Description
Book SynopsisHow care can resist the stifling force of the neoliberal paradigm
In a world brimming with tremendous wealth and resources, too many are suffering the oppression of precarious existences—and with no adequate relief from free market–driven institutions. Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity assembles an international group of interdisciplinary scholars to explore the question of care theory as a response to market-driven capitalism, addressing the relationship of three of the most compelling social and political subjects today: care, precarity, and neoliberalism.
While care theory often centers on questions of individual actions and choices, this collection instead connects theory to the contemporary political moment and public sphere. The contributors address the link between neoliberal values—such as individualism, productive exchange, and the free market—and the pervasive state of precarity and vulnerability in which so many find themselves. From disability studies and medical ethics to natural-disaster responses and the posthuman, examples from Māori, Dutch, and Japanese politics to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, this collection presents illuminating new ways of considering precarity in our world.
Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity offers a hopeful tone in the growing valorization of care, demonstrating the need for an innovative approach to precarity within entrenched systems of oppression and a change in priorities around the basic needs of humanity.
Contributors: Andries Baart, U Medical Center Utrecht, Tilburg U, and Catholic Theological U Utrecht, the Netherlands; Vrinda Dalmiya, U of Hawaii, Mānoa; Emilie Dionne, U Laval; Maggie FitzGerald, U of Saskatchewan; Sacha Ghandeharian, Carleton U; Eva Feder Kittay, Stony Brook U/SUNY; Carlo Leget, U of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands; Sarah Clark Miller, Penn State U; Luigina Mortari, U of Verona; Yayo Okano, Doshisha U, Kyoto, Japan; Elena Pulcini, U of Florence.
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Care Movement Born of Necessity
Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower
1. Precarity, Precariousness, and Disability
Eva Feder Kittay
2. Neoliberalism, Moral Precarity, and the Crisis of Care
Sarah Clark Miller
3. Vulnerability, Precarity, and the Ambivalent Interventions of Empathic Care
Vrinda Dalmiya
4. Precariousness, Precarity, Precariat, Precarization, and Social Redundancy: A Substantiated Map for the Ethics of Care
Andries Baart
5. Global Vulnerability: Why Take Care of Future Generations?
Elena Pulcini
6. Care: The Primacy of Being
Luigina Mortari
7. Deliberate Precarity? On the Relation between Care Ethics, Voluntary Precarity, and Voluntary Simplicity
Carlo Leget
8. Precarious Political Ontologies and the Ethics of Care
Maggie FitzGerald
9. Care Ethics and the Precarious Self: A Politics of Eros in a Neoliberal Age
Sacha Ghandeharian
10. Resisting Neoliberalism: A Feminist New Materialist Ethics of Care to Respond to Precarious World(s)
Emilie Dionne
11. Precariousness, Precarity, and Gender-Care Politics in Japan
Yayo Okano
Conclusion: Care as Responsive Infrastructure
Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower
Contributors
Index
