Care economies: States, markets and inequalities.

This special issue engages with the concept of ‘care economies’, broadly defined by sociologist Ito Peng (2019) as the economic sector concerned with caring for and nurturing present and future populations. This special issue challenges the tendency in the literature to reduce care to informal household labour by drawing attention to the ways in which care is increasingly commodified, formalized and regulated. By examining care economies both inside and outside the home, the special issue explores various organizational and market arrangements of commodified care; investigates how states, markets and civil society intersect to shape these economic configurations; analyses the ideological frameworks that underpin care's commodification; and identifies care-related inequalities across social relations (e.g. between employers and employees), households and nations.