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.

This article defends an ethics of care approach to global justice, which begins with an empirically informed account of injustices resulting from the workings and effects of contemporary neo-liberalism and hegemonic masculinities. Dominant distributive approaches to global justice see the unequal distribution of resources or ?primary goods? as the basic source of injustice. Crucially, however, most of these liberal theories do not challenge the basic structural and ideational ?frames? that govern the global political economy. Instead, they seek to ?correct? unjust (...) patterns of distribution according to an ideal theory. Subjects in these theories are generally understood as abstract, autonomous and impartial; this is in contrast to an ethics of care, which starts with an ontology of the subject as embodied, vulnerable and relational. The first part of this article explores the role and nature of theory in relation to the task of considering injustice on a global scale and offers a critique of the narrow focus in traditional theories of justice on the distribution of ?primary goods?. The second part considers the effects of neo-liberal globalization and hegemonic masculinities on global working families in order to illustrate the relationship between care and global justice. The final section sketches out a care-ethics approach to global injustice, focusing on three features: first, care as a relational approach; second, the focus in care ethics on intersecting structures of injustice; and third, care as a multi-scalar approach to global injustice. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential for an international political theory of care as an alternative to liberalism in the context of contemporary global politics. It argues that relationality and interdependence, and the responsibilities for and practices of care that arise therewith, are fundamental aspects of moral life and sites of political contestation that have been systematically denied and obfuscated under liberalism. A political theory of care brings into view the responsibilities and practices of care that sustain not just ‘bare life’ (...) but all social life, from nuclear and extended families to local, national and transnational communities. It disrupts and challenges the individualism of liberalism, and the associated valorization of ‘freedom’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘toleration’. Instead, it emphasizes an ontology of relationality and interdependence that accepts the existence of vulnerability without reifying particular individuals, groups or states as ‘victims’ or ‘guardians’. Furthermore, by demonstrating the gendered and raced nature of caring in the contemporary world—from the household to the transnational level—an international political theory of care challenges our received assumptions about ‘dependence’ in world politics, and opens up space to interrogate politically not only gender but race and other aspects of inequality in the global political economy. (shrink)

I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention to the (...) way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker has introduced the insightful notion of epistemic injustice in the philosophical debate, thus bridging concerns of social epistemology with questions that arise in the area of social and cultural studies. I concentrate my analysis of her treatment of testimonial injustice. According to Fricker, the central cases of testimonial injustice are cases of identity injustice in which hearers rely on stereotypes to assess the credibility of their interlocutors. I try here to broaden the analysis of that testimonial injustice by (...) indicating other mechanisms that bias our credibility assessments. In my perspective, the use of identity stereotypes is just one case among many biases in our credibility judgments. (shrink)

This essay’s starting point is Judith Shklar’ diagnosis of a pathology marring democratic societies: complex injustices passing as “misfortunes” that nobody feels responsible for. I propose that denunciations can reveal the political nature of the suffering that everyone conveniently ignores, thus advancing democratic accountability. While denunciations can target various invisible injustices and take many forms, this essay deals with the case of societies with an unmastered past of violence. In order to avoid taking responsibility for the plight of victims, the (...) past is often redescribed in the language of “catastrophe” or “necessity.” Building on Hannah Arendt’s views on spectatorship and storytelling, this essay analyses theatrical denunciations addressing the wider community. Theatre—professional or amateur—can repoliticise neutralised areas of social interaction and transform passive onlookers into reflective spectators. The Argentinean performance of escraches and Thomas Bernhard’s play Heldenplatz are discussed as examples of successful political denunciations communicated in dramaturgical form. (shrink)

Once upon a time scholars assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known and untouched by the geo-political configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured. From a detached and neutral point of observation, the knowing subject maps the world and its problems, classifies people and projects into what is good for them. Today that assumption is no longer tenable, although there are still many believers. At stake (...) is indeed the question of racism and epistemology. And once upon a time scholars assumed that if you ‘come’ from Latin America you have to ‘talk about’ Latin America; that in such a case you have to be a token of your culture. Such expectation will not arise if the author ‘comes’ from Germany, France, England or the US. As we know: the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science. The need for political and epistemic de-linking here comes to the fore, as well as decolonializing and decolonial knowledges, necessary steps for imagining and building democratic, just, and nonimperial/colonial societies. (shrink)

A paper about cross-cultural and cross-racial loving that emphasizes the need to understand and affirm the plurality in and among women as central to feminist ontology and epistemology. Love is seen not as fusion and erasure of difference but as incompatible with them. Love reveals plurality. Unity–not to be confused with solidarity–is understood as conceptually tied to domination.

We defend the view of some feminist writers that the notion of silencing has to be taken seriously in discussions of free speech. We assume that what ought to be meant by ‘speech’, in the context ‘free speech’, is whatever it is that a correct justification of the right to free speech justifies one in protecting. And we argue that what one ought to mean includes illocution, in the sense of J.L. Austin.

It may be thought that the ethics of care has developed important insights into the moral values involved in the caring practices of family, friendship, and personal caregiving, but that the ethics of care has little to offer in dealing with violence. The violence of crime, terrorism, war, and violence against women in any context may seem beyond the ethics of care. Skepticism is certainly in order if it is suggested that we can deal with violence simply by caring. Violence (...) seems to call for the harsh arm of law and enforcement, not the soft touch of care. Elsewhere I have discussed how the ethics of care would recommend respect for international law and how it would thus approach issues of military intervention. I will concentrate here on how the ethics of care can contribute guidance in dealing with family violence and in confronting terrorism. (shrink)

Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges. Ultimately, I illustrate that by focusing on the ways in which (...) hearers fail to meet speaker dependency in a linguistic exchange, efforts can be made to demarcate the different types of silencing people face when attempting to testify from oppressed positions in society. (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic women's (...) "motherwork.". (shrink)