Theorizing eldercare work: An orders of worth analysis.

Abstract

Eldercare is often regarded as "dirty work" due to its association with dysfunctional, decaying, and diseased bodies. This paper focuses on eldercare work, and studies how current practices and organization of eldercare have been justified and legitimized in different and sometimes conflicting ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with workers in nursing homes for the elderly and homecare service, this paper examines eldercare work through the theoretical lens of "orders of worth." The concept of orders of worth affords a moral political analysis of eldercare work that helps to explain those dilemmas and situations which eldercare workers encounter and negotiate. Through the analysis, the moral entanglements between individual practices, institutional logics, and the political economy of care labor are systematically revealed.