Post date: Mar 8, 2017 8:31:56 PM
[These are some lecture notes I circulate for my introductory ethics course, from a module on care ethics. Posting for International Women's Day. The stuff up front is recommended media for context.]
Julie A. White and Joan C. Tronto, “Political Practices of Care: Needs and Rights,” Ratio Juris 17.4 (2004), 425-453
Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson (eds.), Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 35-62.
Murray Rothbard, one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement, understands the history of human civilization as a contest between political power and individual liberty:
I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself…but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life. But liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power, power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax, and exploit the fruits of liberty and production. Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear.[1]
From the perspective of care ethics, Rothbard’s template for interpreting history ignores caring activities and networks as the invisible background without which exercises of liberty and power are impossible. For example, artists create beauty and scientists construct knowledge only against a backdrop of parents and communities who provide education, teachers who provide refined skills and advanced knowledge, friends who provide support and encouragement, peers who provide challenge and inspiration, and service workers who provide reliable access to work spaces. From a care perspective, liberty might be the tree bearing the fruit of civilization; but that tree grows and flourishes only in the soil of care.
This is not to say that care ethics is incompatible with valuing liberty. Imagine, for example, Rothbard’s interpretation of history, substituting “care for ourselves and others” for “individual liberty.” In doing so, one might interpret the history of human civilization as a contest between political power and caring activity, with political authorities tending to disrupt or undermine networks of care—this would motivate a libertarian version of care ethics. But one might interpret history, instead, as a gradual effort to build political structures capable of nurturing and sustaining networks of care for ever-growing populations—this would motivate a communitarian version of care ethics.
This is not the forum to debate the merits of competing interpretations of human history. The takeaway point here is that, from a care perspective, debates between libertarianism and communitarianism are secondary to issues regarding care. Whence Nel Noddings observes:
Rather than arguing about what institutions best satisfy what we collectively owe to each other—respect for natural rights, a certain degree of welfare, etc.—care ethicists discuss what social institutions are most conducive to the formation and maintenance of caring relationships between people.[2]
Care ethics allows that sometimes public governmental organizations, other times private market forces, are best-suited to promote or provide care. From the care perspective, broad principles about the proper balance of power and liberty are secondary to empirical information about what is “most conducive to the formation and maintenance of caring relationships between people.”
Prioritizing care over liberty brings into focus unfamiliar and neglected aspects from our experiences of living with and among others. Perhaps the most fundamental shift is metaphysical: whereas those who prioritize liberty typically emphasize our autonomy, prioritizing care directs our attention instead to our vulnerability.[3] Autonomy is a capacity to determine the course of our own lives; vulnerability, by contrast, is a condition of depending upon others for options and choices available to us, as well as for success in our choices among those options. From a care perspective, vulnerability is universal. Judith Butler offers a justification grounded upon our inescapable embodiment:
[I]n its surface and in its depth, the body is a social phenomenon: it is exposed to others, vulnerable by definition. Its very persistence depends upon social conditions and institutions, which means that in order to “be,” in the sense of “persist,” it must rely on what is outside itself.”[4]
From a care perspective, vulnerability is also more fundamental than autonomy: we exercise autonomy only when we achieve sufficient protection against our vulnerability. Because we achieve such protection only through networks of care, prioritizing care over liberty demands understanding care as fundamental to who we are: care enable autonomy by providing security against vulnerability.
Prioritizing care over liberty also entails a fundamental sociopolitical shift regarding the barriers between private and public.[5] Insofar as liberty is the fundamental political value, private life is the appropriate domain for caring: care we receive at home prepares us to exercise autonomy in public life. By contrast, prioritizing care as the fundamental political value reveals that care transcends the boundary between private and public: care is given and received at home (private) as well as through social institutions (public). Moreover, insofar as public life is an appropriate domain for caring, the care perspective guides us to assess political institutions and public services by how well they provide care (and distribute the burden of giving care), rather than by how well they support autonomous action (and respect individual rights).
Positioning care as central and fundamental to our selves and to our society encourages us to reconceptualize how we think about care itself. It encourages us, in particular, to conceptualize care as political rather than personal. As political, care is not a matter of individual decision. Instead, as political, care is a social matter: care is a way of ordering the (human) world, determining who does what, who bears the caring burdens, who receives the privilege of “irresponsibility” through exemption from caregiving, and how caregivers themselves—from mothers to custodial staff—become invisible. Again: as political, care is also not restricted to stereotypically “caring domains such as family, education, and health care. Instead, care encompasses family, neighborhood, community, health and well-being, education, environment, and any other domain where some need and other provide.
We typically do not think of care as relevant to our relations in public life—our interactions with those to whom we lack kinship bonds, and who might be strangers to us. So one challenge for care ethics is providing guidance about what caring for others means in a political sense (rather than a private or personal sense). Fisher and Tronto consider three potential exemplars for the kind of interactions and obligations involved with caring as a political activity: the mother, the friend, and the sister.[6] They argue that sisterhood, rather than motherhood or friendship, provides the best model for guiding politically-oriented practices of caring (directed beyond the boundaries of private life).
