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Think Pieces

Vol. 1 No. 1: December issue

Heaviness, intensity, and intimacy: Dutch elder care in the context of retrenchment of the welfare state

  • Barbara Da Roit
  • Josien de Klerk
DOI
https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.1.1.204
Submitted
January 12, 2014
Published
01-Dec-2014

Abstract

In the Netherlands the recent shift to a ‘participation society’ has led to a reconfiguration of health care arrangements for long-term care. The new long-term care act, scheduled to commence January 2015, forms the political realization of the participation society: people are expected to decrease their dependency on state provisions and instead become self-sufficient or dependent on family and community solidarity. In this Think Piece we argue that the implicit references of policy makers to pre-welfare state community solidarity and self-sufficiency do not adequately consider the historical and social embeddedness of care. Referring to Rose’s concept of ‘politics of conduct’ we argue that in framing care as a moral obligation, the current politics of conduct may obscure the physical and psychological heaviness of intimate care between family members, the diversity of care relations, and their sociohistorical embeddedness.