Radical Intimacy in Sally Rooney's <i>Intermezzo</i>

This paper was published as: “Universality, Vulnerability, and Collective Responsibility” for Les ateliers de l’éthique/The Ethics Forum. Special Issue: “After Covid”: ethical, political, economic and social issues in a post-pandemic world, Vol 16, No. 1. Winter 2021 (peer reviewed).In vulnerability theory, the body is an ontological or anthropological concept, a fundamental reality, consistent over time, place, and space. Vulnerability is intrinsic to the body, actually indistinguishable from the body, and, therefore, an element of the ontological. Note that I am using “ontological” not to assert the existence of God or some supernatural creator or to refer to some inherent, abstract, endowed quality bestowed on the individual, such as “dignity.” Rather, I am arguing instrumentally for acceptance of a manifest logic of collective responsibility. This is an argument for a radical “ethics of care” as the foundation for governance, an argument that recognizes that human vulnerability provides the primary legitimating justification for the coercive ordering of human relationships and endeavors through law. Under this logic, the failure to respond to social discord, injustice, or inequality would constitute a harm demanding governmental action and redress.The body requires that we be communal and political beings. The body necessitates the creation of social units, be they called families, communities, civil society, nations, or international organizations. This unavoidable and indispensable social embeddedness is the foundation for an alternative to Western, liberal social-contract theory exemplified in the work of John Rawls, which is based on ideals of rationality and consent. In other words, vulnerability theory is a theory of essential (not voluntary or consensual) social cohesion and reciprocity. It is based on the recognition and acceptance of human beings’ inevitable dependence on social relationships and institutions and the collective responsibility for those relationships and institutions that dependence entails.

In 1958, G. E. M. Anscombe wrote, "It is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking" (p. 186). Anscombe hinted (and she and many others pursued the hint) that the Aristotelian tradition was the best place to look for a richer and less shadowy conception of moral agency than either utilitarianism or Kantianism had provided. In the same year Anscombe published "Modern Moral Philosophy," Lawrence Kohlberg completed his dissertation at the University of Chicago, a dissertation that laid the foundations for what has been the dominant program in moral psychology for the last twenty-odd years. The contrast between the sort of Aristotelian philosophical psychology Anscombe envisaged and Kohlberg's program could not have been starker. Anscombe recommended that the concepts of "moral obligation and moral duty ... and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of 'ought,' ought to be jettisoned ... because they are survivors ... from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer survives, and are only harmful without it" (p. 186). Kohlberg meanwhile claimed that people at the highest stage of moral development "answer [moral dilemmas] in moral words such as duty or morally right and use them in a way implying universality, ideals and impersonality" (1981, p. 22). And while Anscombe pointed to Aristotle as the possibility proof that ethics could be done with a more robust and realistic conception of moral agency than the will-o'-the-wisp Enlightenment conception which Iris Murdoch describes as "thin as a needle" (1970, p. 53) and Alasdair MacIntyre depicts as "ghostlike" (1982), Kohlberg derided Aristotelianism, calling it the "bag of virtues" model; and he explicitly rejected the view that personality is divided up "into cognitive abilities, passions or motives, and traits of

Set in contemporary Ireland, Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) focuses on the relationship dynamics between characters who struggle with intimacy and human connection, against the backdrop of the individualist ethos and existential anxieties induced by current neoliberal systems. Drawing on care ethics, vulnerability and relationality theory, this analysis of Beautiful World underscores how Rooney constructs her characters’ psychological evolution through their progressive, albeit irregular, adoption of care virtues within relationships. The analysis shall apply Khader’s taxonomy of care virtues (2011), which include “loving attention” –a willingness to appreciate and accommodate the particular nature of the other–, “the transparent self” –an awareness of how our self-interests block our recognition of the other’s needs–, and “narrative understanding”, a desire to engage with the other’s personal history so as to make decisions that promote his/her well-being.

"This article will examine how rural Afghan women employ practices of everyday resistance as a means of challenging extremely patriarchal power structures and male domination in Afghanistan. The research presented illustrates how rural women simultaneously support and reproduce patriarchal societal structures and values through quiet encroachment of public spaces and the labor market as well as conscious adherence to certain patriarchal norms. Through a qualitative research method consisting of eleven focus groups with 130 rural women from four districts, across two provinces in Afghanistan, a structurationist approach is employed in order to fully account for the interaction and interrelationship between dominant, male-privileging structures of power and rural women’s agency. Significantly, these women, through the intentions behind their practices of everyday resistance and encroachment upon public spaces, demonstrate that they do not wish to eradicate patriarchy, but rather to transform it into a more benign structure of power which conforms to the women’s interpretation of Islam. This is a construction of Islam which accommodates women as individuals with agency and ability, enabling them to take advantage of independent mobility, provide for their families, and send their children (sons and daughters) to school. Thus, these women deliberately engage in everyday resistance to extreme manifestations of patriarchy, but simultaneously consciously adhere to, and subtly advocate for, more benevolent patriarchal social norms."