Before we consider Fisher and Tronto’s reasons, we should ask: why don’t they consider fatherhood or brotherhood? Cultural connotations associate fatherhood with providing resources rather than providing care, and brotherhood with banding together to inflict or protect against violence, rather than to provide care.[7] In saying that sisterhood is the best model for caring as a political activity, Fisher and Tronto are not saying that such activity is restricted to sisters, or even to women. They are saying, instead, that thinking about sisterhood, and stereotypical interactions between sisters, is a good guide for thinking about how we care ethics recommends interacting with others in public life.
Motherhood. Mothers care for their children in ways designed to create (more) autonomous adults, they do so from a position of power and authority over their children, and they receive no reciprocal care from their children (at least, not until much later in life). Fisher and Tronto reject motherhood as an exemplar for public practices of caring, because it provides no resources for solving problems of exploitation and domination inherent to hierarchical social arrangements. Because caring tends to be invisible, the efforts mothers exert to care for their children tend to be ignored or dismissed as less worthy than more acquisitive efforts (such as working to help others generate profits). Moreover, because children tend to be much more vulnerable than their mothers, mothers depend upon other relationships to have their caring needs met—and this makes them vulnerable as well, with little resource to having their care needs met if their wider relationships fail. From a care perspective, we ought not model practices fundamental to morality on roles that are inherently hidden and vulnerable.
Friendship. Friendship is a relation between equals, occurring through the mutual consent and autonomous choice of persons regardless of kinship bonds. Fisher and Tronto reject friendship as an exemplar for public practices of caring, because it distorts caring activity into a market-based relationship. Friendships persist only insofar as they provide mutual benefit to friends. Caring obligations, however, often exist even when caregiving provides benefit only to those receiving care. Moreover, some friendships center around shared interests rather than attention to caring needs. From a care perspective, we ought not model practices fundamental to morality upon roles that reduce the value of care to the value of mutual benefit, or that treat caregiving as optional.
Sisterhood.[8] Sisterhood, as Fisher and Tronto understand it, incorporates the best of motherhood and friendship while avoiding their weaknesses. Like friendship, sisterhood is a relation among equals; but unlike friends, sisters care for each other even when doing so is not mutually beneficial. Yet, like motherhood, sisterhood is also a relation among unequals, because differences of birth order entail differences of need and obligation; but unlike mothers and their children, sisters both receive and give care to each other.
Upholding sisterhood as exemplifying caring in the public realm delivers several corollaries. Because sisters’ needs and responsibilities differ (as a result of birth order), it follows that we should understand people as unequal in their caring needs (as a result of mental and physical health, disability, age) and as unequal in their power to care (as a result of access to resources, education, skills, and privileges). Yet because sisters have equal claim to their family and kin, we should also understand people as entitled to become equals; and because sisters are equally accountable to each other, we should understand people as accountable to each other for help and assistance in achieving such equality. Finally, because bonds of sisterhood persist through times of disproportionate and unreciprocated needs, we should understand our caring obligations for others to persist even when giving care provides no reciprocal benefit.
Fisher and Tronto provide use the sisterhood model to sketch applications of care ethics. For families, sisterhood provides a model for parental relations: demands of child-rearing (pregnancy, breastfeeding) preclude equality among parents, but modeling parents as sisters offers guidance for how fathers ought to support the mothers of their children—not by shirking caregiving responsibilities, but by doing what they can to be accountable to meeting the increased needs of mothers. In business, sisterhood offers a model for our relations to experts: experts should act as older sisters, treating their superior knowledge as a resource for offering better care; and non-experts should act as younger sisters, deferring to expertise rather than dismissing or doubting it.
[1] Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2011), xvi.
[2] Nel Noddings, The Maternal Factor: Two Paths to Morality (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).
[3] See Julie A. White and Joan C. Tronto, “Political Practices of Care: Needs and Rights,” Ratio Juris 17.4 (2004), 425-453 at 448-449.
[4] Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso, 2009), 33.
[5] See Virginia Held, “Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 Supplement (1990), 321-344 at 334-337; Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993), 165-166.
[6] Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” 50-55.
[7] See Michael E. Lamb, “The Changing Role of Fathers,” in M.E. Lamb (ed.), The Father’s Role: Applied Perspectives (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1987), 3-27; Mark Swiencicki, “Consuming Brotherhood: Men’s Cultural Style and Recreation as Consumer Culture, 1880-1930,” Journal of Social History 31.4 (1998), 773-808.
[8] In David M. Schneider and George C. Homans, “Kinship Terminology and the American Kinship System,” American Anthropologist 57 (1955), 1194-1208, sisters are conspicuously absent.