipment that shapes human life. Culture, in its normative, spiritual and moral aspects, is indispensable for humane development. Beginning with the early occupation of land, man cultivates the soil, and while cultivating it, he is cultivating his life and himself for the sake of his capacity to act. Knowledge and culture offer material for creativity. With it, care comes to a fulfilled end. Especially works of art, be it a well done painting, a sculptural, an architectural or a musical work, are sans souci. But they lead on. Moreover, in the sustainment of life, knowledge and culture become a productive factor through the mediation of education. A person invests in it and, in advance, institutional care is taken to ensure that culture persists and is available in its tangible and intangible forms. With its formative capacity, culture provides the individual with a

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s­ upra-­individual inventory for the self-determination and ordering of his social existence. In terms of culture and its goods, subsistence cannot be accomplished by one person alone. She does not create it; it is created for her. The culture of existence is begun for a person even before he is born, and subsequently the cultivation of the person is an essential aspect of his social growing up. In addition to the cultural endowment, there are other immaterial and material components that an individual does not have on his own. For example, his security, for which something must be done outside of him, otherwise a person would remain completely unprotected outside. Social relationships help to alleviate this situation and are also indispensable throughout life. As the saying goes, man does not live by bread alone. The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” of the UN has linked in Article 25 the basic subsistence to which every human being is entitled with social rights to secure his subsistence: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability or widowhood, old age and other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

More must be accomplished than the mere subsistence of life. This is demanded by the culture in which common existence is shaped. One has to provide a standard of living without indicating a certain level of goods for a population and the individual, even a gold standard as a generally recognized way to guarantee such a level. Living conditions differ within a society, also between urban and rural areas and globally between the developed countries of the North and many countries of the South. Here as well as there, the requirements are needed to prevent poverty and to guarantee a minimum of livelihood for all parts of the population. Making a living can be achieved in a variety of ways. Depending on people’s lifestyles and fields of action, they are offered specific livelihoods as procedures and means of making a living. “These relate to locales (rural or urban livelihoods), occupations (farming, pastoral or fishing livelihoods), social difference (gendered, age-defined livelihoods), directions (livelihood pathways, trajectories), dynamic patterns (sustainable or resilient livelihoods) and many more” (Scoones 2009, p. 172). The material and cultural endowment of subsistence (a livelihood system, cf. Baumgartner and Högger 2004) functions in its entirety in a complex and dynamic way. According to Karl Polanyi, economics in its substantive meaning is concerned with the subsistence of human beings (Polanyi 1977). Economics in its “substantive meaning”, according to Polanyi, “points to the elemental fact that human beings, like all other living things, cannot exist for any length of time without a

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p­ hysical environment that sustains them” (Polanyi 1977, p. 19). The Sustainable Livelihood Approach seeks to identify the concrete goods that must be present in a subsistence strategy so that people not only remain alive, but can also endure the stresses, disturbances and crises within it and develop. It was conceived in development cooperation and taken up by the UK Department of International Development (DFID). What does a poor rural population need in terms of livelihoods and to build resilience? Poverty has many faces and occurs in very different ways. Accordingly, the needs to meet the necessities of life are complex. Robert Chambers and Gordon Conway have defined for the economic unit of a family: “A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (stores, resources, claims and access) and activities required for a means of living: a livelihood is sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation; and which contributes net benefits to other livelihoods at the local and global levels and in the short and long term.” (Chambers and Conway 1992, p. 6)

People must have skills (human capital), food sources, supplies, access to natural resources, and they must be able to mobilize sources of support (knowledge stocks and technology), social capital (social support), and capital in the form of physical and monetary resources in order to exist and progress in their circumstances. All this is to be provided for and managed. The sustainable livelihood approach is used here to place simple subsistence in the broader ecological framework of resources, which as assets in nature, culture, technology and social relations provide support for existence. Man does not live by bread alone. For all the variance of an actively shaped subsistence, it is not arbitrary goods that fructify in him. Postcolonially, nations such as the Māori in New Zealand or the Quechua in Peru insist on their sovereignty in the choice and culturally shaped use of food (Morris and Fitzherbert 2017; Huambachano 2018; cf. Prince et al. 2021). Livelihoods research has chosen as its subject agricultural conditions in countries of the South, rather than urban conditions in the wealthy North, where a surplus of goods is advertised and wants to be consumed. In the ecologically framed relationship of doing care and doing economy, first of all, categorically, consumption is not given its own place next to care supply. In the promotion of mere consumption, a marketing may prove itself. Those who consume not for their sustenance, i.e. for a reason to care, but to a certain extent for their entertainment and in the end addictively, do so ecologically carelessly. He also acts uneconomically in the sense that he wastes resources. However, a person’s “uneconomic behavior” usually means that he consumes beyond his financial means in his household management and subsequently finds himself in excessive

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debt. Carelessness, therefore, need not necessarily be assumed in such cases. It is often concerns about personal and family livelihood, children, health, home maintenance, etc., that lead to financial crisis when income is insufficient. Economically critical – and determinant of poverty – in such cases is the insufficiency of provision. Sufficient is a use of goods that is adequate in terms of need and resource conservation. To limit oneself to this does not necessarily mean renunciation, but requires the examination of ecological contexts from which a good is taken and into which there is a need to bring it (e.g., into contexts of health maintenance). In the marketplace, the type of influencer shows how a non-existent need is replaced by personal allusion to needs. Such induced unnecessary consumption is cause for concern for householders. In other words: the generation of consumption in the independent game of supply and demand is counteracted by responsibility, in which care is taken and is economized with care. What remains unrestricted  – detached from the concern for material sustenance – is the freedom of recreational and creative entertainment. In it, consumers can seek and find the satisfaction that can be derived from the possession, use and enjoyment of goods. Among them are many which, when used, do not diminish but increase the stock of resources. Works of art, books, theatre, sports and other goods and services which increase competence, contribute to knowledge, benefit well-­ being and health and satisfy worry for a while can do this.

3.1 Subsistence in Place and Time People live their lives in a certain milieu. It offers orientation and support and is the external conditional structure of the everyday conduct of life, which envelops it and gives it space. Life is not lived without expansion; it is physical and predisposed in an environment that is natural, material, social and cultural. Man dwells, moves indoors and outdoors, has his work and business in space at various points, and obtains in it what he needs to live. More than that, the environment so marked places the person in certain positions – as a resident in a residential setting, as an employee in a business setting, as a road user, a visitor to events, a hiker in the outdoors, etc. Movement and stay there place us in a relationship to the respective fellow world, which we can accept as our world – together with the care for it that it remains hostly or becomes hostly first or again under our participation and care. The individual usually only comes to such concern and care when sustainability and what is expected of us all in terms of lifestyle has been talked about in public for a long time and often enough. In a gradually gained ecological awareness, the

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individual finds himself involved in a commitment to the natural foundations of life, to the preservation of biodiversity, to the reduction of his ecological footprint, or simply to the removal of garbage or the watering of a street tree. Environmental conditions also point to social conditions. Commitment there sooner or later needs commitment here. In social shaping of existence, it is the places of our stay that form the outer framework of this shaping as a living environment. We care about our habitat. The individual person may consciously care little for it; but there are always several people who look to it: the mother who wants it to be suitable for a child, the small child who has its world in it, neighbours who also perceive their relationship to each other spatially, some who want to keep it clean and look after it, others who lament neglect, still others who want to be left alone or who are present at every activity around them and are happy about it. Their habitus needs the habitat, takes root in it, adapts to it and appropriates it (cf. Bourdieu 2021). In the habitat there is the place of our dwelling, our own as well as the common one, its surroundings, the place of work, the urban or rural locality, the spaces of meeting, of recreation, of experiencing in general, locality as well as landscape. The shaping of everyday life has a real scope, in which someone can show himself, present himself, in which people cultivate their relationships and in which they exercise their care for themselves and others. In the place I depend on, life is entertained and care is present. The space of personal development offers much or little space; the space of caring (carescape, cf. Ivanova et al. 2016, or caringscape, cf. Bowlby and McKie 2019) can also be very confined or offer people the opportunity to be in good hands and cared for at home if they are disabled or in need of care. Institutional care has a material-spatial structure in which it takes place and to which it extends. “Doctor’s practice”, for example, is a place specification and at the same time it names the bundle of the offered medical procedures. With our habitat, we have to provide for our maintenance the whole place where we spend our lives and where we can be “at home” in a certain way. The production and maintenance of a hostly place is considered at once an ecological and a social object of concern. Individuals stay in one place or another, move freely between them, and seek them out according to the nature of their occupation or in pursuit of one purpose or another. The hostly (wirtliche, not only hospitable) configuration of the place beyond the private sphere is not incumbent upon the person who seeks it out or who is brought into it. She can experience it as a hostly one – or as an inhostly or inhospitable one – if and as long as she is present there. It is with the conditions in it in the positive case conducive to the person in her life. A place can only appear homely, habitable, when I freely spend time in it. I enter into a relationship with it and the place into a relationship with me in which

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it is considered acceptable and conducive. The impressions I gain of it are left to the free play of my imagination. The open space grants freedom to it and to action in it. If we are forced to stay in a place, it can, by not allowing any choice, decisively affect our state of mind and behaviour. In “Asylum” (Goffman 1973), Erving Goffman described total institutions as places of living and working, which completely take over the conduct of life for their inmates with the orders that apply in them. How life can be lived is, as it were, inscribed in the house rules of an institution. The institutional welfare takes over the living of the segregated persons totally. The institution is not an economic place for them; it is not designed to be pleasant for them. It does not leave them free to accept it as their own. In Italy in the 1970s, when Franco Basaglia and his fellow activists triggered a deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care, the freedmen subsequently also changed the open space in which they were housed in cooperatives. The status of the people in the changed practice of living together rubs off on the status of the places. What has happened and is happening in them makes them habitable. In remarks on “caring ecologies” we find such a transformation described: “Today, in Trieste, one gets lost in a physical, social, and mental place as it has emerged over the last forty years from struggles over borders, histories, lives, practices, objects, and places” (Salvini 2017, p. 98). Urban space is inhabited in new ways, as happens elsewhere when networks of solidarity are established or when social neighbourhood management encourages residents to participate in local concerns. Social space lives from the movement within it. Its life – urban or rural – is a source of experiences, of manifest meaning, of interest for all those who participate in it. Interest in the conditions and processes present in the surrounding space varies; it also comes and goes. Without any interest, however, man cannot exist. At places in space we encounter or find something. There is something to discover, to use, to process, to bring forward and to pick up, to remember. One must seek out these places, be on the spot or otherwise connected to it, in order to participate and share. Thus, place and temporally structured movement in space are an objective condition of individual and communal sufficiency. The sustenance of life and the progress in it always happen in a temporal course. Care requires precaution. Personal economic activity is bound to the dimension of time. It has to do with working time, educational time, recreational time, recurrent everyday life, future expectations, foresight, planning. For the individual and for society, well-being as a general goal in the proper sense of welfare occurs in a progression form. It wants to be endowed with goods that contribute to it as continuously as possible. The reflective observer recognizes from a merely short-term satisfaction that the endowment does not make this contribution.

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Welfare, in order for it to occur in its extension, must be managed in the course of its occurrence. In general, doing economy has an extension in time. Momentary decisions are economic only if and insofar as they (e.g., financial decisions) are connected with foresight or already belong to an ongoing decision-making process in which they arise conclusively. The pursuit of a project involves many decisions. If means or forces are to be used, their existence is considered before and after. A host manages them in time. Decisions are not made haphazardly, but are prudently prepared and made with goals and purposes in mind. In the form of a process, doing care and doing economy coincide in their time-boundness.

3.2 Doing Economy in and Around Business Life Individuals and their communities do not operate alone, self-sufficiently in their households, but in modern society participate in the economic process in their environment. This process is usually called “the economy”. It is said to be strong or weak, growing or shrinking, developing, flourishing or declining, and so on. The economic framework is already present when people, in an effort to make a living, undertake something “outside the home.” As economic subjects, they participate in the exchange of goods, in transactions of services and financial transactions, as they come about mainly in markets. Persons thus take their place in (external) economic activity. In its terms, economics also captures the subjects of the actions taken as economic entities within it that make economic decisions independently. Personal economic activity enters into a relationship with that process primarily through the fact that one’s own labor power is employed in it for purposes of acquisition and through the fact that business is done in it and goods are purchased. The relation in which one’s own economic activity encounters the business events around it is one of difference: my dispositions stand out from those found there; the objectivity of “the economy” does not affect the subjectivity of my decisions, although I participate actively in external economic events. I am ahead of it with my decisions (in what and with what I participate) and also behind it (following the stream of transactions into which I enter). The subject, host or hostess in the event, creates an economic setting in it: an arrangement in the use of means to its ends. When it is said that a person undertakes something, he or she is doing business in the double sense that he or she is providing for his or her life and is performing in economic life around it. The subject of care chooses to participate in external economic events, but can also withdraw from them. However, in contemporary life, the stream of transactions to which we are exposed everywhere is powerful. Personal and domestic life

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takes place in constant communication with the outside world, and these communications are already market-formatted and a transaction even without my choosing to engage in it beyond mere participation in communication. We may forego shopping and provide for ourselves from the garden, if available, and through self-­ work, but we cannot avoid reaching beyond the informal economy of the personal or family circle of life and participating in the world of work, which in turn presupposes a self-sufficiency in the private sphere sufficient to enter the world of work anew each day and to remain gainfully employed in it. Of course, the satisfaction of basic physiological needs and the safeguarding of survival are not enough for a good life. The minimal task of personal efforts in doing economy is recursively related to each of its extensions. They complement one’s own economy, continue it and take it with them into an ever more extensive communal responsibility for a good as a whole. From the subsistence economy of modest self-sufficiency, the sphere of economic activity, in which the individual economic subjects participate, extends through forms of social and solidarity economy and the common economy, alongside the purely commercial economy of gainful employment, to the task of global economic activity for the sustainable safeguarding of life on earth. In this extension, the ecological frame of reference of all economic activity emerges. The ecological perspective allows us to assume: What has its core in the personal and communal domestic economy  – in which hosts manage  in their own way – is, on the whole, independently of it, the economy on a state territory, where it emerges macroeconomically (and as the disciplinary object of economics) in the interplay of all actors – in the best case these are at each level the hosts of the process. It can also be oriented towards a community of life, if the state works towards this in alliance with a strong civil society. In recent years, the term “people-centred economy” has been used repeatedly in political statements  – from the United Nations to various other international forums to the EU – to describe an economy based on common goods that serves both the needs of people and the livelihood of the earth. Instead of being merely oriented towards monetary profits and unlimited growth, a sustainable and just society, David Korten has argued, should focus on “people-centered development” (Korten 1990, p. 67 ff.), with a “living economy for a living earth” (Korten 2015) and culminating in the economy of a global living community, an “earth community” (Korten 2007). Korten bases his conception on the ecology of living systems and, as in original economies, on the prerogative of the household. Opposite to care, here, as before at the individual level, the question is raised once again at the global level as to what economy means at all and as a whole – across the elements of what is happening – and how it can be understood. In the

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midst of the seemingly boundless stream of economic transactions, there is no longer the foothold to which Zedler’s understanding of the economy in the eighteenth century could be linked. The means, the actors and their interactions are too many to be definitively grasped in a fixed order. The process seems to be out of control. Let us approach this problematic issue once again in a step-by-step manner, grounded in the history of theory: In human life, care turns into economy when individual acts do not directly and immediately remedy a concern, but when the use of resources must be deliberate and organized according to plan. The fulfilment of purpose occurs only in a sequence of actions. Economy is necessary in precaution. Max Weber defined an economically oriented procedure in his time by saying that it is “oriented in its intended sense to the care for a desire for useful services” (Weber 1980, p. 31). For this desire, Weber notes, “care (no matter how primitive and traditionally lived-in) seeks to secure satisfaction”. Doing economy, he explains, is the name given to the “power of disposal” directed towards it. Later neoclassical microeconomics does not stop at such observations, but begins with (rational) decisions about the use of goods. Weber does not want to see “any ‘economic theory’ driven” by his discussions. Such a one would immediately insert the feature of purposes and costs to be weighed (Weber 1980, p. 33). Related to this, continuous economic activity, especially when it takes place in an operationally ordered manner, brings about the “economy”. It is to be thought in a processual way. The economic process as it takes place on markets, called “the economy”, does not necessarily include doing economy in the sense of need-appropriate and expedient decisions, as people make them in caring for themselves and others. People manage by deciding on their means and opportunities in the time and space of their lives. With their dispositions they can also “go to market” in order to enter into exchange and acquisition relationships with other people and their means and possibilities. If the production of goods based on the division of labour is added, as has occurred historically, economic activity becomes independent. Doing economy as a individual way of participating in this process, however, remains at the disposal of the individual agents: it takes place • before entering a market economy with the justified decision to enter it consuming, producing or entrepreneurial, • during the business in it and • after the event in the assessment of the extent to which it is worthwhile and should be continued in their own participation.

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Doing economy in household, personal and community life is thus distinct from the independent processes of “the economy” and the enterprises within them. The term “economic” is henceforth to be used in the double meaning of non-­ market maintenance-related action and market appearance in business. The going to the resources and their care is contrasted with the disposition in their profit-­ oriented use. Karl Polanyi has written on the one sense of the term: “In its factual-material meaning the word ‘economic’ is derived from the dependence in which we human beings stand in relation to our subsistence on nature and fellow-­ man. The reference here is to the mutual influences between man on the one hand and his natural and social environment on the other, in so far as these influences are connected with his material satisfaction of needs.” (Polanyi 1979, p. 209 f.)

Action is taken according to necessity; a choice among goods does not characterize economic activity in its objective sense. In the other sense of the word, rational decision-making is meant: “In its formal logical meaning, ‘economic’ derives from the character of the end-­ means relationship, as in ‘economy’ in the sense of frugality. The basic situation is that of a choice between different uses of means, if the necessity of the choice is given by the fact that the means are not sufficient.” (Polanyi 1979, p. 210)

Rational decisions satisfy their own logic in the pros and cons of transactions within a process that is not itself calculated. In contrast, a householding management constantly takes into account a stock and its development. The flows of economic activity in the market have long passed over this difference and with them the mainstream of scientific economics. No less so is social thinking and action that focuses exclusively or predominantly on the fair allocation of resources and assistance for needy groups of people. Added to this, even only marginally, are alternative projects for an ecologically compatible and needs-based shaping of social and economic processes. However, if they are not linked, i.e. if they do not take each other into account, the social provision of people here and the preservation of the natural basis of life there will not succeed as a whole. Ecologically, every action and the entire economic process is moved into the inner space of life contexts. They form the smaller circles of individual existence, the larger ones of a community and, beyond that, of the state, and they all include the global framework of conditions of our existence. In all this we have to cope socially and economically. This is done by building and maintaining an infrastructure that is supposed to function economically and socially. Even if private

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c­ ompanies operate them, they fulfil public obligations. With them, the infrastructural requirements can be met in an ecologically multi-sided way. Broadly speaking, world conditions make demands on our behaviour, while this behaviour in turn contributes to global conditions with positive or negative consequences. Trivial as this statement may seem, it places economic activity in all sorts of markets in an intermediary sphere. The economic agents whose behaviour matters make decisions before they enter the market. The personal decision to act in a market is one of them. Entrepreneurs are economic agents who have decided to do something in a market. The market mechanism to which they expose themselves in doing so is not the economy; it or economic activity is left to it only insofar as and as long as it proves effective and expedient. If the businesses remain unleashed in the market, the playing field of trade, without regulation, they will have the social and ecological consequences that can be observed everywhere: In the market economy, rational action is more or less inconsiderate or considerate between global realities (of biodiversity, climate change, etc.) and individual participatory decisions (in productive and consumptive resource use). As long as its intermediary character, the free space it offers, is not erased by a planned economy dictatorship, there is no substitute for the market in economic transactions and their dynamics. The market, however, does not alone constitute the sphere of action of doing economy. This space contains, with or without a market appearance, the spheres of action of economic individuals with the (unpaid) work they do for themselves and for each other, the economic activity of companies or of the markets on which they appear, and the economic activity of public institutions at municipal, state and global level. At the same time, these are fields of political action in which binding decisions are made by and for the actors. They and economic action are carried out in a space of competence, which the actors claim for themselves or should exercise competently. Competence has different connotations – in the life circle of a person or an association of persons, in the appearance of a company, in an industry to which many companies belong, in the area of responsibility of a local authority or in the regime of state and international economic policy with a competence that is distinct from other policy areas and overlaps with them. In the extension of the sphere of action, the competences of the actors influence each other. Classical economics is not concerned with the internals of the circles in which life is conducted individually and collectively. Since Adam Smith, it has placed the market in the focus of observation of economic activity. In the open space of the market, the price mechanism rules in the balance of supply and demand. The object of economics is therefore the interaction on markets and the efficient production of goods for them – with the result of ever greater quantities of goods. Neoclassicism

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added methodological individualism as a basic assumption, according to which individuals acting in markets are guided by their self-interest. Homo economicus, as constructed, rationally seeks to maximize his utility. What actually benefits in individual lives is irrelevant; market participation feeds the process and increases its output. Now, the environmental crises have long made it clear that market activity, with its drive for growth, is damaging nature and all our lives. In order to mitigate the damage that is being done, some market regulation is taking place. Further, however, in two hundred years of tradition, “economy” is understood to mean the free generation of goods for profit, with all that is done in markets to ensure that goods are sold and make way for new goods. The market actors and the science relevant to them are at liberty to describe this fact as the economic one par excellence and to contrast it with social concerns and ecological conditions. This does not, however, prevent theory from attempting, from a different angle, to return economic activity to the responsibility of caring for the preservation and goodness of life in ecological and social terms. Meanwhile, the market continues to dominate “the economy” and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. One conclusion is: the ecologically demanded change will not be brought about by alternatives offered outside the market-based capitalist economy. At best, they occupy niches in the economic system, if they successfully establish themselves within it or following it. For decades, alternative practical projects and corresponding theoretical approaches have been appearing, without a transformation of “business as usual” in the system and operation of the economy as a whole having taken place with them. But when, as in the Covid pandemic, concern and the caring it demands permeate it, every company must ask itself whether and how it contributes to the generally necessary errand. Only in the whole structure of economic relations can a government, in the sense of its “hosting”, advance a real transformation that promises sustainability economically, socially and ecologically at the same time. Individual measures of governance in economic activity justify themselves in the context of a strategy for its transformation. The transformation is an ecological one if it corresponds to the household of common life. Economic policy as a whole can be oriented towards this. Conventional economics expects economic policy primarily to promote the momentum of events (in the market) towards more growth, stability, flexibility and structural adjustment (among other things to the requirements of environmental protection). All this is intended to serve economic welfare, which is by no means identical with social (even ecological) welfare – but can become so. Social movements strive for a different economy and practice it –

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exemplarily in slow design, slow food and slow fashion. Slowly it is penetrating the business world. For social welfare, the main focus is on the well-being of individuals and communities of individuals. At the level of individual participation, doing economy beginns when decisions are taken in the immediacy of individual and common existence to provide for it. If the decisions are made with the inclusion and consideration of the closer and further conditions of existence, the economy, with which the needs of one’s own and common subsistence are met, is aligned with ecology, which, according to its approach, meets the needs of life in its contexts – from subsistence in individual existence to the subsistence of life in global existence.

3.3 Economy in Reflection of Caring The social and disciplinary thinking about economy is in motion and follows the change in which the gainful economy is on its way under the conditions of globalization, climate change and further crises in the environment, digitalization and scientific-technological development in general. Parallel to the transformation processes in the economic sphere, transformation processes are also occurring in the spheres of personal and social concern – in family life, in lifelong learning, in education and healthcare, and in the regimes of human services. Women who are simultaneously fully employed or entrepreneurial and have young children to care for practice an interweaving of caring and economic activity on a daily basis. The intersections of domestic management and business management are also increasing in the employment system itself, such as in the shift from gainful employment to the home office, or in the use of digital platforms not only in activities of self-­ care and everyday living. The ecological theme has an impact on their discourse and that of the business economy alike, and lends a perspective to caring and business management that encompasses them. Re-thinking the economy has become a multifaceted endeavour. The alternative movement has been doing this for a long time, but its projects remained “in the shadows” of the profit economy. The extent of the “shadow economy” that existed even without those projects was known, but hardly interested in the academic discourse. After the establishment of many forms of a different economy, not only in the alternative scene, it had to be astonishing, wrote Klaus Gretschmann in 1983, “that the sphere of self-employment, the home economy, the cooperative group economy and the alternative projects or moonlighting and neighbourly help have

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so far remained a largely black spot for the economic discipline” (Gretschmann 1983, p. 5). In economics studies, there are now the Real World Economics working groups with their platforms (Fullbrock 2007; Petersen et al. 2019) and, independently, a plurality of approaches, diverse according to their anti-capitalist positions, indigenous modes of economic activity, alternative designs, feminist care perspectives, environmental science and economic ethics contributions (cf. Gibson-Graham and Dombrowski 2020). A “plural economy” in this juxtaposition of approaches discusses the “alternative economic spaces” (Leyshon et al. 2003; cf. Zademach and Hillebrand 2013) – of the social economy, of financing, of fair trade, of local development, of housing, of employment, of participation and of life design – that already exist in many places and networks. In recent decades, feminist economists in particular have claimed to bring the economy back from the capitalist machinery of commodity and money transactions (Gibson-Graham 2006) into a common life practice. This action takes place in the relationships we have to each other and to the nature and world around us, and according to the choices we make economically when we look equally to individual and common need on the one hand and to resources on the other. By balancing the two, people individually and collectively can be the hosts of economic activity. The call to “take back the economy” is the title of a book that states in its first sentence that it is based on the following premise: “our economy is the outcome of the decisions we make and the actions we take. We might be told that there’s an underlying logic, even a set of natural principles, that direct how economies operate, but most of us can see that the decisions and actions of governments and corporations have a lot to do with how economies shape up. Encouraged by the idea that we can build the economies we live in, individuals and communities across the globe are taking economic matters into their own hands to help create worlds that are socially and environmentally just. Take Back the Economy is inspired by these efforts.” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013, p. XIII)

From the space of life on earth, we look to the urban and rural settlements in which the “human-made support systems we call societies and economies” are organized for social sustenance from nature’s endowment of resources. Economy, as it is metaphorically called, occurs locally in community as well as globally in the “garden” that nature offers and that is necessary to cultivate and maintain. Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson, through their Community Economies Collective and The Community Economies Research Network, base ethical decisions about how we want to live on an economy that meets the needs of people and the living environment:

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3  The Beginning Is Socially and Economically the Provision of Subsistence “For us, taking back the economy through ethical action means • • • • •

surviving together well and equitably; distributing surplus to enrich social and environmental health; encountering others in ways that support their well-being as well as ours; consuming sustainably; caring for – maintaining, replenishing, and growing – our natural and cultural commons; and • investing our wealth in future generations so that they can live well.” (Gibson-­ Graham et al. 2013, p. XVIII)

The authors call the economy that can come about on this basis of decision-­making a “community economy  – a space of decision making where we recognize and negotiate our interdependence with other humans, other species, and our environment. In the process of recognizing and negotiating, we become a community” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013, p. XIX). It is expected that each individual person aligns his or her actions in the economy with this process of “communing” (see Sect. 9.2), that is, that he or she does not submit as a willing consumer to the machinery of the commercial exchange of money and goods. The desire to “reframing the economy” requires “reframing ourselves” (Gibson-Graham et al. 2013, p. 1 ff.) by reflecting on our actions and thus on the economy in our households, our region and nation. Unlike in the real capitalist economic world, an understanding of community with an awareness of the interdependence of all life does not separate economics from ecology. In its discourse, the Community Economies Collective transforms economic action into ecological action for common livelihood (Gibson-Graham and Miller 2015; Miller and Gibson-Graham 2019). At the same time, and also with a feminist orientation, in Germany Adelheid Biesecker and her comrades in arms have advocated for a socio-ecologically based “reinvention of the economic” (Biesecker and Hofmeister 2006). To this end, the “Netzwerk Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften” has existed since 1994 (Busch-Lüty et  al. 1994; Biesecker et  al. 2000; Netzwerk 2013). In such connections of protagonists, care becomes a dispositive of change, which is to be considered in social action in general. Where does the previous economy, the accustomed lifestyle, the distribution of work and the division of goods that can be disposed of lead, and where should they lead in this time and in the future? These are the questions of those who care, who find themselves compelled and obliged to orient the economy in society, and thus their own and common doing economy, towards life and its ecological requirements.

