What new forms of ethical engagement are emerging in naturecultural worlds? In this paper I explore the example of the practical ethics of the permaculture movement. I put these in dialogue first with new approaches to ethics in biopolitics and naturecultures and second with a reading of feminist care ethics. Across this discussion I focus on the potential of ethos transformations experienced through everyday doings to promote ethical obligations of care. If we are living in a naturecultural world where politics (...) and ethics conflate in biopolitics, the permaculture movement is an example of an alter-biopolitical intervention. It works within bios with an ethics of collective empowerment that puts caring at the heart of its search of alternatives for hopeful flourishing for all beings. (shrink)

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...

The first thesis of this article is that the concept of responsibility takes on an unprecedented meaning in the twentieth century resulting from the emergence of a new dimension of the other: to be responsible comes to mean not just to account for oneself in relation to the other, but also to take the other into account, to take care of the other—what I call responsibility towards (the other). The main reason for this change consists in the emergence of global (...) risks and the necessity, as underlined by Hans Jonas, to be responsible for the destiny of the world and future generations. The problem, as explored in the article’s second thesis, is that this implies the existence of a subject who is capable of responsibility. Jonas’s insights on this point are insufficient, since he only recognizes duty as the fundament for his ethics of responsibility and thus neglects the problem of motivation. This is a particularly crucial problem today as we are witnessing the presence of a pathological subject, characterized by a split in his faculties (between doing and imagining, knowing and feeling). To underline this fact, this article makes use of Günther Anders’s reflections, which provide a psycho-anthropological analysis of the subject, showing his pathologies and the necessity, from a moral perspective, to overcome his scission. Finally, this author suggests, as the article’s third thesis, that this overcoming is the necessary fundament for the perception of risk, which in turn reinstates the subject’s perception of his own vulnerability. Responsibility thus finds a motivation, which is neither altruistic nor duty-centred, in the awareness of our own vulnerability and the bond with the destiny of humankind as a whole. (shrink)

A philosophical exploration of the nature, scope, and significance of ecofeminist theory and practice. This book presents the key issues, concepts, and arguments which motivate and sustain ecofeminism from a western philosophical perspective.

Calls are increasing for American health care to be organized as a learning health care system, defined by the Institute of Medicine as a health care system “in which knowledge generation is so embedded into the core of the practice of medicine that it is a natural outgrowth and product of the healthcare delivery process and leads to continual improvement in care.” We applaud this conception, and in this paper, we put forward a new ethics framework for it. No such (...) framework has previously been articulated. The goals of our framework are twofold: to support the transformation to a learning health care system and to help ensure that learning activities carried out within such a system are conducted in an ethically acceptable fashion. (shrink)

What new forms of ethical engagement are emerging in naturecultural worlds? In this paper I explore the example of the practical ethics of the permaculture movement. I put these in dialogue first with new approaches to ethics in biopolitics and naturecultures and second with a reading of feminist care ethics. Across this discussion I focus on the potential of ethos transformations experienced through everyday doings to promote ethical obligations of care. If we are living in a naturecultural world where politics (...) and ethics conflate in biopolitics, the permaculture movement is an example of an alter-biopolitical intervention. It works within bios with an ethics of collective empowerment that puts caring at the heart of its search of alternatives for hopeful flourishing for all beings. (shrink)

In this essay I present an overview of the problem of climate change, with attention to issues of interest to feminists, such as the differential responsibilities of nations and the disproportionate “vulnerabilities” of females, people of color, and the economically disadvantaged in relation to climate change. I agree with others that justice requires governments, corporations, and individuals to take full responsibility for histories of pollution, and for present and future greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless I worry that an overemphasis on household (...) and personal-sphere fossil fuel emissions distracts from attention to higher-level corporate and governmental responsibilities for addressing the problem of climate change. I argue that more attention should be placed on the higher-level responsibilities of corporations and governments, and I discuss how individuals might more effectively take responsibility for addressing global climate change, especially when corporations and governments refuse to do so. (shrink)

What new forms of ethical engagement are emerging in naturecultural worlds? In this paper I explore the example of the practical ethics of the permaculture movement. I put these in dialogue first with new approaches to ethics in biopolitics and naturecultures and second with a reading of feminist care ethics. Across this discussion I focus on the potential of ethos transformations experienced through everyday doings to promote ethical obligations of care. If we are living in a naturecultural world where politics (...) and ethics conflate in biopolitics, the permaculture movement is an example of an alter-biopolitical intervention. It works within bios with an ethics of collective empowerment that puts caring at the heart of its search of alternatives for hopeful flourishing for all beings. (shrink)

Interviews with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) growers in Iowa, a majority of whom are women, shed light on the relationship between gender and CSA as a system of resource management. Growers, male and female alike, are differentiated by care and caring-practices. Care-practices, historically associated with women, place priority on local context and relationships. The concern of these growers for community, nature, land, water, soil, and other resources is manifest in care-motives and care-practices. Their specific mix of motives differs: providing safe (...) and nutritious food, educating self and others, and building relationships with other growers, shareholder-members, and the land. Care-practices include reducing or eliminating chemical usage, encouraging or accepting beneficial insects and wildlife, building soil, and creating resource management partnerships with shareholder members. CSA, viewed through a lens of care, may offer a means of transcending gender stereotypes. (shrink)