Care in everyday life
An ethic of care in practice

Author/Editor(s):

Marian Barnes

Format:

Paperback, 224 pages, 234 x 156 mm

ISBN

9781847428226

Published:

27 Jun 2012

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North America customers can order this book here from the University of Chicago Press.

"Recommended"
Library Choice Journal

"This text is significant in both its timeliness and scope. In exploring the concept of care in everyday settings it makes a major contribution to current debates about care ethics."
Joan Orme, Glasgow School of Social Work

"In this wide-ranging analysis of various locales where feminists have applied an ethic of care, Barnes convincingly shows the centrality of care in understanding human life and social policy."
Joan C. Tronto, University of Minnesota

About This Book

Care has been struggled for, resisted and celebrated. The failure to care in 'care services' has been seen as a human rights problem and evidence of malaise in contemporary society. But care has also been implicated in the oppression of disabled people and demoted in favour of choice in health and social care services. In this bold wide ranging book Marian Barnes argues for care as an essential value in private lives and public policies. She considers the importance of care to well-being and social justice and applies insights from feminist care ethics to care work, and care within personal relationships. She also looks at 'stranger relationships', how we relate to the places in which we live, and the way in which public deliberation about social policy takes place. This book will be vital reading for all those wanting to apply relational understandings of humanity to social policy and practice.

Author Biography

Marian Barnes is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Brighton, UK. She has researched and written on the experience of care giving, of ageing and of mental health difficulties. She has also researched the way service users have sought to shape health and social care services, and different forms of participative policy making. Her recent work has reflected on these practices and experiences from the perspective of care ethics.

Contents

Introduction
Conceptual, philosophical and political perspectives on care
Care and intimate others
Working at care
Friends, neighbours and communities
Civility, respect and recognition: the 'comfort of strangers'?
Places and environments
Deliberating with care: achieving social and political change
Conclusion.

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Care in everyday life
The current global financial and economic crisis is leading some to ask what is to come after neoliberalism? One answer is that the ethic of paid work which currently dominates political, economic and social arrangements could be undermined, even replaced, by the increasing influence of the feminist-based ethics of care.,,As Marian Barnes writes in this excellent book, care should be an essential value in private lives and public policies. She looks at the importance of care to well-being and social justice,and applies insights from feminist care ethics to care work and care within personal relationships.,,Chapters deal with, for example: conceptual, philosophical and political perspectives; care in families; working at care; friends, neighbours and communities; stranger relationships; places and environments;and, importantly, ethics, policy and politics. As she writes in the conclusion there has to be a 'robust alternative to the individualising and ultimately sterile dominance of the autonomous subject of neoliberalism'(p. 183). An ethic of care is part and parcel of such a project, and her work certainly contributes to this.,,Overall, a timely and welcome book, one that deserves to be widely read and digested, not least, as the blurb states, by those wanting to apply relational understandings of humanity to social policy and practice.
Reviewed by Steve Rogowski

Care in everyday life
'Care in everyday life. An ethic of care in practice' is an excellent development of concepts of care and its ethical dimensions in everyday life. The book's starting point is the universal significance of care: needing and giving care are part of being human and living in relationship, with each other and with the world around us. ,The volume's content is wide-ranging. This is an important and very timely book that both integrates and significantly develops thinking about the philosophy, policy and politics of care. ,,Reviewed by: Angie Ash,,,
Reviewed by Angie Ash

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