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References Baumgartner, Ruedi, und Ruedi Högger (eds.). 2004. In Search for Sustainable Livinghood Systems. Managing Resources and Change. New Delhi: Sage. Biesecker, Adelheid, Maite Matthes, Susanne Schön, und Babette Scurrell (Hrsg.). 2000. Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften. Auf dem Weg zu einer Ökonomie des guten Lebens. Bielefeld: Kleine-Verlag. Biesecker, Adelheid, und Sabine Hofmeister. 2006. Die Neuerfindung des Ökonomischen. Ein (re)produktionstheoretischer Beitrag zur Sozial-ökologischen Forschung. Ergebnisse Sozial-ökologischer Forschung Band 2. München: oekom. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2021. Habitat und Habitus. Visuelle Formen soziologischer Erkenntnis. Hrsg. Franz Schultheis und Stephan Egger. Bielefeld: transcript. Bowlby, Sophie, und Lind McKie. 2019. Care and caring. An ecological framework. Area, 51 (3), S. 532–539. Busch-Lüty, Christiane, Maren Jochimsen, Ulrike Knobloch und Irmi Seidl (Hrsg.). 1994. Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften. Frauen auf dem Weg zu einer Ökonomie der Nachhaltigkeit. Politische Ökologie, Sonderheft 6. München: Ökom Chambers, Robert, und Gordon R. Conway. 1992. Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical Concepts for the 21st Century. Institute of Development Studies Discussion Paper 296, 1992. University of Sussex: Brighton. Fullbrock, Edward (ed.). 2007. Real World Economics. A Post-Autistic Economics Reader. New York: Anthem Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J.K., Jenny Cameron, und Stephen Healy. 2013. Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Gibson-Graham, J.K., und Ethan Miller. 2015. Ecology as Ecological Livelihood. In Manifesto for the Living in the Anthropocene, Gibson, Katherine, Deborah Bird Rose, and Ruth Fincher (eds.), S. 7–16. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books. Gibson-Graham, J.K., und Kelly Dombrowski (eds.). 2020. The Handbook of Diverse Economies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Goffman, Erving. 1973. Asyle. Über die soziale Situation psychiatrischer Patienten und anderer Insassen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Gretschmann, Klaus. 1983. Wirtschaft im Schatten von Markt und Staat. Grenzen und Möglichkeiten einer Alternativökonomie. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Huambachano, Mariaelena. 2018. Enacting food sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand and Peru: revitalizing Indigenous knowledge, food practices and ecological philosophies. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 42 (9). S. 1003–1028. Ivanova, Dara, Iris Wallenburg, und Roland Bal. 2016. Care in place. A case study of assembling a carescape. Sociology of Health & Illness, 38 (8). S. 1336–1349. Korten, David C. 1990. Getting to the 21st Century. Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda. W. Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Korten, David C. 2007. The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Korten, David C. 2015. Change the Story, Change the Future. A lining economy for a living earth. A report to the Club of Rome. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Leyshon, Andrew, Roger Lee, and Colin C.  Williams (eds.). 2003. Alternative Economic Spaces. London: Sage Publ. Miller, Ethan, und J. K. Gibson-Graham. 2019. Thinking with interdependence. From economy/environment to ecological livelihoods. In: Thinking in the World. A Reader, Jill Bennett und Mary Zournazi (eds.), S. 313–340. London: Bloomsbury Press. Morris, Carolyn, und Stephen Fitzherbert. 2017. Rethinking ‘alternative’: Māori and food sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand. In Postcolonialism, Indigeneity and Struggles for Food Sovereignty. Allternative food networks in subaltern spaces, Marisa Wilson (ed.). S. 15–33. Abington: Routledge. Netzwerk Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften (Hrsg.). 2013. Wege Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften. Marburg: Metropolis. Petersen, David J., Daniel Willers, Esther M. Schmitt, et al. (eds.). 2019. Perspektiven einer pluralen Ökonomik. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Polanyi, Karl. 1977. The Livelihood of Man. Edited by Harry W.  Pearson. New  York: Academic. Polanyi, Karl. 1979. Ökonomie und Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Prince, Russell, Carolyn Morris, Matthew Henry, Aisling Gallagher, und Stephen Fitzherbert (eds.). 2021. Markets in Their Place. Context, Culture, Finance. Abingdon: Routledge. Salvini, Francesco. 2017. Instituierung und Invasion. Eine Ökologie der Sorge in Triest. In Ökologien der Sorge. Tobias Bärtsch, Daniel Drognitz, Sarah Eschenmoser, et al. (Hrsg.), S. 97–111. Wien: transversal texts, eipcp – European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies. Scoones, Ian. 2009. Livelihoods perspectives and rural development. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36 (1). S. 171–196. Suzman, James. 2021. Work. A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. New York: Penguin Press. Weber, Max. 1980. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. 5. Aufl., Tübingen: Mohr. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2015. Soziale Versorgung bewirtschaften. Studien zur Sozialwirtschaft. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Zademach, Hans-Martin, und Sebastian Hillebrand. (eds.). 2013. Alternative Economies and Spaces. New Perspectives for a Sustainable Economy. Bielefeld: transcript. Zedler, Johann Heinrich. 1731–1754. Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, welche bishero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden und verbessert worden. Halle und Leipzig: Zedler.

4

Economy “Started at Home”, Politically and Globally Considered

Abstract

From antiquity until more recent times, the economy was constituted by domestic concern. It was presided over by an oikonomos as host and manager. In modern times, the unity of household and economy dissolved. Care has no place in markets. Business interests are the determining factors. Economic activity, however, is framed by households – personal households, community households, public households. It is for them that doing economy takes place. All households are included in the global household, although this has long gone unnoticed. For considerate householding, hosts are in demand, and with them, care in all economic activity comes back into play.

In order to tie an economic theory to a conception of care and caring, a recourse to the initial situation of human coexistence may be helpful. In its predisposition, it can be assumed, concern and care for the maintenance of existence entails doing economy. We find initial economic activity in domestic community. It took place in “life care” for them. This “Lebensfürsorge” is how the German-Russian economist Peter Struve characterized primary economy and categorically separated this doing economy as an activity from the economy (Struve 1934, p. 499 ff.). In “life care” it happened at first without “money measurement”, as in the independent economy

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_4

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afterwards. In modern times, it emancipated itself from the initial provisioning process and unfolded into the acquisition process, which in its apparent unity (the gross domestic product) has since been called the economy par excellence. Many economic actors are on the move in the business economy. They each do business for themselves and take part in the allocation process of the market in which they operate as entrepreneurs. The state captures the open space of market-­ based economic activity in macroeconomic terms: without it as a capturer, there is no overall economy, usually called a national economy. It exists within the boundaries of a state or a community of states  – and as a global economy within the boundaries set by the planet. The diversity of what is undertaken on it seems – before its ecological capture – detached from any bond or obligation. For the freed economic activity, understood for 250 years as economy par excellence, the care of human beings is considered only as an extra-economic background, against which the rational maximization of utility appears as the guiding principle of entrepreneurial action. In the history of mankind, economic activity was initially linked to caring, or caring activities were linked to doing economy. Among individuals or members of a group, decisions had to be made about the distribution of tasks in order to earn a living. In ancient Greece, an oikonomos was someone who knew what needed to be done in the house and yard and who knew how to do it. The oikonomos is the one who takes care; he keeps house with the means of life and knows how to do this in the domestic as well as in a larger political circle. He manages a household as an economic unit. Even today, in German-speaking countries, one can go to a Wirtschaft as a tavern and be entertained there, provided the host has procured food and prepared meals with it. Lodging may be added to this caring services. In the original agricultural coexistence – in a coresident domestic group – doing economy can be seen as the rational way of caring. The daily concern, as discussed above, is first and foremost subsistence. The sensitivities of the household members are included in this concern. It cannot be supposed that a single man, existing for himself alone, begins from himself to conceive of his action as an economy. In seeking to meet his needs, he has recourse to the means that serve them, and he has only to consider and try how he can obtain them and make good use of them. He has nothing more or further to care about. He has his food, seeks it, and finds it. Productive action, by which in many intermediate steps the useful is first created and assigned to its purposes, is unnecessary. With it also the care devoted to this process and its cultivation. Man on his own (if we assume heuristically that he ever existed) does not have to bear responsibility. Animals, too, are not assumed to do economy, if they find their food

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with skill, make some effort to do so, and also know how to build up a stockpile in order to survive times of scarcity. The shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe on his island is doing economy only insofar as he has goods left, which are to be used carefully for their own maintenance, and he finds opportunities for agriculture and animal husbandry. He brings with him knowledge of how to grow grain and what can be had from goats. Robinson also knows how to be entrepreneurial. But he has no market for business, supplies himself alone, and theoretically, in order to remain within the framework of neoclassical theory, you have to keep that apart what coincides in Robinson, namely being both a producer and a consumer, as has been analysed economically (Barro and Grilli 1996, p. 49 ff.; Helbich 2020, p. 35 ff.). Robinson’s economy serves the capacity to persevere on its own. Until Friday appears and therefore has to be redisposed. The acquisition of means for the satisfaction of needs does not require an economy as long as the decision about the use of means is not put back into the context of the conduct of life in which different tasks are to be fulfilled side by side and one after the other for different purposes and goals, and therefore dispositions are to be made about the use and distribution of means. Robinson has to make dispositions; he is torn from a familiar life and wants to return to it. Let us assume a man who is isolated from the beginning and on his own: he will also dispose of food, but he is not responsible for this to anyone or anywhere. He does not manage a household for himself without reference to other households. He does not need to set a price or pay one; he does not need to draw boundaries or be accountable. If we take doing economy as a paradigm for the care of and for people, it has its basis in the life situation to be managed jointly and by each individual. In this situation, ecologically broadly enough in the real circumstances in which people move and have to do with each other, possibilities of subsistence are offered and means are available or can be developed to realize this subsistence. Man depends on the natural environment and his fellow men for this purpose. “He survives by virtue of an institutionalized interaction between himself and his natural surroundings. That process is the economy, which supplies him with the means of satisfying his material wants” (Polanyi 1977, p. 20). In the process of gaining a livelihood, caring in the given situation leads to decisions about needs and to dispositions with regard to means and possibilities. With these dispositions, people become economic actors. They act in relation to the natural and social environment and maintain this relationship economically. They act according to their own assets and with other assets (tangible and intangible) to which they have access. Prudent in the sphere of their competence, they are host or hostess in the maintenance of a real life context, be it a house or a domestic community, be it a municipality or larger local authority, a business or event.

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Economy is that which a host is skilled in practicing and knows how to do in relation to goods. He or she manages the affairs of his or her  own and the ­community’s lives and all the goods that meet their needs in a caring manner. People are doing economy within the framework of a household, that is, within the material limits within which resources can and must be disposed of. The formulation is prescriptive. It attributes to the agents in their errands the characteristic of being responsible for the dispositions according to which they act and which they bring about. Brushed against the grain of standard economics, let it be noted: Business as such and the market mechanism do not constitute an economy in the understanding described. The movement of goods, including the movement of money, could be completely automated, but an economy comes about with the decisions as to which goods are to be preserved, how they are to be developed and how they are to be used (alternatively). The formula that economy – in the sense to be advocated here – consists in a set of dispositions of responsibly acting persons over goods is ecologically founded: Every actor participates in the life around him and cannot escape it throughout his life. Participation takes place in the prozess of use in one way or another as well as in a conservation or care in another way. Participation makes those who act into hosts of what happens. This is a claim that is open to discussion in its ecological or ecosocial interpretation. Certainly, the choice of words does not already bring out what it refers to. Even without business in the market economy, it places the carers in the position of responsibility for resources, their own provision for existence and significant participation in and in the common household of existence. Livelihood is economic in itself even in modern times. This is obvious with a farmer or a craftsman. They are economically hosts in their farm or house and what they create in their business can be seen. In the case of other people, doing economy detached from subsistence does not seem to exist at all, because it is not directly observable in its economic nature. Empirically, the caring and economic activity of a homeless person who collects bottles is certainly different from the caring and economic activity of a person who buys and sells stocks. But they both care for their livelihood and they are hosts in the sense described, that they create self-preservation and master their existence in one way or another. The observed actions, moreover, hardly allow any conclusions to be drawn about the physical, mental and social condition and situation of the actors. How they manage their households over time, alone or in a community of need, and whether they are “hosted and served” in a community elsewhere, remains open. Once, with the preservation of the property of persons and things and the administration of the concerns of oikos as “house and yard”, the ancient Greek concept of oikonomia was given. Knowing it, it can be stated in the oikonomike techne

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how right housekeeping directs, allocates and assigns (nemein) what is necessary to do in the internum of the (domestic) circle of life (Singer 1958, p. 29 ff.; cf. Leshem 2013, 2014, p. 201; Tribe 2015, p. 21 ff.). In modern terminology formulated in economic wording: Those allocation and distribution decisions on goods that are needed in the household of common life are made in an association of persons or individually. In ancient reflection, caution is urged. The oikonomia includes provision for existence, Daseinsvorsorge. For household management, Aristotle finds, it “must procure to be forthcoming a supply of those goods, capable of accumulation, which are necessary for life and useful for the community of city or household. And it is of these goods that riches in the true sense at all events seem to consist.” (Arist. Pol. 1256 b 27–30). On the other hand, a “profit-seeking art of acquisition” (chrematistiké) that does not serve the necessary needs of life is unnatural. Insofar as it is necessary for the equipment of life, chrematistiké is regarded as an economy of supply (“art of supply,” Leshem 2014, p. 203), while “all men engaged in wealth-­ getting try to increase their money to an unlimited amount” (Arist. Pol. 1257 b 34). Referring to the nature of common life, Aristotle is basically arguing ecologically; he had in mind the agrarian conditions in which the means of living were mainly obtained in his time. In general, the life situation of people is ecologically determined by the fact that they have their place (their habitat) in a field of life and are not alone in their existence. With location, responsibility is given. People share and use a habitat. Since early times they have settled “domestically” in it and have formed structures of their coexistence in it. A coresident domestic group (Laslett 1972; Hammel and Laslett 1974) forms an economic unit for its own maintenance. It disposes of property – and that means: of assets with which something can be done. It consists, on the one hand, of material assets of immobile and mobile goods and, on the other hand, of human assets of physical and mental powers, knowledge and skills. Both types of assets are needed for each other and need to be cultivated. In the modern economy, too, its productivity depends on the equipment that people bring in and which is available as material and monetary assets and can be used in production. In Greek antiquity, the fundamental economic unit was conceived as the oikos. The form of the oikos unites a living space and a living community, the primary endowment with property and culture, with means and possibilities, the sphere of action and experience of one’s own world and the world around one. Their ecology shapes the economic unit. The oikonomia in it does not occur in isolation; it inserts itself into the larger orders of the community, all the way to a cosmic order, as postulated by ancient philosophers and then by early Christian theology (Reumann

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1957, 2014). However, the ancient oikos was characterized by relations of domination. Freedom could only exist – as in Athenian democracy – outside the oikos. The conditions of subsistence limit freedom. Regardless of the requirements of subsistence, adventurers, merchants, and privateers in modern times took liberty to do as they pleased. They were not hosts in the sense of good stewards. The state had to be used against their arbitrariness. Economically, not least for its own maintenance, the state allowed the freedoms of the market and the industry that supplied it. In the end, with regard to the goods of life, a new housekeeping is called for. In broad caring participation: The oikonomoi can also be hosts of an ecosystem. If economy is included or requested in it, the traditional oikonomia returns in it “out of house” in a new way – within the household of a local or the global ecosphere. Every actor has competence in it – and thus ethical and economic obligations are given. To say economy is what a host is skilled and competent to create is a fairly direct translation of oikonomia. Economy is the totality of what is done in goods related dispositions. It is done in a caring way in the context of a household. Vividly in the closeness of a person or family. In a domestic space a host is “on the spot” and what is managed by him or her fills a household within its boundaries. The oikonomikē technē shapes the communal household and brings together the practices necessary for it. Beyond our own everyday lives, we are less aware of the municipal and state householding framework or the overall economic setting, and certainly not of the global household of life, for which no authority has so far taken binding responsibility, even if many international actors have invoked it. Participation in it and sustainable control of economic activity within it represent a specific and differentiated task, depending on the level of activity. What is to be achieved in a territorial community is, from a normative point of view, the task of doing economy of a territorial authority. At the municipal level, there is an oikonomia in the sense described. Decision-maker is the citizenry in its representation. The representative body is also called citizenship here and there. The municipality does its “homework” in planning, equipping and maintaining infrastructures. It has its administration to take care of its affairs and those of the population. The political municipality provides basic services (see Chap. 7) for the inhabitants and uses partly municipal enterprises and partly other economic units for this purpose. The frame of reference of doing economy of a territorial community does not differ in this respect from that of a small household community. Market activity is left out of the equation, even though there is competition between cities and districts, and they have to attract companies, cultural institutions and events, skilled workers, tourists and immigrants in their concern for their own future.

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4.1 The Exodus of the Economy Out of the Domestic Space The context of life beforehand of “house and yard” in the oikos constitutes a context of action with the social relations of the people in it. Whether it is a farm or a craft enterprise, it has a spatial extension in which the objects of action have their place and their assignment, and it has a temporal extension of what is to be done now or later, is to be considered and coordinated in its sequence, and is afflicted with more or less uncertainty. One works and lives together. A spatial and temporal unity of caring determines the unity of economic activity, i.e. the household. In its concrete form it is governed by norms, rules and customs, according to which it seems appropriate to live and to care for. In the household there is order, and it is in the household that the way of life is controlled and accounted for. The form of togetherness is not fixed for the (multi-person) household; it only demands a form. What interests people, that is, what is significant for them in their existence, and what they then also care about, extends beyond the immediacy of an oikos. It was already not closed in ancient times and its sphere of action expands with the interests and external references of people. What they address as their space of belonging expands. They say they are “at home” in their place of residence, in their city or in a region. This can also include a place of work; historically, a craftsman’s workshop was indeed also the home of an apprentice or journeyman until more recent times. Although this social embedding of work and business in the unity of dwelling and workshop no longer exists or only exists in a residual form in our times, commercial enterprises today do a great deal for the working atmosphere, the working climate and the culture of togetherness in their companies. The sense of belonging contributes to the motivation to “participate” in a company and to act to a certain extent as hosts in the space and field of their professional activity. The care of the employees is an important factor of the productivity of the company. The removal of the business from the home in the course of industrialization transformed gender relations. While entrepreneurial activity henceforth took place “out in the world” and its rationality was connoted as male, the ethos and emotionality of caring for domestic life was separated from it, connoted as female. In the role of breadwinner of the family, the man left the caretaking of the household to the woman, now dependent on his income. Not all women accepted the retreat into the private sphere that was imposed on them, especially women from the middle classes. They soon formed associations not only for charitable purposes. They responded to the devaluation of their caring activities within the private household

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with plans for a new expansion of household practice and caring into the community. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, as Dolores Hayden describes in “The Grand Domestic Revolution” (Hayden 1982), American women have transferred their competence in the domestic space to the larger space of the communal and social sphere. Social work in the Settlement Movement was shaped by this, and “municipal housekeeping” could be derived from “family housekeeping” by women. Referred to as “community housekeeping” or “public housekeeping”, it was the social and economic task of Jane Addams and her fellow women to improve the living conditions in the urban space for its inhabitants (Addams 1913). Addams’ Hull House offered a counter-image to the retreat of female caring into the private home; it was the center of caring work in the surrounding community in Chicago. It was to be a new home for the many immigrants there. In ecosocial terms, the hostesses of Hull House were committed to hostly conditions in the urban environment of the settlement (Wendt 2017, p. 66). Meanwhile, women’s “domestic science” in the United States had spawned the distinct field of home economics (Wendt 1986; Stage and Vincenti 1997; Dreilinger 2021). It was intended to valorize female management in the family household. It did not emphasize the economic weight of care work in it or contrast it with male business activity. Home economics remained merely alongside it as a badge of female expertise. Feminist economics did not connect to this kind of household science. As a result, orthodox economics appropriated this discipline and allowed it to be considered only as “family and consumer sciences” (Goldstein 2012). The lasting impact of women in the field of social work around 1900 was framed by efforts in the United States to tame rampant monopoly capitalism. It exploited human and natural resources for the sake of profit, wrote Henry D.  Lloyd in “Wealth against Commonwealth” (Lloyd 1894). The power of the trusts also corrupted public institutions. The large corporations were to be subjected to democratic control and municipalities began to realize economic independence from them with their own utilities. It was the time of municipal socialism in England and the USA with approaches of public services of general interest in municipal budgets. Infrastructures were built in the cities for the maintenance of the population, as they are taken for granted today from water supply to local public transport to refuse collection. The municipal household contains these services. It is not to be understood here as an arithmetical manifestation of municipal finances, but as the concrete context of action to be managed in its endowment with means and forces – in the area of a territorial authority as well as in the internal area of another economic unit. In it, task-related dispositions and provisions are made. What the

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women in early social work regarded as “housekeeping” in the urban space concerns the care and shaping of the communal sphere of life. In its execution, the household, in the sense meant here and described above, is equal to the economy as a circumscribed process. In contrast to it, the market is logically not an economy. But in it there are economic relationships in which economic agents move outside the home. In the market there is supply and demand, capital, credit and interest and the market mechanism of price, competition and the incentive to innovate. In these events, it is the energetic entrepreneur (and precisely the one seeking his profit) who is in demand and not an “Wirt schlechtweg”, as Joseph Schumpeter called the actor who serves a given need in a static economy (Schumpeter 1993, p. 122). Households do not have to remain without dynamics; according to the old pattern, however, what matters in the house and farm is that “plain” hostly action is taken. It did not remain with the old manner and can happen again in a new manner. Certainly, doing economy within the framework of a household has a certain limit and range within which there is a competence for decisions. The hosts of a household have domain-specific command over a space, but they do not do so alone. For in every space people live together and there are orders of the common in it (in nature and in society). They determine one’s own sphere of action in assignment to larger spheres. The jurisdiction of hosts overlaps in a hierarchy of households. Political bodies include individual economies and are themselves included in the common world, ultimately in the earth body with its biosphere. The relationship of households to each other is a dynamic one and causes concern to the actors in them. A local authority’s budget has implications for residents in ways of infrastructure and social planning, with advantages and disadvantages for them. In some places, they are invited to reach alternative dispositions in a participatory budget. It offers the opportunity to bring the caring commitment of residents directly to bear in the political shaping of existence that affects them. In the householding of the state, attention must be paid to the capacity and willingness of the population (its human capital), with whose taxes and contributions the public budget is financed. The state and its members have, as is becoming increasingly clear, to meet the demands made on them by the crises in the environment with their caring and economic behaviour.

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4.2 Doing Economy Becomes Business and Goes to Market As is well known, the modern term of economy, and later also the term of ecology in the life sciences, is derived from the terminology of the ancient oikonomia. The new interpretation of economics took place against the background of an expansive freedom of action, which the structures of previously ordered coexistence in the political sphere could not withstand. In thinking, one sought to reconstruct them; new frameworks were set for the sprawling processes. If we look back at this thinking, it becomes clear that it was concerned with domesticating economic activity, not with its entrepreneurial and market independence. Discursively, there was a transfer of the notion of community in the household and of caring in it to a community held together in the polity and its government. Thus, in the field of economics, there was a shift from governing in the home to governing in the larger community. In modern times, business outside the home had become independent. This complicated and made more difficult the political control of processes. It was recognized that the art of government henceforth had to include mastery of the rules of business transactions, or at least supervision of them. In modern times, the economic process is dominated by commerce, buying and selling with the intention of making a profit. Without wishing to trace in detail the development of modern Western capitalism and business in it, their difference from householding may be pointed out. Commerce eludes from it and thus also from the concerns of those for whom householding takes place. The accumulation of capital in commercial enterprises (with beginnings, however, already in the monasteries), the expansion of industrial production and the practices of trade have contributed to this development. All these aspects are not part of a care-induced economy. The market, where supply meets demand, provides the ratio. Complementary to him, the economy in the oikos, which is related to an internal space of coexistence, becomes a modern model for what has to be considered internally in all the business on the territory of a state and is therefore elevated to the object of political economy. The state appears as a great steward. Thus in the Enlightenment about him in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in James Steuart and also still in Adam Smith. Rousseau wrote in 1755 at the beginning of his discourse on political economy: “The word Economy, or OEconomy, is derived from oikos, a house, and nomos, law, and meant originally only the wise and legitimate government of the house for the common good of the whole family. The meaning of the term was then extended to the government of that great family, the State. To distinguish these two senses of the

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word, the latter is called general or political economy, and the former domestic or particular economy.” (Rousseau 1977, p. 9)

In Rousseau’s conceptual extension of economy from the domestic system to the state system, it is irrelevant that the term oikonomia has its linguistic root in allocating (nemein) and does not connote legality of the action. Economy appears in Rousseau as a form of government. Economics is still regarded as right administration, as it was in ancient times, but the understanding of both, of governing and economics, is changing precisely at the time of Rousseau and with him. Michel Foucault has illuminated this change in his history of governmentality. He follows up Rousseau’s observation on the terms: “To govern a State, then, will be to apply economy, an economy on the scale of the state as a whole; that is to say, one will exercise, as regards the inhabitants, the riches, the conduct of all and each, a form of supervision and control no less attentive than that of the father of the family over the household and its goods.” (Foucault 2004, p. 144)

However, the process of governing as an economy on a large scale cannot keep the economy in the many businesses on a small scale: The economy of business emancipates itself from governing – and it must detach itself from them. Their freedoms require a regulating and, where necessary, guiding hand. Henceforth, as Foucault notes, the economy can become a field of intervention for government (Foucault 2004, p. 145). But we have not yet reached that point in the conceptual work. Analogous to Rousseau, Antonio Genovesi in Naples in his Lezioni di commercio o sia d’economia civile in 1765 distinguished private and bourgeois, political economy. In the German translation, “Grundsätze der bürgerlichen Oekonomie.” (Genovesi 1776, p. XIV) man appears here as there as oikonomos: Economics regards him as the head and lord of his family; it instructs him to govern it well and to provide it with wealth, riches, and honor. Politics, finally, regards him as the great father and prince of the people, and teaches him to govern them wisely, prudently, and affably. That part of it which contains the rules for making the subjugating nation populous, rich, powerful, wise, and mannerly, may be called civic economy.

For Genovesi, civil economy is about a wholesome arrangement of relations among people. The business they do in a market can be mutually beneficial in just give and take, instead of being uncivil in the mere pursuit of profit, contrary to good relations among people and destructive of their community. Genovesi’s civil economy

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has remained alive in Italian economics (Bruni and Zamagni 2004, 2013, 2017; Becchetti and Cermelli 2018). For Genovesi and his contemporaries, the state governs with a view to the economy of the people’s lives. A policy is promising that understands the economy, the state’s own in connection with that of the people. This is what the Scot James Steuart refers to paternalistically in his “Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy” (1767). The business of the state is to provide for the maintenance of the people. But the economic prudence of the statesman takes care of the prudence expected from the citizens (spirit of the people) and does not leave the steering to the “invisible hand” of the market (cf. Menudo 2020). For Steuart, economy generally means “the art of providing for all the wants of a family, with prudence and frugality” (Steuart 1770, p. 1). In the family and political households, care must be taken for the security of subsistence, for food, for all other needs, and for employment. The head of the family functioned in the economy as “lord” in charge of the direction of events and as “steward” in their wise execution. For Steuart, economic action in stewardship stands out from the economy of a government that does not take on too much, but leaves the governed to take care of their own affairs: “Oeconomy and government, even in a private family, present therefore two different ideas, and have also two different objects. What oeconomy is in a family, political oeconomy is in a state: with these essential differences, however, that in a state there are no servants, all are children: that a family may be formed when and how a man pleases, and he may there establish what plan of oeconomy he thinks fit; but states are formed, and the oeconomy of these depends upon a thousand circumstances. The statesman (this is a general term to signify the legislature and supreme power, according to the form of government) is neither master to establish what oeconomy he pleases, or, in the exercise of his sublime authority, to overturn at will the established laws of it, let him be the most despotic monarch upon earth. The great art therefore of political economy is, first to adapt the different operations of it to the spirit, manners, habits, and customs of the people; and afterwards to model these circumstances so, as to be able to introduce a set of new and more useful institutions.” (Steuart 1770, p. 2)

The state should not intervene in the affairs of men; its matter – and the matter of economics as a science – is the ordering of economic events as they take place. Adam Smith, like Steuart (without mentioning him), defined political economy in the fourth book of Wealth of Nations in 1776 as a “doctrine for the statesman and legislator” (Smith 1978, p. 347) and spoke of economics only in this context. It was there to enable people to obtain income and to secure their livelihood. Likewise, the state must have the means to perform this task.

