On ‘caring against’: A feminist, political and spatial account of how care builds and sustains resistance

Although an ethics of care is increasingly recognised as offering an alternative set of values and practices to organizations significantly shaped by neoliberal and patriarchal norms, its proponents have yet to contend with how care can help overcome the hostile contexts within which it usually operates. This study explores the political role of care in catalysing and sustaining resistance to careless organizations. In doing so it theorises the concept of caring against, enriching understanding of how care can be a means and an end, building and enhancing resistance to achieve caring outcomes. We approach this challenge as a tangible and material one – practices of care enacted by and between bodies that build and sustain resistance in work, home, social and transit spaces. Conceptually, we draw on feminist organization studies accounts of care and space, further deepening insight into their embodied dimensions through the theory of Sara Ahmed. Empirically, we build the concept of caring against through a qualitative study of hospitality workers who unionised and organized for strike action, allowing insight into mobilisations with and for care in an industry where patriarchal norms are dominant and abuse of women workers commonplace. We posit the caring against concept as comprising four practices that deploy care to engender and, subsequently, sustain resistance: shaping carelessness, absorbing care, interstitial politicising and fortifying defiance. The study enables future theorisation of care within organization studies as an active, political force which does not merely survive carelessness but holds the capacity for mobilising organizational alternatives that may challenge it.