ABSTRACT
Domiciliary care is a site of conflict in which two social groups, both of whom suffer from a wider social diminishment, struggle to establish autonomy and personal esteem. Clients struggle to resist the domination of workers and to maintain a fragile sense of self in the face of the erosions of disability and age. Workers strive to establish control over their work and to extract from it sources of esteem and status. Although these conflicting aims are played out in the confined space of the home and the close intimacies of body care, they reflect larger tensions deriving from the wider society concerning class, ‘race’, age and gender. In this chapter we will explore the nature of these power struggles as experienced in the care encounter, focusing in particular on ‘race’ and class. But before doing so we need to look at some of the general features of bathing and body work that underlie these dynamics, for the power struggles of care are far from equal and are heavily weighted in favour of the workers.