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“Political œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. The different progress of opulence in different ages and nations has given occasion to two different systems of political œconomy with regard to enriching the people. The one may be called the system of commerce, the other that of agriculture.” (Smith 1978, p. 347)

According to Adam Smith, productive economic activity is no longer inherent in the state system as a large household. The goods produced by the division of labour are traded in the market; it is the place of accumulation of the means which the busy individuals use for themselves and the state for its tasks. After the French Revolution had equated the state and society in the nation, “national economics” gradually had to deal with questions of provision, as the historical school of economics did in the nineteenth century, especially in Germany, with socio-political questions. As early as 1805, Ludwig Heinrich Jakob summarized his concept of a national economic theory in his “Principles of National Economy” in the following sentences “§ 1. The principal end which every one has in joining a civil society is: to lead the more secure, leisurely, and happy life. § 2. The means of a happier life, so far as they are within the power of men, lie partly in the powers of the individual members, partly in the public, united powers of the State. § 3. For a happy life depends first of all on having the proper means to satisfy the needs which one has … .” (Jacob 1805, p. 1)

The state is needed so that the aforementioned end can be achieved and the general good can be achieved through the use of means. It is remarkable that Jakob lets the national economy begin with the maintenance and security of the citizens, united in society. This is also how Franz Fischer proceeded in 1848 in a little-­known work (see Chap. 5). There it is noted: “Equal to economy of the people (Volkswirthschaft) is the household of the people (Volkshaushalt) and national economy. A people can make its household a matter of association, but insofar as this does not happen, the national household … is to be distinguished from the economy of the people” (Fischer 1848, p. 253). Jakob – with Adam Smith – founds prosperity in “industry”, i.e. the industriousness of the citizens. The object of economics now consists in that “by which human industry is set in motion”.

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4  Economy “Started at Home”, Politically and Globally Considered “It was not thought before Adam Smith to present the doctrine of the causes of civic welfare separately from the science of government (politics). Locke, Steward, Rousseau, the French Encyclopedists, and even the Physiocrates, under the title of Economie politique, political oeconomy, carry forward the science of government.” (Jakob 1805, p. 8)

However, there is a connection between state economy and the object of national economy in the activity of the citizens insofar as the state represents not only government, but also civil society as a nation (Jakob 1805, p. 10). The “caring state” (De Swaan 1993) then later took over into its administration from the spectrum of supply tasks sub-areas of education, health and social welfare, which differentiated themselves in the progress of science and industry. “Daseinsvorsorge” as the provision of services of general interest by the public authorities appeared to be necessary for the “provision of services on which the human being, relegated to modern mass forms of life, is vitally dependent” (Forsthoff 1938, p. 7). These include the secure, nationwide supply of energy, water and public transport, the disposal of sewage and waste, as well as the infrastructures of education, health and social services. The well-being of the individual cannot do without a public infrastructure. The welfare state has taken care of their maintenance and the expansion of social services “in cash” and “in kind” and has relied on a flourishing market economy to finance them.

4.3 Households in a Personal, Community and Global Context The economy’s move into the market and commerce in it opens up the significance of the household. It forms the framework in which the carers, be they individuals or the state community, operate. What is meant on the individual level of persons is their household. In real terms, one can move within it; it surrounds us physically, as it were, as a concrete version of domestic activity. Concurrently, people conduct their lives in the idea of a household of the time they have before them, a household of the forces they can employ and the means they can use. In this conception, as well as in reality, the household signifies a unity of economic activity. Time, forces and means can be used in the individual or communal household of life, and there is a real space for the maintenance and shaping of existence: the household in which life is lived.

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Households of cohabitation have always been found in all cultures (Netting et al. 1984). The real person household exists in ethnographically and historically different forms: “In general, a household is a collection of persons who work together to provide mutual care, including the provision of food, shelter, clothing, and health care as well as socialization. But though households everywhere may be defined as task-oriented social units, the precise pattern of task allocation is variable.” (Carter 1984, p. 52)

The household of persons productively and consumptively provides for the livelihood of its dependents, thus linking their concerns and their economies. If someone looks at the condition of his or a common household, he has reason to care and reason to manage. Directly and in a figurative sense, a household provides task structures and a statement of accounts. A household also exists in companies and enterprises of the profit economy: however, it is not the purpose and frame of reference of entrepreneurial action and the performance of the enterprise. It is only its back-up: the household contains the assets with which (budgeted) the business is maintained. In addition to the households of individuals, there are community households, institutional households, the households and budgets of local authorities, the state budget, supranational e.g. the budget of the European Union, and finally there is the global household of life on our planet. The maintenance and shaping of life appear in the household as a product of care. Economically, it generates utility. It does not consist in the private benefit that someone wants to have for himself. In the household, utility is to be related to him and all that belongs to him. It may be an increase in amenities, a health benefit, an increase in education, or a benefit to family life. Directed towards common and personal welfare, the household of persons and communities is the primary framework of action and the main gestalt of the economy (cf. Wendt 2011, p. 43 ff.). It includes from the outset dependencies of household members. If there are several of them, however, their unequal position is overmolded by the unity of the task of providing. At the individual level, in the household or with the household management, the conduct of life of its members is transformed into economic conduct. Everyday dispositions have to be made about the paths to be taken and the stakes involved. Resources are claimed as material and immaterial assets and their existence and development must be watched over. A personal or communal household has a material and an intangible endowment. Physically, it includes physical assets, the furnishings of the dwelling and the things with which everyday life is maintained,

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including financial resources. Psychologically, mentally and culturally, all the intangible assets and factors are meant, which give support and orientation to the conduct of life. They are used to manage the stresses of individual existence, to seek an inner balance personally and to strive socially for a balance of stresses in living together. A person’s householding concern is reflexive; it is directed towards not worrying unnecessarily, not getting bogged down, but rather using attention, strength and time in a concentrated way. Thus everything that has to be thought of in everyday life and in the course of things belongs to the household of a (preferably) successful existence of persons. On a supra-individual level, these factors of individual householding are not least important in productive economic activity, since the use of labour in the employment system and the flexibility of both gainful employment and social enterprises depend on them. Understood as dealing with scarce goods, economic activity in personal households, i.e. in a complex context requiring the diligence of the actors, means dealing carefully with the goods that are present in it or are included in it. Maximising the utility of a single good in production or consumption does not do justice to the task. Empirical evidence shows that economic behaviour differs from person to person and between groups of people according to the degree of availability of material goods. Often wealth tempts to carelessness in consumption; only it is usually not noticeable in prosperity, because money is more than enough available. The wealthy, however, are also most likely to maintain an ecologically sensitive lifestyle. Material poverty, on the other hand, compels people to be thrifty and, moreover, encourages them to manage their resources well – and if this is lacking, they can quickly become clients of the social services or debt counselling. An “uneconomical household management” is suspected if consumption exceeds the financial framework of individual lifestyle. People’s households today are not limited to one person’s home, to one family, or to partners in some other form of cohabitation. People also form a household when they pool their costs and benefits in a network of living and working. Households can generally be viewed as “long-term income-pooling arrangements” (Wallerstein and Smith 1992, p. 13). Pooling maintenance succeeds people even if they live and work remotely from each other, provided they care for and with each other. Millions of migrants form networks of support for dependents across state borders. Their financial transfers from rich countries to poor countries, which amount to billions of euros, contribute significantly to the gross national product in those countries. At the same time, many immigrant care and support workers in rich countries stabilise the households of people in need of care and their families, and relieve the burden on them economically.

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What happens in households and the household management of individuals and families have an impact on the overall economic household. In their concern for the environment, for the climate, for biodiversity and animal welfare, many people change the dispositions of their household management in the purchase of food, in the consumption of water, in the avoidance of waste. If fewer cars are driven, the car industry notices; the preference for “organic” food among the population affects industrialized agriculture. In care of persons for themselves and their professional development, they fill educational institutions and exercise facilities of all kinds. Family investment in the advancement of children pays dividends in the economy as a whole. In the opposite direction, the state encourages the appropriate behavior of citizens with investments in educational infrastructure, ecologically oriented agriculture, and public transportation. Even without having to deal with the complexity of the global balance of nature, more and more people are willing to shape their lifestyles in a way that conserves resources and the environment, and to behave accordingly as market participants. Insofar as concerns about global or even regional problems are constantly present in public and in the media, they are added to the concerns that people have and influence their lives. They affect, at the bottom, their psychosomatic disposition and, uppermost, the design of their further life with decisions and dispositions, for example, to their professional commitment or to a retreat in old age. Civil commitment takes place in coordination with publicly discussed or partially publicly traded requirements. Not every actor satisfies them all – and hardly anyone is always able to do so. One must be able to afford social commitment. It must be facilitated in a person’s household. In their narrower circumstances, personal households are in a position to close themselves off to the larger public household in a self-determined way with their own dispositions. One does not have to open oneself to public programs and projects, can “close the door” to them in one’s own household, so to speak. But in the lockdown at the time of the pandemic it turned out that under certain circumstances the public sector is on the outside. In ecological terms, individual and community households remain involved in the household of a state and in the global household of life on earth. A pandemic teaches how much the state, in the exercise of public responsibility, and each individual, in the exercise of private responsibility, have to dispose of economically in relation to one another. “The state also protects the natural foundations of life in responsibility for future generations,” states the German Basic Law in § 20a. In the climate crisis, this concerns the measures for the energy budget and the CO2 budget. The state drives the conversion to renewable energies, forces companies to make the appropriate adjustments and, nolens volens, the population finds itself involved. In the ecosocial framework, the small and large, private and public a­ ctors,

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as economic subjects and economic units, participate in processes of exchange and transformation for their own and common development and for overcoming problems. The production of goods is included. Globally, economic activity will suit the household of life on earth when it is managed in the form of a circular economy. It conserves resources through their repeated reprocessing, through long use, recycling and reuse of products, avoidance of waste. For this purpose, enterprises are interrelated in production: the output of one can become the input of the other. In the system of resource use, the circle of production and reproduction is closed. The circular economy has been on the agenda for some time with growing environmental awareness and more technological possibilities (Pearce and Turner 1989) and is the subject of industrial ecology (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989; Frosch 1992). There are legal provisions in Europe and Germany to promote circular economy. It is significant for the connection between care and economic activity that here the whole surrounding ecosystem, in which industry finds the natural resources, is recognized as a frame of reference for economic activity. The concern that is followed by a circular economy is precisely the concern that is pursued by environmental initiatives in society and spread among the population. It is both a customer and, with its consumption patterns, a participant in sustainable economic activity. On the other hand, the state, in its household responsibility for the common life on its territory, ensures that it fits into the ecological framework.

4.4 Doing Care and Doing Economy in the Interest In the field of action of caring and doing business, all actors have their interests. Being in between, being in the midst of something – and this is what inter-esse literally means – puts us in a relationship to something that, if evaluated positively, suggests or indicates a stake as a given. Something is at stake. It engages. It makes one consider how to proceed. With caring, doing economy results; with interest, businesses result. They are not the basis of doing economy. Its reason is care, and it is its execution. In it, however, a great deal of business takes place. An interest can stimulate, trigger, and advance them. An economic process already exists with the availability of goods when there is business to be done in it. Someone offers a good as a commodity when a demand exists or can be expected. The interest is the basis of the business relationship. Actors enter into it to realize an objective advantage, which they perceive subjectively. As is well known, in the “Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith anchored the individual incentive to do business in the self-interest of an actor:

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“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewe, or the baker that er expect our dinner, but from their refard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” (Smith 1978, p. 17)

Certainly, in one trade or another, individual concern for subsistence can be relieved with the proceeds of the business. There is also occupational satisfaction and personal self-affirmation. Moreover, there may be an intangible added value in a social betterment of the successful actor. As such, business interest is not ethical. People may engage in selfish and ruthless business, and the market (for ivory or tropical timber, for example) may invite it. The immediate interest in which business partners agree is not affected by the reprehensibility of the conduct. People often enter into criminal transactions in concern for their livelihood and for the support of their dependents. The purchasers of a prohibited good bear at least equal culpability for the transaction as the suppliers or intermediaries. Interests are represented by persons, and in a figurative sense also by organizations or by legal persons. Interest consists in what exists between a person and other persons, between them and things, states and living nature as the objects of interest. With interest there is a difference of value. I do not have something, but I strive for it. If I arrive at a singular object of my interest, it often loses itself. There remains nothing further to be cared about in the matter or concern. Care and doing economy are for that which is to be achieved, endure, or be preserved, but is not yet achieved. If it is much and seems to last, even inexhaustible, the interest also lasts. Provided a value consciousness nourishes it. With it in my mind and in my heart, I take a lively, even passionate interest in someone or something. What interests attracts. A person acts in an interest and can represent it with his stake. She is a stakeholder in something and has a claim on it. People are not always aware of their stake. They are often collectively stakeholders in economic undertakings (e.g. in the energy transition) and are affected by their impacts without attributing them to the undertakings. The individual interest that is perceived in a business is opposed by other interests that have to be taken into account in spheres of economics and politics. In the time of Adam Smith, the question of the relationship between private interest and public interest was discussed above all. A social association that is to form a state requires the agreement of particular interests in a common interest, Rousseau stated in the Contrat social. However, the expression of political interests and their representation in a democracy will not be pursued further here – in the discussion of the relationship of care to economy.

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The interest in business often appears in society and vis-à-vis political authorities bundled as the interest of “the economy” or of an economic sector. Group interests of producers or market players are asserted and represented. They want to influence the formation of opinion and will and decision-making processes in matters relating to their business activities, right up to legislation. Interest groups exist in society and government at every level, from local trade associations to umbrella organisations to international organisations. Intermediary is necessary in a plural society the representation of competing interests. It allows collective political, economic and social concerns to be transformed from their subjectivity into the objectivity of a claim. Such a claim occurs and is raised between participants, socially in the political sphere. Hannah Arendt once formulated, “Politics arises in the between-people, that is, quite outside of people” (Arendt 1993, p. 11). In the space of interests, they are put forward impersonally. For example, industry representatives, in demanding public support, argue for the preservation of competitiveness. The hunting association claims nature conservation in shooting game. The cigarette industry argues against a tax increase with the preservation of jobs. The social association points to the number of needy people who need its help to finance its activities. On the individual level, too, real interest cancels out the subjectivity of concern. In interaction with a counterpart who is also interested, the personal subject is “beside himself” in interest with the object in which he has an interest. What makes me anxious, I put aside and express my interest. A transaction is in the offing. The interest I state does not carry to market wherein my concern consists. I lay claim to a good or declare my willingness to pay for it. With the interest that someone has, he enters the space of economic activity in which something can be procured, produced, traded, and utilized. Interests compete with each other, especially the interested parties who represent them. Interest, if it is conscious, reveals the value, status, rank or importance attached to a thing or a state of affairs. Action is taken out of interest in something. If we consider concern as an expression of active participation, it is rooted in an interest that exists in the relationship to a person or a thing. I am concerned with it and we are concerned with it. We are subjects (in care) and have an object (an object of our economy). The concept of interest is introduced here with economic reference, in order to link caring action to economic activity and doing economy to caring in the justification of what is undertaken. Between them stands and weighs on both sides, noticed or unnoticed, the ecological interest in considerate and sustainable action. In financial economic and legal terms, an interest has since Roman times denoted the difference (“id quod interest”) between what is due or accrues to a person and what has not accrued to him. In interest lies a pecuniary advantage. In the event

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of damage, there is a claim to it. The semantics of the term interest also keeps the meaning of self-interest present in linguistic usage; someone acts without interest if he does not look to his advantage. However, it can also be in one’s own interest to take on seemingly distant things and concerns, and thus foreign interests, if these circumstances have meaning, value and significance in the context of individual existence. On a supra-individual level, people emphatically claim that it is “in the very own” interest of a country or people to cultivate certain relationships, to promote developments or to engage in common projects  – for example, in climate protection, in the protection of species or in the fight against diseases, exploitation and poverty all over the world. In the concern directed towards the future, the deficits and shortcomings on the way to it are clear. There is an interest in remedying them. Companies can build on this, competing with each other with innovations in electromobility or biotechnology, for example, which lead to structural change in the economy. The interest that is served by entrepreneurial creativity and innovation legitimises the profit that accrues to the companies concerned in the process, even if other companies fall by the wayside in “creative destruction” (Schumpeter) (cf. Aghion et al. 2021). In order to ensure that the dynamics of the development of householding in common life do not run counter to it, but rather are conducive to it, influence must be exerted on events in the overriding interest: civil society and the state are called upon (see Chap. 5). In the ecological interest, a host or hostess preserves stocks that are beneficial to life and welfare. There is a general interest in them. Because the human community and each individual exist in life contexts, they are to be cared for and protected with all that belongs to them. We are stakeholders in them and so affected by them; they affect our actions. Engagement legitimizes us as a host or hostess in the household of the environment. Being interested only in a section and tearing it out of its contexts has quite often been the exploitative environmentally damaging behavior in business in the past. In contrast, we act competently in a household when we perceive our responsibility in its contexts and are able to act according to its needs or at least participate in such actions (cf. Reed 2008). Stakeholding is a basis on which to manage or make economic decisions after careful exploration of the ecological conditions. Ecological stakeholding aims at welfare in a narrower or broader context. What belongs to or contributes to the general welfare is in the public interest. It is the responsibility of the state to safeguard it. A public interest is often advanced when private interests oppose state or municipal projects. However, such projects may again be in a private interest, which then conflicts with another interest. For example, someone has a clear view from his apartment that is taken away by a new

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building across the street. The creation of housing is in the public interest. It outweighs lesser detriments that the individual must accept for the general good. Such conflicts of interest concern the relationship between doing care at one level and doing economy at another level. Many such conflicts can be arbitrated ecologically. Let us take housing as an examplar. Individual needs and requirements in the area of housing differ. In general, there is a legitimate claim to healthy and adequate living conditions. In urban as well as in rural areas, the organisation of living together in space according to social and ecological requirements, including economic ones, is superior to the private interest in them. In the case of housing, they can mean that in the case of loose development from earlier years, redensification is envisaged. In public concern it comes to it. Developed building land is thus better used and urban sprawl is counteracted. If local citizen participation is provided for in the planning of the development, there is a chance of reconciling private interests with the public interest. Such a comparison appears possible wherever, in a relational structure or ecosystem, its independent participants have to adjust to each other. They are interested parties of the context to which they belong. In their narrower and wider circles of life, people are dependent on each other and on an order of their relationships. In their inter-esse, that is, in the relation of their togetherness, the actors behave according to norms or behave in a civilized manner. They can also violate the order and culture of their relationship, undermine norms or negotiate a change of order. This may well be in the interest of the participants, which would have to be clarified by them together in their examination and understanding. Intersubjectively, the contexts of life that are perceived by the subjects embody their world. Intersubjectively, the perceived contexts are represented in orders of shaping existence. They exist objectively in the interest of people. For the political space, Hannah Arendt has formulated on this interest: “Wherever people come together, world pushes itself between them, and it is in this in-between space that all human affairs take place.” (Arendt 1993, p.  25) If persons take on things in the world, they do so for themselves and for others. In doing so, they shape their existence in the world that is open to them. In the interest, that is, in the relationship between the parties involved, obligations and duties arise. This applies more closely to relationships of dependence in a family, but also to neighbourhoods, to municipalities vis-à-vis their inhabitants and to employment relationships in the world of work. In it there is institutionally the social partnership of the representations of employees and employers to balance interests. On a larger scale, the interest in environmental protection has developed and unfolded in an ecological awareness of the conditions of the world. It can lead to a corresponding economic action of the actors.

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A common interest forms the basis of partnership in business life and outside of it. No matter how unequal the skill people bring to a cooperation, their communication and cooperation are guided by the interest they share or have in each other. In neoclassical microeconomics, this interest – for example, of partners in marriage and of parents in children – has been explained economically in terms of utility maximization by Gary Becker (1982). The consideration of costs and benefits, however, ignores all other aspects of welfare – which are given in the interest of the participants. In the interest not only comes together what involved persons think, want and value, but also what they participate in socially, culturally and civilly in their thinking and wanting and according to which they direct their appreciation. The interest appears in the structure of their belonging. It reaches ecologically in its references far in the household of living together.

References Addams, Jane. 1913. Women and Public Housekeeping. New  York: National American Woman Suffrage Association. Aghion, Philippe, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel. 2021. The Power of Creative Destruction. Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1993. Was ist Politik. Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß. München: Piper. Barro, Robert J., und Vittorio Grilli. 1996. Makroökonomie. Europäische Perspektive. München: R. Oldenbourg. Becchetti, Leonardo, und Massimo Cermelli. 2018. Civil economy: definition and strategies for sustainable well-living. International Review of Economics, 65. S. 329–357. Becker, Gary S. 1982. Der ökonomische Ansatz zur Erklärung menschlichen Verhaltens. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Bruni, Luigino, und Stefano Zamagni. 2004. Economia civile, Efficienza, equità, felicità pubblica. Bologna: Mulino. Bruni, Luigino, und Stefano Zamagni. 2013. Zivilökonomie. Effizienz, Gerechtigkeit, Gemeinwohl, hrsg. von Peter Schallenberg. Paderborn: Schöningh Bruni, Luigino, und Stefano Zamagni. 2017. Civil Economy. Another Idea of the Market. New York: Columbia University Press. Carter, Anthony T. 1984. Household Histories. In Households. Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. Netting, Robert McC., Richard R.  Wilk, und Eric J. Arnould (eds.), S. 44–83. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. De Swaan, Abram. 1993. Der sorgende Staat. Wohlfahrt, Gesundheit und Bildung in Europa und den USA der Neuzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Dreilinger, Danielle. 2021. The Secred History of Home Economics. How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live. New York: W. W. Norton.

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Fischer, Franz. 1848. Naturrecht und natürliche Staatslehre. Gießen: Ferbersche Universitätsbuchhandlung. Forsthoff, Ernst. 1938. Die Verwaltung als Leistungsträger. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Foucault, Michel. 2004. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität I.  Sicherheit, Territorium, Bevölkerung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Frosch, Robert A. 1992. Industrial Ecology: A Philosophical Introduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 89 (3). S. 800–803. Frosch, Robert A., und Nicholas E.  Gallopoulos. 1989. Strategies for Manufacturing. Scientific American. 261 (3). S. 144–152. Genovesi, Antonio. 1776. Grundsätze der bürgerlichen Oekonomie. Nach der neuesten und verbesserten Ausgabe aus dem Italienischen übersetzt von August Wissmann. Erster Theil. Leipzig: Paul Gotthelf Kummer. Goldstein, Carolyn M. 2012. Creating Consumers. Home Economics in Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Hammel, E.  A., und Peter Laslett. 1974. Comparing Household Structure over Time and between Cultures. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (1). S. 73–109. Hayden, Dolores. 1982. The Grand Domestic Revolution. A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Helbich, Lukas. 2020. Inseln der Ökonomie. Zum Inselmythos der klassischen Ökonomik. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Jakob, Ludwig Heinrich. 1805. Grundsätze der National-Oekonomie oder National-­ Wirthschaftslehre. Halle: Ruffsche Verlagshandlung. Laslett, Peter (ed.). 1972. Household and Family in Past Time: Comparative Studies in the Size and Structure of the Domestic Group over the Last Three Centuries in England, France, Serbia, Japan and Colonial North America, with Further Materials from Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leshem, Dotan. 2013. Oikonomia Redefined. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 35 (1). S. 43–61. Leshem, Dotan. 2014. The Ancient Art of Economics. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 21 (2). S. 201–229. Lloyd, Henry Demarest. 1894. Wealth against Commonwealth. New  York: Harper & Brothers. Menudo, José M. (ed.). 2020. The Economic Thought of Sir James Steuart. First Economist of the Scottish Enlightenment. Abingdon: Routledge. Netting, Robert McC., Richard R.  Wilk, und Eric J.  Arnould (eds.). 1984. Households. Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Pearce, David W., und R.  Kerry Turner. 1989. Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Polanyi, Karl. 1977. The Livelihood of Man. Edited by Harry W.  Pearson. New  York: Academic Press. Reed, Mark. 2008. Stakeholder participation for environmental management. Biological Conservation, 141(10), 2417–2431. ­ https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.07.014.

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Reumann, John H.  P. 1957. The Use of ‘oikonomia’ and Related Terms in Greek Sources to about A.  D. 100, as a Background for Patristic Applications. Diss. University of Pennsylvania. Reumann, John. 2014. Stewardship & the Economy of God. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1977. Abhandlung über die Politische Ökonomie. In: Rousseau, Politische Schriften, Band I. Paderborn: Schöningh. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1993. Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Eine Untersuchung über Unternehmergewinn, Kapital, Kredit, Zins und den Konjunkturzyklus. 8. Aufl., Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Singer, Kurt.1958. Oikonomia: an inquiry into beginnings of economic thought and language, Kyklos 11 (1). S. 29–57 Smith, Adam. 1978. Der Wohlstand der Nationen. Eine Untersuchung seiner Natur und seiner Ursachen. München: dtv. Stage, Sarah, und Virginia B. Vincenti (eds.). 1997. Rethinking Home Economics. Women and the History of a Profession. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Steuart, James. 1770. An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. Being an Essay on the Science of Domestic Policy in Free Nations, in which are particularly considered Population, Agriculture, Trade, Industry, Money, Coin, Interest, Circulation, Banks, Exchange, Public Credit, and Taxes. Dublin: James Williams and Richard Moncrieffe. Struve, Peter. 1934. Das Wirtschaften. Zur Grundlegung der Wirtschaftstheorie. Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, 3 (4). S. 499–507. Tribe, Keith. 2015. The Economy of the Word. Language, History, and Economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel, und Joan Smith. 1992. Households as an institution of the world-­ economy. In Creating and Transforming Households. The Constraints of the World-­ Economy. Smith, Joan, Immanuel Wallerstein, Immanuel, et  al., S. 3–24. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 1986. Haushaltswissenschaft und soziales Management: Beiträge zur ökonomischen und exekutiven Kompetenz von Sozialarbeitern. Nachrichtendienst des Deutschen Vereins, 66 (6). S. 235–241. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2011. Der soziale Unterhalt von Wohlfahrt. Elemente der Sozialwirtschaftslehre. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2017. Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit 2. Die Profession im Wandel ihrer Verhältnisse. 2. Aufl., Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

5

The Caring and Economic State

Abstract

The modern state arose to stand up against arbitrariness of self-empowered individuals who conducted their business independently and recklessly. The state’s safeguarding function includes the promotion of the general welfare. The state has become the caretaker with regard to social welfare, and in the ecological framework it is called upon to act as a host. The state not only sets rules and limits for economic activity, but it also conducts business itself within the framework of its budget and in markets and in an reciprocal relationship with its members and dependents.

The state is the great institutional steward for country and people. While individual people find themselves in a wide space and extended occurrrence and have their concerns therein, the state has in it its territory and its responsibilities, by which it also exercises care. The State is a decision-maker, whether it is governed in one way or another, rightly or wrongly. It acts in the public interest and has the power to enforce it against other interests. The state is the shaper of the scene of doing business; as a host it creates and maintains the framework within which something can be done (economically) under the conditions set with it. After all, in the free market, action can be taken on the basis of rules that are not produced by the mar-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_5

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ket. The standards that apply in it are derived from an overarching household that encompasses the management of what happens in it and its control and stabilisation, giving and leaving room for market activity and competition between the actors in it. The state (with the local authorities in it) is an administrative and productive actor. State activity includes a lot of allocative and distributive decisions. In macroeconomic terms, the state quota or government spending ratio indicates the extent to which the state provides and manages (and retains resources for) the fulfilment of its tasks. In many countries, the government spending ratio, i.e. the ratio of public spending to gross domestic product, is around 50%. The state invests in infrastructure and subsidises economic units in the national territory to promote and support them, and it redistributes income through transfer payments. In its formative and caring function, the state is not (as in the case of market participation with public enterprises) an economic subject alongside others. It holds house in territorial competence and for the population in responsibility for its community of life. It frames doing economy in the market and does not appear in it as a competitor. Its primary economic function can be described as caring for the prosperity of the community, which includes promoting and supporting of activities for profit and not-for-profit purposes and caring for the performance of the population in quantitative and qualitative terms. Related to individual people, the focus is on services of general interest, which provide the nationals of a state with secure access to common goods for their livelihood. Since economic activity has largely taken place “outside the home” and has allowed the market mechanism to prevail, the state has increasingly assumed a role in caring for its citizens and for living conditions in general, in accordance with a corresponding role in economic activity. This role deserves detailed consideration in the discussion of the relationship between doing care and doing economy.

