During the last decade, scholars of business ethics have become increasingly interested in the construct of moral courage. However, despite the importance of understanding both moral courage and the factors that might facilitate its expression, this topic has still received relatively limited study and several areas have been identified as being in need of further exploration. These include the need to investigate courage from within a full range of theoretical frameworks, including feminist ones, from within which, little is yet known (...) about this construct; the need for developmental perspectives on moral courage ; and, the identification of developmentally informed approaches for facilitating its expression. This article responds to these needs by providing a conceptual framework for understanding moral courage through a feminist and developmental ethic of care, and by describing the implications of this framework for the expression of moral courage in business and organizational settings. (shrink)

This paper explores the ambiguous impact of new information and communications technologies on the cultivation of moral skills in human beings. Just as twentieth century advances in machine automation resulted in the economic devaluation of practical knowledge and skillsets historically cultivated by machinists, artisans, and other highly trained workers , while also driving the cultivation of new skills in a variety of engineering and white collar occupations, ICTs are also recognized as potential causes of a complex pattern of economic deskilling, (...) reskilling, and upskilling. In this paper, I adapt the conceptual apparatus of sociological debates over economic deskilling to illuminate a different potential for technological deskilling/upskilling, namely the ability of ICTs to contribute to the moral deskilling of human users, a potential that exists alongside rich but currently underrealized possibilities for moral reskilling and/or upskilling. I flesh out this general hypothesis by means of examples involving automated weapons technology, new media practices, and social robotics. I conclude that since moral skills are essential prerequisites for the effective development of practical wisdom and virtuous character, and since market and cultural forces are not presently aligned to bring about the more salutary of the ambiguous potentials presented here, the future shape of these developments warrants our close attention—and perhaps active intervention. (shrink)

This paper argues that human rights-based approaches to human security overlook the importance of caring values, relations of care, and care work in the achievement and long-term maintenance of human security. It outlines an alternative approach to the ethics of human security which combines a feminist ontological and normative position on the centrality of caring values and practices in sustaining life with a feminist account of the gendered political economy of contemporary globalisation. Moreover, it argues that a critical, feminist ethics (...) of care can provide a comprehensive ontological and normative framework for integrating economic exclusion with violence, and thus for understanding and conceptualising human security in a way that is sensitive to the role played by gender identities and other types of power relations. This, I argue, can be achieved through an interrogation of the relationship between neoliberal globalisation and hegemonic forms masculinity in the context of contemporary global governance. (shrink)

El texto propone una confrontación entre la fenomenología de la vita activa de Hannah Arendt y la ética del cuidado. Se trata, por una parte, de aplicar las distinciones arendtianas entre esferas pública y privada, y entre labor, trabajo y acción , a la actividad de cuidar, para reafirmar su relevancia; por otra parte, tomando el concepto de «mundo» como clave de la definición de cuidado, se ensaya una reinterpretación crítica de los conceptos de Arendt a partir de algunos análisis (...) feministas y de una fenomenología responsiva y del cuerpo, a fin de plantear una reivindicación matizada de las implicaciones públicas del cuidar, en línea con las propuestas de paso de una ética a una «política del cuidado». (shrink)

Many older people in western countries express a desire to live independently and stay in control of their lives for as long as possible in spite of the afflictions that may accompany old age. Consequently, older people require care at home and additional support. In some care situations, tension and ambiguity may arise between professionals and clients whose views on risk prevention or health promotion may differ. Following Antonovsky’s salutogenic framework, different perspectives between professionals and clients on the pathways that (...) lead to health promotion might lead to mechanisms that explain the origin of these tensions and how they may ultimately lead to reduced responsiveness of older clients to engage in care. This is illustrated with a case study of an older woman living in the community, Mrs Jansen, and her health and social care professionals. The study shows that despite good intentions, engagement, clear division of tasks and tailored care, the responsiveness to receive care can indeed not always be taken for granted. We conclude that to harmonize differences in perspectives between professionals and older people, attention should be given to the way older people endow meaning to the demanding circumstances they encounter (comprehensibility), their perceived feelings of control (manageability), as well as their motivation to comprehend and manage events (meaningfulness). Therefore, it is important that both clients and professionals have an open mind and attempt to understand each others’ perspective, and have a dialogue with each other, taking the life narrative of clients into account. (shrink)