As societies age, social care is an increasingly important social policy domain focussed on the provision of care and social protection for vulnerable groups. These groups include children, those living with disabilities, and fragile older adults. Social care and healthcare services are part of a continuum of care provided by societies, but their scope, scale, and organisation are vastly differentiated across geographical contexts. What is common across core OECD nations, however, is the increasing use of migrant workers in care and health sectors. In this chapter analysis of migration and the care sector is framed by two concepts: the vulnerability theory, where vulnerability is understood as a universal constant of the human condition, one that necessitates models of state responsiveness; and Global Care Chains, where migrants, predominantly women from the Global South, are incorporated into domestic, child, and elder care contexts in the Global North. This chapter explores the policies and processes directing migrant workers into social, home, and healthcare settings. Using Canada and the UK as examples, the chapter explores how migration policy channels migrant workers into the diverse institutional care structures of healthcare, home-based and long-term care. It highlights the significance of intersectional disadvantage, vulnerabilities, the ethics of care, and the devaluing and redistribution of care that has structured current systems of care provision.

The so called “vulnerability turn” mainly involved ethics. This line of thought encountered feminist analyses, especially those developing an “ethics of care”. In the following pages I outline the main stages of contemporary philosophical reflection on vulnerability, focusing on the relationships between vulnerability theory and some versions of the ethics of care. I then try to show how the theses about vulnerability (and care), today held predominantly by North American scholars, can be employed in Europe in light of the evolution of the “constitutional state”.

This study utilizes the personal critical narrative of myself, a woman from the Chaoshan region in China, as the primary data source to explore the impact of traditional gender roles and patriarchal values on women's personal growth transformation through a feminist lens. Integrating feminist and transformative learning theory, it encompasses my journey, including growing up with traditional patriarchal norms and thinking; being shaped by traditional gender bias without critical thinking; struggles from valuing males over females; and becoming a feminist‐informed and transformative adult education scholar. This study emphasizes the significance of integrating feminist and transformative learning theories into personal narratives and gender issues in adult education. Through dialogic connections, it may inspire self‐transformation in readers, potentially evolving into informed adult learners and feminist practitioners. This understanding can improve culturally sensitive adult education, fostering inclusivity, empowerment, and enhancing Western researchers’ comprehension of societal norms' influence on personal transformation in diverse contexts.

Mindfulness is generally considered a characteristic or quality of individual persons. Its focus is primarily inward, directed toward one’s thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, as well as toward one’s immediate environment. Yet the accelerating pace of globalization compels us to consider mindfulness in a broader context. Using global health as an example, I explore the essential role of mindfulness in fostering ethical decision-making and in nurturing compassionate, effective action at the global level. I also explore how mindfulness and compassion might contribute to the emerging field of global health ethics. Global health is a rapidly growing field, dedicated to alleviating suffering, improving health, and achieving health equity. It is rooted in the value of compassion. It operates in ethically challenging environments characterized by extreme disparities in wealth and power, vast geographic distances, partisan hegemony, divided loyalties, and crushing poverty. Mindfulness can enhance ethical decision-making in global health through clarifying personal and collective values, enhancing empathy, regulating emotion, facilitating perception, fostering insight, and opening practitioners to a direct experience of interconnectedness and interdependence, which lie at the heart of global health’s universal values. In addition to mindfulness, a mature global health ethics must be rooted in compassion and draw on a variety of influences, such as bioethics, public health ethics, Ubuntu, and the ethics of care. Practitioners must be able to simultaneously perceive the “one and the many,” the global and local, populations and individuals, “numbers” and “faces.” In this respect and many others, mindfulness and compassion have much to offer the nascent field of global health ethics.

Cultural dynamics have a significant impact on how sexual matters, including sexual abuse, are discussed in British South Asian communities. The ways in which these communities talk about sexual violence often reinforce patriarchal norms and values, especially those concerned with honour and shame. As a result, victims are either silenced or the blame for the sexual violence they have suffered is laid at their own feet. Addressing the fact that these problems are rooted in patriarchal norms and values is key to understanding how to tackle sexual offending effectively in such communities. Both retributive and restorative justice are necessary in responding to sex crimes; retributive approaches help to recognise victims’ suffering, while restorative approaches offer promising avenues for encouraging victims and offenders alike to speak about their experiences. Both approaches are essential components to reintegrating victims and offenders into their communities.

