Maurice Hamington

Features contributions from global leading care scholars
Provides theoretical and applied discussions
Care Ethics and Political Theory brings together new chapters on the nature of care ethics and its implications for politics from some of the most important philosophers working in the field today. Chapters take up long-standing questions about the relationship between care and justice and develop guidelines for the development of a care-based justice theory. Care ethics is further applied to issues such as security, privacy, law, and health care where little work has been previously done. By bringing care ethics into conversation with non-Western and subaltern cultures, the contributing authors further show how care ethics can guide and learn from other traditions. A final set of chapters uses care ethics to challenge dominant moral and political paradigms and offer an alternative foundation for future moral and political theory.

The book as a whole makes the case for care ethics as an equal or superior approach to morality and politics compared with liberalism, luck egalitarianism, libertarianism, the capabilities approach, communitarianism, and other political theories.

The volume includes many of the leading care scholars in the world today engaging in both theoretical and applied discussions of this burgeoning field of study. Ultimately, Care Ethics and Political Theory endeavors to find realistic methods and ways of thinking to create a more caring world.
Readership: Scholars and students interested in Political Science, Political Theory, Political Philosophy, Public Policy, and Ethics

The notion of "feminist pragmatism" or "pragmatist feminism" has been around since Charlene Haddock Seigfried introduced it two decades ago. However, the bulk of the work in this field has been directed toward recovering the feminist strain of classical American philosophy, largely through renewed interest in the work of Jane Addams. This exploration of the origins of feminism and pragmatism has been fruitful in building a foundation for theoretical considerations.

The editors of this volume believe the next logical step is the contemporary application to both theory and experience. Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism is the first book to address the modern significance of the nexus of feminism and pragmatism. The issues explored here include the relationship between community and identity, particularly around the impact of gender and race; reframing political practice regarding feminist pragmatist commitments including education, sustainability movements, and local efforts like community gardens; and the association between ethics and inquiry including explorations of Buddhism, hospitality, and animal-human relationships.

Notre Dame Philosophical Review:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/31971-contemporary-feminist-pragmatism/

Applying Care Ethics to Business is a multidisciplinary collection of original essays that explores the intersection between the burgeoning field of care ethics and business. Care ethics is an approach to morality that emphasizes relational, particularist, and affective dimensions of morality that evolved from feminist theory and today enjoys robust intellectual exploration. Care ethics emerged out of feminist theory in the 1980's and the greatest contribution to moral analysis among Women' Studies scholars. Today, feminists and non-feminist scholars are increasingly taking care ethics seriously. Applying care to the marketplace is a natural step in its maturity. Applying Care Ethics to Business is the first book-length analysis of business and economic cases and theories from the perspective of care theory. Furthermore, given economic turbulence and the resulting scrutiny of market practices, care ethics provides fresh and timely insight into ideal business values and commitments.

In many ways, care ethics’ emphasis upon connection and cooperation as well as the growth and well-being of the other make it appear to be the antithesis of the corporate character. Nevertheless, many contemporary theorists question if traditional moral approaches based on autonomous agents is adequate to address a shrinking and interconnected world—particularly one that is marked by global markets. Applying Care Ethics to Business offers a unique opportunity to rethink corporate responsibility and business ethics.

Content Level » Research

Keywords » affective dimensions of morality - business ethics - care ethics - connection and cooperation - corporate responsibility - corporate social responsibility - csr - dimensions of morality - economic ethics - feminist theory - feminists - ideal business values - non-feminist scholars - particularist of morality - relational of morality - scrutiny of market practices - social policy - socially responsible investment - sri

Related subjects » Applied Ethics & Social Responsibility - Business & Management - Economics - Personality & Social Psychology - Social Policy / Labor / Population Economics

