• Nick Malherbe.
• Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa, Lenasia, South Africa.
• J Community Psychol. 2020 Sep 1; 48 (7): 2131-2137.

AbstractIn addition to the twinned crises of ecology and political economy, we face today a crisis of care. The crisis of care, I contend, is fundamentally a political and an ethical crisis. In this short commentary, I outline the structural (i.e., systemic) and reproductive (i.e., labour) character of this crisis, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. From here, I argue for the imperative to centre an expansive conception of care in critical community psychology work. Specifically, I posit that by working with and alongside activist care workers, community psychologists can assist in building socially just modalities of care. After reflecting on my work with collective caring initiatives, I offer five (tentative) guiding principles for a community psychology that is committed to addressing the crisis of care, namely: (1) commitment to building political coalitions; (2) commitment to refuting capitalist conceptions of care; (3) commitment to expanding conceptions of care; (4) commitment to embracing the psychological consequences of care work; and (5) a politicoethical commitment.© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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