This article critically examines the relationship between shared residence and contact after the breakdown of the parents’ relationship. It examines the background to the government’s main emphasis on methods of monitoring, facilitating and enforcing contact as the most efficacious method of proceeding in respect of the law reform agenda, focussing particularly on the potential impact of punitive enforcement measures on primary carers, usually mothers. The article sets the discussion within its wider cultural context in respect of fathers’ rights claims that (...) family law currently favours mothers, and shows how recent legal developments constitute part of a package to manage post-separation relationships between parent and children. It also examines some of the emerging case law to show how the judiciary is using shared residence orders and transfer of residence to deal with protracted and very difficult contact disputes, and in ways which were not anticipated when shared residence orders were first introduced. Drawing on feminist legal commentaries the argument will be made that the use of transfer of residence and shared residence orders in these disputes is extremely worrying, especially in light of the growing body of empirical research which heralds caution. The article will conclude by suggesting that far from favouring mothers, both the law reforms and the case law effectively construct mothers as integral to the problem of contact. They are treated as the site of and solution to the ‚problem’ of contact, and the means of dealing with the problem is by increasingly punitive measures which are inappropriate in a family law context. At the same time non-residential fathers who do not uphold contact escape legal sanctions. (shrink)

In this paper, we seek to re-conceptualize the ethical framework through which ethicists and medical professionals view the practice of live kidney donations. The ethics of organ donation has been understood primarily within the framework of individual rights and impartiality, but we show that the ethic of care captures the moral situation of live kidney donations in a more coherent and comprehensive way, and offers guidance for practitioners that is more attentive to the actual moral transactions among donors and recipients. (...) A final section offers guidelines for the practice of live kidney transplants that emerge from an ethic of care. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce a theoretical framework on care developed by the Norwegian nurse and philosopher Kari Martinsen, and I argue that this approach has relevance not only within nursing, but also within clinical medicine. I try to substantiate this claim by analysing some of the key concepts in this approach, and I illustrate the potential clinical relevance of this approach by applying it in relation to two care scenarios. Finally, I discuss some of the concerns that have been (...) raised in relation to the aim of highlighting care in medicine. (shrink)

In Rogers, the Court of Appeal held that the decision of Swindon N.H.S. Primary Care Trust to refuse to fund Herceptin for the treatment of Ann Rogers against breast cancer was irrational. The P.C.T. maintained that their decision was not resource driven but based on the fact that Herceptin was, at that time, not licensed by the European Medicines Agency (E.M.E.A.) for use in early stage breast cancer. Yet it was prepared to fund its use in ‹exceptional circumstances’ which could (...) only be based upon the personal situation of the patient. In this note, I focus upon the ‹exceptionality’ argument in the context of the patient as consumer of healthcare and women as carers. I argue for a focus upon caring rather than consumerism in healthcare. (shrink)

The object of this essay is to explore the central role played by the ‘ethic of care’ in debates within and beyond feminist legal theory. The author claims that the ethic of care has attracted feminist legal scholars in particular, as a means of resolving the theoretical, political and strategic difficulties to which the perceived ‘crisis of subjectivity’ in feminist theory has given rise. She argues that feminist legal scholars are peculiarly placed in relation to this crisis because of their (...) reliance on the social ‘woman’ whose interests are the predominant concern of feminist legal engagement. With the problematisation of subjectivity, the object of feminist legal attention disappears and it is in attempts to deflect the negative political consequences of this that the ethic of care has been invoked, the author argues, unsuccessfully. The essay concludes with suggestions as to how the feminist project in law might proceed in the wake of the crisis of subjectivity and the failure of the ethic of care to resolve it. (shrink)

