Ethics Of Care Research Articles

The Ethics of Care in Disaster Contexts from a Gender and Intersectional Perspective

The Ethics of Care in Disaster Contexts from a Gender and Intersectional Perspective

Relational solidarity and conflicting ethics in dementia care in urban India.

Using the concept of relational solidarity, we examine how autonomy, equality, dignity, and personhood are practiced in the care of people living with dementia at home in urban India. Video interviews with 19 family carers and 25 health providers conducted in English, Hindi, and Kannada in Bengaluru between March to July 2022. Data were translated into English and thematically analyzed. Family carers and providers unanimously agreed that people with dementia should be respected and cared for. Concurrently, they perceived people with dementia as being 'like a kid' and used the analogy of a parent-child relationship to understand their care responsibilities. This analogy informed how ethical principles such as personhood and equality were reframed in the relationships between family carers and people with dementia, as well as how carers and providers maintained the safety but undermined the autonomy of people with dementia through restricting their movements inside and outside the home. There can be relational solidarity in dementia care at home in urban India but also contradictions in the interpretations and applications of the ethical principles of autonomy, equality, dignity, and personhood. As such, a more organic, grassroots model of ethical practice is needed to frame care and provide material support to families in India.

“Now she has everything, a happy family story and an Olympic medal”: Representations of Gloria Kotnik in the Slovenian media landscape

Over the last four decades, feminist sports media research has developed into an established transdisciplinary branch of research that contributes to highlighting the contradictions and unevenness of social change at the level of women's sports and its positioning in society. In this context, the increasing media visibility of athlete mothers as an expression of an emerging social phenomenon provides an opportunity to examine and reflect on the patterns of media portrayal of sportswomen. This article focuses on the media representations of Gloria Kotnik, the Slovenian snowboarder and bronze medalist at the 2022 Winter Olympics. Through textual analysis, it attempts to identify how Kotnik was portrayed in selected Slovenian media and what role her motherhood, in particular, played in this. While ambivalence was identified as a predominant pattern in the media representations of Kotnik, the role of motherhood was presented both as something seemingly incompatible with the role of an elite athlete and in a way that perceived these two roles as compatible. Due to the reproduction of traditional gender ideologies and hierarchies, the article problematizes both patterns and concludes by linking the desire for social change with the need to redefine the ethics of care.

‘On the frontline’: gangs, teachers, and the ethics of care

Knife crime in the UK is on the increase, prompting an emphasis in education policy on the role of secondary schools in addressing gang violence. Very little is known, however, about how teachers in secondary schools experience this new role. This article helps to fill this gap in the literature by foregrounding teachers’ perspectives on gang violence in an East London secondary school. It analyses their teaching practices through an ‘ethics of care’ lens, understanding ‘care’ as an inherently relational practice based on mutuality and trust. The article shows how these qualities are being subverted by individualised approaches to care in education, which reproduce rather than challenge the violent care offered by gangs. It argues that the political dimensions of care must be reclaimed if efforts by schools to address gang violence are to be effective.

Gendered urban cycling and the ethics of caring: coming to voice in the streets of Tijuana and Oaxaca amidst the patriarcarro

ABSTRACT This article explores grassroots organisations and collectives of women cyclists in the cities of Tijuana and Oaxaca, Mexico. Taking a narrative approach, it delves into the idea of public space that emerges from their life histories, chronicles, and talk groups. It contends that the narratives of their urban practices and interventions, and of their lives as a whole, are a radical resignification of the meaning and purposes of streets and other urban public spaces. Currently sites of different forms of oppression, in these women’s actions and narrative formulations, they become places ‘from which I come to voice’, intersubjective locations of ‘radical openness and possibilities’ developed through an ethics of caring. This collective vision pushes against capitalist ideas of streets as places for the efficient transit of individuals for productivity and consumption, and against oppressive boundaries of gender, sex, and class. Instead, what emerges from their narrated experience is a relational form of mobility, a way through the city that fosters self-affirmation, inclusivity, and community. Our contribution is based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico and on ‘disappropriative writing’ exercises with our participants to produce the collaborative public archive of community narratives of urban cycling (www.reciclarseenlaciudad.com) upon which this and other research outcomes of this project are based.

