Modes of Caring - Ethics and Justice — On Caring

Ethics and Justice

What should we care about? Why do things matter to us? (See Andrew Sayer's very important book, Why Things Matter to People). What values support caring communities and societies? How do we research our values (see our blog post on where do social work values come from)? We have called this: research-informed values. For some, even in social science, values are taken to be subjective and beyond our knowing. For others we can have no clear articulation of values because they are said to be relative. We will maintain that values can be known and should be clearly articulated in a caring society. The things we care most about we articulate in statements of value. We care about violence against women and children. We care about racism and social inequality. We care about the elderly. We care about our pubic health. We care about mass incarceration. We care about the planet. We place values. You will find in our On Caring Library links to the thinkers who have most influenced our thinking about values (e.g., Andrew Sayer, Virginia Held).

What values might support cooperative and caring communities? In capitalism, the market valorizes inequality. And many would argue we must value and even embrace inequality. A caring society cannot value inequality! This of course does not mean that we can or should strive to be equal in all ways, in our capacities, and abilities; we learn and grow over a lifetime so there will always be differences, even significant ones. Yet our differences should not necessarily lead to inequalities in wealth and unequal access to the necessary means of production and consumption. In a caring society we must have forms of justice that apply to all, regardless of wealth and capacity. We will make a strong argument for what some have called contributive justice (e.g., Sayer, Gomberg).

We are especially interested in the necessary relationship and tension between rights and responsibilities. Take for example, the use of masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus. Many in the United States have asserted their "right" not to wear masks. What kind of right is this? While others willingly abide by the request and even see it as their responsibility. How do we understand these relationships, especially in a society where rights are asserted and claimed without accompanying responsibilities?

Because ethics lives in the swampy ground between what we value and what we actually do any caring society must pay attention to ethical practices (see work by the anthropologist Webb Keane).