I argue that it is appropriate for adult recipients of personal care to feel and express gratitude whenever care providers are inspired partly by benevolence, and deliver a real benefit in a manner that conveys respect for the recipient. My focus on gratitude is consistent with important aspects of feminist ethics of care, including its attention to the particularities and vulnerabilities of caregivers and care recipients, and its concern with how relations of care are shaped by social hierarchies and public (...) institutions. In addition, it goes beyond the current preoccupations of care ethicists both by introducing gratitude as an important aspect of morally valuable relations of care and by stressing the significance of attending not only to the needs but also the capacities of recipients of care. (shrink)

Solidarity belongs to the basic principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and is part of the ethical repertoire of European moral traditions and European healthcare systems. This paper discusses how leaders of Catholic healthcare organizations (HCOs) can understand their institutional moral responsibility with regard to the preservation of solidarity. In dealing with this question, we make use of Taylor's philosophy of modern culture. We first argue that, just as all HCOs, Catholic ones also can embody and strengthen solidarity by just (...) doing their quintessential job, that is, to care for people with ill health. Second, we focus on the Catholic identity of these organizations and argue that this characteristic can empower a radical commitment to solidarity. Finally, we argue that CST provides a critical ethical framework for approaching solidarity from the perspective of the common good. (shrink)

Care Theory is a growing schoolof ethics that starts with the assumption ofthe relational nature of human beings. Incontrast, the dominant assumption of theautonomous view of human nature has made itdifficult to integrate ``relational'' aspects ofreality into the realm of political actionrelated to agriculture. Variables such ascommunity attachment, community vitality andrichness, and environmental ``fit'' cannot beincorporated into policy because such variablesare perceived to be tainted by ``attachment,''and compromise rational judgement. Feministagricultural theorists parallel Care Theory andhave the potential of extending Care (...) Theory tohuman-nature relations. Both taken togetherenrich each other and through that process,contribute to our understanding of the moralchoices embedded in agricultural systems,particularly hog production systems, the focusof this paper. (shrink)

Despite the centrality of the term within the title, the meaning of ?care? in residential child care remains largely unexplored. Shifting discourses of residential child care have taken it from the private into the public domain. Using a care ethics perspective, we argue that public care needs to move beyond its current instrumental focus to articulate a broader ontological purpose, informed by what is required to promote children's growth and flourishing. This depends upon the establishment of caring relationships enacted within (...) the lifespaces shared by children and those caring for them. We explore some of the central features of caring in the lifespace and conclude that residential child care is best considered to be a practical/moral endeavour rather than the technical/rational one it has become. It requires morally active, reflexive practitioners and containing environments. (shrink)

Can feminists count on welfare states—or at least some aspects of these complex systems—as resources in the struggle for gender equality? Gender analysts of "welfare states" investigate this question and the broader set of issues around the mutually constitutive relationship between systems of social provision and regulation and gender. Feminist scholars have moved to bring the contingent practice of politics back into grounded fields of action and social change and away from the reification and abstractions that had come to dominate (...) models of politics focused on "big" structures and systems, including those focused on "welfare states." Conceptual innovations and reconceptualizations of foundational terms have been especially prominent in the comparative scholarship on welfare states, starting with gender, and including care, autonomy, citizenship, dependence, political agency, and equality. In contrast to other subfields of political science and sociology, gendered insights have to some extent been incorporated into mainstream comparative scholarship on welfare states. The arguments between feminists and mainstream scholars over the course of the last two decades have been productive, powering the development of key themes and concepts pioneered by gender scholars, including "defamilialization," the significance of unpaid care work in families and the difficulties of work-family "reconciliation," gendered welfare state institutions, the relation between fertility and women's employment, and the partisan correlates of different family and gender policy models. Yet the mainstream still resists the deeper implications of feminist work, and has difficulties assimilating concepts of care, gendered power, dependency, and interdependency. Thus, the agenda of gendering comparative welfare state studies remains unfinished. To develop an understanding of what might be needed to finish that agenda, I assess the gendered contributions to the analysis of modern systems of social provision, starting with the concept of gender itself then moving to studies of the gendered division of labor and of gendered political power. (shrink)