5.1 The State as Host On its territory and for the welfare of the population, the state is a host preserving wealth and increasing it as far as possible. With its creative power, the state regulates coexistence in general and business life in particular. It ensures order and stability and thus economic conditions. The economic order in orientation to welfare is included. It is constitutionally incumbent on the state. The Swiss Confederation “shall promote the common welfare, sustainable development, internal cohesion and cultural diversity of the country” (in Article 2 of the Constitution). In the German territory, the establishment of equal living conditions

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is a structural and regional policy action goal under the constitution, for which a variety of p­ rogrammes and measures are used. Entire sectors such as the digital economy, agriculture or housing construction are the subject of allocative and distributive economic promotion. Now, however, in the West the liberal attitude, which has been widespread for more than 200 years, does not want to allow the state to play more than an instrumental role. In the ideological debate, the left adds the insinuation that the state is the “bailiff of capital”, according to Friedrich Engels the “ideal total capitalist” (Engels 1973, p. 222). According to this, in matters of the economy the state sets the framework of the processes of exploitation and thus serves the entrepreneurial interest. But even if there were no profit interest in a real socialism, there would remain (unlike in the Marxist utopia of the dying state) the social protection and security function of the state for the population. It is the great steward and in this function a provider. The state cares – however one interprets the reasons for its actual behaviour. In the period after the French Revolution, the state in unity with society – or, according to Hegel, as the embodiment of society – had the role of carer. In this function, the state was considered by liberal as well as conservative and early socialist discourse. In 1815, the businessman and philanthropist Johann Daniel Lawätz wrote “On the Care of the State for its Poor and Needy” (Lawätz 1815): People, after all, united to form the state with the intention of achieving protection and welfare. To stand up for this and especially to offer opportunities and means to the homeless and unemployed was a “national affair”. In addition to security and order, the state is assigned the task of “establishing, promoting, maintaining and increasing the culture and welfare of the citizens in their entirety” (Pölitz 1825, p. 140). There is also talk of state care in the “natural doctrine of the state”, which is elaborated in the aforementioned work of the natural law expert Franz Fischer in 1848. It is the duty of the state “to order and direct human coexistence in such a way that the greatest possible enjoyment of existence is achieved by all” (Fischer 1848, p. 249). The author distinguishes in the tasks of the state the “care for the bodily needs of the citizens” (p. 253 ff.), the “care that everyone is entitled to his share of the use of the earth and its treasures” and “care for the appropriate use of land and soil” (p. 264), the “care that all find the necessary earnings” (p. 270), the “care for adequate instruction, education, training and habituation of the citizens” (p.  283), the “care for adequate recreation, entertainment, edification and recreation of the citizens” – “It therefore belongs to the care of the state that walks and places for adequate exercise are not lacking in populous places” (p. 289). Public welfare was not yet established at that time, but it was already understood what could belong to it.

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Early socialists up to Lassalle cultivated the idea of promoting the collective self-help of working people through state support. For Louis Blanc, the state became the “banker of the poor”, financing the Paris ateliers sociaux of the working classes in 1848  – with only short-term success. Soon afterwards, Ferdinand Lassalle sought capital funding from the state for “productive associations”. However, from a socialist point of view, it seemed best to transform the state first into a “total association”, which was virtually equivalent to a large cooperative for the “poorer classes”, After its transformation into a welfare state, a century and a half later, the state is more than ever a bearer of common concern in relation to its dependents. This does not mean that it is always and necessarily on its agenda. However, the Corona crisis has shown how this function is exercised in thoroughgoing ordinances. Their drafting involves the advice of experts and public opinion. In a democracy, concern in the state comes together deliberatively with diverse participation. Or not, if democracy is weak and the carers keep their interests to themselves and do not express them in participation in common care. In an autocracy, the state must prove in advance to those who care that it successfully cares for the common good. If the government passes the test of its own judgment, it does not need the advice of many voices. Nor is it necessary if it is obvious what is to be done in a critical situation. Preparedness in the climate crisis is a more complex task than it was for public health in the pandemic. Climate change is a protracted process. The more it becomes apparent, the more it persists and the more it increases, the more extensive the measures that are being taken in an attempt to limit the consequences. More or less every area of production (in the commercial economy) and consumption (consumer behaviour) is affected by this need. The legislator has a controlling influence on all of them when it ensures environmental compatibility and conversions to climate neutrality. The state provides long-term services of general interest with an ecological orientation, to which the social and economic actors must comply. Public services of general interest are specifically found in the social and health care sectors, which have served as the starting point for the discussions in this paper. Beyond these, the state proves to be a much more far-reaching economic actor. In the interest of what it is responsible for with “land and people”, the state does not leave economic activity to the “economy embodied in price-forming markets” (Polanyi 1979, p. 215). He sets a framework for it in the market. In the market, the economy is dependent from the outset on the regulative guidelines of the state. Until the nineteenth century, it was the task of a “state economic policy” (“staatswirthschaftliche Policey”, Schmalz 1808, p. 159 ff.) to promote trades in general. “In cultivated nations, the government assumes a care for the increase of

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n­ ational wealth” (Schmalz 1808, p. 162). It does this primarily by giving legal security to private trades. Less authoritatively, in one of the earliest discussions of social policy, Julius Froebel set a framework in the state economy for the economic activities of individual actors. It was supposed to have a corrective effect in the case of “erroneous conditions of society” caused by the national economy. “The state economy has the task of correcting the erroneous results of the free movements of the national economy. It must therefore intervene in the national economy and unite with it in a double process in the simple organism of the state” (Froebel 1850, p. 431). Not that the state has to play the all-encompassing planner and regulator, as in the former real socialist world, or that it acts in a state-monopolistic manner. Schmalz expressly contradicted this in his “Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft” and this was far removed from Froebel’s understanding of freedom. “The economic organization of society has the immediate task of creating and securing the material freedom of individuals” (Fröbel 1850, p. 438). Nowadays, the market economic order functions to preserve freedom. In it, the individual is also left the freedom to provide for himself. Only in a subsidiary and complementary way does the state, within the framework it sets socially, provide for the individual in ways of support and encouragement. The state also provides this for the gainful economy. It does so, however, in its dual interest in economic welfare as the generation of overall economic benefit and in social welfare, which depends on it. In a market economy regime, the state does, on the one hand, play a direct role in the business life of enterprises. Public enterprises may have a large or small share in the economic life of a country, but it is mainly fiscal policy, subsidy practices and other economic policy measures, such as monetary policy in the internal-­ external relationship, with which the state acts as a great householder, regulating and controlling. It allows the bureaucracy to rule; its planning and approval procedures have a stalling effect. The state regulates the market in terms of competition policy and environmental policy. It intervenes in business life through taxation; it comes up with economic stimulus programmes; it promotes economically relevant research and development in companies through investment and finances it in advance, as it were, with the teaching and research carried out in state universities: in the pandemic, vaccine producers were able to build on processes developed in public laboratories. It is part of the public service to invest entrepreneurially in certain areas of production and thereby help the whole of the economic activity and the promising developments in it. As a result, the investor state triggers investments of enterprises. This is done on the basis of location, sector and supply. The state (or the European Union) subsidises agriculture and not only agriculture. The legislator

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intervenes massively in the free market in terms of energy policy or transport policy. The central bank expands (or tightens) the money supply and thus keeps companies liquid. In science-related and technological change, renewal processes are promoted in economic activity. “Innovation policy as system strengthening” seems to be called for (Bertelsmann Stiftung et al. 2021, p. 27 ff.). In the critical situation of the Covid pandemic, the state took extensive measures to regulate economic activity in order to contain its consequences: with short-time working allowances to maintain employment or relieve the burden on companies, with subsidies for companies, with protection for the self-employed, and so on. In the preceding decades, since 1980, there has been the neo-liberal deregulation policy, which was no less carried out from the point of view of keeping house and economic promotion, but which, with the dismantling of normative requirements, concentrated on the expansion of scope for companies, including the abolition of regulations on the movement of capital and the privatisation of areas of supply previously operated by the public sector. The opening of the market also promised a better cost-benefit balance for human services in competition between providers. The promises of the market called into question the importance of public services. Private commercial providers seemed to serve the need more effectively and efficiently. In any case, companies generate the revenues in the market with which consumers and the state pay their expenses. The caring people and the caring state do not themselves generate returns, or so the orthodox doctrine with the market in focus assumes. The neo-liberal deregulation policy after 1980 sought to reduce the state quota, that is to reduce overall state expenditure in relation to gross domestic product. After all, market activity seems to be able to serve all possible needs with its supply of goods and thus to be able to provide social and health care. Market failure at one point or another is conceded, and in this respect there is a call for the state – at least as long as resourceful companies are not able to offer suitable solutions to the problem. The privatisations that have taken place in recent decades have not diminished the guarantor role of the state in social security. The state has not been relieved of the task of expanding and reforming social security; it has more to do in regulating and controlling the provision of care, given the many independent or commissioned actors and their varying degrees of involvement.

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5.2 Caring for Welfare In Germany after 1900, the idea of the welfare of the people was associated with the notion of helping the whole population to get by. Bismarck’s insurance of workers and the restrictive municipal poor relief had their specific purposes, while welfare could now be regarded as a gift of general progress that the state could impart. It was the “Minority Report” of the British Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress in 1909 that, in a swan song to the outmoded care of the poor, demanded that all citizens be granted a “national minimum of a civilised life” (Wendt 2017, p. 400 ff.). In the background, by the way, was the concern for the Empire’s retention of power after the Boer War, which concern set in motion a revision of English poor law in the first place. A general basic provision for the population, as proposed, was not to be had at first, but after the beginning of the World War in 1914, war relief in Germany supplanted the discriminatory poor relief. By decree in 1915 it was prescribed: “For the duration of the war, care of the poor will be raised to the level of war relief”. This was irreversible. After the end of the war, war relief, together with the “war welfare care” of the municipalities, led to the newly formed public welfare care. Fear of revolution and communism helped to establish it. After the end of the war in the Weimar Republic, the state tended to become a welfare state (in Prussia, a “Ministry of People’s Welfare” took over responsibility) and based its social policy on this, including labour policy, health policy, population policy, housing policy and public education policy, according to which welfare care was divided into needs care, labour care, health care, youth care, housing care and the promotion of education – as stated in 1924 in a list in the “Handwörterbuch der Wohlfahrtspflege” (Wronsky 1924, p. 447). The broad political and administrative scenario had its origins in the breadth of the population’s distress. The person-­ centeredness of welfare care was only one practical consequence. What welfare care has meant since then is conclusively defined in Germany in § 66 of the Tax Code: “Welfare care is the planned care for needy or endangered fellow human beings, exercised for the benefit of the general public and not for gain. The care may extend to health, moral, educational or economic welfare and may aim at prevention or remedy.” What reasons the actors in the state and in the organisations and associations involved may have had, initially and later, on the surface and in the background, for launching the welfare state is irrelevant with regard to the development of institutional provision between the wars and after them in the further course of the twentieth century. According to William Beveridge’s programme, which was

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i­nstrumental to the democratic welfare state, the deployment of the social service state was aimed at combating the ‘five giants’ of want, disease, ignorance, squalor, idleness (Timmins 1995). The state’s welfare was henceforth to serve an adequate income for the population, access to health care, access to educational opportunities, an adequate supply of housing, and sufficiently remunerative gainful employment. Organised welfare care can only ever fulfil these tasks inadequately. Concerns and problems that people have and that society perceives are always in advance of structured care. They are met in a limited way both by services in cash via direct payment to beneficiaries or via insurance companies and by services in kind via professional assistance and problem-solving. When cash services are preferable to human services in kind, or vice versa, has been much debated for decades (see Thurow 1974; Stuart 1975; Currie and Gahvari 2008). The impact of benefits always depends on what the recipients can do with them and what they can achieve with them. A person may be momentarily delighted by a support or cured of an illness by competent treatment, but their personal welfare can only be insufficiently “cared for” institutionally. On the human services side, there have been structural and procedural adjustments in Western countries under neoliberal auspices after 1980, aimed at making human services more effective in the long term. The restructuring has taken place gradually, for example in the health service in the transition from inpatient to outpatient care and then to home care. For inpatient treatment, for example, care management in the form of follow-up care has been made obligatory. Or, since then, procedures of individualized or personalized medicine have sought to take into account the special circumstances of people in treatment or to tailor therapeutic measures to them. For the success of these innovations, a partnership in care and management is required from the service-providing agencies and their addressees. If providers and users actively engage with each other – after better mediation between them – more opportunities for appropriate arrangements will open up. Digitalization creates better conditions for individualised and partnership-based care. A network-based person enters the health economy in the space opened up by advancing information technology – and a networked health economy operates towards the person. Providers and demanders, carers and caregivers, professionals and their addressees meet on virtual platforms. Communication on these platforms is managed independently of how the caring users and the providers of care operate. The operators of the platforms usually belong to neither side, but in the digital ecosystem they make the success of care-based communication possible in an entrepreneurial way. For their part, the players in the platform economy are interested in an ecosystem for their businesses. How well they run depends on innovations in digital tech-

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nology. Those who are not involved in them or are not able to follow them quickly will soon fail in the market. So you need to be well networked and involved in collaborations on new developments. In them, corporate alliances can often make better progress than individual companies, each of which is looking for new solutions on its own. The complexity and uncertainty of success of research and development work also calls on the state to do more than just provide funding, support and security. The sustainability of research and development requires a structural framework – independent of corporate interests.

5.3 Nurturing Economic Ecosystems The state-organized large territorial householding has as its content the economic events with their many participants. It fills a field – in fact in the spatial distribution of firms, workplaces, logistical structures, etc. It is the environment in which individual firms are embedded and the field of action in which production and consumption happen and business transactions take place. The economic field consists of many sectors, each with specific transactions. Agribusiness, construction, engineering, transportation, or health care are such complexes, each of which is in motion and in flux, and which interrelate with each other to form the system of the economy as a whole. The prosperity of the community depends on it. That is why the state is called upon to act, not as a conductor, but as a sort of caring orchestrator of the system in its main components. In our times, the orientation of the industrial system towards environmental protection and sustainability represents an enormous challenge. A new structure of the use of resources, of scientific-technical advances and interlocking production is emerging. Its material and energy flows have to be balanced. This is what the aforementioned term “industrial ecology” refers to (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989; Lowe and Evans 1995). It cannot be set up without state direction. With it, public concern permeates the private-commercial economy. The conversion to renewable energy, nature conservation in agriculture, or information technology upgrading and research contributing to all of these take place within a framework of public governance and support. The role of the state can be understood, as that which once led to the moon landing in the USA, in terms of a “mission-oriented approach” in which it acts as a “catalyst of investment, innovation and cooperation” towards the major goals (Mazzucato 2021, p. 8). In order to advance the transformation while maintaining a balance in the burdens that it entails for all those involved, the state acts in a structural and systemic manner. Companies, too, are well advised to place their activities within the sys-

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tematics of the energy turnaround or the transport turnaround, for example. Derived from the concept of industrial ecology, the term “industrial ecosystems” is now used in various connotations. The adoption of the biological category of the ecosystem in the business area of companies suggests itself for their strategy to meet the requirements of sustainability, climate neutrality, preservation of biodiversity and at the same time to cope with the structural change and the growing complexity of economic traffic. Profit oriented companies everywhere insert themselves into interdependencies on which they depend and which they want to use. They build on an infrastructure of suppliers and customers, supported by a “digital ecosystem”. Companies conduct research, train specialists and provide continuing education. If they do not do it themselves, they can participate in education, science and research that happens elsewhere and that is accessible to them. The term industrial ecosystem is sufficiently vague to be used in a variety of ways. Industrial ecosystems can refer to (1) structures and processes of development around firms, (2) the overall processes in which goods and services are moved, or (3) networks of firms in these processes, or (4) the economic conditions of their existence in the environment in which they operate. These conditions can be set by economic policy, legal and administrative decisions. The helping hand of the state is welcome for its own cultivation of the fabric of activity in which companies are involved. On their territory and beyond, states cultivate the landscape of economic activity. In the European Union, this is particularly pronounced in its function as an economic community. The focus on industrial ecosystems was set by the European Commission in its March 2020 Communication “A New Industrial Strategy for Europe”. It states: “Our new industrial strategy is entrepreneurial in spirit and in action. The Commission is ready to co-design and co-create solutions with industry itself, as well as with social partners and all other stakeholders. This will be supported by a new focus on industrial ecosystems, taking into account all players within a value chain.” (Communication 2020, p. 2)

A change was needed that would drive “competitive sustainability”. This would be served by a European “Green Deal” leading to climate neutrality. A more circular economy must be built. At the same time, the digital future is to be shaped. The opportunities and challenges of industrial ecosystems should be examined. “These ecosystems encompass all players operating in a value chain: from the smallest start-ups to the largest companies, from academia to research, service providers to

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suppliers.” (Communication 2020, p. 18). The Communication could not yet address the Covid pandemic. The Commission made up for this with an update of its industrial strategy in May 2021. Communication COM (2021) 350 identified 14 industrial ecosystems in the internal market: (1) aerospace and defence, (2) agri-­ food, (3) construction, (4) cultural and creative industries, (5) digital, (6) electronics, (7) energy-intensive industries, (8) renewable energy, (9) health, (10) mobility, transport and automotive, (11) local and social economy and civil security, (12) retail, (13) textiles, (14) tourism. Economic sectors were affected differently by the consequences of the pandemic and needed differentiated support to recover and strengthen. The European Commission is concerned about the resilience of the internal market, the import dependency of strategic sectors and the design of green and digital transition pathways in relevant industrial ecosystems. Individual EU measures such as liquidity and investment support to strengthen the economy need not be discussed here; detailed analysis of the aforementioned ecosystems alone reveals the depth to which economic activity is managed in the EU Common Market (see European Commisssion 2020). In the comparably large economies of the USA and China this happens at least as intensively. The state provides for the economic operation on its territory. The fact that the business thrives is a concern that the state can attribute to its general services of general interest. In the field of social and health care, we speak of welfare care, which is also provided directly by the public sector to varying degrees. It is a comparable type of care that the state (or in the case of the EU, a community of states) provides in the internal space of economic activity. The concept of economic care (“Wirtschaftspflege” in German) by local authorities is used less frequently today; in the past it also generally referred to the state’s care for the economic well-being of its nationals. Meanwhile, market design is used to shape the well-being in the economic sphere, for example, by the EU anchoring sustainability goals in competition law or by the state optimising the market mechanism for climate protection with the CO2 pricing scheme. Insofar as the actors are integrated into the ecosystem of one or other economic sector – as companies, as employees, in self-­employment, as customers and users – the state also promotes, secures and supports the individual participants with the industrial system and has sufficient cause for its concern in their care.

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References Bertelsmann Stiftung, Breitinger, Jan C., et al. 2021. Good-Practice-Beispiele für misionsorientierte Innovationsstrategien und ihre Umsetzung. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung. Currie, Janet, and Firouz Gahvari. 2008. Transfers in Cash and In-Kind: Theory Meets the Data. Journal of Economic Literature, 46 (2) S. 333–83. Engels, Friedrich. 1973. Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft. In: Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels – Werke. Band 19, 4. Aufl., S. 210–228. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. Europäische Kommission. 2020. Sozialunternehmen und ihre Ökosysteme in Europa. Zusammenfassung des Syntheseberichts. Autoren: Carlo Borzaga, Giulia Gelera, Barbara Franchini, Stefania Chiomento, Rocio Nogales und Chiara Carini. Luxemburg: Amt für Veröffentlichungen der Europäischen Union. Fischer, Franz. 1848. Naturrecht und natürliche Staatslehre. Gießen: Ferbersche Universitätsbuchhandlung. Fröbel, Julius. 1850. System der socialen Politik. Zweiter Theil. Leipzig: Verlagsbureau. Frosch, Robert A., und Nicholas E.  Gallopoulos. 1989. Strategies for Manufacturing. Scientific American. 261 (3). S. 144–152. Lawätz, Johann Daniel. 1815. Über die Sorge des Staats für seine Armen und Hülfsbedürftigen. Altona: J. F. Hammerich. Lowe, Ernest A., und Laurence K. Evans. 1995. Industrial Ecology and Industrial Ecosystems. Journal of Cleaner Production, 3 (1–2). S. 47–53. Mazzucato, Mariana. 2021. Mission Economy. A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. New York: Harper Business. Mitteilung der Kommission an das Europäische Parlament, den Europäischen Rat, den Rat, den Europäischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialausschuss und den Ausschuss der Regionen. 2020. Eine neue Industriestrategie für Europa. COM (2020) 102 final. Brüssel: Europäische Kommission. Pölitz, Karl Heinrich Ludwig. 1825. Grundriß für enzyklopädische Vorträge über die gesammten Staatswissenschaften. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich. Polanyi, Karl. 1979. Ökonomie und Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Schmalz, Theodor.1808. Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft. Berlin: Friedrich Maurer. Stuart, Archibald. 1975. Recipient Views of Cash versus In-Kind Benefit Programs. In: Social Service Review, 49, 1. S. 79–91. Thurow, Lester C. 1974. Cash Versus In-Kind Transfers. The American Economic Review, 64 (2). S. 190–195. Timmins, Nicholas. 1995. The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State. London: HarperCollins. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2017. Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit 1. Die Gesellschaft vor der sozialen Frage 1750–1900. 6. Aufl., Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Wronsky, Siddy. 1924. Wohlfahrtspflege. In: Handwörterbuch der Wohlfahrtspflege, hrsg. Oscar Karsted. Berlin: Carl Heymanns.

6

Business and the Caring of Companies

Abstract

Caring actors step out of their households into the open space of economic activity and run enterprises within it. Their businesses are diverse in the free market and limited only by public regulation. For 200 years, standard economics has described the profit-oriented, capital-supported gainful economy; however, enterprises also create the capacity for further and sustainable development and bring it forward in an innovative way. The role and function of business enterprises in relation to households in personal, local and global contexts is discussed.

People take on something. They want to achieve something; purposefully they consider, plan and begin an undertaking. Such undertakings take place in the private sphere of life; they can also involve travel or a move, involve several people, consist in a social context in a project with coordinated activities and, provided with a programme, in events and other happenings. Caring action is part of the execution of the undertaking. Business enterprises or ventures differ from such undertakings in personal life in that they conduct business for the purpose of earning a return. They strive to make a profit, even though this does not always mean a return on capital, nor does it mean a return on capital alone. The business enterprise is organised as an independent economic unit and appears as a firm or company in a legal form. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_6

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In economic activity, commercial enterprises indirectly bring about prosperity and the maintenance of life in their relationship to (collective) households. This is neither their formal objective, which consists in the productivity and profitability of the enterprise, nor their material objective, insofar as they are enterprises which, in their efforts to perform, do not from the outset pursue a direct personal welfare purpose, for example, in social and health care. For-profit enterprises, for which financial profit is in the foreground, do not stem from care for people; they dare to do something. They leave behind what is fixed and take the freedom of their own appearance. People who start a commercial enterprise have weighed up the opportunities and risks in the market, drawn up a business plan and decided on their venture. We are talking about “start-ups”. They become independent professionally and dare to become economically independent. Certainly, the founders already exist as living people when they start their business; with it they begin their existence in commercial life. The economic existence of a person is put on a basis within the given system of employment and earning opportunities. No one calls a person who moves into the forest and feeds on the fruits of nature a founder of an economic existence in commercial terms. Such a person certainly gives his life a new direction when his business starts. But in its progress it follows the logic of business relations, not the rationale of personal conduct of life. Business relations are existentially significant in another sense. With them, not only the business can be maintained, but also employment can be secured and, in connection with production and consumption, the livelihood of the population can be contributed to. In this sense, commercial enterprises “care” for prosperity. The mere profit orientation with which an enterprise may start does not relieve the operators, after its entry into commercial activity, of the care for its permanent existence, for its own maintenance, for its personnel and for the environment in which its conditions of existence are given. In the market, people do not care, they act out of business interest. But in times of change and crisis, the dependence of business operations on circumstances external to the market and other developments becomes particularly apparent, A company starts out with regard to them and with expectations in them. Its strategic management is geared to them. It is a form of doing economy, carried out in care; business can then be managed in operative control. The strategy of larger companies, but also of start-ups, appears as an engagement in the dynamic process of the economy or economic developments. They participate, for example, in the digitalisation process or in the shift to e-mobility, in advances in genetic engineering, or they are active in the growing market for certain services. The constant adaptation and movement in the economic process

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places more demands on the habitus of concern of entrepreneurs in the perception and interpretation of developments than on a habitus of calculation, in which what appears to be necessary is implemented. They orientate and network themselves in the ecosystem of their industry and the local and regional entrepreneurship. Furthermore, in their habitus of care, the actors can participate ethically and ecologically in the efforts to have a sustainable effect on life in nature and society. Companies, for example, in the food trade, in the construction industry or in the pharmaceutical industry, are, due to their proximity to the needs of the people, the busy drivers of the economy with main and side effects for the general welfare. In order for this performance to occur (e.g., that companies can quickly develop and deliver a vaccine in a pandemic, as has been shown) and to prevent negative effects (e.g., of products that endanger health or pollute the environment), economic activity is institutionally framed. There is oversight of food, building codes, and guidelines for the introduction of medical devices. In the market, companies are expected to take part in directing, which is done in and by public households. It is in these that the extent to which commercial actors contribute socially and environmentally to, rather than detract from, general livelihoods can be recorded and controlled.

6.1 The Frame of Reference of Transactions in the Economic Space Transactions presuppose an interest. It is present in the space of economic activity among producers and consumers and in society, in which individual and institutional actors, among them again producers and consumers, publicly or “under the table” make their interest in goods known. Whoever wants to undertake something can count on the fact that or to what extent the space in which the interests are present is receptive to an undertaking. He can virtually request certain undertakings in order to advance a desired development, to prevent a risk, to remedy a supply deficit or, as recently, to contain a pandemic. A business enterprise does not stay with itself. Let us start with the people who have something in mind and want to realize it successfully. Let us assume they decide to go beyond their private household and carry out their economic project in an organized way. They have a business plan and set up a company with it. In the common space, notwithstanding the households of actors, the open field of economic activity is filled by many enterprises. It is not enterprises that constitute the economy. It is the economic acting of people that gives rise to enterprises, which intervene in the existing activity in which many other actors appear and trade in

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goods. Companies have their business in the market place in which they enter. A business, which can be made, results after orientation in the economic happening resp. in the market, which exists for business of such kind. A business cannot claim to be an economy in itself. Nor does economy come about with many scattered businesses, as long as these do not belong to the dispositions of an enterprise in its unit of action and enter into a relationship with the dispositions of other market participants. The enterprise does not necessarily have to be profit-oriented and profit-maximising; it can also be active in a non-profit-making way with its business, offer care services and operate social institutions. Enterprises as economic units conduct business and enter into transactions with them in a market with other actors who have something to deliver or want to acquire something. In principle, in a market, enterprises trade in goods characterized by the fact that they are purchasable. The price mechanism hides care and concern. The interest in a commodity is satisfied by paying for it. The knowledge of the merchant, then, has long been the basis of the theory of enterprise. For Jacques Savary in 1675, the order and matter of commerce founded the empowerment of an entrepreneur in “The Perfect Merchant” (Savary 2010). The science of enterprise began as the science of commerce, the science of mercantile action and the science of trade. It became Betriebswirtschaftslehre only in the twentieth century in German-­speaking countries (see Sundhoff 1979 for the history). In English, it has remained with business administration and business management. The business that is undertaken appears as an independent, self-sufficient undertaking in the field of economic acting. In terms of European Union competition and state aid law, an enterprise is defined by the European Court of Justice as “any entity engaged in an economic activity, regardless of its legal status and the way in which it is financed”. Enterprises act as providers of goods or services in a given market. The economic character of an enterprise, according to the Court, consists in “the activity of offering goods and services into the market” (Case C-205/03 P FENIN v Commission [2006] ECR I-6295, para 25). The existence of markets is presupposed and entrepreneurial activity is related to them. Domestic interaction requires the function of enterprise when it steps out of the closed sphere of self-work and self-employment for an economic purpose. So does a political entity when it grants property rights to the actors belonging to it for independent exercise. A household of persons or the state itself may engage in entrepreneurial activity as a supplier on a market. The ECJ equates “entrepreneurial” with “economic” and identifies “economic” with the appearance (of business) in a market. While households (ecosocially understood) preserve their existence in a field of activities, enterprises are directed towards change in it. They operate outside of

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households in a business-like, commercial manner, an activity related to goods. In households, on the other hand, disposition is made according to the need that can be discerned in their circumstances or in their tasks. Enterprises meet desires or otherwise create wants by providing new goods that are perceived as goods by their customers. The prospect that this will happen and bring profit is reason enough to start a business. However, as noted, not every enterprise has its motivation in the intention of generating a profit in the commercial economy. There are research enterprises with economic weight, cultural enterprises and social enterprises. This is not contradicted by the fact that the concept of enterprise, as has just been stated, is based on actors in a market. An independent research enterprise draws its resources from a market and proves itself with its results in a market. A cultural enterprise asserts itself in the market of events and entertainment, and social services also compete for their customers. Always assuming that the public sector does not finance all or most of research, culture and social services. It does so within the framework of the tasks that fall to it inherently and in the provision of services of general interest. It remains the case that care in a household and for a household itself is not the business of a commercial enterprise, however it may contribute to the care of the population. It may be involved in it directly or, as is mostly the case, indirectly. If we think the space of doing economy before entrepreneurial activities, that is, without them in it, the space is equivalent to the potential extension of a household. What a host creates, he either procures in his home and household or achieves in the environment to which he extends the household. His action becomes an entrepreneurial activity when it becomes independent in the environment (in a market). Businesses can be seen as an organizational form of such activities that proves itself in the space of doing business. The space grants room; it contains resources that can be used, and it provides regulated relations in a territorial community or state for the exchange processes of private enterprises. These relations are present in a market (the market does not produce them). Business enterprises rely on the existence in space and its regulated relations of final consumers of the goods that are produced and traded. The end-users are caretakers in their own concerns. They are not alone, but “in society”. Social attitudes and trends influence consumer behaviour. Companies are well advised to adapt to this and attribute their impact in society to their business activities. Concerns that exist in society make companies concerned: they frame entrepreneurial action economically as much as the orders that the state sets. All the environmental conditions mentioned are conditions of existence of a private enterprise in the sense in which Ernst Haeckel once located the object of ecology, namely in “the relations of organisms to the surrounding external world,

