A major challenge posed by gender research is understanding and analysing the shift of gender relations from a global perspective. In this research field, the concept of transnationality is widespread. It argues that transnational spaces emerge with their own normative-cultural patterns, while the paradigm of multiple modernities focuses on the idiosyncratic modes of modernity in each civilisation. However, none of the approaches systematically includes a gender perspective. Based on a media analysis of Femen's topless protests in Tunisia in 2013, we illustrate several potentials and limitations of each concept in order to explain social interactions in a globalised world from a gender perspective. We argue that the perspective of the multiple modernities approach is more comprehensive, since it makes the constructed nature of dominant views on feminist issues visible and traces them back to concrete social conditions.

Although care and care work have always formed a theme of fundamental social significance, neither has had much social recognition nor sociological attention commensurate with this importance. In this Current Sociology monograph we want to move the discussion forward towards a global sociology of care and care work. The contributions focus on both theoretical and empirical studies about care relations and their global interrelations. To shed light on the dynamics that characterise the social organisation of care and care work, the monograph has been structured around three significant tendencies in the international sociology of care: (a) the marketisation and the de-commodification of care and care work; (b) the transnationalisation of labour and policies; and (c) new forms of governance and social statehood. The articles in this monograph present state of the art research reflecting on the care-situation, -arrangements and -regimes all over the globe.

Viele Menschen geraten beim Versuch, gut für sich und andere zu sorgen, an die Grenzen ihrer Kräfte. Was als individuelles Versagen gegenüber den alltäglichen Anforderungen erscheint, ist jedoch Folge einer neoliberalen Krisenbearbeitung. Notwendig ist daher ein grundlegender Perspektivenwechsel - nicht weniger als eine Care Revolution. Gabriele Winker entwickelt Schritte in eine solidarische Gesellschaft, die nicht mehr Profitmaximierung, sondern menschliche Bedürfnisse und insbesondere die Sorge umeinander ins Zentrum stellt. Ziel ist eine Welt, in der sich Menschen nicht mehr als Konkurrent_innen gegenüberstehen, sondern ihr je individuelles Leben gemeinschaftlich gestalten.

This article argues that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of capitalism. Under the auspices of an economic shift, social reproduction and constituent care and care work are undergoing a process of reorganization. The first part draws on Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the relation between market and society and on contemporary revisions of his approach. Referring to core arguments from his perspective on the market society it identifies processes of commodification, marketization and quasi-marketization, which we can understand as an economic shift driving the development in the field of care and care work. The second part refers to empirical studies in Austria and Germany and reflects in terms of a Polanyian double movement on how far care and care work – in the case of elder and child care and, more precisely, home care agencies, residential care communities and the social investment state – have become a contested terrain. The third part, the conclusion, points out how tendencies like the economic shift touch care and care work.

PurposeThe starting point of the paper is the meteoric rise of care and care work upon the societal and sociological agenda. Referring to Polanyi, the authors argue that this is the manifestation of a new phase of capitalist societalisation (Vergesellschaftung) of social reproduction in the form of an economic shift. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the societal organisation of care and care work and questions of inequality and justice.Design/methodology/approachThe first part of the paper illustrates some facets of the economic shift in the field of care and care work. The second part reconstructs the societal organisation of care and care work in the private sector, state, third sector and private households from the mid-twentieth century in the context of questions of inequality and justice. The third part draws on the institutional logics perspective and French pragmatic sociology and the own case studies on home care agencies (HCA), residential care communities (RCC) and early child care (ECC) in Austria and Germany and shows how conflicting demands give rise to new questions of justice. The paper ends with a short conclusion.FindingsThe paper shows how the commodification and de-commodification of care and care work have changed over time and how the economic shift – illustrated in the case of HCA, RCC and ECC – is accompanied by conflicting demands and questions of justice.Originality/valueA Polanyian perspective on the relation between market and society is combined with the neo-institutionalist and pragmatic idea that orientations rooted in the “logics” of the market, the state, the family and the profession influence how conflicting demands in elder and child care are dealt with and how questions of inequality and justice arise.