Conventional management strategies for anti-corporate anger involve its negative construal as an inappropriate irrationality in need of containment. An alternative account is offered in which such anger comprises a healthy and health-sustaining component of care-based moral agency directed not only toward the affiliative advancement of connection among community members, but also toward the (political) resistance to violation, injustice, and carelessness through which disconnection from responsive community relationships occurs. The role of anger in care-based moral agency is demonstrated through discussion of (...) the classic case of environmental and human health crisis at Love Canal, New York. (shrink)

The traditional theories of the firm leave no room for love in business organizations, perhaps because it is thought that love is only an emotion or feeling, not a virtue, or because economic efficiency and profit making are considered to be incompatible with the practice of charity or love. In this article, we show based on an approach to the human action within the organization, that love can and must be lived in firms for firms to operate efficiently, be attractive (...) to those who take part in them, and act consistently in the long run. (shrink)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

Protestant Christian ethicist Timothy Jackson and secular feminist philosopher Eva Feder Kittay each explore the relationship between love or care and justice through the lens of human dependency. Jackson sharply prioritizes agape over justice, whereas Kittay articulates a more complex and integrated understanding of the relationship of care and distributive justice. An account of Christian love and its relation to justice must account for the gratuity, mutuality, and reciprocity that pervade human existence. Such an account must integrate provision for another's (...) basic needs, a feature of agape, with a distributive justice that fairly allocates the material prerequisites of care and the burden of caring labor. Kittay's treatment of care and justice is more adequate to the realities of human embodiment and the social organization of care than Jackson's, but neither offers a fully adequate ground for the moral personhood of all human beings, including deeply dependent persons. (shrink)

All markets are embedded in ethical relations and moral discourses. This is often forgotten or ignored in alternative agrofood studies, where there has been a frequent assumption that ‘ethics’ can be inserted into markets (Trentmann, 2007), or are only acknowledged in products certified as ‘ethical’ and suchlike (Barnett, Cloke, Clarke, & Malpass, 2005). This paper takes a different approach, choosing to explore how a mainstream commodity, widely associated with the development of capitalist agriculture (Mintz, 1985), is unavoidably embedded in both (...) a set of moral discourses and a web of ethical relations (Goodman, Maye, & Holloway, 2010). Specifically, I offer a critical reading of the moral discourses that circulated between the Caribbean Sugar Protocol signatories and the European Union in the context of the 2006–2009 European Union Sugar Reform. The paper looks at how both Caribbean and European actors negotiated ‘fairness’ and in doing so, reconfigured their historical relationship. I discuss how a relational—or ethical—approach to fairness was evoked in certain instances, disrupting the European Union's (EU) neoliberal rhetoric. Contributing to the literature around ‘moral geographies’ (Jackson & Ward, 2008; Proctor et al., 1999; Smith, 1999) and also to agrofood studies, I conclude by affirming the significance of a relational approach to how the ‘fairness’ of the EU Sugar Reform might be comprehended and to how the ethics of neoliberal market reform can be more generally understood and critiqued. (shrink)

The Confucian family, not only in its historical manifestations but also in the imagination of the Confucian founders, was the locus of misogynist norms and practices that have subjugated women in varying degrees. Therefore, advancing women’s well-being and equality in East Asia may seem to require radically transforming the Confucian family to approximate alternative ideal conceptions of the family in the West. This article opposes such a stance by arguing that (1) Western conceptions of the family may be neither plausible (...) nor feasible in traditionally Confucian societies and (2) the Confucian family, once reconstructed in line with Confucianism’s core ideas and values, can be conducive to a feminist future in East Asia that is uniquely Confucian. In order to support my position, not only influential contemporary Western ideal conceptions of the family from the justice perspective and care ethics, but also different interpretations of the Confucian family will be carefully examined. (shrink)

Care ethicists have long insisted that Kantian moral theory fails to capture the partiality that ought to be present in our personal relationships. In her most recent book, Virginia Held claims that, unlike impartial moral theories, care ethics guides us in how we should act toward friends and family. Because these actions are performed out of care, they have moral value for a care ethicist. The same actions, Held claims, would not have moral worth for a Kantian because of the (...) requirement of impartiality. Although Kantian moral theory is an impartial theory, I argue that the categorical imperative in the Formulation of Humanity as an End and the duty of respect require that we give special treatment to friends and family because of their relationships with us. Therefore, this treatment does have moral value for a Kantian. (shrink)