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to which we may reckon all ‘conditions of existence’ in the broader sense” (Haeckel 1866, p. 286). There is a space of exchange of enterprises, bounded on all sides by households – of nature, whose resources become the scarce means by which goods can be produced and commodities offered, of personal households as ultimate consumers, of public households, whose institutions regulate, among other things, the flows of money and commodities. The conditions of existence of the automobile industry, for example, are changing with the direction of the switch to electric mobility, which is being pushed by the state in consideration of the global balance of nature in concern for the climate. The conditions of existence of agriculture in Europe depend on the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, and if less is paid directly and more is done for the development of rural areas, farmers will adjust to this. The relationships of enterprises which each other are determined by market conditions. For their part, they are shaped by the behaviour of all participants in the market. With its conditions, it is the launching pad for companies and, on the other hand, the space in which they seize their opportunities. The framework in which a company starts and in which it places itself is determined by the households that make the company possible. These are the households of all economic units involved, overarching the housholds of municipalities, of the state and always also the household of nature. In relation to them, the enterprise plays a dynamic role, challenging the households in which and with which it operates. What is undertaken changes them. It withdraws resources from them and adds resources to them. The balance sheet can record, across all transactions, the debits and credits of a household involved in them, in other words, its assets received or renewed. A first condition for an individual actor to take action and appear in the market is the personal household. It is the training ground and the launching pad for engagements beyond it. A household endows capabilities for undertakings. Families invest in education. A young person begins to orient himself in working life with an education. A family household provides beginnings and models for vocational, craft, service, or other business activities. The narrowness or width of a mental household determines the horizon in which something seems appropriate to undertake. The sparseness of the material household to which a person belongs and which is his or her starting place may already compel him or her to do so. The transition of individual actions of economic actors from households to enterprises takes place in many ways. There is the connection of professional activity to private and domestic motivations – often still in the career choice of women. Innovative enterprises can emerge from play, exploratory instincts or hobbies. There are many examples of this in the start-up scene. Or household and business remain in the continuity of agricultural work. And there are family businesses in

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industry in which family household decisions are guided by entrepreneurial dispositions and the business household becomes the focus of private concern. In its hybrid character, many family businesses exist in a strained combination of household and market. In the case of large family businesses, the family plays a role only in the background in the given ownership relationships, while the small family business in the craft trades still shows the pre-modern unity of domestic community and the place of work and acquisition. While private households are oriented towards security in the space of coexistence and offer security, enterprises expose themselves to uncertainty in the market “away from home” and to the risk of failure. They search for and create their niche in the space of economic activity. They discover empty spaces, realize new possibilities and take the freedom to occupy them by acting and shaping. Niches change the field in which they are set up or in which the company establishes itself. A business idea is realized, after which it is important to assert oneself in the business field. Empirically, it can be observed in many start-ups how this succeeds innovatively. The process of the business economy as a whole depends on the momentum of entrepreneurial initiative and agility in order not to become lame and stagnant. This is true not only for the profit economy, but also for alternative economies, however different the nature of the engagement. In the sphere of science and research, the dedicated commitment appears in an entrepreneurial way, by methodically (almost transdisciplinarily in niches of the science business) opening up, trying out and exploring ways to generate (and enforce) new knowledge and skills. The gain in knowledge can be seen in analogy to material gain; in contrast to it, knowledge gained has the power to generate further knowledge. The ecological framework leaves enterprises the freedom of the market, in which they can appear and strive for profit in this playing field. Within this framework, however, they are obliged to take into account the conditions of their performance in their actions: the conditions of the field from which they draw and in which they place the results of their actions. Governmental and supranational regulations ensure that the burdens which the enterprises bring with them for the social and the natural environment are curbed or compensated. Standard economics speaks of (negative) externalities; in the ecological context, they or the costs incurred are to be “internalised”. In the field in which the externalities occur, it must be ensured that it can cope with them or that compensation is provided. The positive externalities of enterprises should not be overlooked. Information technology has made it possible for Internet companies to use what they offer in a different way than intended. Research-based companies generate further benefits with their success in applications that arise for other companies and with the increased knowledge that accrues to society.

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Whether positive externalities can outweigh negative ones is a difficult question to answer. Industry and the development of productive forces in general have enormously increased human wealth while consuming large amounts of resources  – from average human life expectancy to the prosperity that the population shares, albeit unequally. Hardly anyone wants to go back to pre-modern times. In the Anthropocene, the household of coexistence needs the companies within it for positive solutions. In the ongoing operation of all economic activity, its sustainable effects are subject to householding care in every respect. For better or for worse, top-down or botttom-up, it claims companies; sooner or later, they will not be able to escape it.

6.2 Economic Units in Conjunction with Each Other Classical and even more so neoclassical economics leaves it at a binary model of the simple economic cycle. In its market orientation, standard economics contrasts enterprises as actors essentially producing and supplying goods on the one hand and households as actors essentially consuming goods on the other. As mere consumption units, households, according to this description, drop out as producers in the (market) economy. Private and public households indicate individual and collective needs that can be served by a supply of goods. According to the traditional theory, households act as consumers in the market because they possess resources of labour, land and capital, with the use of which purchasing power can be generated. Households make these factors of production available to enterprises for the production of goods in order to earn income. Economic activity appears as an activity of enterprises alone; they help themselves to households and serve them. However, households can be regarded as the custodians of resources. These are also present independently of the fact that they are exploited by companies and in the market. They form the conditions of existence of life, its forces and sources. People’s concerns also relate to them: to their health, to their education, to what belongs to them, what offers them security and protection. The economic decisions of household actors are determined by them. However, these decisions are often not made autonomously. People allow themselves to be lured into their self-care, for example, with wellness products that promise to contribute to self-­optimization – according to the stipulations of the goods on offer. Consumers often reach for goods whose value is suggested to them by advertising. In doing so, the providers refer to a gain that is supposedly associated with the purchase, consumption or use of the goods for health, education, security or social recognition. They thus refer to weighty motives that guide personal households and individual lifestyles.

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For the stakeholders in their living environment, it is not just a matter of delivery. They do not want to be passive recipients of goods. As carers in their own concerns, they can certainly demonstrate their market power. Since households with growing ecological awareness prefer goods that carry the label “organic” or otherwise show their sustainability, producers and traders have to adjust to this. Consumers think economically in ecological sense and the market adapts. The large governmental stewardship does the rest to move companies accordingly with laws and regulations. It can be seen that from below as well as from above, the sphere of (the included and the inclusive) households provides the measures of what can be done. In the end, it is the global household that determines the shape of economic activity. What remains for the companies is the innovation that is able to assert itself in the market and among the consumers in a way that makes life easier or promotes development. According to the ratio of the personal household, decisions are made in a resource-­oriented way. Be it that a person chooses goods on the market to purchase that may be good for health or contribute to education or are intended for the family; be it that the state orders goods for health and education, security and protection of the population. It can be part of the explicit self-image of companies to want to contribute to this with their products or services. In any case, nolens volens, commercial enterprises bear the statutory social costs in the remuneration for their employees. This social expenses fill the budget of the public social benefit system. The ecological framework of the economy as a householding task does not exclude the corporate sphere. From an ecological point of view, profit (mere monetary enrichment) is not in itself a goal and purpose of economic activity. Certainly, companies need sufficient capital resources if they want to survive. Under competitive conditions, they can only hold their own with the staying power that is fed by the profits of their business, which are to be valued in monetary terms. The purpose of economic activity, however, which is superior to the operational requirements, only begins with the decision in what a profit taken from the business is invested (again, profit is not really a utilization of profit). Whether these are ultimately investments in life support and the increase of human wealth can only be judged in complex interdependencies. After all, the amount of enterprises with a social and environmental purpose combined with profit-making is increasing. Social entrepreneurship is not limited to explicitly social enterprises. More recently, virtual platforms and networks, however much profit they generate for their operators, have provided a reasonable basis for individual supply and its personal management. With crowdworking and crowdsourcing, the platform economy short-circuits producers and consumers in the digital marketplace. In the

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field of social and health care, it is the carer and the provider who can interact through information and communication, with benefits for both sides. The progress of networking, which integrates all actors into a found basis of action that dynamically unfolds with them, could not have been inscribed in methodological individualism when Schumpeter introduced it. In the network, a field of interests is already ordered when an actor enters it with his intentions. If a Green Deal is in the offing on a large political scale, or a project of redevelopment or renewal in the local political sphere, an actor either participates in it or stays out of it. An entrepreneur – in the model of homo economicus as an isolated individual utility maximizer – does not get far unless it coincides with or connects to the given interests in the network. If we counter this with the idea of a homo oecologicus (Meinberg 1995), this counter-concept also remains valid only within the limits set by its relationship to the natural environment. Referring to the social microlevel, it can be concluded  – with Biesecker and Kesting in their microeconomics – for the actions and the conduct of life of a person: “The welfare in the actions of people applies to themselves, other people as well as the natural environment. It is thus a question of a ‘good life’ that preserves the natural foundations of life and does not merely consume them as resources” (Biesecker and Kesting 2003, p. XV). The “good life” is not a good that can be produced individually nor consumed individually. It is more expansive than individual existence can be in it. It comes about in the conditions of life, in shaped existence. One can only participate in the good life and get along well in it.

6.3 Ventures Between Home and State With their economic success, commercial enterprises contribute indirectly to the shaping of life, to the livelihood of individuals and to the prosperity of society. However, they also always have a direct social and ecological responsibility in their business and its environment. The term Corporate Social Responsibility stands for this duty of care. In the European Union, a CSR Directive has obliged large companies to provide transparent social and environmental reporting since 2014. The German CSR Directive Implementation Act of 2017 explains that the non-financial statement of corporations can refer to environmental concerns, such as water consumption, air pollution or the protection of biodiversity; to employee concerns, such as gender equality, health protection or safety at work; and to social concerns, for example, in relation to “dialogue at the municipal or regional level or measures taken to ensure the protection and development of local communities”. All these

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aspects can be reflected in terms of business and corporate ethics with regard to the general usefulness of enterprises for life (Ulrich 2008). Companies want to have a sustainable effect, as long as they are not only aiming for a quick profit with their business and only appear on the market for this purpose and also quickly disappear again. If they are involved in sustainable development, they must understand its social and ecological dimensions as well as its economic ones. Often it remains with a perception under marketing aspects. More reputation can be gained if the company’s purpose is reflected in the heights of social challenges. Derived from them, companies profess responsibility in their relationship with the social and natural environment, perceive environmental social governance as a task and want to demonstrate to what extent their activities contribute to social development and the preservation of the environment and nature, or even lead to innovative solutions in this area in the face of the challenges. New businesses that create goods that contribute to a sustainable economy can be very profitable, directly for the owners of the business and indirectly for the stakeholders around the operation. Companies act as stewards, so to speak, dabbling in a circular economy or supporting projects and start-ups that promise to contribute to better social provision. With social business, they are also present in the social economy (see Chap. 8) and participate in its promotion. With regard to the social obligation of private enterprises, the actors of civil society and social work have the possibility to link their tasks and projects to the actions of commercial enterprises and to agree on one or the other cooperation in the common social space. Those who care for the community, civil society and social services can expect the cooperation of a profit-making enterprise, naturally with due regard for its competencies and interests. The profit-oriented companies can meet with the social actors in their environment in common social challenges, whereby the common ground is to be worked out and the consequences for projects are to be negotiated (cf. the contributions in Stoll and Herrmann 2020). In the ecosocial frame of reference, “doing business ecologically” should not simply mean avoiding harmful effects on the environment in economic activity and succeeding in the market with sustainable business models, nor should it mean that the nature- and environment-related project is merely realized in an extra sector, the “alternative economy” (as long as this does not transition to a generally different way of doing business with a “green economy” agenda). The ecological transformation takes all actors in the field of economic activity with it into a householding conversion. The transformation concerns, in addition to commercial enterprises, other undertakings that operate between households. This refers to actors and actions that either originate from the household of local authorities and the state or come from

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households of persons and their needs. For example, the political unit operates public passenger transport enterprises in the performance of services of general interest. On the other hand, there is a wide variety of enterprises run by persons who are engaged in a commercial activity in and with their households in a market, for example, in the activities of a childminder or with a house-based small business or with a photovoltaic system that feeds electricity into the public grid. In addition, there is the participation that takes place in a consumptive way in the digitalised world online with the generation of usable data. In the conceptual framework chosen in this treatise, doing economy, as described above, definitely begins “at home” in personal and community life with giving and taking, which is purposeful and expedient. One has to take care of the means of living, information and orientation and other things that one needs, and uses one’s powers, time, available helps and other means for this purpose. Doing economy consists essentially in the disposition of them. Work is done in execution of economic considerations and decisions. Informally for self-sufficiency or in voluntary participation and formally in the employment system of the world of work. Self-activity is in many ways a condition of entry and sojourn in this system. Self-­ work and gainful employment are interrelated (Teichert 1993). Young people first carry out their own work in the form of educational work and relationship work, and often also in an gainful job, which, as long as it does not consist of employment subject to social insurance contributions, hardly appears in the national economic performance balance. There is hobby work, do-it-yourself, domestic work, employment in the personal life circle, mutual assistance, neighbourly help, etc. Countless irregular domestic helpers play a significant role, especially in the care of people in need of long-term care. Moonlighting is a term used to describe clandestine employment that is undeclared and hidden from tax and insurance. Illegal business can be of great magnitude in the basement of an economy and provide it with stability. The formal and informal economies – “household economy”, “self-sufficiency economy” and “self-help economy” (Teichert 2000) – are interdependent. Not represented in the market and not recorded as enterprises are all informal gainful activities that take place in the background of the employment system. What is undertaken there is often well organised, has its own networks, and the value added that comes about is of a size that can hardly be overestimated. The economy “in the shadows” ranges from the self-supply economy to undeclared secondary employment, neighbourly help and moonlighting to criminal business. The assignment to the shadow economy is to be understood as a negative distinction from the legal, taxed and market-regulated gainful economy. Since informal transactions take

References

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place outside of private households, the domestic and family work to be performed in the private sphere or the personal care work is not meant. Following the postulate that doing economy is what hosts undertake and create, the above-mentioned demarcations become obsolete if the use of human capital, the use of resources and productivity in the community in general are considered ecologically. People usually acquire and secure their living from multiple sources. Gainful employment is only one of them, although for most people it is the most important. Self-employment is regularly added, community infrastructures are used, and the natural environment is utilized. Individuals always participate economically, and without being aware of it on a day-to-day basis, from resources around them that are publicly held by. They belong to the larger households in which a person resides and participates. By being a householder herself, she, as a stakeholder, is not indifferent to these households and the economies within them. They are present in the interaction space of caring.

References Biesecker, Adelheid, und Stefan Kesting. 2003. Mikroökonomik: eine Einführung aus sozial-­ ökologischer Perspektive. München: R. Oldenbourg. Haeckel, Ernst. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Allgemeine Grundzüge der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, mechanisch begründet durch die von Charles Darwin reformierte Descendenz-Theorie. Zweiter Band: Allgemeine Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen. Berlin: Georg Reimer. Meinberg, Eckhard. 1995. Homo oecologicus. Das neue Menschenbild im Zeichen der ökologischen Krise. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Savary, Jacob. 2010. Der vollkommene Kauff- und Handels-Mann. Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1676. Bergisch-Gladbach: Vereinigung zur Förderung der Betriebswirtschaftslehre. Stoll, Bettina, und Heike Herrmann (Hrsg.). 2020. Corpoate Social Responsibility – Impulse aus der und für die Profit- und Sozialwirtschaft. Verantwortung und Nachhaltigkeit. Opladen: Barbara Budrich. Sundhoff, Edmund. 1979. Dreihundert Jahre Handelswissenschaft. Beitrage zur Geschichte der Betriebswirtschaftslehre. Göttingen: Schwartz. Teichert, Volker. 1993. Das informelle Wirtschaftssystem. Analyse und Perspektiven der wechselseitigen Entwicklung von Erwerbs- und Eigenarbeit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Teichert, Volker. 2000. Die informelle Ökonomie als notwendiger Bestandteil der formellen Erwerbswirtschaft: Zu den ökonomischen, sozialen und ökologischen Wirkungen informellen Arbeitens. Papers der Querschnittsgruppe Arbeit & Ökologie, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, No. P00-524. Ulrich, Peter. 2008. Integrative Wirtschaftsethik. Grundlagen einer lebensdienlichen Ökonomie. 4th. Aufl., Bern: Paul Haupt

7

Care Supply in Its Structures and Processes

Abstract

The state’s provision of services of general interest meets people’s concerns about social security, health and coping with emergencies with an increasingly developed care system. Its structures and processes are in constant need of reform. Organized care can serve its purpose only in relation to the situational, self-care and co-care of its addressees and to individual welfare. In the Covid pandemic, the behavioral dependence of the system became apparent. Formal and informal engagement in person-centred care are interrelated and structures of care are transforming. The household of care supply and the management of contributions to it need to be discussed.

To the people with their concerns the modern state justifies itself with its provision of services of general interest, more specifically with its welfare regime and the care supply it provides. It should be safe, as broadly based as possible and of acceptable quality. The Covid pandemic has shown how significant and determining the provision of human services can be for political and economic events in a community: public and private life and the economy as a whole bowed to the regime of health care provision according to indicators of the burden of care. Supply in general (VERSORGUNG in German) is multifaceted. On the one hand, there is the utility industry, which has to ensure the supply of energy and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_7

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water and the disposal of waste and wastewater and also public transport continuously for the common good for all residents. They can demand security of supply and quality of supply. On the other hand – and to be considered here in more detail – is the organized human service supply. It itself represents a large economic sector, which in the self-image of the actors in it operates as a branch of the health economy and as a branch of the social economy (see, however, Chap. 8). Assignment to one or the other sector does not define the provision of health care, but rather the business activities of the private commercial or non-profit enterprises in its field. For example, companies that manufacture ­medical products belong to the health care industry, but for the most part contribute only indirectly to the provision of human services. For the reciprocal relationship of (personal) care and (institutional) supply and for both householding and management, they and other industries producing means of living can be left out of consideration here. Human services are provided in a complementary and compensatory way to people’s own care and concern. They want to stay healthy or recover from an illness and need medical help to do so. Parents seek out-of-home care for their children and are often also dependent on support in their upbringing. Young people have difficulties in the transition from school to work. People with disabilities need help to participate in society. Specialist advice is needed in many problem situations. The need for care in old age needs to be remedied. Protection in case of unemployment or invalidity is necessary. People often cannot find their way out of economic hardship on their own and need supportive guidance and strengthening measures. In the case of mental suffering, a wide range of therapeutic help is sought in inpatient and outpatient structures. Institutionally, in the German social and health care system, this care is also constructed in a complementary and compensatory way to participation in acquisition in the market economy, and thus in principle presupposes the use of the addressees’s labour and ability to pay. Care supply is understood here in the sense of the social security system. This corresponds to the public services systems, which in the USA mean “services, goods, and other means of assistance made available to its citizens by a government” (Collautt 2005, p. 26). There is an infrastructure of care for the population that makes certain basic goods that everyone needs accessible to people and protects people in life situations that are the subject of everyone’s care and concern. Social care supply takes the form of the institutionalised provision of material benefits and (more narrowly defined in provision of care) personal services. The structures of social care supply (in Germany in unity with statutory insurance and nonstatutory welfare) have gradually developed; they exist differently from country to country in Europe and are repeatedly the subject of reforms due to develop-

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ments partly in themselves, but above all in external circumstances, for example, following new findings in science, technological innovations, changes in the labour market, demography or advancing digitalisation. Care supply adapts to the requirements that change. However, its structures and processes cannot fully meet and satisfy people’s concerns. In public services, beyond human services, utilities are the actors that provide the goods to the population that they usually and continuously need in the maintenance of their lives. Individuals in developed countries do not usually worry about the provision of energy and water, telecommunications infrastructure and public transport. Unless, of course, the supply fails. That is then an emergency that must be remedied immediately. For many people, however, especially in the global South, clean water to drink, fuel for cooking or electricity remain a daily concern. In developed countries, “services of general economic interest” provide a basic service for the entire population (and the manufacturing economy also depends on them). In addition, there are institutions that provide the general public with educational and cultural goods and perform security tasks such as the fire brigade or dispose of and recycle waste water and waste (the manufacturing economy also needs these institutions). The reference to services of general interest concerns more closely the relationship of the economic body politic to the economic people. They are dependent on public provision. They use it according to their own needs. The use (e.g., of drinking water) is open to all consumers in the same way, but can be limited. It can be regulated in various ways, not only by the price to be paid for the goods. They are provided on an impersonal basis; they are collective goods from whose use no one is excluded in principle. A broad concept of supply includes the delivery of food and all other items of daily use. In contrast to the basic supply of energy or schooling, for example, it is assumed that people obtain these goods themselves and that – except in emergency and disaster situations – neither the public sector nor institutions commissioned by it are required to provide them. In a market economy, it is left to commercial and trading enterprises to supply such goods and to offer them to consumers in competition with each other. However, the profit-oriented suppliers, as well as the manufacturers of the products, should not be denied the social merit of guaranteeing the supply of the population at all times. Beyond possible profit creation, this is part of the ecosocial function of companies from the relevant sectors of the economy. Within the framework of care, which is structured by public services of general interest, the services and facilities of the social and health care system have a specific function relating to people’s personal lives and their immediate welfare. Social, medical, nursing and educational services respond to concerns and provide professional care. There is a German term for this, Fürsorge. It has a patriarchal

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and authoritarian connotation for many professionals and they like to avoid it. In the past, Fürsorge also meant taking over the care of people against their will and with paternalism and supervision, as in inpatient youth care and care for the disabled. Care contradicts self-determination. Such care has no place in a partnership-­ based form of care. The fact that it is omitted is a question of professional attitude, which will not be examined in detail here. In any case, the specific professional conception  – medical, nursing, socio-­ professional – of “services to people” should be bracketed here when discussing the organisation and management of care supply. According to its legal anchoring in the Social Code, the system of social benefits in Germany consists of insurances (pension, health, accident, long-term care and unemployment insurance), of benefits for support (family support, education support, employment support, housing support, support for children and young people and for the rehabilitation and participation of people with disabilities) and benefits for assistance and protection (in job search, in special life situations, in old age, in case of reduced earning capacity and for the integration of migrants). Human services are tailored to the individual situation. It is part of the professionalism in the services to perceive the social, physical and psychological condition and situation of a person in a differentiated way. The relationship to people’s personal concerns is clear, although the lack or absence of other basic services, such as electricity or connection to the Internet, will certainly not cause the people concerned any less concern. In contrast to the aforementioned collective goods, the good brought about by human services only comes into existence at the persons themselves and regularly in cooperation with them. In its individualisation it cannot be provided by a supplier. Human services are provided in the form of their organised operation. Institutionalized, the care available in it enters into a relationship with private and domestic care.

7.1 On the Development of Social Care The system of services and facilities in social and health care is historically the result of a longer development. Social care has emerged from existential concerns with differentiation of its collective perception. Historically, a structure of person-­ related care existed for a long time solely with the domestic living community (Horden 2014, p. 21 ff.), apart from the hospitals in monasteries and cities (Dirmeier 2010). It was not until the dawn of modernity that political communities found themselves challenged in systematically warding off beggary. They sought to deal with poverty through work and education. Bringing the destitute to gainful em-

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ployment was seen as the main task beyond almsgiving, as described by Juan Luis Vives (De subventione pauperum, 1525). It was natural to set up separate houses in which the chastisement offered could take place: workhouses in England, hȏpitaux généraux in France, Zuchthäuser as penitentiaries and poorhouses, workhouses, spinning houses and orphanages in German cities. These institutions are the predecessors of many other forms of in-patient accommodation, in the health sector exemplarily in Austrian supply houses beginning with the General Hospital in Vienna in 1784. From the very beginning, the care of the needy in public and private institutions was an economic matter. Municipalities, foundations and donors were responsible for raising the funds to maintain the institutions, while the inmates had to use their labour as much as possible. How provision could be made profitable was set out by Jeremy Bentham in the draft of the “Panopticon” and in his scheme for “Pauper Management” (Bentham 2013; cf. Wendt 2017, p. 217 ff.). In the English workhouses according to the specifications of the New Poor Law of 1834, policy followed these ideas and combined the intention of disciplining the poor with the purpose of exploiting their labour power. Positive provision was not to be offered; in the liberal understanding, it diminished the industriousness of the able-bodied poor. Self-­help was demanded. Its most common form in the nineteenth century was emigration. The introduction of statutory insurance in German social policy had nothing to do with the communal and charitable care of the poor. Bismarck’s concern was solely for the welfare of the body politic; in the struggle against revolutionary socialism, the working class was to be won over to the Reich, which promised them social security. For the first time, war relief provided on a large scale in 1914 for the families of soldiers, explicitly distinguished in a positive way from poor relief (see Sect. 5.2). The participation of the entire population in the war subsequently made welfare care for the people indispensable, which after 1918 the state adopted – at least in terms of its claim. In addition to the statutory insurance schemes, welfare care was provided in the form of social assistance. The welfare state in the sense of a social service state according to the design of William Beveridge concretised the comprehensive care project. Since then, social services have no longer been understood as those provided by people together for themselves or for each other, but as material and other services to be claimed under social law. The professional personnel who implement the services in a person-related manner come to the fore, while the economic production of the care product recedes into the background of the service operation. Consequently, the intention to relate the social and health-related care of people and the necessary economic management to each other represents a particular chal-

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lenge in view of the resistance in the help system to the economisation of helping activities. If we take the point of view of the users of the care supply system, the accessibility, the guaranteed and locally and temporally available range of services and their quality are important for them. The care provided becomes productive for the well-being of users whenever they are objectively unwell and seek improvement. People themselves care about health and social livelihood and have a need for material support and professional problem solving, as it is institutionally available in the system of social security and organized care of welfare. In the welfare state, the structures of care are developed in specific areas, in Germany according to the structure of the Social Code. The structure of official, inpatient and outpatient structures in the social and health care system is not managed as a whole. Each area and sector has its own organisation and financing. The diversity and the many boundaries are due to the involvement of various public service and cost bearers, non-profit and private commercial actors. For some time now, reform efforts have aimed at more cooperation and coordination, networking and integration. They should include civil society initiatives, independent commitment and non-professional help. First and foremost, it is the municipalities that are called upon to act as designers and networkers, taking on board the concerns of their inhabitants in accordance with democratic practices. In the local area of the population, the municipalities can plan and direct the settings of their care according to need, be it in the provision of childcare, in the integration of migrants, for accessibility for disabled people or for networked support in the event of need for care. Municipal responsibility for infrastructure also extends to the linking of civil and professional activities, that is, in a structuring of caring that combines people’s own caring, commitment at civic and neighbourhood level with the competence of services and institutions – exemplary in the direction of a caring community. In it, an ecology of care can be realized in the relationship of informal care and formal care to each other.