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Care Ethics and Business Ethics.- Section 1: Justice, Distribution, and Economics.- 1. Dare to Care with an Ethics of Care; Thomas Hawk.- 2. Care Ethics and Markets: A View from Feminist Economics; Julie A. Nelson.- 3. Adam Smith Cared, So Why Can’t Modern Economics?: The Foundations for Care Ethics in Early Economic Theory; Andrew Terjesen.- 4. The Ethics of Care and Economic Theory: A Happy Marriage? ; Dimitria E. Gatzia.- Section 2: Corporate Decision Making.- 5. Care Ethics and Stakeholder Theory; Daniel Engster.- 6. Moving Toward a More Caring Stakeholder Theory: Global Business Ethics in Dialogue with the Feminist Ethics of Care; Daniel Palmer and Mary Lyn Stoll.- 7. Elucidating the Role of Care in Ethical Decision-Making and Action; Sheldene Simola.-8. Care Ethics and Unintended Consequences; Daryl Koehn.- Section 3: Case Studies.- 9. The Changing Face of Ethics in the Workplace: Care and the Impact of Immigration Enforcement; Jill Hernandez.- 10. Taking Care of Business: Caring in Competitive Corporate Structures; Bill Puka.- 11. Bumfights and Care Ethics: A Contemporary Case Study; Mathew Brophy.- Section 4: Corporate Culture.- 12. Care and Loyalty in the Workplace; Julinna C. Oxley and Dylan Wittkower.- 13. Care Ethics, Knowledge Management, and the Learning Organization; Maurice Hamington.- 14. Care As A Corporate Virtue; Maureen Sander-Staudt.- Bibliography.-Contributor Biographies.-Index.

Hospitality is something of a modern paradox. On the one hand, hospitality connotes a nicety or pleasantry easily undervalued as a ritual or formality devoid of epistemological or ethical content. On the other hand, the rise in international conflict and violence, the decline of civil speech, and the increased hostility toward immigrants points to the dire need for hospitable responses to mitigate tensions.

Hospitality represents a further paradox for feminism. Historically, women have been saddled with disproportionate responsibility for hospitality and have also been treated as unwelcome guests in so many arenas. For these reasons, feminists have good reason to be wary of addressing hospitality. Yet, feminist theory has taken the lead on developing ontological, epistemological, and ethical approaches to connectedness and relationality such that addressing hospitality appears to be an appropriate extrapolation. Feminism and Hospitality is a collection that negotiates amidst these intriguing paradoxes.

Feminism and Hospitality: Gender in the Host/Guest Relationship is the first collection of original works to bring a feminist analysis to issues and theories of personal, political, economic, and artistic hospitality. Furthermore, because feminist theorists have brought so much attention to the nature of human relationships, this volume employs a fresh analysis beyond the tradition in political theory.

List of Contributors
Fauzia Erfan Ahmed; Patricia Boling; Stephanie Burdick-Shepherd; Jacqueline M. Davies; MariaLaura Di Domenico; M. Christian Green; Daniel Haggerty; Maurice Hamington; Barbara J. Howe; Jo-Ann Pilardi; Maureen Sander-Staudt; Helen Daley Schroepfer; Nancy E. Snow; Ileana F. Szymanski; Meyda Yegenoglu

About the Editor
Maurice Hamington is associate professor of women's studies and philosophy at Metropolitan State College of Denver

Although Jane Addams s Twenty Years at Hull-House is considered an American classic, Addams s dozen books and hundreds of published articles have sometimes been thought of as quaint examples of an overly optimistic era. Beginning in the 1990s, feminist scholars rediscovered the vitality of Addams s social philosophy and challenged the marginalization of her ideas. Today, following a war-laden twentieth century and the failure of militarism and get tough approaches to solve domestic and global problems, Addams s social theorizing, which emphasizes cosmopolitan experiences and sympathetic connections, provides a provocative alternative to Western notions of individualism, transactional relations, and spectator epistemology. Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams brings together many of the leading Addams scholars in North America to consider Addams s ongoing relevance to feminist thought.
Aside from the editor, the contributors are Victoria Bissell Brown, Marilyn Fischer, Judith M. Green, Shannon Jackson, Katherine Joslin, Louise W. Knight, L. Ryan Musgrave Bonomo, Wendy Sarvasy, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Eleanor J. Stebner, and Judy D. Whipps.