Early on in the development of Practicing Healthcare Ethicists Exploring Professionalization (PHEEP), the founding members recognized the need to address and meet two important goals: (1) the creation of a dynamic, rigorous process to support the exploratory work, and (2) the establishment of the means—deliberative engagement—to generate and justify the substantive content of professionalization-related products, such as practice standards and position statements. Drawing from social justice and deliberative democracy conceptions and insights (among others), the authors identify and describe the core (...) elements of the “process scaffolding” and “deliberative means” that inform PHEEP’s deliberative engagement methodology. The paper demonstrates how these process and substantive features have been meaningfully instantiated in the decision making framework established by PHEEP for its use in the development of professionalization-related products by Canadian practicing healthcare ethicists. (shrink)

This article uses elements of autoethnography to theorize an in/formal support relationship between a friend with a physical disability, who uses attendant services, and me. Through thinking about our particular “frien-tendant” relationship, I find the common scholarly orientations toward “care” are inadequate. Starting from the conversations between feminist and disability perspectives on care, I build on previous work to further develop the theoretical framework of accessible care. Accessible care takes a critical, engaged approach that moves beyond understanding “accessibility” as merely (...) concrete solutions to create more inclusive forms of care. Care, in this context, is positioned as an unstable tension among competing definitions, including that it is a complex form of oppression. Accessible care draws on feminist disability perspectives and the feminist political ethic of care to build bridges in four areas: from daily experiences of disability and support to theoretical discussions; across feminist care research and disability perspectives; across divisions and anxieties within disability communities; and from the local to transnational applications. These bridges do not aim to resolve debates but allow us to travel back and forth between differing perspectives and demonstrate the tenuous possibility of accessible practices and concepts of care. (shrink)

Care is a feature of all of our lives, all of the time. An analysis of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence reveals that care and caring permeate complex dimensions of life in and after school and we ask here, if, on some accounts, care can do the work required of it. Acknowledging the significance of her contribution to care, we focus on the work of Nel Noddings suggesting that she pays insufficient attention to other emotions implicated in the work of morally (...) appropriate care. We argue here that Noddings' version of care would benefit from the support of an ethical theory of the emotions, including a moralized form of compassion, if care in schools is to be both better understood and more likely realised. (shrink)

This paper highlights a number of ethical dilemmas encountered in a pilot study with a hard-to-reach group of research participants with harmful childhood histories. Drawing on a project exploring black teenage mothers' understandings of their own childhood experiences of abuse, it is argued that in asking young mothers to talk about such an emotionally sensitive topic as their own harmful childhood, a number of challenges are posed about how to deal with number of key ethical principles. The paper begins by (...) outlining the context of the pilot study, including the research literature on this subject. It then discusses three key ethical principles that were considered during the process of the research: issues of gaining consent; and when the principle of confidentiality ought to be breached when a duty of care prerogative emerges. The paper explores these tensions in operationalising these principles when dealing with the competing needs and rights of gatekeepers, the young women and their carers, using occasional extracts from research findings to illustrate these tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethical challenges in accessing marginal voices in social research. (shrink)

Many older people in western countries express a desire to live independently and stay in control of their lives for as long as possible in spite of the afflictions that may accompany old age. Consequently, older people require care at home and additional support. In some care situations, tension and ambiguity may arise between professionals and clients whose views on risk prevention or health promotion may differ. Following Antonovsky’s salutogenic framework, different perspectives between professionals and clients on the pathways that (...) lead to health promotion might lead to mechanisms that explain the origin of these tensions and how they may ultimately lead to reduced responsiveness of older clients to engage in care. This is illustrated with a case study of an older woman living in the community, Mrs Jansen, and her health and social care professionals. The study shows that despite good intentions, engagement, clear division of tasks and tailored care, the responsiveness to receive care can indeed not always be taken for granted. We conclude that to harmonize differences in perspectives between professionals and older people, attention should be given to the way older people endow meaning to the demanding circumstances they encounter (comprehensibility), their perceived feelings of control (manageability), as well as their motivation to comprehend and manage events (meaningfulness). Therefore, it is important that both clients and professionals have an open mind and attempt to understand each others’ perspective, and have a dialogue with each other, taking the life narrative of clients into account. (shrink)