7.2 A Different Division of Labour In the course of history, with the expansion and independence of market activity, the economy had distanced itself from the concerns of the people. In coordination with them, social care work gradually re-establishes the connection. The modern world of work caused people to shift their own care in the private household to outside services and institutions. There was less time and energy for this at home. For example, in the care of the elderly and in cases of chronic illness. The more the shift happens, the more the care organised in the service sector is forced, out of

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excessive demands, the more it becomes necessary to make care possible at home again. New arrangements become necessary. The commercial employment system participates in the changes in social care. It is moving closer to it. An earlier development is beginning to be reversed. For the working man, the modern economy had begun when gainful employment separated from work in the home (and farm). The sphere of production moved away from the sphere of domestic-family reproduction. Work in the home was largely left to women and devalued relative to work in the productive commercial e­ conomy. However, over time, the sphere of reproduction in education, schooling, and training, as well as in health care, gained importance outside the home. It is not only in the welfare regime that the state has taken up this area and is making an increasing effort in it. As a consequence, it is also publicly acknowledged that the desired success in education or health cannot be had without (unpaid) domestic care work and personal self-care. With the expansion of care structures in social and health care, the welfare state has turned a considerable part of care work into a paid occupation. In mixed welfare production, professional employment is also offered in hybrid form in connection with domestic care supply, for example, by childminders or in homecare help for elderly. On the other hand, people entitled to benefits and their relatives can decide to what extent they call in professional help or manage the necessary care themselves, or choose one or the other combination, and use a personal budget for this. Incidentally, the state generally finances family care with services in cash – including child benefit, via tax-free child allowances or care allowance. It can also, in an ingeniously caring way, as the Finnish state does, convert a cash benefit into a benefit in kind and provide a maternity package with baby equipment for every birth. Reference has already been made above to the discourse on the remuneration of previously unpaid care work by women (Sect. 2.1). The more care supply and one’s own care become intertwined, the more it is possible to ask for a form in which private care with its services is completely absorbed into public services of general interest. This presupposes the recognition that those services are services of general interest that belong to the community. The complementary and compensatory function of care in relation to self-care can be contrasted with a complementary and compensatory function of personal and community care. According to this, raising children would be a joint task, which is fulfilled in a differentiated manner by parents and in institutions of childcare and schooling. Doing economy in hostly action, they together create a successful upbringing of young people. The care and nursing of people with disabilities or frailty could be carried out in an analogous way. The concept of a caring community, as it has been

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discussed in recent years with regard to bringing together the willingness of citizens, professional services and municipal organisation with distributed responsibility, points in this direction (ISS 2014; Klie 2015). Parents, family members, committed neighbours or volunteers would not become “employees” of the public sector in a network of formal and informal care. Rather, it would be placed in the hands of the other helpers and those affected. Compensation for the economic commitment of the caring persons could be offered in various forms of basic security for the children, time off for “parental leave”, tax allowances, etc. A central consideration of reform efforts is that the economy of social reproduction services should not be left to private households, but that economic participation should fall to each side of the household of the community. With the transformation of the world of work in digitalisation, this should be easier to achieve. While business life in the home office connects the domestic sphere to commercial production activities, private concerns access and draw on the infrastructure of care supply in real terms via virtual portals and media. Digital technology enables the provision and retrieval of advice from the professional side and also from the informal side by “experienced” people (psychiatry experienced, care experienced, etc.) in the various areas of health and social care. The advice of citizens is also in demand in many places in the structural development of the social and health care system. An increasing economic interweaving of individual caring and providing activities and more consideration of gainful employment for reproductive care work can be observed. Just as the business of the economy is associated with rights and duties, participation in the common task of social reproduction entails rights and duties. Parents of children have the right to infrastructurally developed support for the care, upbringing and education of their offspring. They have the duty to provide for them accordingly. Corresponding to this is the duty of the public authorities to adapt their support to personal and family circumstances. The commercial enterprises are also stakeholders in the new generation of workers through training and are inevitably involved in the provision and promotion of trainees. The only thing that needs to be discussed is the concrete design of this involvement of the corporate employment system in the infrastructure of education and regeneration of human capital. A gender-equitable distribution of care work and a better reconciliation of gainful employment and care work has long been a constant topic not only of the feminist debate. Parents need time for children. Their education takes place at home before and while it is generated at school; the pedagogical staff is a necessary partner of the family, but is overburdened on its own. In the case of chronic illness, the aim is to avoid exclusion from working life and invalidity. Later care needs can be covered less and less professionally. There is a shortage of staff in institutions

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providing care for the elderly and the sick, and the same is true of childcare facilities and care facilities for the disabled. Welfare care has long since reached its limits with its equipment. In terms of professional policy, greater commitment in this area is repeatedly called for (Care-Manifest 2013). A broader public has noticed the “care crisis” in the Covid pandemic. It could be the opportunity to “organise and finance our health, social and welfare systems, and thus the totality of care work, in a more socially solidary way” (Brückner et al. 2020, p. 221). To this end, it is proposed, among other things, to introduce “care mainstreaming”, which is supposed to mean “that in all political measures of all departments, the effects on people who bear responsibility for care, who perform care activities or who need care are taken into account as a mandatory dimension in decisions” (Brückner et  al. 2020, p.  222). Admittedly, the dimension of care is not perceived here in the extension of a concern that has as its object the social conduct of life and its ecology as a whole. Shifted to professional and informal care activities, the task of self-care, co-care and care cannot be accomplished: it is to be borne by all of us, despite all inequality in distribution, in the conduct of life. If care is perceived as a burden that carers and helpers bear and which, according to general opinion, deserves compensation, then care remains marginal and everyone who is not currently affected is happy to unburden themselves in appreciation of those who do the work and also concedes them better pay. Caring is different in the sense of being able to live with the difficulties of living together, caring for children, the hardships of growing up, illness or disability and infirmity, and knowing how to organize this life appropriately in the community. Such concern certainly includes the consideration of burdens and the effort to balance them, but it seeks above all economic conditions in which life can succeed while overcoming the problems it entails.

7.3 Supply Is Not Equal to Welfare In common parlance, social provision provided by the public purse is equated with welfare. “Living on welfare”, to be on welfare, is what recipients of monetary social benefits say, and it is also what the media say when reporting on “welfare cases”. Personal welfare, however, cannot be received by those in need of assistance with the handing out of soup or with the money they are entitled to. Even compensatory and complementary human services contribute to the welfare of their recipients, but do not deliver it directly. Welfare is not deliverable.

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Welfare happens in personal life and is determined as a process (how we are doing and how we are “faring well”) by the conduct of life of the individual person and together in the respective life situation. What is economically called “production of welfare” must be at least as much related to the life situation and the self-­ direction of a person in it and considered in its life practice as in view of what is done in organized care and achieved in its outcome. In a residential home, and even more so in assisted living, the welfare that results will be co-produced and predominantly determined by the residents’ actions, their care (Davies and Knapp 1981; Fernández and Knapp 2004). Following the common understanding of ­economy, however, it is the operational output of the service providers that counts: Welfare production is usually located in the care structures, that is, in the services and facilities and, as far as the necessary acquisition is concerned, in the employment system, and then, in a concept of mixed welfare production, the share of informal assistance and civil commitment in it is described (Evers and Olk 1996). The mixture is measured structurally in terms of the relationship between the market and state sectors and the family and civil society in their contributions to the arrangement of welfare in the community. Usually, one considers welfare production as an operational process in the structure of care. Various actions work together towards a better outcome for individuals. What can be accounted for as an outcome can only be determined in a majority of cases, since the individual situation is contingent and the efforts to achieve it also make the result random. Personal welfare does not represent a product to be agreed upon and administered in a supply company, which a service provider or a service undertakes to deliver ready-made. Only performance or target agreements can be made in relation to tasks. How a person is “comfortable” with this will become apparent in the course of her life: Welfare results in the whole context of life, which is perceived individually in the course of time. People are usually concerned about their own welfare. But they do not constantly act in terms of their well-being and often do not know what their well-being is. In the everyday course of things, individual moments of their well-being are present to them – concerns about health, education, partnership, professional career, leisure activities or material livelihood. How these concerns are to be assessed is communicated socially, informally within the family, among friends and colleagues, in the social media and formally by professionals and politicians. Many people tell us how important education is, what social participation promises, how partnership can succeed, what opportunities the job offers, how to eat well and properly or how to stay mobile in old age. The benefits system of care only helps to a limited extent. In the concern for well-being, the interests of a person are not identical with the interests of person-­

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centred services. According to their design, service providers, like all organisations, perceive the individual in a role – as client or patient or, deliberately named neutrally, as addressee, user and target person. The target is measured by the service. The staff of a social institution, a counselling centre or a medical service will adapt to the individual person in the best possible way; but this is done within the framework of the organisation’s mission. Caring professionals are only “on duty”. They are usually well advised, in view of the mission of the service and the clientele, to keep their private lives separate from their professional activities. The organization deals with many clients or patients and manages care across cases. The disposition of its use of time, personnel, and materials cannot be based solely on the needs of a single person because this would interfere with the treatment of the remaining cases. In medical care, the guideline-based procedures of diagnosis and therapy that have been introduced are likely to operationally catch the concern of a person or their relatives. In social services, for example, a homeless person may not want to be taken “off the streets” at all, as the homeless are supposed to be, and a job centre reports its success in job placement figures and does not necessarily follow the intentions of individual clients to do so. For the most part, the recipients of the services do not expect this either. They are usually clever enough to adapt to the system’s specifications for the sake of the benefits they can derive from it. Individual welfare requires compromises everywhere in the shaping of life. Young people have to set aside their leisure interests as they move into the world of work. For children, parents adapt their life plans and lifestyles: the welfare of the family demands a continuously flexible arrangement. Professional qualification and further education take up a lot of time which is lacking for other projects. Lifelong learning involves constant adaptation to systemic change, for example, in advances in digitalisation and artificial intelligence. At the same time, there are new opportunities for self-sufficiency, including the use of all kinds of services. More independence is gained with more dependence on the support, that is available. In the life of persons, welfare, if it is perceived, is progressive and, because of the crooked paths, requires mobility. If we understand well-being as an active endeavour, the necessary dynamics must be pursued by the person with inner and outer dispositions. The individual situation in life can make it easier or more difficult. Those who are materially and mentally well endowed possess a degree of freedom of choice that does not exist in the case of lesser fortune. Capabilities in the sense of Amartya Sen make worries superfluous, as they must be for the less well-off in the absence of opportunities. The design of the education system in particular opens up opportunities. It is an important task of schools and training to

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keep access to it and transitions within it open for young people in their particular circumstances. How they fare on the educational path is a pacemaker of personal welfare. However, despite all external support, it remains bound to the subjective experience and in it to the driving forces of the person. Personal well-being usually becomes an issue in everyday social life when it is lacking or appears to be at risk. Then the casual question “How are you?” cannot be dismissed with one word. One worries. Even with continued self-direction, one is affected by impairments and hindering circumstances. In the case of an illness, the loss of a job, the end of a partnership, a person runs the risk of being thrown off course. The dependence of well-being on the individual situation in life encourages people to make their own provisions and to take this situation into account in all areas of social and health care. To do this, their services must be “personalised”. And this is difficult in their system. The care supply system is hardly prepared to deal with the whole life situation of a person. It is sectorally and professionally differentiated and requires users to differentiate their concerns. Access to it is legally and administratively open to specific indications of need, classified in characteristics of loss of material subsistence, reduction in earning capacity, sickness, disability, need for care, etc. A deficit in welfare is among the indications of human services treatment, counseling or targeted assistance. The system can transform a life situation as a whole at most by its inclusion in a total institution, as described by Goffman. Individual welfare certainly does not succeed in it. Thus, the desideratum remains to achieve personand situation-specific welfare arrangements for them with the participation of various parties, transsectorally and in partnership with the users (Wendt 2010). The conditions for this must be created in the social economy (see Sect. 8.2). According to political objectives, individual welfare cannot be achieved across all levels without taking into account the broader contexts of life. The situation in which people can “experience well-being” does not only consist of the immediate material and social conditions in which they live. Their existence is shaped in perspective by experiences of security and of future prospects on which to build. Whether someone and we are doing well in the world is also determined by where we are going in it and how things are going in the world and with life in it. Ultimately, it is the global situation, the conditions of which extend into the welfare of every individual and are a constant concern not only for the young people of “Fridays for Future”.

References

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References Bentham, Jeremy. 2013. Das Panoptikum. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz. Brückner, Margrit, et  al. 2020. Großputz! Care nach Corona neu gestalten. Ein Positionspapier zur Care-Krise aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege, 167 (6). S. 221–224. Care-Manifest. 2013. Care. Macht. Mehr. Von der Care-Krise zur Care-Gerechtigkeit. Feministische Studien, 31 (2). S. 324–326. Collautt, Alan M. 2005. Community Well-Being and Public Welfare. Administration of Public Systems of Care: Philosophy, Models, and Guidelines for Improvement. Xlibris/Alan Collautt Ass. Davies, Bleddyn P., und Martin R.J. Knapp. 1981. Old People’s Homes and the Production of Welfare. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dirmeier, Artur (Hrsg.). 2010. Organisierte Barmherzigkeit. Armenpflege und Hospitalwesen in Mittelater und Früher Neuzeit. Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet. Evers, Adalbert, und Thomas Olk (Hrsg.). 1996. Wohlfahrtspluralismus. Vom Wohlfahrtsstaat zur Wohlfahrtsgesellschaft. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Fernández, José-Luis, und Martin Knapp. 2004. Long-Term Care. Matching Resources and Needs. Abingdon: Routledge. Horden, Peregrine. 2014. Household Care and Informal Networks. Comparisons and Continuities from Antiquity to the Present. In The Locus of Care. Families, communities, institutions and the provision of welfare since antiquity. Horden, Peregrine, und Richard Smith (eds.), S. 21–70. Abingdon: Routledge. ISS im Dialog. 2014. Sorgende Gemeinschaften  – Vom Leitbild zu Handlungsansätzen. Dokumentation. (ISS-Aktuell 03/2014) Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Sozialarbeit und Sozialpädagogik. Klie, Thomas. 2015. On the Way to a Caring Community? The German Debate. In Compassionate Communities. Case Studies from Britain and Europe. Klaus Wegleitner, Katharina Heimerl, und Allan Kellehear (eds.), S. 198–209. Abingdon: Routledge. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2010. Arrangements der Wohlfahrtsproduktion in der sozialwirtschaftlichen Bewerkstelligung von Versorgung. In: Wohlfahrtsarrangements. Neue Wege in der Sozialwirtschaft, hrsg. Wolf Rainer Wendt. S. 11–52, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2017. Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit 1. Die Gesellschaft vor der sozialen Frage 1750–1900. 6. Aufl., Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

8

Solidarity in Care and Social Economy

Abstract

Common care turns into common economy. The ecosocial transformation invites this. In order to secure one’s own supply, social economy is carried out in self-organisation. Historically, various cooperative, mutual and nonprofit formats developed, which in the neoliberal era have presented themselves as social enterprises. Social economy includes not only organisations serving their members but also welfare work organised in public service. In addition, there are solidarity-based economic projects worldwide. Commercial enterprises are also seeking to incorporate social business and to link it to an ecological orientation in their activities. These developments are the subject of social economic discourse. In this discourse, the theory of social economy covers the breadth of welfare-oriented economic activity.

What people care for and what happens in “the economy” fall apart in our times. The internal space of self-care and business in the open market seem to exclude each other. In the private sphere there is much to care for, and there is the complementary and substitute sphere of care supply in the system of social security and social benefits. Those who enter the capitalist economic arena in an entrepreneurial way “outside the home” do so at their own risk and leave behind their charge for care in the personal circle of life. At least, that is what is expected. Certainly, every© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_8

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where in the employment system a good connection and balance of life and work, of family and career is desired, but even with a balanced relationship the separation of the two worlds persists. If the two were to coincide and appear identical, there would not be much to think about in terms of their relationship to each other. In pre-modern times, the main space of doing care was the space of doing economy, and there was no separate system of provision. Modernly, the economy has moved into the market, away from caring and left it in private households. Many carers did not accept this development and the hardship it brought. They united their forces in their own social organization of production and consumption for their common sustenance. These initiatives are needed in our days to underpin the ecosocial transformation towards an environmentally and socially compatible way of life and manner of economy (Elsen 2011; Elsen et al. 2015). An economy that is based on care and provision is called a social economy or solidarity economy. For a substantial part of it, the care of the participants is also the content of their economy. In the market, as far as their self-sufficiency goes, they do not have to appear. The success of action is not sought where a profit can be made with goods, but rather directly in the welfare of people. Either they take care of themselves in a socio-economically organized way or they are taken care of in an organized way – or the one comes to the other in communal efforts. The market remains outside, but can be used. On the other hand, developments in the market and economic-political impulses can cause a social economy to be integrated into it in the end, if it is in the interest of the commercial economy. But the origin of social economy is different. Economists of the classical school may accuse the term “social economy” of being conceptually contradictory. Some commemtators  mistakenly think of the term as referring to the “social market economy” of the German type. Socially committed people, on the other hand, keep their distance from the economy in their concern. They think that by caring people remain in relation to each other, at least to themselves, and have nothing to do with an economy of capitalist nature that is alienated from them. Even where care becomes social outside the home in service structures, professional carers keep their distance from the economic rationale wherever they can. The habitual polarization is refuted in practice by the self-­ serving actions of individuals and by organizations in which the economy is managed collectively in self-administration. The functional differentiation of the economic sphere and the social sphere, as it is usually communicated, has good reasons and also allows for overlaps, but it remains absent in forms of a different practice: A social economy comes about when people in the same precarious situation unite in solidarity – quasi in a care

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from below. Or social economic activity results in projects of social cooperation in the interest of social reform – quasi in a concern from above. The entrepreneurial initiative comes im addition from the side of taking up a social problem and wanting to solve it in a business set up for this purpose. In the evolution of the social economy, these formats have appeared one after the other, and they now coexist. Once born out of social need, a different way of doing business in the ecological crisis is now the subject of concern, even among profit-making companies and start-ups geared towards innovation. Primarily, a community of caring (in common care, Wendt 2021) carries a social practice of economic activity, however the caring comes about in narrower and wider circles of life, privately and publicly, and however it may be pronounced voluntarily, charitably, in solidarity or civically engaged. Let us recall the oikos model (see Chap. 4). The community of caring includes an economy that is attuned to the individual participants, their needs and their participation in giving and taking, in the completion of tasks and in coping with problems. The broader the scope of communal concern, the more important becomes the social organization of the actions and participation of the actors. They bring their freedoms in the way they undertake tasks and solve problems. A larger community of caring does not exclude enterprise (in the social sense) and business (in the economic sense), but includes them. In the reality of “services in the general interest” or the “mixed economy of welfare”, great importance is attached to the linking of different forms of participation according to motivation, ability, capacity and the agency fed by these. There is self-help that does not need any further social support, community self-help, voluntary work, organised problem solving in groups with professional support and competent care in institutions. The public and societal interest in social activity stimulates it – sometimes with an appeal to morality or public spirit, sometimes with calls for cohesion, sometimes with reference to human rights and their codification, sometimes with appreciation and esteem, right up to the perception of the return that those who help and are committed achieve for themselves and for society with their commitment. The various forms of activity in social economy can be traced back to the basic pattern of joint satisfaction of needs. In economic terms, as explained above (in Sect. 4.3), this generally takes place in concrete households. This is the individual household of a person, a family household or the household of a larger community. In each household, consideration is given to what needs to be done and what resources are available to meet those needs. What thus needs to be taken care of and how that can be done stands to reason for the members of a household. But most of

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the time they have to do something beyond the household to meet their supply needs in themselves or in solidarity with others and in larger households. As has been discussed, what is to be done socially for individual and community good takes place informally or self-organised on the one hand and is organised in the social benefit system on the other. Here, social economy takes place in the reciprocal use of social security institutions (who not only bear the costs), service providers and service recipients. They are independent economic actors in their own households. They have to do socially only in relation to each other. This fact is followed by the reconstruction of social economic practice in theory. The social economy can be (1) designed from the self-organisation of a group of people for their own use (in a member serving organisation) or (2) build on services in the general interest (public serving organisations) or (3) of companies that make social business the object of their activities. A service enterprise managed by the profit-making business distances itself in its economic management from the personal care which has to guide it in the execution of its social task. The operational management of the firm, may it also be called social management, follows in the business interest the business administration standards and focuses on marketing, controlling and fundraising. Social economy, however, takes place in a caring manner on a level below its organisation and in a caring manner on a level above its organisation in a management of the social – in each individual case of social problems as well as in the tasks which arise in the community. The relevant service organisations, on the other hand, see the social economy in the business interest as a sector alongside other sectors of the economy, only not-for-profit. Social entrepreneurship has joined the established service providers in this “industry”. Social entrepreneurs are entrants into a social business. Promoted by the European Union, social entrepreneurship has received the most attention in the debate on the social economy in recent years. Social business is expanding into innovative approaches to ecologically conscious and sustainable business. Companies recognise that they are social if they act in an ecologically responsible way; if they do, they thus also want to do social business, or at least see themselves doing so. However, the origin of social economic practice is not to be found in entrepreneurial ingenuity, but in the solidarity of people who want to earn their material livelihood together in a self-determined way.

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8.1 A Recourse into the History of Social and Solidarity-­ Based Economy The historical exodus of the economy from the domestic economy to commerce also released concerns. It left room for social initiatives to organize the maintenance of people in community instead of on the basis of money and property. The divorce of home and business in the modern era meant that wage earners, at risk of impoverishment, could not rely solely on their families for sustenance. The ­safeguarding function of community was now in demand outside the home. The example of citizens’ connections in societies for good causes in the eighteenth century (Wendt 2017a, p.  61  ff.) prompted craftsmen and factory workers in England to form friendly societies as self-help associations for the purpose of receiving support from collected funds in the event of illness, invalidity or failure of the breadwinner in the event of death. Friendly societies emerged in large numbers and became a nucleus of the insurance industry (Cordery 2003). Likewise in France, the sociétés de secours mutuel as mutual insurance companies. The field of social economy is initially occupied by member serving organisations. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the followers of Robert Owen advanced the formation of cooperatives of workers in trade unions (up to a large trades union) and in consumer associations. In France, Louis Blanc sought to generalize the model of productive cooperatives in a new “organization of labor.” There has been explicit talk of social economy in Europe since about 1830 (Dunoyer 1830). In French, the term économie sociale was used to describe a (theory of) economic system which, in contrast to capitalist business, consisted of organised cooperation for the benefit and supply of those participating in it. Cooperatives and mutual societies in various forms realized this mode of economy in France, England, Germany, and elsewhere. The social economic theory discourse from Frédéric Le Play (founder in 1857 of the Société internationale des hautes études d’économie sociale) to Léon Walras and Charles Gide influenced a policy of social reform in France with cooperatives in focus (Gide 1905). With the development of the welfare state and the communist form of socialism in the twentieth century, the importance of cooperativism in economic and social policy dwindled. After 1968, however, against the backdrop of the new social movements, the cooperative system again attracted increased attention, initially in French politics (Duverger 2015, p. 91), and soon the economic significance of the free associations became the subject of international debate on the “third sector”. Although not for profit, it was seen as playing a productive role alongside the market and state sectors. In 1982, the French organisations in this sector signed a

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“Charter of the Social Economy”, in which, against the background of the neo-­ liberal reorientation that had just begun, they characterised themselves as enterprises that are run democratically and in partnership by their members in self-­ administration and do not distribute the profits from their activities, but use them for the common purpose. Internationally, however, a uniform understanding of the social economy has not emerged. In England, it covers the involvement of charities in the voluntary sector; in Spain and Italy, cooperatives play the main role in the social economy. In Italy, social cooperatives have been regulated by law since 1991 and provide social, health, educational and socio-cultural services under Type A and the integration of disadvantaged people into the labour market under Type B (Picciotti et al. 2014; Elsen and Fazzi 2021). The “four families” of the social economy in France  – cooperatives, mutual societies, associations and foundations  – have been discovered by the European Union’s economic policy as an important factor in employment, growth and social cohesion. Since then, the social economy can be considered as a sector alongside others in the national economy. In the market, the actors are supposed to play their role as social enterprises, being subject to the same rules of competition and aid in the economic community as other enterprises. Of course, it was noted that the aforementioned organisations with their social purpose and objective functioned differently for the most part. The debate in the European Union or at the European Court of Justice about which social economy activities or “services of general interest” have a commercial, economic or entrepreneurial character and which are non-economic or “social” in nature has been ongoing since the 1990s (Herrmann 2002; Wendt 2002; Hatzopoulos 2011; Wehlander 2016). One of the Union’s priorities in recent years has been the development and dissemination of social entrepreneurship. Instrumental was the European Commission’s “Social Business Initiative” in its Communication COM (2011) 682 final on “Creating a favourable climate for social enterprises, key stakeholders in the social economy and innovation” (Europäische Kommission 2011). Since then, many start-ups are emerging with a “social business”, connecting in networks and tackling selected “societal challenges”. The start-ups can be found in the field of care, but currently more often in the claim of sustainability. According to their own understanding, social entrepreneurs want to “generate social added value” and “are thus committed to issues such as climate change, digitalisation, demographic change, migration, in the fight against poverty, in education, in the environmental sector, in development policy or in the community. Combining market rationality and solidarity-based action, social entrepreneurs strive to reconcile entrepreneurship and the common good” (Any-Klara-Morf Stiftung 2020, p. 4).

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In remarkable contrast to the business of social entrepreneurship in Europe, a solidarity economy is being discussed internationally, which is supposed to be in line with the development in the countries of the global South (Defourny et  al. 1999; Laville 2007) and to represent an alternative to the capitalist economy. Forms of cooperative agriculture, combined with fair trade, and self-managed farms for the preservation of jobs fall into this category. In this understanding, there are many initiatives and projects of a solidarity economy in Europe as well (cf. Voß 2010), and the social economy also joins it terminologically in the designation économie sociale et solidaire or social and solidarity economy (Hiez and Lavillunière 2013). In Germany, the non-profit welfare sector with its many institutions and services has adopted the term social economy after 1990 without referring to the francophone, southern European and other connotations of the term. In the provision of social services in Germany, the link with public institutions and services is not absent. Here, the social economy is organized in transitions of “mixed welfare production” and to that extent “hybrid” (Evers and Ewert 2010). In addition to the inventory of social welfare, there are a lot of alternative initiatives and projects in many countries, from energy cooperatives to barter exchanges. They explicitly count themselves as part of a solidarity economy, less often as part of the social economy in the sense of services of public interest. Nevertheless, they fit into a concept of “social economy that works for people and the planet” (Social Economy Europe 2020). Since the end of the First World War, the dual structure of social provision by the public sector on the one hand and the non-profit welfare sector on the other has been developed in the social care supply regime in Germany. On the macro level, the non-statutory welfare organizations communicate with the regional authorities in a spirit of partnership when it comes to strategic questions of design and development in the social sector. The institutions and services that provide care at the operational meso level are primarily interested in maintaining what they undertake and receive funding for, both individually and in competition with each other. Involved in public serving, they do not see their task in the management of the system of person-related care as a whole. Their services are administered at the macro level under public law. In its entirety, the social economy thus extends across all levels with the participation of many actors in vertical relationships and in horizontal coexistence. This does not even take into account the ecological orientation of innovative economic activity, which goes beyond social care and has also recently been given the label “social economy”. In contrast to the start-ups in social entrepreneurship, the existing structures in welfare care in Germany, in which not only the public social service providers but also the non-profit welfare organisations see themselves as providers of social care,

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are not very innovative. They proceed according to the specifications associated with their mandate. Apart from adopting the titles “social enterprise” and “social economy”, they also have little in common with the francophone économie sociale or the international forms of a social and solidarity economy. Social cooperatives only became possible in Germany after the amendment of the Cooperatives Act in 2006. User initiatives for the design of care remain tied to the alternative or civil society scene – with a distance to the scene of established welfare care. This is also true of the cooperative platform models (such as Fairmondo) that are emerging in the digitilisation process, which aim to advance a “common ­good-­oriented platform economy” (Kagel et  al. 2018). Platform cooperativism (Scholz 2018, p. 16) can be a vehicle for a circular economy that is socially based on many individual people coming together to form it, and operating exchange processes in a decentralised and partnered way. These have existed at the local level for some time, exemplified in the Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) since 1983 and the various exchange rings since. The digital platforms facilitate and broaden this mode of economic activity without striving for a financial return. Social and solidarity-based economy can catch up with the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations in Agenda 2030. The 17 Social Development Goals (SDGs) agreed in 2015 (Martens and Obenland 2017), with 169 individual targets, cover virtually all areas of life and business  – from eradicating poverty in the world to health and education, managing water and energy, decent work for all, resource conservation, combating climate change and biodiversity loss, and global partnership for sustainable development. Global concerns are formulated in tasks to which the international community is committed. The social and solidarity economy is given a special role in fulfilling these tasks by the UN, the OECD and European bodies. It is expected to be inclusive in the implementation of social, economic and ecological goals with the active participation of the people for whom they are pursued. Their participation in their own care is a condition for the success of the transformation that is demanded of all actors in the ecological crisis.

