 These caregiving relationships are similar to relationships of welfarism and leave little space to build relationships of reciprocity and exchange. In addition, these unidirectional relationships are far from founding social relationships or social bonds that strengthen sense of community and reciprocity. Likewise, the relationships that are built between the subjects do not have the scope to solve a major problem such as the unfair access to basic food, which has increased with the outbreak of the COVID-19.
This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on care in feminist scholarship and FPE, which is developed from a materialist and post humanist perspective (Harcourt, 2018; Desai and Harriet, 2018; Van den Berg, 2019). Although care in feminist scholarship is highly contentious, the research builds on a typology of care relations based on practices of distribution, exchange, and reciprocity (Mauss, 1974; Tronto, 1998; López-Córdova, 2014; Temple, 2000). Therefore, this work conceptualizes care as practices that maintain, continue, and repair our world when it is performed under reciprocity or exchange practices. However, we show how care can foster inequalities and exclusions and perpetuate relations of power when performed in a distributive way, this is to say, in a unidirectional way, from the center to the periphery. This paper also speaks to the socio-nature debates that show the intrinsic link of humans and more-than-human-others in terms of distributive and relational agency (Harcourt 2017; Harcourt, 2018; Federici, 2010; Elmhirst, 2011). This link illustrates how actors are interconnected to each other as demonstrated by the COVID-19 virus influencing mobility in the socio-nature network. Finally, the paper contributes to the debates on care within FPE since the core of caring is not only the subject that defines the practice of care, but a relational interaction of circumstances, uncertainties, and agencies performed by humans and more-than-human-others, in this case, the COVID-19.
The two case studies present similarities and differences in caring practices. The participants in both cases rely heavily on mobility for them to function and were therefore adversely affected by the measures that curbed movement. At the same time, they faced inequalities in the face of the pandemic, with the Maasai being excluded from state interventions (IMF, 2020; PPU, 2020), and the food recipients having no access to food (Naumann, 2013; FIAN, 2017). The cases highlight how different practices of care emerged. While the community kitchens in Berlin predominantly exhibited a distribution form of care that was unidirectional, care as reciprocity was dominant in the Mara region. This may be argued to result from the essence of formation of these assemblages of the populations. Whereas the participants of the kitchens in Berlin were brought together by the common need to take care of their own need for food and the care of others and of food, the Maasai’s are bonded together by sharing a common ancestry, language, history, social norms and even struggles like marginalization. Therefore, the social contracts that activates the dynamic wheel of social relations, is absent in Berlin and more pronounced in the Mara. On the other hand, navigating the measures against movement had differing effects on sociability within the group. While the post dinner activities of social political engagements that fostered social encounters ended in Berlin, there was enhanced sociability among the Maasai as members of the community became more closer in performing caring practices communally.
The health crisis is also a crisis of care practices. One of the greatest challenges we currently face is the exacerbation and sustainability of care in times of uncertainty. The threat of collapse of health centers and hospitals has highlighted the lack of capacity of the States to manage and provide spaces for care and welfare for citizens. The call to stay at home has proved to be a call for individual care. In this pandemic, every individual, every household, every group has had to take care of itself. COVID-19 has intensified uncertainties and life-threatening conditions. Against this backdrop, finding ways to ensure effective sources of care that guarantee access to well-being at home, access to food, health, and a dignified life has become a primary care task. The crisis has strongly hit the marginalized individuals who depend on the daily flow of income and goods and those who seek to build alternative economies that require alternative care practices from the socio-nature network in which we live. This is more visible in countries from the geopolitical south, according to what we saw in our case studies and what the United Nations. (2020) in its Policy Brief on the COVID-19 affirms. Thus, this crisis forces us to think about care and the work it entails from a condition of uncertainty, limited movements, and the sudden interruption of alternative flows of food and other goods. We are facing a scenario in which rethinking the practices of care and the daily means by which we carry out this work is a fundamental act to ensure a dignified life in the face of uncertainties.
Building on Haraway’s provocation of staying with the troubles, FPE scholars have successfully challenged the socio/nature dualism and its related hierarchical relations. They opine that the hierarchical dualism normalizes human and patriarchal privileges, that result to the marginalization of subjugated groups like women, indigenous communities, the poor, non-human others, among others. Thus, they propose a reflexive immersion in care practices for others without reducing them for not being human (Haraway, 2016). By having direct contact and recognizing non-human agency in the everyday interactions between humans and non-humans can trigger care and response-ability (Greenhough and Roe 2010). This would see a reduction of cruel and insensitive practices towards the non-human others as facing each other as kin would entail respecting our differences, while acknowledging how we are co-produced along them. The care of the more-than- human-others by rescuing food from being wasted or by according to livestock agency was observed as practices towards non-human-others both in the community kitchens and in the Maasai community. In Berlin mobile kitchens ensured the continuation of alternative food networks and other political engagements through redistribution of food. The Maasai community negotiated access to the national reserve to graze their livestock and that of their kin-people and translated, demonstrated, and taught fellow community members. Both cases indicate care practices that enabled the communities embrace uncertainties collectively.
We acknowledge that the research may be limited in terms of available empirical data used, that could have been obtained by use of more engaging data collection methods but could not be used due to the ongoing restrictions. It would be interesting to have a further inquiry on the topic, including the motivation of the people engaging in these practices of care using participatory research methods. We further acknowledge the pandemic is still ongoing and the circumstances around it remain highly dynamic and contentious. Thus, it would be helpful to delve deeper on the long-term impact/relevance of the alternative forms of mobility or the contingent practices of care that emerged in a post COVID-19 time.
GM contributed to classify practices of care through redistribution, exchange and reciprocity practices. As well as asserting that reciprocal actions are the most contentious practices capable of founding relationships and moral systems of responsibility to repair and maintain the long-term welfare of a community. Likewise, she contributed to the understandings of the COVID-19 as a non-human-others capable of maintaining agency within the socio-nature network in which we cohabit. She contributed to the methods and empirical part and the Berlin case study and wrote the findings. She contributed to the reference management. M-WE contributed to the materials and methods section and contributed to the discussions of uncertainties and non-human-others sections of political ecology. She wrote the methods and empirical part and the Narok case study. She collected data on the case study, analysed it and wrote the findings. She contributed to the discussion and funding parts and also did reference management.
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