Australia has one of the harshest regimes for the processing of asylum seekers, people who have applied for refugee status but are still awaiting an answer. It has received sharp rebuke for its policies from international human rights bodies but continues to exercise its resolve to protect its borders from those seeking protection. One means of doing so is the detention of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. Health care providers who care for asylum seekers in these conditions (...) experience a conflict of “dual loyalty,” whereby their role in preserving and maintaining the health of patients can run counter to their employment in detention facilities. Many psychiatrists who have worked in the detention setting engage in forms of political activism in order to change the process of seeking refuge. (shrink)

Crop protection has a very long history during which new methods have been developed whilst, at the same time, the older ones have retained their usefulness in certain conditions. The diversity of agricultural land and production has meant that it was futile to search for a unique and definitive approach or technical solution and, instead, the central concept has always been one of integration, during all the period of pre-Green Revolution and again today within what we call a sustainable agriculture. (...) On a global level, it would seem that the current situation does not fundamentally contradict this idea. Nevertheless, in recent years (since the Second World War), two important advances, presented as the definitive solutions to problems and potentially exceeding previously less effective ones, have led to this integrative approach being questioned. These are agrochemistry and agro-genetics. We will detail, here, the agro-environmental limits of these two “miracle solutions,” followed by a review from an ethical and an epistemological point of view. This enables us to demonstrate the relevance of integrated approaches in agriculture and leads to a definition of crop protection that forms part of a strong approach in sustainable development. By changing the semantics, the epistemic position and our vision of production, we arrive at the proposal of sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

This paper explores how Schutz’s ideas enrich and extend the ethic of care promulgated by feminist theorists such as Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, Sara Ruddick, and Eva Feder Kittay. Using Schutz’s ideas about the I-Thou relationship, systems of relevances, and growing old together, the author lays a foundation for continuing dialogue between feminist theorists of care and Schutzian phenomenologists.

Although there has been a proliferation of interest in sustainable business practice, recent research has identified concerns with the relative neglect of the social versus environmental aspects of sustainability. It is argued here that due to its reliance on internally held, concrete and intrinsically motivated forms of responsiveness, as well as its ability to be authentically social versus parochial in nature, that the ethical construct of “embodied care” (Hamington, Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics, 2004 ) has (...) particular relevance as one path through which responsiveness to the human aspects of sustainable business practice might occur. Consideration is given to care as both an individual and organizational level construct. Business case examples are offered and directions for future research described. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to re-examine an ethic of care as the main ethical approach to nursing practice in light of past and present developments in nursing ethics, and to briefly speculate whether or not it will survive within nursing in the future. Overall, it is maintained throughout that the terms ?caring?, ?nursing? and an ?ethic of care? are inextricably linked. This is because, it is argued, professionally focused nursing practices are based predominantly on a well-recognised moral commitment (...) to deliver expert care, and that a care-based ethic is the major factor in the construction and maintenance of these practices. Subsequently, the influences and developments of a caring ethic in nursing are firstly re-examined, and the discussion is supported by evidence from more recent nursing research and theoretical developments. Consideration is given to the philosophical underpinnings of both care theory and caring ethics, and the fundamental importance of caring in nursing, as an interpersonal relationship and as an appropriate ethical response, is made transparent. Finally, an outline of the future possibilities that may affect an ethic of care in nursing is offered. (shrink)

Care drain brings the traditional problem of carers' choice between paid work and family at a new level. Taking care drain from Romania as a case study, I analyse the consequences of parents' migration within a normative framework committed to meeting the needs of vulnerable individuals. The temporary migration of parents who cannot take their children with them involves moral harm, particularly the frustration of children's developmental and emotional needs. I use recent feminist work on justice and care in the (...) economy to address the question whose responsibility it is to fill the void of care created by temporary migration. I argue that the moral issues raised by care drain are also issues of social justice and therefore call for rectification by the states involved. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of twenty years of feminist philosophy in Northamerica. The professionalization of feminist theory that has occurred through the mainstreaming of feminist philosophy creates a danger of a gap between theory and practice that creates the danger of co-optation. Three stages of feminist philosophizing are outlined, including the radical critique, gender difference and difference/post-modernist stages. The last stage, it is argued, leads to an conceptual impasse about feminist strategies for social change.