8.2 What to Do: The Horizon of Challenges Internationally, in recent decades, social economy has strategically and operationally expanded its horizons beyond the narrower realm of social provision, associated civic engagement and self-organised maintenance in diverse ventures, projects and initiatives. The promotion of social entrepreneurship and social innovation at the European level has contributed to this. If in the neoliberal decades since 1980

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providers in the social and health care sector were taught to act economically according to cost-benefit criteria, now in the business sector young entrepreneurs with offers of social problem solving are in demand. In the general striving for sustainability, ecological and social projects are becoming compatible: The climate crisis and its consequences are also a social crisis, and both challenge doing economy. In the European “ecosystem” of the promotion of the social economy, social business should dedicate itself to those “societal challenges” with innovative and effective solutions in the interest of “inclusive” economic growth. Direct aid and social services are thus not primarily meant on the actor and object side. What is called “societal” and is to be promoted does not necessarily have to be “social” in relation to disadvantaged groups of people. The “German Social Entrepreneurship Monitor” explains: “The primary goal of social entrepreneurship is the solution of social challenges, which also includes social and ecological aspects” (SEND 2021, p. 14). European funding, including through the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI), covers this broad task. The extent to which “social” is equated with “societal” in the notion of innovation remains an open question. There is probably a need in both directions. With more or less deliberation, the following distinction was written into the coalition agreement during the penultimate German government formation in 2018 (p.  42 there): “Social entrepreneurship plays an increasingly important role in solving current societal and social challenges. We want to promote and support social entrepreneurship even more than before.” The title social economy is now claimed by and for companies that are committed to the social and ecological transformation and want to contribute to it with innovative solutions. The major issues of sustainability that affect society call for the involvement of companies. “Social businesses” can be launched in the range of “societal challenges” equally for the support and promotion of disadvantaged groups of people, for preventive health care, care in old age, integration of immigrants, for the energy turnaround, in digitalization projects and in environmental protection. Large parts of the private sector want to participate indirectly or directly in these tasks in the collective interest and thus demonstrate their involvement in the ecological transformation. In the meantime, a lot of start-ups are counting themselves to the social economy, which identify their business models as socially responsible and alternative-­ sustainable. Examples include projects of the “Social Entrepeneurship Netzwerk Deutschland e.V. (SEND)” founded in 2017 to “overcome social challenges”. It emerged from the “Bundesverband Deutsche Startups” (Federal Association of German Startups) and, among other things, pursues the “development of a common

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ecosystem for social entrepreneurship and social solidarity economy in Berlin”. Guiding themes of the association are: Climate change, circular economy, digital transformation. The comprehensive economic projects are not identified as social concerns of and for specific groups of people, but the business purpose is ascribed social significance as such. The network of social enterprises is supported by the Bertelsmann Foundation, SAP, BMW and VW, among others. The large companies not only want to prove their social responsibility, but also to profit from the innovations realized by the start-ups. It is claimed that there is a unifying social interest. This exists in the local economic and social economy ecosystem, which must be nurtured alongside the other industrial ecosystems in which, as discussed (Sect. 5.3), in the European Common Market, the encouraged interaction of all stakeholders should benefit the prosperity of the economy. In the field of the social economy, a group of experts (GECES) has developed a concept of “clusters of social and ecological innovation”. In these clusters, companies, civil society organisations, local authorities, educational and research institutions come together in one place or region to jointly promote local development in economic, social and ecological terms. This can be done in particular to promote the circular economy, to revitalise urban or rural areas or to integrate immigrants on a broad scale. In May 2021, after a series of preparatory events, there was a European Social Economy Summit, sponsored by the European Commission and the City of Mannheim. A large number of social enterprises and young entrepreneurs took part. Most of the contributors discussed green and digital transformation projects. These are financially supported by European funds. The players are not yet satisfied with this. Because their business is intended to achieve a positive social impact in one way or another, it is counted as part of the social economy. How it is to be conceptualised was left open at the meeting. Aspects of social provision played a determining role in only a few projects. Social business identifies the ecological with the social sense and thus also legitimises itself economically. It requires its promotion from the “ecosystem” of the European programme to achieve sustainable growth with social cohesion and with social innovation. This is the aim of the European Action Plan for the Social Economy, which was finalised at the end of 2021 to promote the social economy as a driving force of economic and social development in Europe after a long discussion, according to the Communication of the European Commission: “Building an economy that works for people: an action plan for the social economy”. The market economy system as a whole should benefit. It is expected that social entrepreneurship with its innovations will contribute to a green and digital orientation of the commercial scene as well. What moves them is the concern for a suc-

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cessful transformation of the economy as a whole. The social economy can be a “driving force” in this development, because at many points in its scene it takes people along with it, without whose participation the change and the coping with its shocks cannot be accomplished. The willingness of many people to become involved in both environmental and social issues is being realised in the social economy. The quantity of those committed overlaps with the large quantity of those who have to endure what the change demands of them in terms of adjustments in their own lives and actions. Europe’s economic development programmes are simultaneously geared towards economic and social resilience in coping with the consequences of the Covid pandemic, in the digitalisation campaign and in the face of the climate crisis. In its 2020 vision “A strong social Europe for a just transition”, the European Commission has linked initiatives for skills development through (digital) education, support for job mobility, increasing social protection and combating poverty and exclusion in terms of industrial policy with the creation of new jobs with fair working conditions in order to arrive at socially acceptable and just solutions in relation to climate neutrality, digitalisation and demographic change. There is an Investment Plan for a Sustainable Europe and, since the end of 2021, the aforementioned EU Action Plan for the Social Economy. The programmes illustrate the political interest in which one is now willing to add social productivity to the overall economic productivity and to orient the entrepreneurial economy itself towards social care and ecological concerns. In the opposite direction, civic initiatives are gaining ground, in which a social and solidarity-based economy is ventured. It does not have to be a social enterprise dedicated to the welfare of a specific target group; capital can be mobilized in a city or region for facilities that serve the population as a whole. Such investments – for example, in creative workshops run by users or green spaces maintained by them – can be used to develop an economy in partnership between the political municipality and the citizenry, a kind of democratization of economic activity or “citizen economy” in which citizen entrepreneurship (Gofen 2015; Mitra et al. 2020) intersects with the economic and social commitment of the local authority in the case of distributed participation. In the public economy, citizens actually contribute to common welfare, linking their own to it.

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8.3 What to Care About: Positions of Social Economy Theory The social economy, in its various manifestations, has reached a breadth with the general economic and social development, spanning from projects related to social problems by large companies and innovative start-ups to support circles for disabled people, revitalised neighbourhoods in urban quarters and small groups moving from the city to the countryside to start an alternative life. At one end, social economy actors face competition in the marketplace; at the other, they act in direct life care. How economic activity and care fit together in the social economy field is the subject of theoretical reflection in social economy theory. Fundamental to the social economy is the social character of such economic activity, which is carried out directly by and for people. The social economy is dedicated to the provision of welfare. Now, as described, this can happen in different ways: in member-serving organisations such as social cooperatives, in public-­ serving organisations such as a Caritas association or the Red Cross, or informally in the neighbourhood or in free commitment. Social economics is concerned with the design of care supply and caring for people on a small and large scale – at the macro level of the social benefit system and the socio-politically designed allocation and distribution of resources to meet needs, at the meso level of social economic operations in organisations, institutions, services, projects, measures and events, and at the micro level of the personal, professional, voluntary commitment of people to their individual and collective welfare (cf. Wendt 2016, p. 2). The subject of the theory is the scene of the social economy as part of the overall economy, including both formally organised and informally performed care work. As described above, the social economy has its historical origins in formats of mutual support and cooperation. Over time, social economy has moved into the structures of social services of general interest in welfare state regimes. This transition in the conception of the social economy from cooperative self-sufficiency to publicly accountable social care took place in theory as early as the end of the nineteenth century in French solidarism, or rather preceded by it in Frédéric Le Play. Then in the Progressive Era of the USA with Edward T. Devine as a mastermind of the just professionalizing social work. In his description of social work, Devine moved from social economics as a theory of communal housekeeping to the task of social work as a service in this housekeeping: Social economics deals with social needs and with the institutions through which they are met: with the need for education, for example, and the schools; with the need for justice and the courts; with the need of children for parental care and the family.

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Smoothly organized households may seem to the stranger to present no problems of household management. So prosperous and well managed communities may appear deficient in social problems. The social economist, theoretically, would deal equally with the normal operations of social forces working advantageously and equitably and with the pathological conditions which are evidence of friction or failure. Public and private agencies for the promotion of the common welfare alike fall within his scope. (Devine 1922, p. 1)

In the spirit of the kind of economics advocated by the German historical school of economics in the nineteenth century, Devine has a comprehensive concept of the subject of social economy theory. In it he casually classifies the problem area of particular social concern. Referring to the practice of problem solving, Devine can pass from social economy to social work: If from the broader term social economics we now turn to the narrower and more familiar expression social work, and if we think of the practical social worker rather than the academic social economist, we may at once limit the scope of our study to those aspects of community housekeeping which have to do with getting rid of bad conditions or helping people who cannot help themselves. The broad object of social economics is that each individual shall be able to live a normal life according to the standard of the period and of the community. The narrower object of social work is (1) the care of those who through misfortune or fault are not able under existing conditions to realize a normal life for themselves or hinder others from realizing it – dependent children, aged poor, sick, cripples, blind, mentally defective, criminals, insane, negligent parents, and so on – and (2) the improvement of conditions which are a menace to individual welfare, which tend to increase the number of dependents and interfere with the progress and best interests of others who are in no danger of becoming dependent. (Devine 1922, p. 2 f.)

This classification of social work, as of care work in general, into social economy was omitted later in the science of the social profession after the awakening years. It focused on relational work, to be done by one person to another. Even operational management of care supply was not the business of social professional one-­ to-­one help. To be fair, it has to be said that in economics, too, nothing was done for a long time to take social caring into account. Feminist economics did, and the ecosocial theory approach led to interpreting social work according to its economic importance in terms of individual and collective welfare (Wendt 2004). The ecosocial orientation suggested the development of a social economy theory which, in disciplinary terms, does not leave the welfare-serving action in the formal framework of social and health care within the competence of business administration and takes it over along with its informal extension from the ignorance of economics into an independent conception of caring for welfare. Social econ-

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omy, as Devine suggests, encompasses, on the one hand, organized care in its interrelation to personal and community care and, on the other hand, the overall design of a welfare-serving economy. The theory discusses the performance relationships of the actors involved in care. We find them linked in public-law organisation, free and non-profit association, civil commitment and individual and community self-help. With all of this, social care is provided in a field of action stretched between public provision and personal and domestic caring. The economics of this are anchored on both sides. It makes a difference, however, whether it is managed separately – in the supply service on the one hand and in the private household on the other – or whether it is managed cooperatively. In the social economy, the effectiveness and efficiency of the use of resources depends decisively on how the participants (human services led in prevention, curation, rehabilitation or associative and cooperative in independent organisation) adjust to each other and work together. Social economy theory takes community-based concern as the starting point for considering how doing economy aimed directly at the welfare of people can be designed. The concept of the ecosystem may again be applied to its multidimensional extension and complexity. Many services, many people, many official bodies are connected on a case-by-case basis and across many cases. In the horizon of togetherness, a caring community ideally comes into being. In the framework of care, which extends vertically over several levels, the allocation and distribution of the means with which the maintenance of the system of services and their execution take place must be investigated. The infrastructure that exists or is to be developed also offers opportunity for the coordination of participation and the unfolding of care in community. The theory covers the elements of the social economy practice in terms of its composition and the dynamics with which it is provided for and managed. The ecosystem of social economy proves its quality in the well-being of individuals and communities within it. This must be taken care of. The objective of the social economy requires to include in its ecosystem all conditions of existence under which people live and under which their welfare can arise. However much our helping concern may be primarily for persons, with the existence of them and of all of us, the concern of thought has reason to be devoted to the circumstances of existence in the world to which it is exposed. Social economy theory reconstructs the position of doing economy in the context of people’s lives. It discusses what the practice can be oriented towards in terms of welfare and how it can be organised. Private, non-profit and public actors can be involved in the welfare economy. In this respect, there is no fixed demarcation from profit enterprises in the market of services. The theorems of social econ-

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omy study concern the actions of the participants within the framework of a social household and under the principles of householding. In particular, as explained elsewhere (Wendt 2017b), the theorems deal with the economy of personal and communal living, the connection between conduct of life and care, the material conditional framework of individual and communal living, the living standard and its alimentation, and the competence of the conduct of life. Whether in practice the concrete object of professional action is a problem of child welfare, family crisis, dissocial behaviour, unemployment, over-­indebtedness, living with a disability, a trauma suffered, being chronically ill or whether it consists of another need for help, in all cases coping with existence has to be achieved and time, strength, personal and material resources have to be used for this. From the point of view of livelihood, care is taken and from the point of view of the household, economy is done. Thus, in the extension of its subject area, social economy theory catches up with the connection between caring and doing economy. The ecological dimension expands the frame of reference in which the well-being of people and the community is placed in the context of life in general and its conditions. Social caring is an expression of solidarity. With caring action, it permeates assistance to people in crisis and in need, cooperative and non-profit economic activity, and should also characterize the structures of a state’s welfare regime. Shaping action and services in solidarity within the fabric of social processes at each of its levels and between them is a highly complex task – and again an object of care and concern and worthy of constant discourse.

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Elsen, Susanne (Hrsg.). 2011. Solidarische Ökonomie und die Gestaltung des Gemeinwesens – Perspektiven und Ansätze der ökosozialen Transformation von unten. Neu-Ulm: AG SPAK Bücher. Elsen, Susanne, Günther Reifer, Andreas Wild, und Evelyn Oberleiter (Hrsg.). 2015. Die Kunst des Wandels Ansätze für die ökosoziale Transformation. München: oekom. Elsen, Susanne, und Luca Fazzi. 2021. Genossenschaften und soziale Landwirtschaft. Potenziale sozialökonomischer Entwicklung ländlicher Räume in Italien. Zeitschrift für Gemeinwirtschaft und Gemeinwohl, 44 NF (1). S. 2–11. Europäische Kommission. 2011. Mitteilung der Kommission an das Europäische Parlament, den Rat, den Europäischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialausschuss und den Ausschuss der Regionen. Initiative für soziales Unternehmertum. Schaffung eines „Ökosystems“ zur Förderung der Sozialunternehmen als Schlüsselakteure der Sozialwirtschaft und der sozialen Innovation, SEK (2011) 1278 endgültig, Brüssel. Evers, Adalbert, und Benjamin Ewert. 2010. Hybride Organisationen im Bereich sozialer Dienste. Ein Konzept, sein Hintergrund und seine Implikationen. In Soziale personenbezogene Dienstleistungsorganisationen. Hrsg. Thomas Klatezki. S. 103–128. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Gide, Charles (1905). Économie sociale. Les institutions du progrès social au début du XXe siècle. Paris, Larose. Gofen, Anat. 2015. Citizens’ Entrepreneurial Role in Public Service Provision. Public Management Review, 17, 3. S. 404–424. Hatzopoulos, Vassilis. 2011. The concept of ‚economic activity‘ in the EU Treaty: From ideological dead-ends to workable judicial concepts. Research Paper in Law 06/2011. Brugge: College of Europe. Herrmann, Peter (Hrsg.). 2002. European Services of General Interest. Touchstone for the German Social Economy/Europäische Daseinsvorsorge. Prüfsteine für die deutsche Sozialwirtschaft. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Hiez, David, und Eric Lavillunière (dir). 2013. Vers une théorie de l’économie sociale et solidaire. Bruxelles: Éditions Larcier. Kagel, Ela, Markus Sauerhammer, Thomas Dönnebrink, und Jonas Pentzien. 2018. Eine gemeinwohlorientierte Plattformökonomie aufbauen  – aber wie? Ökologisches Wirtschaften, 4. S. 20–23. Laville, Jean-Louis (dir.). 2007. L’économie solidaire. Une perspective internationale, Hachette Littératures, coll. „Pluriel Sociologie“. Martens, Jens, und Wolfgang Obenland. 2017. Die Agenda 2030. Globale Zukunftsziele für nachhaltige Etwicklung. Bonn/Osnabrück: Global Policy Forum/terre des hommes. Mitra, Jay, Mariusz Sokolowicz, Ursula Weisenfeld, et al. 2020. Citizen Entrepreneurship: A Conceptual Picture of the Inclusion, Integration and Engagement of Citizens in the Entrepreneurial Process. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 6 (2). S. 242–260. Picciotti, Antonio, Andrea Bernardoni, Massimo Cossignani, und Luca Ferrucci. 2014. Social Cooperatives in Italy. Economic antecedents and regional distribution. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 85 (2). S. 213–231. Scholz, Trebor. 2018. A Portfolio of Platform Cooperativism, in Progress. Ökologisches Wirtschaften, 4. S. 16–19.

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SEND. 2021. 3. Deutscher Social Entrepreneurship Monitor 2020/21. Berlin: Social Entrepreneurship Deutschland e.V. Social Economy Europe. 2020. Co-designing the Action Plan for the Social Economy. For an economy that works for people and the planet. Brüssel: Social Economy Europe. Voß, Elisabeth (Hrsg.). 2010. Wegweiser Solidarische Ökonomie. Anders Wirtschaften ist möglich. Neu-Ulm: AG SPAK Bücher. Wehlander, Caroline. 2016. Services of General Economic Interest as a Constitutional Concept of EU Law. The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press/Springer. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2002. Sozialwirtschaftslehre. Grundlagen und Perspektiven. Baden-­ Baden: Nomos. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2004. Sozial arbeiten und sozial wirtschaften. Freiburg i. Br.: Lambertus. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2016. Sozialwirtschaft kompakt. Grundzüge der Sozialwirtschaftslehre. 2. Aufl. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2017a. Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit 1. Die Gesellschaft vor der sozialen Frage 1750–1900. 6. Aufl., Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2017b. Ökonomie der Lebensführung. Wohlfahrtsbezogene Lebensführung im Kontext sozialen Wirtschaftens. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2021. Ecology of Common Care. The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service. Cham: Springer.

9

Prosperous Development: Well-Being Under Ecological Guidelines

Abstract

In global crises, the ecologically expanded care and concern is for a sustainable and prosperous development of coexistence on our planet. Civil commitment, public opinion-forming, corporate responsibility, scientific research and political measures all play a part in this. The social question has been joined by the ecological question. Various models of thought and practical projects are dedicated to a design of existence directed towards hostly conditions. They focus on the commons, on living actively with and in them (commoning), and on the linking of welfare to common wealth. In this connection, doing care and doing economy come together. Self-care proves itself in world-care.

If we become active in care, this happens in the expectation of achieving something good or preventing something bad. The good in personal caring may be success in everyday life or success in one’s job, and caring can prevent the aggravation of an illness or failure in one or another test in life. Its household is to be taken care of. Many people have enough to do with this on a daily basis, and subjectively, worries in the larger world are far from their minds at first. But it is their world, in whose household the individual’s fate is tied to the ecology of living together and to a sustainable conduct of life in it. After all, there have long been many protagonists, initiatives, groups and other associations that convey an awareness of the connec-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7_9

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tion between caring for the world and caring for oneself, and that discursively and practically perform an economy that is capable of meeting ecological requirements. Normatively, in the nearer and larger community in which we participate, the concern is to get along in complex contexts. Care must be taken for security, for social balance, for the adaptation of living conditions and for sustainable development, with which the ecological crisis can be countered. All agents and agencies participate in different ways in these tasks in the narrower and wider household of life. The more and the better they are networked, the more they can be encouraged to participate in the fulfilment of these tasks. The concerns that find expression in civic engagement, in citizens’ initiatives, in scientific advice, in public sector action, as in the exercise of corporate social responsibility, require discursive integration towards the common good, It is to be ecologically reinterpreted in the contexts to which it is bound. After the societies of citizens in Europe 250 years ago had begun to take care of their common own and the affairs of the public domain (Wendt 2017, p. 57 ff.), the social question of how to counter impoverishment and widespread misery became a common, publicly articulated mandate. Society, having become one with the nation state, had to perceive the social question. Meanwhile the damaged environment and endangered livelihoods press for answers. The ecological question expands the obligations to a comprehensive shaping of man and nature in their relations. A new, transformed society is confronted with this task – now captured by a “science of living together in the world”, as Laurent Thévenaut (2004) has called it and, following him, Bruno Latour (2007, p. 11) has called sociology for the twenty-first century. This science, together with ecology, is also inscribed with the reflection of the economy that is necessary in living together. For social actors, caring action becomes economic in its considerations and intentions, having to cope with the consequences of climate change, overexploitation of resources, shrinking biodiversity, population dynamics, urbanization, etc., and having to find new ways to solve problems everywhere. Now, the necessary transformation in the economy and society has been discussed for a long time. There are various paths that are being taken in thought and in practical projects in order to arrive at an ecosocially appropriate design of existence and prosperous development. The discourse on sustainability in recent decades was based on the construction of the three-pillar model of economy, social affairs and ecology and thus assumed a separation of a sphere of the economy, a sphere of the social and a sphere of nature as environment, taking into account the overlapping of the respective fields of action. This construction was soon criticized, especially by feminist economics. In

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their exposition of “economy as ecological livelihood”, Gibson-Graham and Miller (2015) have placed humans in their environment in an ecological community of life to be managed. What if we were to see economic activities not in terms of a separate sphere of human activity, but instead as thoroughly social and ecological? What if we were to see economic sociality as a necessary condition of life itself? What if we were to see the economy as ecology-as a web of human ecological behaviors no longer bounded but fully integrated into a complex flow of ethical and energetic interdependencies. (Gibson-­Graham and Miller 2015, p. 8)

According to Miller (2019) in Reimagining Livelihood, it should not be forgotten that in pre-modern times there was a conception of the unity of humans and nature and of life in the midst of the natural environment; it was only the capitalist economy, with its enclosures of the commons, that broke this connection. The three pillar model of sustainability, the author states, is completely misguided and unsuitable for sustainable development (Miller 2019, p. 1 ff.). Instead of the usual anthropocentric approach, ecocentric thinking and action is needed. So let us once again start from the subsistence, but now not only (see Chap. 2) to meet human needs, but to meet the needs of life in its ecosystem locally and globally. What has to be taken care of is the survival of life in it. The creation of “ecological livelihood” (Miller 2019, p. 149 ff.) takes place in a work “in the field”. In it, adequately nourishing relationships of and to the surrounding life in the ecosystem are to be maintained. For humane society, this means a culture and ethics that does not assign well-being to individual subjects, but strives for it in the extension of living together, an extension in which the individual self can also embed itself: Well-being results from participation. Just as air is necessary to breathe, just as one always needs ground under one’s feet, just as one cannot swim without being in the water, so welfare is continually dependent on conditions in which it can arise. What is needed – since the beginnings of agriculture – is a fertile field. Just as a farmer may be expected to take care of this field, so in every other field a caring economy is to be regarded as understanding the conditions of its field in which it exists, remains alive, can be maintained and flourish. It may be conditions of the natural environment that favour or detract from urban and rural life, including those conditions relevant to human health, or educational conditions in which children grow up, civic conditions of participation and co-determination, communicative conditions in the digital universe, and it is humane labour conditions that characterise the employment system. In this ecological view of doing economy, the exchange of goods, the production process and the consumption process are put behind the direct relationship to

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the “good” in which people live and work. Companies can contribute to the setting of the “good” with their services: in a circular economy with the involvement of the users, products contribute a share to what is needed as a means of subsistence – for food, for health, for communication, for education. Anyone who wants to make a contribution must look with care at the context in which the contribution is to be made and be useful. The meant good, which is economically asked for here, should allow and enable us – and existence in general – to do well with it and in it. The good is present (like a property in which and on which it is possible to stay and live well), it surrounds us, but is often overlooked and not considered economically. In the case of air and water, their existence and condition has long been a topic not only of environmental protection; for the individual way of life, however, further material and immaterial contents of common existence are in question, which belong to the quality of our existence – our living, our work, our cultural and social being. These contents of life belong to human practice; they do not exist in a material way or have their external form only through the fact that they are practiced: The good meant is the lived good. It is the object of doing economy. In it, care appears to be entirely suspended in economy.

9.1 For the Common Good The expectation that a hostly economical action in the community comes about among those involved in it presupposes that they do not persist in a mental state of concern with regard to the conditions. It is true that a lot of activists are on the move in their concern for the preservation of the basis of life, but for most people it remains in a state of passive concern with regard to environmental problems, unless they are shopping in the world shop or consuming fair-trade organic goods elsewhere. The practice of common caring and doing economy needs a broader ecologically oriented perception of responsibility – an ecological commitment of one’s own actions. In the economic sphere, the dependence of the business economy, and more specifically of enterprises of all kinds, on an ecosystem that supports them, and their obligation to it, have become clear. In the social sphere, the external sources of well-being for the individual are all the more important to consider. In part, the designed environment holds this sources ready, in part they are tapped in personal action. For example, the opening up takes place in the field of education and training or in the relationship between the supply of local infrastructure and its individual use. Public transport is a common good for all who use it. We experience

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what the freely available knowledge on the Internet means to us when it is switched off. Local neighbourhoods are being re-formed with virtual exchange on a digital platform followed by real encounters, to the extent that neighbours participate. They maintain or draw on a commonality that is perceived but not realized in a net-­ based way. The discourse about a bonum commune of a small or large community, about goods in the general interest and responsibility for them, has not only existed since the environmental debate and with post-capitalist perspectives. Discursively, the interrelation of individual well-being and the common good was acted upon long before. With growing self-centeredness, the process of individualization made this necessary. Whereas in pre-modern times the fate of the individual depended on the fate of the community, individuals now produced the yield for the larger, the state unit, provided it was able to obtain it. In return, it offered security and order. Freedoms included, as far as they could be useful for the prosperity of the whole with the private acquisition. Intensive debates took place during the Enlightenment as to how the one contributed to the other. For the common good (the “common weal”) the state was called upon. The common wealth was its very legitimation. The old political concept of the commonwealth identified the state system as res publica with the welfare of the people according to Cicero’s principle “salus populi suprema lex esto” (De Legibus, III, III, VIII). The body politic was conceived in the early modern period in its orientation towards the common good (as common weal) (cf. Rollison 2010, p. 13 ff.). What seemed to be at stake was not concretely individual, but collective well-being. In the best case, according to Rousseau in the Contrat social, a society unites the particular interests in a common interest (intérêt commun), which consists in the common good (bien commun). Good, if individuals agree with it. But as late as the French Revolution, the executive body of the welfare committee, Comité de salut public, had nothing to do with the care of needy individuals, for which post-Revolutionary bureaux de bienfaisance existed from 1796. These later became the actual helping social services of the public authorities. In the course of the environmental crisis and the sustainability debate, common wealth is being rethought. Livable and economic conditions must be provided for and they have to be handled economically. What is meant is a stock of nature, a stock of culture, a stock of social relations and, in general, the experience of the social. The stocks can be understood as resources, insofar as they offer the material from which we draw in our experience and represent the potential on which we build (or in old-fashioned formulation: on which we can edifying ourselves). They are a source of strength for our existence, of solidity and resistance (or as we have learned to call them: resilience), and in any case they provide an anchor for our

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state of being. Similarly, they are material and immaterial goods in terms of the benefits that can be derived from them. Common wealth is offered to people everywhere by the infrastructure provided by the public sector. The development of this infrastructure of transport, educational, cultural and social facilities creates wealth for all who use them. The structures form the equipment of the field in which the individual, a community and society reside and move. The endowment is not equally distributed in the field of coexistence. As a result, disadvantage is found to affect individuals and to affect groups of people, globally whole populations in their existence. Disadvantaged people are more exposed to risks than the better off nearby or beneficiaries across borders. In order to remedy disadvantage and to provide compensation, one must know on the one hand about the situation of those affected and on the other hand about the goods to which they, like everyone else, are duly entitled. The human being experiences well-being in hostly conditions. It is not enough for the professional welfare actors to care for the person in their service and to provide good care. In an inhospitable place or in a devastated environment, much effort will be spent in vain. Many people suffer from their poor housing conditions or from environmental degradation of various kinds, others from working conditions. Social improvement is not simply achieved by means of monetary or therapeutic aid. The well-being of the persons extends to the circumstances of their lives. Social work is to be done on them, as far as possible together with the persons concerned. On a supra-individual level, the object of care consists in the goods which make it possible to nourish better circumstances and to achieve and maintain hostly social and economic conditions. Despite all the external crises and internal grievances in the social sphere, life can flourish in the goods which are common to us and which are entrusted to our common care. These are natural goods, which include common goods such as the air we breathe and the water we drink. They are cultural goods, including educational and knowledge goods, instrumental goods in the infrastructure of the modern community, and those without which we cannot do in times of digitalization. Thus the data that is available about us all and networked by us all. And there are social goods that arise in people’s relationships with one another and those that are looked to in social services of general interest: the goods of health, work, housing, participation and leisure. In commodity form, production and consumption goods are in a state of transition; only when they are used do they prove their value. Self-care binds because human existence has conditions of its own. One has to get involved in these conditions. They are materially and factually present in the world to which we belong. Self-care is bound; because it cannot do without the ground, on which one moves, and without the goods on it, it necessarily becomes

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world-care. Practically speaking, worldly concern need not extend far and may be limited to the immediate circle of life. But in the consciousness of connections it reaches far beyond it. Worldly care already requires the care of relatives and other people in order to prepare or maintain economic conditions for them: Children space to play, the working person recreation in nature, the elderly safe residence, everyone participation in natural and cultural diversity, the common existence quality of life against its deterioration as a result of behavior harmful to the environment. In his encyclical “Laudato si’ On Care for Our Common Home”, the Pope denounced this behaviour and called for “a holistic ecology” of the environment, culture, the economy, the social sphere and an “ecology of everyday life” in order to safeguard creation (Laudato si’ 2015, n. 137 ff.). The principle of the common good and intergenerational justice must apply. A new universal solidarity is necessary (op. cit., No. 14). The call for a globalization of care is shared by many. It has been the subject of the publications of the Club of Rome since 1972, most recently in “Stewarding Sustainability Transformations” by Petra Kuenkel, of documents by international organizations and individual authors in their concern for the earth (Maser 2009). In the “Genealogies of Care”, the widening of concern comes from the times after which “care relegated to the seclusion of the oikos” (Bärtsch et al. 2017, p. 11) began to express itself in the world. In theory and practice, care, as discussed, was primarily externalized by the feminist movement. “Globalized care” was the theme of Spanish women who set their “logic of life” against the “logic of capital”, which sometimes finds its way from the global South to the North with care workers under precarious circumstances (Precarias a la Deriva 2017, p. 26 ff.). It is not necessary to return with the Spanish women to the basic Marxist contradiction of capital and labour in order to consider the relationship between doing economy and doing care and ultimately the sustainability of humanity on a global level. An ecological binding and commitment of action – along with productive labour and capital input – is sufficient for its orientation towards both justice for people in precarious situations and justice for the community of life of nature in precarious situations. This bond and commitment is radical enough, provided that it can be expressed in a differentiated collective practice of changed ways of being.