In 3 experiments we show that, relative to reading literal sentences, reading metaphor enhances performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), an instrument meant to measure first-order theory of mind. In each experiment participants read metaphorical or literal sentences in different contexts and afterwards completed an ostensibly unrelated task, the RMET. In Experiment 1, participants were presented metaphorical or literal sentences in short discourse contexts and were asked questions about the characters in the stories. We found that when one of the characters used metaphor, they were rated as having a closer relationship. A novel finding is that the degree to which the characters are perceived as being more intimate in the metaphor condition, the higher their scores on the RMET. In Experiment 2, participants created fictive contexts to prompting literal or metaphorical sentences. This writing task was followed by the RMET. Participants who created contexts for the metaphors scored significantly higher on the RMET. In Experiment 3, participants read metaphors or literal counterparts without any discourse contexts. Once again, participants scored higher on the RMET after reading metaphorical as opposed to literal sentences. Additional analyses across the 3 experiments revealed that metaphors but not literal counterparts were associated with fictive contexts that contained reference to mental states and idioms with emotional content (Experiment 2), were associated with a sense of intimacy between interlocutors (Experiment 1), the presence of affective words in the created context (Experiment 2), and association with a human agent when context was not presented (Experiment 3).

The purpose of this paper is to add to the nascent literature on ethics in social entrepreneurship by extending contextual understanding of care ethics. We present an ethnographic study on social bricoleur entrepreneurs in rural India, and as a result, introduce an integrative framework for contextual care ethics. The study shows that context is not something “out there”, but instead, enacted in the caring practices of social entrepreneurs. This study has two major contributions. First, by departing from the notion of ethics as a characteristic of an individual we show how social entrepreneurs are ethical through human interaction. Second, by adding the analysis of formative context to care ethics, we identify how social entrepreneurs seek to make meaning of and enact the context through these relational caring practices. Bringing together analysis of care ethics and formative context deepens our understanding about care ethics as a relational practice in social entrepreneurship.

Women face a unique set of challenges in India on account of traditionally held views of their gender, as well as often having lower educational and community status. Gender discrimination has continued to remain an evil in our society. Almost 70% women in South Asia are married at a young age, which is coupled with early childbearing and a lack of decision-making abilities within the traditional family structures, further enhancing their “disadvantaged” position in society. In India, the relationship of status and patriarchal values in addition to the deprived status of women worsens the situation. Despite advances having been made in the active participation of women in the political and economic domain, not much change has been seen in incidences of gender discrimination or dominant patriarchy. Daily interactions ensure that gender stereotypes have a strong influence on our values, judgements and evaluations to an extent that men and women are treated differently in society. A small weaving community, the Devanga community, which has its roots spread across India, practices stereotypes and patriarchal norms which have ensured the existence of male dominance in almost every aspect of decision making. The position of women within this community is worthy of debate and discussion, although no prior research has been conducted on this issue within the Devanga community. This paper draws upon the voices of women from within this community to understand the various levels of discrimination faced by them on a regular basis, along with highlighting male privilege as a cause of perpetuated discrimination and lesser opportunities for girls compared with boys. The reported research study analyzed data obtained from 120 women from the Devanga community through semi structured questionnaires and interviews and adopted an ethnographic feminist perspective to interpret these data. Findings indicate that the voices of women within this community are suppressed due to contributory factors such as orthodox beliefs and practices, male dominance, early marriage, and domestic responsibilities and all of these can be viewed as a barrier to providing educational opportunities to girls. Findings suggest that despite the progress made by women in India, they are still considered to be the single largest group of backward citizens.