Although there has been a resurgence of academic interest in Jane Addams (1860-1935), much of the recent literature has focused upon her extraordinary and pioneering life and less on the philosophical contribution of her twelve books and hundreds of published articles.  The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams is the first book-length work to focus entirely on Addams as a philosopher steeped in the classic American Pragmatist tradition but who transcends that tradition to emphasize the significance of gender, race, and class.  The first half of the book sets the intellectual framework for Addams' social philosophy including her influences, how she adds a radical edge to American pragmatism, her brand of feminism, and finally her unique analytical perspective self described as "sympathetic knowledge."  The second section of the book investigates how Addams applies her social philosophy to various arenas of social life including peace, diversity, economics, education, and religion.  The trajectory of the book leads to an understanding of Jane Addams as a cosmopolitan theorist who eschewed ideological stances in favor of intermediary steps in the service of social progress.

Contributors to this volume demonstrate how the ethics of care factors into a variety of social policies and institutions, and can indeed be useful in thinking about a number of different social problems. Divided into two sections, the first looks at care as a model for an evaluative framework that rethinks social institutions, liberal society, and citizenship at a basic conceptual level. The second explores care values in the context of specific social practices or settings, as a framework that should guide thinking.

Until now, ethicists have said little about the body, limiting their comments on it to remarks made in passing or, at best, devoting a chapter to the subject. Embodied Care is the first work to argue for the body's centrality to care ethics, doing so by analyzing our corporeality at the phenomenological level. It develops the idea that our bodies are central to our morality, paying particular attention to the ways we come to care for one another. Hamington's argues that human bodies are "built to care"; as a result, embodiment must be recognized as a central factor in moral consideration. He takes the reader on an exciting journey from modern care ethics to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the body and then to Jane Addams's social activism and philosophy. The ideas in Embodied Care do not lead to yet another competing theory of morality; rather, they progress through theory and case studies to suggest that no theory of morality can be complete without a full consideration of the body.

Revealing Male Bodies is intended to be the first scholarly collection that directly confronts male lived experience. There has been an explosion of work in mens studies, masculinity issues, and male sexuality, as well as a growing literature exploring female embodiment. Missing from the current literature, however, is a sustained analysis of the phenomenology of male gendered bodies. Revealing Male Bodies addresses this omission by examining how male bodies are physically and experientially constituted by the economic, theoretical, and social practices in which men are immersed.

Hail Mary? examines the sexist and misogynist themes that underlie the socially constructed religious imagery of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Maurice Hamington explores the sources for three prominent Marian images: Mary as the "the blessed Virgin," Mary, the "Mediatrix"; and Mary, "the second Eve." Hamington critiques these images for the valorization of sexist forces with the Catholic Church that serve to maintain systems of oppression against women. In challenging dominant, religious representations of Mary, Hamington surveys a variety of emerging reinterpretations of Mary. He then provides a framework for further study of "non-alienating" images of Mary.

This article explores the integration of the seemingly disparate notions of care ethics and design thinking. The business community has adapted, “design thinking” from engineering and architecture to facilitate innovation and problem solving through participatory processes. “Care ethics” is a relational approach to morality characterized by a concern for context, empathy, and action. Although design thinking is receiving significant attention and application in business practices, care ethics has only achieved limited traction among business ethicists in academia. “Caring design” is offered as a mutually beneficial integration of the two ideas. Care ethics and design thinking have much in common. For example, the relational and responsive dimension of design thinking is analogous in some important ways, namely empathy and inquiry, to the relational and responsive approach of care ethics. The shared themes in care ethics and design thinking make the integration of the two plausible and reciprocal advantages make the combination compelling. Explicit ethical language can shape design thinking as more than a tool of productivity while the participatory processes of design thinking can aid in expanding the circle of care ethics as a social and political ethic. Furthermore, caring design may provide a palatable path for greater acceptance of care ethics among business professionals. An overview of design thinking and care ethics is offered prior to exploring how the synergies are mutually beneficial. The article concludes with a focus on how to educate the next generation of business students for caring design.