9.2 The Commune Reason Care – the existential – is for the continuance of existence in small and large ways. It is a common existence by nature. Individual existence is only the beneficiary of its life-nourishing assets. The care of the fundamental stock is incumbent on all who share its usufruct. In view are especially the freely accessible common goods.

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These commons are at the disposal of every individual. The natural goods among them have long been exploited or overused by capitalism and are threatened by scarcity and decay (Hardin 1968). They provide a basis for subsistence and therefore there is a general interest in them. Their management is recognized as a central task of the design of exixtence – and the focus on this task is seen as the beginning of a comprehensive transformation of the economy: “The discourse around commons and commoning lets us see the world in a different light. It points a way to a stable, post-capitalist order” (Helfrich and Bollier 2019, p. 19). Here, the discourse is only referred to for path exploration towards global ecological responsibility. The broader the concept of commons is understood (“omnia sunt communia”, De Angelis 2017), the more extensively they take up the entire social and economical conduct of life. It is not only about air and water and their quality, but also, for example, about livable urban space in its design, with its rituals, with stories and perspectives inscribed in it. Or about a landscape that is experienced and appreciated as a natural space and recreational area. Or about the data stock of a digital community that people are able to participate in a smart city (Zubizarreta et al. 2016) as a smart digital ecosystem (Morozov and Bria 2018). Or about the cultural and intellectual assets that form a “superstructure” of human life, fertilize it in its design, and are open to all people. The resources present in the commons as tangible, intangible and social goods can be the object of shared negotiation, design and management, use and care, thus of a practice of commoning that has gained much popularity in recent years (Linebaugh 2008; Bollier and Helfrich 2015; Gibson-Graham et al. 2016; Varvarousis 2020). The discourse revolving around the commons is about an alternative way of life and economic design that is aspired to in ecological consciousness. It must initially be content with islands of trial and error in the sea of the prevailing economy. The envisaged post-capitalist economy (Gibson-Graham et al. 2016; De Angelis 2017) seems idealized, but feasible in the multiplication of many projects. “The idea of the commons offers a romance, and through this romance, a way forward, a way to think out of the despondent political narratives of ecological destruction, polarisation and dispossession, and a counter-narrative to that of the inevitable and uncontrollable force of neoliberalism. Above all else, it offers a glimmer of possibility that change can occur incrementally, and that small acts matter” (Dawney et  al. 2016, p. 3). Commoning or doing commons means creating or maintaining a common good in collective participation. Common erranding is tantamount to doing common economy. Empirically, it can be shown how a reasonable use of common pool resources can succeed in cooperation even without market and state (Ostrom 1990) and can lead to a good life for all in a solidary way of life (I.L.A. Kollektiv 2019).

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Those who want to take an active part in this can join together locally, agree in self-organisation on what and with what work is to be done. They are thus on the way to social economy. If the users are also the producers of the goods they need, they share (are commun) in them. The “intermediary trade” and the divorce of households and enterprises cease to exist. In relation to what is accomplished cooperatively, the participants have a stake that includes the entitlements and obligations with regard to the goods. The term “common” or “communus” provides this interpretation (Dardot and Laval 2014, p.  22  ff.). Communus is to be used in a caring and economic way in matters of health, work, housing, education and culture. In a sense, this always means “landscape care” of one kind or another: in the field of health, in working life, in the residential environment, in the educational landscape and in the landscape of culture. The preparation of the commune can be done for the domestic community, for the residential neighbourhood and city life, and can also be an economic task for the larger political entity, as conceived by Dardot and Laval in their idea of a communal society: “L’association dans l’économie doit préparer la société du commun” (Dardot and Laval 2014, p. 497). In the meantime, there are many commoning projects in which “commoners” work in a demand-oriented way in agriculture, in eco-communes, in handicrafts or in digital open-source projects in community self-determination. The participants are emotionally connected to their forests, farmland, urban spaces, the stocks they care for, the code they maintain, so that this often becomes part of their culture, their social life, their identities. This is why we call what is created in commons care wealth: assets shaped by caring for. Commons-centered creative processes do not aim at maximum efficiency, profit or higher GDP. It is simply about meeting needs and contributing to a stable, fair, satisfying, and ecological way of life. (Helfrich and Bollier 2019, p. 158)

Shared life is shaped in the way of doing and gains its value objectively in the living conditions thus maintained. They exist, for example, in the residential environment in the maintenance of neighborhood, in the play space for children and young people, in the accessibility for people with a disability, in well-kept parks, in the equipment of the quarter with shops and services. Civic engagement in these matters (for example, with pollution or greening, with redevelopment measures or against gentrification) is part of the commitment to them. Commoning takes place in the field of the public domain and its scene. It is animated by it or alive with it. The ecological compatibility of the conditions that the “commoners” achieve, they identify with the social compatibility of the events and vice versa.

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What is expected and what happens remains conceptually and organizationally different. Commoning can be practiced as a social economy, an economy of solidarity or a public economy and is interpreted in the feminist care economy. Only in borderline cases does a closed community of life come into being (like that in spiritual communities). What is done and created communally in commoning does not mean communitization as an expropriatory transfer of private holdings into the ownership of a local authority, for example. Existing property rights can remain unaffected, regardless of whether they are tied to individual persons or to a legal entity. The collective care and use of common property does not require monetary offsetting, as is the case with the exchange of goods in a market economy. However, regulation of collective use and its management, if necessary on a proprietary basis, are required. “Ownership obliges” and can prevent those involved from overuse and thus help to avoid the “tragedy of the commons” so often claimed. It will also not be possible to require all people to participate in one or another community project. What is desired of these projects is that they act as a kind of infection foci that have a far-reaching effect in the sense of commoning. Many forms of engagement, from civic to entrepreneurial, can be understood as sharing in common concern. Individuals engaged remain sovereign in their choices of where and how to participate. The role they take on can be determined and appreciated in public discourse, included in the social concern for a common good and attributed to the productive common. An initiative movement interested in this brings it forward incrementally. How this actually happens, succeeds or fails, can be studied in the multitude of social movements of the last 200 years. Commoning promises social progress in the ecological upheaval of doing economy. It explicates the hostly provision of a good for the common good. For it, however, we are all referred to the common good of economic living conditions locally and beyond, and are called upon to care for this common good. What is exemplarily demonstrated in one or the other project promises a transition of well-­ being and of human flourishing from the one-dimensionality of individual satisfaction into a field of flourishing of common existence to be cultivated. With the particular hostly economy in living together, which commoning promises to achieve, the hostly conditions have not already been reached in which the shaping of existence in general can be called a commonwealth.

9.3 In the End, Global Livelihoods are Provided for How we want to live in the future is answered discursively for the individual existence only very limited because diverse. What the individual person intends and desires for his or her own existence is not even asked. Self-care expands to world-­

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care and proves itself in it on the basis of the existential condition of existence as being-in-the-world. It is and remains virtually individually non-existent without this extension. How I am able to live is due to conditions to which I am exposed and transformations in which I participate. Ethically, the common existence, and what can become of it, is taken into consideration. In participation in the existence of the community, individual well-being is also affected. The question of how we want to live in the future involves future generations and is concerned with the global dimension of life on our planet and the social problems of many people on it. How self-care of some must change into world-care for others has recently been described in an exemplary way for dealing with refugees (Klie 2021). What matters for the continued sustenance of life is the way of doing economy, the general mode of production. As has been explained, this means that what we maintain and what we create as hosts in the household of living together determines the common future. This refers to the hosts, men and women, carers in personal life circles, the hosts in the management of companies, the hosts in offices and governments and in other positions of public life. As everyone can know, the economic activities of the past – largely carefree – have globally destructive effects. They threaten life on earth. Care and concern for its preservation has become global. Whereas the provision of general interest has hitherto been there socially to supply and secure people, it has become ecologically necessary for the interrelationships of life and their management as a whole. What is required is the stewardship that belongs to a host. The term steward says more or less the same thing as the term host with regard to doing economy. “Stewardship begins with the willingness to be accountable for some larger body than ourselves” (Block 2013, p. 16). The larger body may be a person household, a property, a business enterprise, a residential neighborhood, a small or larger community. Everywhere, a steward is responsible for the concerns in his or her field of action and will manage them in a fact-finding, in-depth, and follow-up manner. This kind of care is discussed for the planetary household under terms such as ecological stewardship (Szaro et  al. 1999), environmental stewardship (Bennett et al. 2018) or ecosystems stewardship and earth stewardship (Chapin et al. 2011; Rozzi et al. 2015). In the intended sense, James Steuart (1770) had already used the term steward to refer to the political economist. In ordinary usage, a steward of goods is meant. Now the global good of life, its preservation, is in question. “A century ago, stewards were responsible for managing estates or for keeping order at public events. Today, the Earth is one global estate, and improved stewardship is vital for maintaining social order and for preserving life on Earth” (Chapin et al. 2011, p. 44).

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Earth Stewardship is a scientific initiative of the Ecological Society of America with the goal of communicating the problems of global livelihood in a partnership that connects researchers from different disciplines, managers, politicians and citizens. The goal is to establish a science of humans with nature. “The goal of Earth Stewardship is not to protect nature from people; rather it is to protect nature for human welfare” (Chapin et  al. 2011, p.  1). This would require finding multi-­ perspective solutions that simultaneously provide sufficient livelihood and development opportunities for the growing population, conserve natural resources, provide sufficient education, promote creative diversity in society, strengthen the resilience of biological and human ecosystems, and ensure sustainability at every level of activity. What is needed in distributed stewardship is an ecological provision of general interest that, like the social provision, is based on people participating in it in self-­ care and self-responsibility – in their local environment as well as in the perception of the relationships to nature that are given in wider contexts. On the global meta-­ level, the international community of states is responsible for this provision of general interest – but it does not provide it adequately, as was recently noted in the pandemic and is loudly lamented in view of climate change. In the effort to achieve sustainability, it is at least recognized that it can only be achieved in the unity of its social, economic and ecological dimensions. According to the concept of the global household, the caring of social and political actors must be coordinated with entrepreneurial economic activity according to ecological guidelines. This has happened in Germany in the course of the energy turnaround and is constantly necessary in the case of measures in the climate crisis. Ecology has an effect on doing care and doing economy. Care catches up with ecology in its spatial and temporal extension. It begins in the immediate circle of life of a person or community, extends further into the communal environment, the urban space and the rural space, which concern us in their economy, and takes part in the state of the nation and finally in the state of the biosphere and its conditions. As caring goes, so will the economy go forward. The ecosocial approach describes its constitution as coming from individual self-economy and the acquisition of subsistence. Business has moved away from this and has developed dynamically in the entrepreneurial world of work, exposed to market activity. Business transactions take place across all borders and are globally networked. In this expansion, every benefit and damage that arises in economic activity is economically responsible in the ecosystem of the planet. Doing economy (with what hosts maintain and create) will have to integrate itself more and more into the world of life and its interrelationships. In past centuries, it was individualism in which this bond was lost in the freedoms of the market.

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Society and state, as long as the (Western) polity also profited in its development from unbridled individualism, have only inadequately counteracted it. This changes in the care for the world. It has always been the object of politics, but for a long time only within the confines of the nation state and international relations and the singular concern given therein. On another level, in the welfare state, personal care is individualistically characterized by the fact that human and civil rights to social benefits are only met selectively. The expansion of social services of general interest has proved its worth despite all its shortcomings. Individuals are exposed to risks that they cannot cope with on their own. In addition to any crises and stresses in personal life, there are also environmental stresses and crises. A merely person-related provision of general interest does not respond to them. It provides disregarding the contexts in which the problems arise that put individuals in a difficult position to cope: Changes in the world of work, demographic change, technological transformation, processes of social displacement, segregation and exclusion, structural weaknesses in the education system, etc. These are processual constellations in which political stewardship is called for. The social scenario and the environmental one are interwoven, be it in the depletion of a city district or a rural region, be it in the dwindling of biodiversity, be it in the requirements of the energy transition, be it in the causes and consequences of migration, or be it in the effects of a pandemic. Individual needs and individual interests are not decisive for political decisions that have to be taken in a caring manner in the face of such processes. The far-reaching context in which the conditions of all metabolism are set in common existence exists complexly in the ecosystem of life and is not at all focused on the individual human being or on humanity. Hannah Arendt noted in a fragment introducing politics: Whatever one’s position on the question of whether it is man or the world that is at stake in today’s crisis, one thing is certain, the answer that places man at the center of present concern and thinks it must change him in order to remedy the situation is deeply apolitical, for at the center of politics is always concern for the world and not for man. (Arendt 1993, p. 24)

For Arendt, the world is everything that exists between people and is therefore in their interest. In the world, the space of our existence is decided; to shape it ­economically is the political task. The human affairs are present, just in the economic events, embedded “between” people (in their interest) in the environment and nature they work and use. For their preservation and thus for the safeguarding of living conditions, a political design of existence is called for that requires topdown and bottom-up communal concern, in other words: democratically shared

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responsibility (not to be borne autocratically by one host alone) for conditions in the world and distributed participation on a small and large scale for their change and preservation. From the connection and ecological framing of caring on the individual level, of economic activity on the level of companies and organised care, and politically on the level of the state-ordered community, the conclusion can be drawn for all the actors involved that they are referred to one another in their respective households, which are connected in participation: The individual person is included with his conduct of life in a social householding, which informally and formally proves itself (or needs improvement) in his supply of care. The state and the respective municipality provide a service of general interest which only unfolds its benefits with the participation of the population. Business enterprises are challenged in their responsibility to remain in ecological balance with everything they produce and supply, and to contribute to its dynamic regulation in an environmentally compatible and socially acceptable manner. In every respect, the general object of concern and of economic activity consists in a design of existence in which common life is cultivated and is to remain fruitful. A self-care in which people want to have a sustainable effect and remain fit for the future transforms itself under the hand into world-care. In the reflexivity of care for ourselves we recognize the world as our home, right or wrong. In our life circles we shape our existence and we take part in the world. Economically we can do justice to it, to the conditions of existence and to ourselves in living together. We are the hosts in the planetary house, which we have to provide for the sake of the common life in every place and in our own circle of existence. Doing economy inner-worldly is a requirement addressed to every actor, which we become aware of in ecological consciousness and with care determined in it.

References Arendt, Hannah. 1993. Was ist Politik. Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß. München: Piper. Bärtsch, Tobias, Daniel Drognitz, Sarah Eschenmoser, et al. (Hrsg.). 2017. Ökologien der Sorge. Wien: trandversal texts, eipcp  – European Institute for Progressive Cultural ­Policies. Bennett, Nathan J. Tara S. Whitty, Elena Finkbeiner, J. Pittman, H. Bassett, S. Gelcich, und E.  H. Allison. 2018. Environmental Stewardship: A conceptual review and analytical framework. Environmental Management, 61 (4): S. 597–614. Block, Peter. 2013. Stewardship. Choosing Service over Self-Interest. 2nd. ed., San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

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Precarias a la Deriva. 2017. Globalisierte Sorge. In: Ökologien der Sorge. Tobias Bärtsch, Daniel Drognitz, Sarah Eschenmoser, et al. (Hrsg.), S. 25–96. Wien: transversal texts, eipcp – European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies. Rollison, David. 2010. A Commonwealth of the People: Popular Politics and England’s Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rozzi, Ricardo, Stuart F. Chapin, J. Baird Callicott, Steward T.A. Pickett, Mary Power Juan J. Armesto, Roy H. May Jr. (eds). 2015. Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Praxis. Series Ecology and Ethics. Dordrecht: Springer. Szaro, Robert C., Nels D.  Johnson, William T.  Sexton, und Andrew J.  Malk (eds). 1999. Ecological Stewardship. A common reference for ecosystem management. Oxford: Elsevier Science. Thévenaut, Laurent. 2004. Une science de la vie ensemble dans le monde. Revue du MAUSS 2004/2 (n°24). S. 115–126. Varvarousis, Angelos. 2020. The Rhizomatic Ecpansion of Commoning through Social Movements. Ecological Economics, 171, Art. 106596. Wendt, Wolf Rainer. 2017. Geschichte der Sozialen Arbeit 1. Die Gesellschaft vor der sozialen Frage 1750–1900. 6. Aufl., Wiebaen: Springer VS: Zubizarreta, Iker, Alessandro Seravalli, und Saioa Arrizabalaga. 2016. Smart City Concept: What it is and what it should be. Journal of Urban Planning and Development, 142, 1.

Index

A Acting, professional, 148 Alternative economics, 55 Anthropocene, vi, 104 B Being concerned, 6 Budget, 5, 6, 26, 66, 67, 73, 75, 105, 117 Business, v, vi, 1, 2, 5–7, 9, 12, 14–16, 28, 30, 31, 34, 40, 41, 45, 48–54, 60–62, 65, 66, 68–73, 76–79, 81, 86, 89, 92–95, 97–103, 105–108, 112, 118, 125, 127–129, 131–134, 137, 146, 153, 154, 156 Business care, 54, 76, 97 C Care, v–vii, 1–16, 19–36, 41–51, 54–56, 59–62, 64–67, 70, 72–81, 85–88, 90–93, 95, 98–101, 106–109, 111–122, 125–139, 143–156 debate, 33 economy, 33–36, 152

work, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 29, 31–34, 66, 109, 116–118, 136, 137 Caring, v–vii, 1–8, 10–16, 20, 22–36, 39, 41, 42, 46, 47, 50, 53–56, 59–62, 64–68, 72, 76, 78, 85, 86, 90–93, 97, 109, 116–119, 121, 126–128, 136–139, 143–146, 151, 154–156 Caring economics, vii, 2, 5, 11, 16, 35, 145 Civil society, 32, 49, 71, 72, 79, 107, 116, 120, 132, 134 Climate crisis, v, vi, 3, 31, 75, 88, 133, 135, 154 Commoning, 150–152 Commons, v, vi, 1–5, 8–12, 14, 15, 17, 20–25, 30, 32, 39–43, 46, 49, 53–56, 62, 63, 67, 68, 73, 76, 77, 79, 81, 86, 88, 95, 99, 102, 107, 112, 115, 118–120, 126, 127, 130, 132–135, 137, 144–153, 155, 156 Common wealth, 147, 148 Company, 12, 17, 30, 52, 53, 64, 65, 73, 75, 79, 89, 90, 92–95, 97–107, 112, 113, 120, 127–129, 133, 134, 136, 146, 153, 156

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 W. R. Wendt, Doing care and doing economy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38071-7

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160 Concern, term, 45 Consumption, v, 44, 45, 74–76, 88, 93, 98, 104, 106, 126, 145, 148 Cooperative, 12, 16, 32, 47, 54, 88, 129–132, 136, 138, 139 Coresident domestic group, 60, 63 Corporate social responsibility (CSR), 106, 144 Creativity, 27, 42, 79 Culture, 28, 42–44, 63, 65, 73, 80, 87, 101, 145, 147, 149, 151 Cura, 20–22, 24 D Daseinsgestaltung, 6 Demand, v, vi, 2, 9, 10, 13, 16, 24, 25, 29–31, 33, 34, 45, 52, 53, 65, 67, 68, 76, 99, 112, 117, 118, 121, 129, 133, 135 Disposition, 8, 10, 21, 23, 27, 28, 34, 39–42, 48, 50, 51, 61, 62, 66, 67, 73, 75, 100, 101, 103, 108, 121 Domestic science, 34, 66 E Ecology, 2, 8, 10–12, 15, 16, 30, 34, 35, 47, 49, 54, 56, 63, 68, 101, 116, 119, 143, 144, 149, 154 Economics, 2, 5, 21, 40, 59, 86, 97, 111, 125, 144 political, 3, 13, 59 Économie sociale, 13, 129, 131, 132 Economy, definition, 1 Environmental protection, 31, 32, 53, 80, 93, 133, 146 Ethics, 29, 55, 107, 145 European Union, 73, 89, 94, 100, 106, 128, 130 Externality, 103, 104 F Family business, 102, 103 Feminist economics, 10, 14, 33, 34, 66, 137, 144

Index G Gainful employment, 5, 7, 16, 33, 49, 54, 74, 92, 108, 109, 114–115, 117, 118 Gender care gap, 33 Globalization, 54, 149 H Habitat, 36, 46, 63 Health, v, vi, 7, 9, 16, 22–24, 28–31, 43, 45, 56, 72, 73, 88, 90–93, 95, 98, 99, 104–106, 111–120, 122, 130, 132, 133, 137, 145, 146, 148, 151 Health care, vi, 7, 9, 16, 24, 28, 29, 54, 73, 88, 90, 91, 93, 95, 98, 106, 111–114, 116–118, 122, 133, 137 Health economy, 92, 112 Home economics, 66 Homework, 64 Host, vii, 3, 4, 7, 8, 40, 41, 49, 60, 62, 64, 86, 109, 153, 154, 156 Household, vii, 2, 3, 5–7, 11–13, 15, 16, 32, 33, 35, 36, 40, 42, 44, 48, 49, 51, 53, 56, 60–76, 79, 81, 86, 98–105, 107–109, 116, 118, 126–128, 137–139, 143, 144, 151, 153, 154, 156 Housekeeping, 27, 30, 40, 63, 64, 66, 67, 136, 137 Human rights, 43, 127 Human services, vi, 7, 16, 26, 29, 33, 54, 90, 92, 111–114, 119, 122, 138 I Industrial ecology, 76, 93, 94 Infrastructure, 6, 16, 36, 51, 64, 66, 67, 72, 75, 86, 94, 109, 112, 113, 116, 118, 138, 146, 148 Innovation, 17, 21, 79, 90, 92, 93, 105, 113, 127, 130, 132–134 Interest, vi, 7, 20, 21, 32, 47, 65, 67, 76–81, 85, 87–89, 93, 98–100, 106, 107, 113, 120, 121, 126–128, 131, 133–135, 137, 147, 150, 153–156

Index L Landlord, 69, 70 Life care, 59, 136 Life contexts, 2, 4, 10, 23, 27, 51, 61, 79 Lifestyle, 34, 43, 45, 56, 74, 75, 104, 121 Livelihood, 3, 6, 10, 11, 13, 15, 22, 26, 28, 29, 42–45, 49, 56, 61, 62, 70, 73, 77, 86, 98, 99, 106, 116, 120, 128, 139, 144, 145, 152–156 Living, vii, 3, 5, 6, 11–13, 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 40, 42–44, 46–49, 54, 55, 60, 63, 66, 74, 77, 80, 81, 86, 98, 105, 108, 109, 112, 114, 119, 120, 139, 143–146, 151–153, 155, 156 Living situation, 61

161 Platform, 54, 55, 92, 105, 132, 147 Poverty, 43–45, 74, 79, 114, 130, 132, 135 Power, 25, 48, 50, 63, 66, 70, 71, 85, 86, 91, 103–105, 108, 115 Precautionary, 34 Productivity, 28, 35 Profit, 9, 41, 49, 53, 54, 66–69, 73, 79, 86, 87, 94, 97, 98, 101, 103, 105, 107, 113, 126, 129, 130, 134, 138, 151 Prosperity, 71, 74, 86, 93, 98, 104, 106, 134, 147 Public good, 12 Public-serving organisations, 128, 136 Q Question, ecological, 14, 144

M Maintenance, 7, 11, 15, 16, 25, 26, 31, 42, 45, 46, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 70–74, 98, 113, 129, 132, 138, 151 Market, v, 2, 3, 5–9, 14, 16, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34, 40, 41, 48, 50–53, 60–62, 64, 67–72, 75, 77, 78, 85–86, 88–90, 93, 95, 98–105, 107, 108, 112, 113, 116, 120, 125, 126, 129, 130, 134, 138, 150, 152, 154 Member-serving organisations, 129, 136 Microeconomics, 9, 34, 35, 50, 81, 106 O Oikonomia, 11, 62–64, 68, 69 Oikos, 36, 62–65, 68, 127, 149 Overall economy, 7, 60, 136 Own work, 108 P Pandemic, v, vi, 3, 16, 21, 24, 30, 31, 53, 75, 88–90, 95, 99, 111, 119, 135, 154, 155 Participation, 8, 20, 24, 27, 31, 32, 45, 49, 50, 53–55, 62, 64, 78, 80, 86, 88, 108, 112, 114, 115, 118, 120, 122, 127, 131, 132, 135, 138, 145, 148–150, 153, 156

R Regional authority, 131 Resource, vi, 2, 5, 6, 15, 29, 34, 36, 41, 42, 44, 45, 50–52, 55, 62, 66, 73–76, 86, 93, 101, 102, 104–106, 109, 127, 132, 136, 138, 139, 144, 147, 150, 154 S Security, social, vi, 16, 25, 87, 90, 112, 115, 116, 125, 128 Self-care, v, 3, 15, 16, 23, 26, 29, 32, 33, 36, 54, 104, 117, 119, 125, 148, 152–154, 156 Self help, 88, 108, 115, 127, 129, 138 Self-reference, vi, 19, 27 Services of general interest, 6, 15, 16, 30, 66, 72, 86, 88, 95, 101, 111, 113, 117, 130, 136, 148, 155 Social benefit, 16, 26, 105, 114, 119, 125, 128, 136, 155 Social business, 107, 128, 130, 133, 134 Social cooperative, 130, 132, 136 Social economics, 10, 127–129, 136, 137 Social economy, 12–13, 16, 55, 95, 107, 112, 122, 125–139, 151, 152 Social entrepreneurship, 105, 128, 130–134

162 Social management, 128 Social policy, 89, 91, 115, 129 Social service, 6, 13, 43, 72, 74, 92, 101, 107, 115, 121, 131, 133, 136, 147, 148, 155 Social service state, 92, 115 Social work, 9, 11, 30, 33, 66, 67, 107, 136, 137, 148 Society, v, 9, 12, 13, 15, 21, 25–27, 30, 31, 42, 43, 47–49, 55, 56, 67, 71, 76, 78, 87, 89, 92, 99, 101, 103, 106, 112, 127, 129, 130, 133, 144, 145, 147, 148, 151, 154, 155 Solidarity economy, 16, 49, 126, 131, 132, 134 Standard economy, 3, 15, 33, 36, 62, 103, 104 Start-ups, 98, 102, 130, 131, 133, 136 State, 3, 20, 47, 60, 85, 100, 111, 129, 144 State concern, 6, 22, 27, 111 State economy, 72, 89 State ratio, 86 Stewardship, 70, 105, 153–155 Subsistence, 14–16, 27, 39–49, 51, 54, 60–62, 64, 70, 71, 77, 122, 145, 146, 150, 154 Supply, 6, 7, 10, 16, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 44, 45, 52, 61, 63, 66–68, 71, 72, 89, 90, 92, 99, 104, 105, 111–122, 125, 128, 129, 131, 136–138, 146, 153, 156 Sustainability, vi, 8, 13, 14, 34, 45, 53, 93–95, 105, 130, 133, 144, 147, 149, 154

Index Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 132 Sustainable livelihood, 44 T Theory, ecosocial, vii, 11, 14, 15, 137 Transformation, ecosocial, 126 U Utilities, 53, 60, 66, 73, 74, 81, 106, 111, 113 W Welfare, vi, 4, 7, 9–13, 15, 16, 23, 25, 30, 47, 48, 53, 54, 72, 73, 75, 79, 81, 86–89, 91–93, 95, 98, 99, 106, 111–113, 115–117, 119–122, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 135–139, 145, 147, 148, 154, 155 Welfare production, 117, 120, 131 Wirtlich, 8, 46 World, v, vi, 1–5, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 19–24, 27–29, 31, 36, 45, 46, 49, 52, 54–56, 63, 65, 67, 79, 80, 89, 91, 101, 108, 116, 118, 121, 122, 126, 131, 132, 138, 143, 144, 146, 148–150, 154–156 World-care, v, 3, 15, 149, 152–153, 156 Worry, definition, 3