Time to Get Closer: Longing for Care Ethics Under the Neoliberal Logic of Public Services

TL;DR

This paper explores integrating care ethics into public services within neoliberal contexts, proposing visual collaging as a method to rethink participatory design and relationality in public administration.

Contribution

It introduces a collaging technique to visualize new participatory design approaches aligned with feminist care ethics in neoliberal public services.

Findings

Care ethics challenge neoliberal privatization and marketization.

Visual collaging reveals new relational design possibilities.

Feminist care ethics can inform more compassionate public service design.

Abstract

The fields of HCI and Participatory design have been turning to care ethics as a suitable ethos to approach current polycrisis with. Similar calls for relationality can be witnessed in public administration research and practice, albeit its current logic being built on privatisation and marketisation of services, managerialism and customer-focus; all of which are challenging to combine with care ethics. In this paper I use collaging technique to visually reflect on new ways for public services to adopt and (care-fully) scale participatory design approaches, and how do feminist care ethics fit in the design of public services, where there is a strong presence of neoliberalism.