It makes sense that many women have sought out utopias. Oppressive and restrictive social systems drive those excluded to claim " there must be something better than this. " While many women have engaged in utopian flights of fancy, fewer have had the opportunity to bring their vision into being. Jane Addams and Dorothy Day are two women who imagined the possibility of a different world and each initiated influential movements to make their dreams a reality. Both created communities devoted to social service, worked among the oppressed, had radical ideas about social morality, and both were staunch pacifists. These two pioneering women also represent a stark contrast in utopian thinking. One was a pragmatist feminist who fought for women's suffrage becoming a political force to be reckoned with. The other was a Catholic anarchist who eschewed the right to vote and refused to participate in politics. This article seeks to bring attention to the intriguing continuities and discon-tinuities of the activist philosophies of Jane Addams and Dorothy Day. While both utopian visions have their appeal, I suggest that ultimately Day's approach is one of charity and Addams's is one of education, and that the latter holds the most promise for feminist activist theorizing.

A major part of critical feminist engagement with philosophy consists in what is often unproblematically deemed to be “the canon.” By illuminating and resituating philosophers' writings in terms of what they might tell us about women, gender roles, and the often ...

In Reweaving the Social Fabric: Pragmatism and Feminism, Charlene Haddock Seigfried claims that, "[i]t is this pervasive concern with the most pressing issues of the day, with the intention of radically transforming the conditions responsible for suffering and oppression, that ...

It makes sense that many women have sought out utopias. Oppressive and restrictive social systems drive those excluded to claim "there must be something better than this." While many women have engaged in utopian flights of fancy, fewer have had the opportunity to bring their vision into being. Jane Addams and Dorothy Day are two women who imagined the possibility of a different world and each initiated influential movements to make their dreams a reality. Both created communities devoted to social service, worked among the oppressed, had radical ideas about social morality, and both were staunch pacifists. These two pioneering women also represent a stark contrast in utopian thinking. One was a pragmatist feminist who fought for women's suffrage becoming a political force to be reckoned with. The other was a Catholic anarchist who eschewed the right to vote and refused to participate in politics. This article seeks to bring attention to the intriguing continuities and discontinuities of the activist philosophies of Jane Addams and Dorothy Day. While both utopian visions have their appeal, I suggest that ultimately Day's approach is one of charity and Addams's is one of education, and that the latter holds the most promise for feminist activist theorizing.

Jane Addams (1860–1935) can be labeled the first woman “public philosopher” in United States history. The dynamics of canon formation, however, resulted in her philosophical work being largely ignored until recently. [1] Addams is best known for her pioneering work in the ...

CH APTE R 12 Resources for Feminist Care Ethics in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of the Body MAURICE HAMINGTON What is interesting is not an expedient to solve the “problem of the other”—it is a transformation of it. —Maurice Merleau-Ponty On April 20, 1999, ...

Series Editors: Hilde Lindemann. Sara Ruddick. and Margaret Urban Walker Feminist Constructions publishes accessible books that send feminist ethics in promising new directions. Feminist ethics has excelled at critique, identifying masculinist bias in social practice and in the moral ...

The Ethics of Care and Empathy makes a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions of care ethics on a number of fronts. Most significant is the engagement with empathy. Slote’s claim that empathy is an underdeveloped concept in ethical theorizing is correct, but perhaps just as compelling is the idea that in the present chilly state of world engagement,
empathy is a welcome topic of study with great potential for making a difference in social exchanges. The Ethics of Care and Empathy is a very clear and well-reasoned book that will not only be of interest to scholars, but is well positioned for mature classroom discussion as well.

Harding refers to as “strong objectivity” is a myth. In Emotional Rescue: The Theory and Practice of a Feminist Father, Isaac Balbus recounts a tumultuous decade of his personal life and professional career as he develops his theories about parenting practices. These interwoven ...

... Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey, and: Living Across and Through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism, and Feminism, and: Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History (review). Hamington, Maurice. ... Hamington, Maurice. ...

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato asked us to imagine a political system where philosophers rule. As part of the social gospel movement in the early twentieth century, Walter Rauschenbusch asked us to imagine a Christian society where social service was the moral imperative. At ...

