Since the 1980s, patient accompaniment has been considered a form of care in its own right. Yet, the “ethic of care,” now a key notion in philosophy, is also part of the solidarity pact that governs the welfare state in France.
Care, which refers both to a kind of work and a social relationship, covers a wide range of realities and often precarious activities. Helena Hirata subjects this polysemic term to piercing and uncompromising sociological scrutiny.
Books & Ideas is slowing down for the summer and will be offering weekly selections of reviews and essays published over the last year. This week’s selection questions the relationship between gender and politics.
With the population aging in the US as in many Western countries, COVID-19 has only revealed an increasingly urgent need for care. But the lack of support for caregiving is an ongoing and increasingly shared struggle. How can we care for the caregivers, and build a society that values care?
Can we think of social transformation from the perspective of vulnerability? Yes, explains Marie Garrau, but for this we need to define the meaning of this notion differently, and to describe all the forms of inequality that weaken us and subject us to multiple forms of violence in our societies.
Replacing the modern liberal concept of the free and sovereign subject with the interdependent, vulnerable and responsible subject, Corine Pelluchon bases politics on an ethical ontology. But does she not thereby disregard the actual organization of the social world, our critique of which makes it possible for us to think about the relationship between ethics and politics?