The best framework for moral and political thought is the one that creates the best climate for good political judgments. I argue that universalistic theories of justice fall short in this regard because they cannot distinguish idealization from abstraction. After describing how an ethic of care guides judgments, I suggest the practical effects that make this approach preferable. The ethic of care includes more aspects of human life in making political judgments.

I explore the ethics of altering the body of a child with severe cognitive disabilities in such a way that keeps the child “forever small.” The parents of Ashley, a girl of six with severe cognitive and developmental disabilities, in collaboration with her physicians and the Hospital Ethics Committee, chose to administer growth hormones that would inhibit her growth. They also decided to remove her uterus and breast buds, assuring that she would not go through the discomfort of menstruation and (...) would not grow breasts. In this way she would stay “forever small” and be able to be carried and handled by family members. They claimed that doing this would ensure that she would be able to be part of the family and of family activities and to have familial care. But the procedure has raised thorny ethical questions. I wish to explore these questions philosophically by bringing to bear my own experiences as a mother of a grown daughter with severe cognitive impairments. (shrink)

In “Conceptions of Care,” Tove Pettersen discusses and articulates select ways in which care can be comprehended. Several difficulties related to an altruistic understanding of care are examined before the author presents the case for a more favorable concept: mature care. Mature care is intended to take into account the interests of both parties to the caring relationship. This understanding of care facilitates the expression of the relational and reciprocal aspects of caring while emphasizing the equal worth of all involved. (...) Also attended to is the embeddedness of care in wider cultural and political contexts. (shrink)

In this paper, I work through the possible contours of an anti-genocide based on a framework informed by the work of Giorgio Agamben. Such a framework posits the inherent need to circumvent sovereign power within any form of normative activism. To begin, I show how the nascent anti-genocide movement promotes an ideal in which ?Western? states, particularly the USA, accept the global responsibility to protect persecuted life beyond national boundaries. Using Agamben, I argue that this vision also entails an acceptance (...) of a sovereign framework for the valuation of life, thus failing to confront the inherent power of the sovereign to condemn life in the first place. I then highlight the limitations that Agamben's ontology places on us in dealing with this inherent problem within the sovereign-subject relationship. By positing an alternative ontology, I suggest the possibility of establishing communities of solidarity that challenge the sovereign's self-ascribed role as the absolute valuator of life. Counter to Agamben, I argue that the basis for such communities could be a dedication to the universal sacredness of human life, which is maintained independently of, and in challenge to, sovereign power. (shrink)

According to the most important theories of justice, personal dignity is closely related to independence, and the care that people with disabilities receive is seen as a way for them to achieve the greatest possible autonomy. However, human beings are naturally subject to periods of dependency, and people without disabilities are only “temporarily abled.” Instead of seeing assistance as a limitation, we consider it to be a resource at the basis of a vision of society that is able to account (...) for inevitable dependency relationships between “unequals” ensuring a fulfilling life both for the carer and the cared for.**. (shrink)

Background: The importance of respecting patients and participants in clinical research is widely recognised. However, what it means to respect persons beyond recognising them as autonomous is unclear, and little is known about what patients find to be respectful. Objective: To understand patients’ conceptions of respect and what it means to be respected by medical providers. Design: Qualitative study from an academic cardiology clinic, using semistructured interviews with 18 survivors of sudden cardiac death. Results: Patients believed that respecting persons incorporates (...) the following major elements: empathy, care, autonomy, provision of information, recognition of individuality, dignity and attention to needs. Conclusions: Making patients feel respected, or valued as a person, is a multi-faceted task that involves more than recognising autonomy. While patients’ views of respect do not determine what respect means, these patients expressed important intuitions that may be of substantial conceptual relevance. (shrink)

