I have been contemplating deeply this next post, especially aware of the grief, despair and anger in the UK regarding the inadequate response to COVID-19 by the current government. I had initially been exploring what a society based around the “ethics of care” (Held, 2006) might look like; what it might feel like to dwell there. This I felt was especially poignant now, as the most vital and irreplaceable work occurring across all our communities on a planetary level is ‘care’ of others, whether that be medical and nursing care, social and support care, child care, familial care, communal care, ecosystem care. Care, often perceived as ‘invisible work’ and critiqued as predominantly ‘unpaid work’, is fundamental to our survival and our potential to transforming communities towards an eco-social justice that prioritises ‘Life’ above protecting an economic system. While thinking over what I want to explore and discuss I was receptive to making further connections, and serendipitously the word ‘philonexia’ appeared on someone’s Twitter feed (Macfarlane, 2020), and a book arrived in the post (a delayed Birthday present). Both of these have added complexities to the discussion on ‘care’ I want to share here.
What am I meaning then by ‘care’ and an “ethics of care”? These questions require nuanced consideration and will still involve ambiguities no matter the definitions or discernments I share here. Therefore, I will use the work of Virginia Held (2006) to explore the “ethics of care” in more detail, which links into Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017) discussions in Matters of Care. An “ethics of care” feminist perspective requests us to conceive of society through a different moral and ethical lens where objectivity and rationality are not throned as pivotal to understanding our world, but instead are part of the interconnected and interdependent relational, subjective and emotional experience of being human (Held, 2006). By bringing these different features and characteristics of human onto-epistemological thinking into more equal consideration one begins to understand how the binary categories of man-woman, human-nature, mind-body, rational-emotional, objective-subjective, and public-private cause dominant theories to be oppressive and reductionist. Over decades and centuries ‘binary thinking’ has led many nations and communities to neglect the importance of ‘care’ and how it defines our morality and ethics to one another as living/dying meaning-making unique human beings. By perceiving human/non-human/more-than-human as relational (Held, 2006; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) with infinite intersubjective meaning-making, and intra-subjective ‘world-making’ (Barad, 2007) the ‘self-sufficient independent individuals of the dominant moral theories’ (Held 2006, p. 13) can not possibly survive an absence of ‘care’.
COVID-19 has evidenced dramatically and heartbreakingly how caring for each other enables and embodies community, which is through securing and sharing food supplies, sharing resources and supplies, accessing medical treatment, nursing, social care support, mental health support, childcare, education, home deliveries for our loved ones, as well as, for strangers that share our spaces and places. Yet prior to this point many of those ‘universal services’, businesses and organisations have been taken hugely for granted and are assumed as always being there without awareness of their vital importance in upholding the health and wellbeing of an entire nation, nor an awareness of how they uphold the morality of an entire nation. In the absence of ‘care’ the UK would presently be an entirely different political, social and cultural landscape, one that I hope to never inhabit, which is why so many fight tirelessly and endlessly for a welfare state, social justice, human rights, political reform and for the continued funding of ‘universal services’ that can never be taken for granted.
Here I return to what is care? Each of us will have different perceptions or examples of what we mean by care and what it looks like in practice; even what it feels like to care or be cared for. From birth we ‘need’ care for survival, our ‘basic needs’ of a shelter, warmth, food and water are fundamental to achieving care of our children, young people, families, elderly, sick and dying. The entire lifespan each of us will live is profoundly impacted by what type of care we receive and how that care is given as it forms our social bonds, our communal and familial cultures, our skills and abilities, our knowledge and meaning about the world, our singular identities through relating and caring with others. Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) states:
“Care is omnipresent, even through the effects of its absence. Like a longing emanating from the troubles of neglect, it passes within, across, throughout things. Its lack undoes, allows unraveling. To care can feel good; it can also feel awful. It can do good; it can oppress.” (ibid, p. 1)
With these ambiguities in mind and the seeking of an '“ethics of care” there is again a necessity to ask what does it mean to human? What does ‘being human’ or ‘doing human’ look like? Is care at the heart of all our relationships, families, communities and even political states? Does ‘care’ of the other and an ethical consideration of ‘care’ influence our values, choices and moral compass? By perceiving of ourselves as always in relationship, thus always ‘caring’ about ‘the other’ whilst not ‘othering’ could potentially enable us to visualise how care-fully entangled our futures really are.
The COVID-19 pandemic has flung the planet into uncertainties I’m sure any of us predicted, and even through grief and suffering there is a unique potential to re-assess our priorities; reflect on our social values; and re-define our planetary morality. The word ‘philoxenia’ offers an additional literary presence of what I’m trying to imagine here, and it is a word that means a friendship to or love of a stranger (Macfarlane, 2020); a kindness shown to people unknown and a tenderness across time and space. If we adopted philoxenial caring values and an “ethic of care” in our democracies and international decision making there could be the possibility of:
1) Different economic systems that position ‘Life’ and planetary wellbeing at the heart of decision making.
2) Reduced private housing and land ownership. In fact housing could be an inalienable right within a ‘care-full’ society. If no one has to struggle to ‘own’ or ‘rent’ a property and adequate systems were put in place for maintenance payments and ‘care’ of housing then one underlying issue for reliance on incomes is abated and instantly there is flexibility with work/life balance, job shares, access to housing, expectations on quality of housing, reduced working week and the removal of competition for housing as a ‘resource’, as it will be perceived as a basic need and right.
3) Universal Basic Income as an alternative to punitive and oppressive benefit systems
4) Well funded Universal Services - Education, Health, etc.
5) Education without knowledge retention assessment. Smaller schools. Alternative approaches to learning and exploring knowledge.
6) Preventative Health Care
7) Community resilience and security for energy, food and clean water
8) Networks of innovation and collaboration not dependent on funding streams or charitable giving as every person would be able to participate with conscious changes across systems, institutions and constructs. Equality to equity. Equity to Empowerment.
9) Food security not only locally, but nationally and globally. All communities must be supported to focus on immediate and direct food needs, then explore if trading or exchanges are necessary or needed.
10) The Planetary Care Plan - Earth is part of our relational and intersubjective becomings. To care would be to learn how to be in relationship with Earth and how to preserve, conserve, protect and reverse the most devastating environmental impacts human beings have imposed on our life giving planet.
Our ethical destinies are entangled. My subjective fate post-pandemic and through the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss are entangled with the fates of every other human/non-human/more-than-human being. The ethico-ontology of how we co-create our futures as communities, nations or planet are inextricably entwined and entangled! How we educate the next generation post-pandemic will also significantly influence those entangled futures. There is a chance to re-direct and re-imagine the future humankind could experience right now as COVID-19 causes grave affect upon our hearts and minds. Could an “ethic of care” be embraced across movements or governments and be part of the transforming forces that seek eco-social justice?
References
Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
Held, V. (2006) The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global.
Macfarlane, R. (2020) [Twitter] 8th April. Available at: https://twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane/status/1247766226975076352 (Accessed: 8th April 2020)
Puig de la Bellacasa, M (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative ethics in More Than Human Worlds.