Participating in the recognition of a contemporary crisis of care is the attention of late devoted to care ethics as having both moral and practical significance.  Care ethics describes an approach to moral action that is challenging and laborious.  Unable to fall back on formulaic ethical rubrics to answer questions of right action, authentic deep care requires time, effort, risk, and emotional investment to locate the emergent normative action for a particular person in a specific context.  In other words, caring must be responsive.  This chapter suggests an additional burden for the one caring by arguing that there is an epistemic demand to effective and responsive care.  Robust care requires the one caring to be an active inquirer and a lifelong learner committed to knowledge both broadly and specifically construed.  This epistemic demand is true for both individuals involved in ordinary daily caring as well as those who engage in caring professions and policy makers.
After offering a definition of a performative and political care ethics, this chapter suggests a two-source knowledge structure that includes both concrete and generalized knowledge as a prerequisite for care. Although concrete knowledge—the particular, local knowledge of the one cared for—dominates the care literature, generalized knowledge—skills and information that can be used across different individuals—is the most commonly referred to attribute of the competent professional.  However, in this chapter I claim that both generalized and concrete knowledge are essential to competent care.  Bringing this two-part epistemic lens to care ethics reframes caring away from the exclusive considerations of what occurs within dyadic relationships to include reliable social evidence thus introducing a significant “third party” to the experience of quality care.  In other words, the one caring is not just responsive to the particular one cared for but must also engage social and scientific understanding of what it means to care.  The two-source claim for care knowledge has implications for all forms of effective care, but this chapter pays particular attention to the delivery and assessment of professionals. Given the two-source theory of caring knowledge, the discussion then turns to assessing care along concrete and generalized dimensions.

Care ethics is a relational approach to morality. Given an understanding of empathy as a capacity to at least partially understand what another person is experiencing, the moral theory described by care ethicists clearly requires the ability to empathize.  This chapter provides an overview of how empathy has been discussed in the care ethics literature and extends that discussion.  First, a brief review of the history and definition of care ethics is offered, followed by a discussion of the function of empathy in care ethics.  Some specific dialogue among care ethicists on the role of empathy is also presented. The latter half of the paper addresses the boundaries of empathy in caring as well as how moral education might look different if care, fueled by empathy, were understood as an ethical ideal to be cultivated.

This chapter contends that our companion animal relationships foment the development of care ethics and, moreover, provide the habit and skill needed for moral progress. Responsiveness is essential to caring.  The lack of narrative in relationships with companion animals requires a heightened level of nonlinguistic responsiveness (such as through touch) as well as increased effort at empathetic imagination. The habits of attunement needed for interspecies care, if meaningfully engaged, point to an openness to moral progress.  These relationships are not governed by abstract rules that support a static standard of normativity.  However, care does not imply relativism as it is guided by effective response.  The notion of care employed draws from feminist theory but emphasizes care’s embodied and performative aspects.  Allowing embodied care for animals to enter our moral imaginations, such as through informed anthropomorphism, suggests a means for moral progress with provocative implications.  One such implication is ethical veganism.

This chapter explores the overlooked epistemological aspects of care ethics, including its inherent particularism and engagement of tacit knowledge, to argue that care can and should participate in an organization’s program of knowledge management en route to building a robust learning organization that holistically flourishes—financially, culturally, and ethically. Accordingly, a caring culture is a culture of learning. The chapter suggests that if caring is conceptualized as fostering fundamental respect, engaging intellectual inquiry, and facilitating a moral atmosphere, then perhaps a culture of care will be more palatable to business professionals who often regard “caring” with suspicion as a nonproductive emotional disposition. This chapter focuses on caring as intellectual inquiry that inspires the moral imagination in the service of creating a culture of care. A culture is a system of shared meaning held by a group of people. That meaning includes values and attitudes as well as transmitted knowledge. Much has been written about corporate culture, but little about a caring culture. In this regard, care should be distinguished from friendship. A corporate culture of care does not suggest that members of the organization must become friends or develop strong relationships. It does suggest that people are attentive to one another as part of a willingness to grow.