This paper explores two feminist contributions to the analysis of the social contract tradition, comparing the political philosophy of Carole Pateman with the moral theory of Jean Hampton, to ask two questions. First, which points must feminists continue to argue in their critique of the social contract tradition today? The second question is: Can feminists actually draw anything from the social contract tradition today? It argues that Pateman's critique of contractarianism continues to be useful when read in the context of (...) her analysis of “self‐ownership” and subordination rather than as a rewriting of the social contract. Hampton's deployment of a Kantian test for the failure of respect for personhood within domestic (and other) relationships does not undermine Pateman's position. Consideration of how such an ideal can be understood as potentially compatible with Pateman's perspective raises issues about the radical potential within claims for equal respect for personhood. In Hampton's work, widespread “test failure” can be used to indicate that political action rather than moral analysis is required. Hampton assumes that those employing the test are able to abstract themselves sufficiently from their current position to imagine what it would be to be treated as a person. It is argued that this “moral test” should be envisaged as being asked in concert with others, at which point it has the potential to become political action. (shrink)

Some Romanian feminist scholars argue that welfare policies of post-communist states are deeply unjust to women and preclude them from reaching economic autonomy. The upshot of this argument is that liberal economic policy would advance feminist goals better than the welfare state. How should we read this dissonance between Western and some Eastern feminist scholarship concerning distributive justice? I identify the problem of dependency at the core of a possible debate about feminism and welfare. Worries about how decades of communism (...) have shaped citizenry feed feminists' suspicion of the welfare state and fears of paternalist policies. I criticize the arguments in favour of neoliberal policies and I suggest a crucial distinction between legitimate, universal forms of human dependency and dependencies that result from particular social arrangements. (shrink)

By meeting needs for individualized love and relatedness, the care we receive deeply shapes our social and economic chances and therefore represents a form of luck. Hence, distributive justice requires a fair distribution of care in society. I look at different ways of ensuring this and argue that full redistribution of care is beyond our reach. I conclude that a strong individual morality informed by an ethics of care is a necessary complement of well-designed institutions.

When Carol Gilligan (1982) first introduced the ethic of care she did so from the discipline of psychology using empirical data that questioned Kohlberg's (1981) negative assumptions about the mora...

As an independent researcher, registered social worker and erstwhile long-term, long-distance carer, the care of older people and protection of elders from abuse had been constant professional and personal foci for me for many years. Commissioned to review a case involving the serious abuse of an elder where official safeguarding procedures had not been used, I puzzled why this had been managed ?informally? by social services and partner agencies (i.e. outside adult safeguarding procedures), with vague unspecified ?monitoring? (AEA 2006). Why (...) was there this apparent gap between policy intention and implementation? That question led to research on which this essay is based. (shrink)

In recent years a growing body of literature on the ethics of care has made significant contributions to understanding the multiple dimensions of care. Feminist theories provide the resource for this interdisciplinary research in which there has been scant attention given to black women's approaches to moral deliberations and understandings of care. Although there are differing interests and diversity among black women, this article seeks to disrupt current frameworks surrounding the ethics of care and discusses a more relevant conceptual framework (...) to bring diverse perspectives to bear in the current wave of interest in caring. By applying black feminist thought to the complexities of black womanhood in the broader society, this paper considers cultural antecedents and lived experiences as a starting point for ethical concerns in reclaiming the everyday world as self-defined by black women themselves to open up new insights into care and its multiple dimensions. (shrink)

How do we know which institutions provide good care? Some scholars argue that the best way to think about care institutions is to model them upon the family or the market. This paper argues, on the contrary, that when we make explicit some background conditions of good family care, we can apply what we know to better institutionalized caring. After considering elements of bad and good care, from an institutional perspective, the paper argues that good care in an institutional context (...) has three central foci: the purpose of care, a recognition of power relations, and the need for pluralistic, particular tailoring of care to meet individuals? needs. These elements further require political space within institutions to address such concerns. (shrink)