Abstract

This dissertation reflects critically on the practices of "caring" in one case study of social service collaboration for families designated "at-risk." In so doing it attempts to set up a dialogue between the theory and practices of "care." An analysis of the case study suggests a critical disparity between policy, as designed and implemented by service providers, and actual needs, as articulated by recipients in the process of interviewing. This disparity seems to be rooted in the very process of defining needs; a process currently dominated by service providers and policy 'experts' rather than those in the position of recipient. I argue that it is, perhaps ironically, the commitment to "care" which works to exclude recipients from this process. The institutional structure of this collaborative effort produced a paternalistic form of caring which took as given the authority of service providers in the process of defining needs. I argue that there is a politics to the process of defining needs and that there is a lack of attentiveness to this politics in both the theory and the practice of care. The turn to politics requires denaturalizing both the concept of "need" and the capacity for "empathy." It also requires moving beyond frameworks for care which situate rights in opposition to responsibilities, and interests in opposition to needs. In suggesting that we focus on "the politics of the process of needs interpretation," I want to emphasize the way in which the fact of process itself destabilizes these sets of oppositions. I conclude by outlining a framework which moves beyond current work on the ethic of care toward a democratic politics of care