Tronto chapter 6

Care and political theory

Goal of the chapter

To redraw moral boundaries.  Only if we understand care as a political idea will we be able to change its status and the status of those who do caring work in our culture.

Adding care as a moral value to politics fails. 3 examples: Herland, Noddings, anti-rights communitarians

1. Herland: society organized around care works only because all difference and conflict has been removed. It only works because all difference in society has been removed. However, a political theory of care has to function in societies we have. Herland’s theory only works because Gilman has removed everything that makes caring politically hard (inequality, privilege, distance)

2. Noddings: rejects institutional forms fo care and can’t handle conflict

3. Anti-rights communitarians: without strong rights, caregivers only see their own perspective and stifle others.

For care to work, we need to change ideas about human nature (4)

1. interdependence over autonomy: we are not fully autonomous

2. Needs over interests: ‘needs’ are social and contestable, while ‘interests’ are individualistic

3. Moral engagement: people are already morally engaged, which makes ‘moral motivation’ less of a problem. Harder problem is staying detached enough to see problems in caring situations

4. Equality as a political goal, not a presumption.

Including the private: how does the public/private split hide care work/work ethic argument

It sorts care into someone’s personal business, and makes autonomy look self-made. Your reward depends on your hard work, but care work often isn’t paid or is paid poorly. So carers are seen as less productive.). The "work ethic" counts only paid work as valuable, so caregivers become lesser citizens.

Care and justice are not opposites: Rawls en Okin

 JTrontustice without care is incomplete. Okin's critique of Rawls shows this.But in her critique of Rawls, she argued that his “original position” (the thought experiment where people choose principles of justice) assumes the parties are mutually disinterested, meaning they don’t care about each other’s interests. Okin says there’s no reason to assume that. People could just as well be mutually engaged.

Tronto’s whole point in the chapter:

even a skeptic of care ends up needing a care-like view of human nature, one of interdependence and connection, to repair a flaw in the leading theory of justice. So justice without care is incomplete, and the two aren’t hostile.

What does care as a political concept require?

Care as a political concept requires that we recognize how care—especially the question, who cares for whom?—marks relations of power in our society and marks the intersection of gender, race, and class with care-giving that we noted earlier.

These facts must be judged according to what a just distribution Dof caring tasks and benefits might be

Danger of ‘enlarged family’: general definition Dan

If you take care seriously as a political ideal, you might be tempted to picture the public realm as one big family in which citizens look after each other like relatives.

Danger of enlarged family, 3 reasons:

1. Hierarchy: families have those who care and decide (parents) and those who are cared for (children), whereas democracy assumes citizens are equals.

2. Unity: families assume shared interests and a single common good, whereas democracy has to make room for real disagreement, including open debate about needs.

3. Partiality: families favour their own members, whereas democratic citizenship requires attention to distant groups and fair treatment of strangers.

How should care shape politics:

Care should shape politics by making citizens more attentive, responsible, competent and responsive. It should do this alongside liberal commitments like rights, due process and following agreed procedures, and not in place of them.

Two dangers of care as a political ideal

Paternalism/maternalism: caregivers may think they know recipients' needs better than the recipients do.

parochialism: we prioritize the relationships we know best

—> The solution is to tie care to justice and keep it relentlessly democratic, by focusing on needs and including care-receivers in decisions.

Care helps us see power. Examples: welfare, market, who needs and who provides, privileged irresponsibility, dismissing carers

1. Welfare: care became a public matter, but the US treated it as if it were still private. The state stepped into the role of the male head of household and policed women's lives.

2. market: people who pay more get more care

3. who needs and who provides: powerful get to be ‘care demanders’. the weak do the caring

4. privileged irresponsibility: powerful people don't have to care about things that matter to them, because others quietly do it for them. That care is invisible, and what is invisible can't be challenged.

5. dismissing carers: he powerful don't like admitting they depend on carers. So society treats care as lowly and ties it to women, servants and people of color, which keeps them looking different and unequal.

—> thread is that caring work exposes inequality that other kinds of analysis’ miss.

Care as a strategy for change. From diagnosis to action. What is the order of her argument?

1. Change the debate: care shifts what politics is about. It puts meeting needs ahead of profit.

2. Include the excluded: this is her more important aim, since it is the puzzle the whole book began with. How do women and others who are shut out become political actors?

3. The problem: people who are outside politics see no reason to join.

4. The opening: movements happen when there is a crack in politics as usual and people come to see their suffering as wrong and fixable.

5. Why care helps: it makes politics feel direct.

6. The objection: "But Americans value individualism." Her reply is that no one is truly self-made, so the objection rests on a false picture.

7. The powerful: care lets the weak combine their strength, and it also gives the powerful a reason to give up some power, since a well-cared-for society benefits them too.

Moral boundaries explained

• Morality vs. politics: it makes care look private and parochial.

• The "moral point of view": it makes care look like a secondary concern.

• Public vs. private: it devalues caring work done by excluded groups.