Spirituality in Contemporary Ireland:Manifesting Indigeneity1 Bernadette Flanagan (bio) and Michael O’Sullivan (bio) The focus of this essay is an examination of a few of the contours of the spiritual search in contemporary Ireland, a society where the form and structures of a long dominant Roman Catholic tradition are becoming less influential and are being resisted, opposed, or rejected by some people. This search—to a greater or lesser extent—seeks to unite a perennial inner yearning with external practices in a new social context. Uniquely, Ireland has an indigenous, spiritual tradition that has a strong ecological core, which is in tune with the spirit of the age. A return to some of the practices of this tradition is proving attractive to many contemporary Irish spiritual seekers. The current intersection then of two spiritual streams, one hidden but enduring, the other dominant but shamed publicly through the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in Ireland, is not dissimilar to the process described by the French cultural theorist of mysticism Michel de Certeau. When reflecting on the sociocultural context in which mysticism blossomed in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain, de Certeau notes that the hidden mysticism present in Judaism’s historical heritage such as that which came from the Essene community, the Kabbalah and the Book of Splendor (Sefer ha-Zohar) broke through in the mystical writings of Teresa of Avila, whose paternal family line was of Jewish stock.2 Similarly, Julia Kristeva has identified an allusion to the seven palaces of Jewish mysticism’s Sheva Hekalot in the imagery of the Interior Castle.3 The blossoming forth of Spanish mysticism occurred in the context of the fragmented and contested religious landscape of a post-Reformation social reality. Philip Sheldrake has pointed out Certeau’s insight that mystics often tend to be socially, culturally or religiously sequestered in a liminal space.4 This insight is relevant for an understanding of the process of change underway in Ireland, where shared certainties of a common religious affiliation are unravelling. For example, it is not uncommon in media interviews with those visiting indigenous holy sites such as Croagh Patrick or Lough Derg to speak of being distant from formal religious structures and yet being willing to undertake demanding spiritual practices and journeys. Sheldrake notes as well de Certeau’s analysis of themes in the history of mysticism that include an abiding [End Page 55] Click for larger view View full resolution The Pilgrim. Courtesy Richard Levine [End Page 56] call to wander, to journey seeking a kind of mysticism of historical place. The current religious landscape in Ireland reflects this tendancy, which de Certeau describes in which the wanderer, seeker or pilgrim yearns, like Mary Magdalene, to discover the site of the presence beyond the empty tomb.5 The emergent contemporary expression of indigenous Irish spirituality embraces this pilgrim spirit through a resurgence of practices grouped broadly as “pilgrim path” practices. It is also notable that de Certeau has challenged the view that references to dark night experiences in various mystical texts refer primarily to inner, personal states of disillusionment. Instead, he emphasizes the environmental conditions which precipitate such states.6 The fruitfulness of his perspective is evident in Flanagan’s recent discussion of the close relationship between the current cultural shift in Ireland and the emergence of a renewed mystical consciousness.7 Keeping in mind de Certeau’s attentiveness to mystical awakening on the margins, we can turn to the insights of another notable group of scholars who have been to the fore in providing critical frameworks for reading everyday spiritual practice and popular piety as a window into the soul of society. These theorists include the North American triad of Nancy Annerman, Meredith McGuire and Robert Orsi.8 These three scholars have collectively developed a new way of understanding spirituality within a society. Rather than studying the practices of spirituality as it is defined by a religious organization (for example, Catholic spirituality as it is defined by the Catholic Church), they draw attention to the lived expression of a spirituality in people’s everyday lives. In this group of three, the Harvard scholar Robert Orsi has won many awards for...

In this timely and thought-provoking book, Marian Barnes explores the complexities of caring relationships in the contexts of paid work, families, friendships, neighbourhoods and communities. ‘Care’ is a highly contested concept and Barnes argues that, in the current social policy climate in the UK, it is has been devalued as something needed only by people unable to exercise choice. In fact, the book reveals that few human relationships and activities can thrive without some form of care being necessary—extending this to relationships between people and their environments, and to the way that policy makers relate to those affected by their decisions. Barnes argues that, within social care services, the philosophical basis of practice has been sacrificed as the context of care has been increasingly shaped by functional, managerial and economic influences. This certainly resonates with current debates in social work about the need to rediscover core skills and values within the profession—what Dybicz (2012, p. 271) has referred to as ‘recapturing Social Work's first voice’. It is also highly topical in the light of recent scandals in institutional settings, where ‘care’ has sometimes been entirely absent from services intended to meet complex health and social needs. Barnes highlights a tension here with parts of the disabled people's movement which have criticised the concept of care as paternalistic and oppressive. She rejects this perceived conflict between ‘rights’ and ‘care’, stating that ‘care is necessary not only to individual well-being but also to social justice’ (p. v) and this belief permeates her discussion throughout the book. Drawing heavily on the work of feminist care ethicists, in particular Joan Tronto and Selma Sevenhuijsen, Barnes argues for an integration of the emotional and practical aspects of care within social policy as well as in personal relationships. Care is described as a dynamic, relational process, requiring mutual respect, reciprocity and a moral sense of taking responsibility for others, whether in close relationships, the wider community or with strangers. There are also new ethical challenges created by the developing global market for care. In the policy arena, Barnes argues that an ethic of care cannot be applied without a real dialogue between the people making policies and those who will be subject to them, reflecting her earlier work on participative decision making and service user involvement.

Gender discrimination in the labor market is usually seen as the result of the employers' cultural bias. In this paper, we see the issue from a larger perspective by combining both labor market and household decision making together. It is often observed that women, prioritizing their families over their careers, willfully settle for less paying and less demanding job profiles. This leads to gender wage gap even if the employers do not discriminate between male and female employees. We argue that women may make such choices in presence of patriarchal social norms which see household chores as the primary duty of women. Our theoretical model predicts that women coming from families with stronger patriarchal values are more likely to accept less paying (and less demanding) jobs in the labor market than the women from liberal families. Our empirical section that uses a nationally representative survey data from India provides support for our theoretical predictions. Our results are robust to different measures of patriarchal culture. We also show that the marginal effect of patriarchy on women's wage varies across occupations and places of residence.