How the (Digital) Black Press (Still) Counters Hegemony, Redeems Democracy, and Cultivates Care

This paper examines the Black press and its role in fulfilling the promises of a society that claimed all men were created equal. It explores how the Black press helped realize journalistic principles and democratic ideals by countering hegemony and being characterized by care ethics. After briefly addressing the transformation of the Black press in the digital age as well as its concomitant challenges for advocacy, the project concludes with contemporary examples and discuss the current state of this Black media care ethic. Ultimately, the Black press serves all citizens, and it is in everyone’s best interest for Black media to flourish and thrive. Furthermore, and considering our current context, we should question who is able to profit from the Black digital press, and how its specific relationship to funding, larger society, and the digital environment might influence its ability to fully critique the social order and advocate for otherwise underserved citizens.

Introduction: Scaling perspectives on grand challenges in management and organization studies

In this introduction to the special issue of M@n@gement for the 30th anniversary of the AIMS, dedicated to complex societal problems, we examine issues of scale and non-scalability, inspired by Tsing’s work and recent calls for an ethics of care and responsiveness, thus highlighting the need to develop more care and relationality in the study of complex problems and grand challenges. This means questioning scale, recognizing the agency and value of human and nonhuman beings, prioritizing local knowledge, mutual respect, solidarity and coexistence.

“Disheartened and Powerless”: How Abortion Providers Discuss Moral Distress Under Dobbs [ID 2683590

INTRODUCTION: Moral distress occurs when providers feel powerless to provide ethical health care. We analyzed how abortion providers discuss moral distress since the Dobbs decision. METHODS: In 2023, we distributed an IRB exempt survey measuring moral distress to U.S. abortion providers through professional listservs. Surveys included an optional open-ended section where participants reflected on their experience of moral distress. Using thematic analysis, we compared open-ended responses between providers practicing in states protective and restrictive to abortion. Open-ended responses were deidentified, so we categorized “protective” and “restrictive” based on the written description of practice environment. RESULTS: Of 253 practitioners who completed the survey, 57% practiced in “protective” states and 43% practiced in “restrictive” states (using Guttmacher's classifications). Of these, 164 (64%) completed the optional, deidentified, open-ended section. Providers who indicated practicing in restrictive environments experienced moral distress arising from being forced to turn patients away or provide substandard care, the instability and ambiguity of abortion laws, and feeling powerless to use the specialized skills central to their identities as providers. Providers who indicated practicing in protective environments experienced moral distress arising from witnessing burdens placed on patients seeking care and the substandard care out-of-state patients received, a lack of resources to accommodate increased clinical volume, and encountering restrictive institutional policies despite the protections afforded by permissive state policy. CONCLUSION: Restrictions on abortion care can harm providers through their experiences of moral distress. Moral distress can lead to provider burnout and attrition, which exponentiates provider shortages and can ultimately lead to poor patient outcomes.

Providing Ethical and Compassionate Care to a Dying Patient When They or Family Threaten Violence

Providing Ethical and Compassionate Care to a Dying Patient When They or Family Threaten Violence

Urban communist politics of the everyday in Graz, Austria

The everyday communist politics of local politicians in Graz offers a potential way forward for the left more broadly In September 2021, the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) won the municipal elections in Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, and Elke Kahr became the city’s mayor. Kahr has governed in a coalition with the Green Party and the Social Democrats, replacing the former conservative and far-right coalition that had lasted for eighteen years. A different kind of local politics has since then proved possible, even in conservative Austria. Graz local communists practise a politics that is sensitive to class injustice and engaged in the local community. Its slogan for the last thirty years has been ‘A party for everyday life’. The party’s success is based on its focus on everyday concerns such as housing, tenants’ rights, public health, education and mobility issues, as well as its battles against austerity and neoliberal privatisation. Its community-oriented approach, strongly committed to social infrastructure at the scale of people’s everyday experiences is explicitly critical of top-down state solutions ‐ and thus stands in stark contrast both to the previous neoliberal and profit-oriented policies in Graz, and to the centralist ways of governing of the socialist states. KPÖ politicians voluntarily cap their salaries at the level of the average worker, with the surplus going into a social fund for emergency help for those on low incomes. This has been criticised by some as a charity commitment rather structural change, but it can also be read as an attempt at lived solidarity. Drawing from local media coverage as well as interviews with politicians and local residents, the article discusses the everyday politics of Graz communists through the lens of relational care ethics, and discusses the potential international movements that could be built on this approach to communist municipal politics. The focus is on alternative social norms in urban cultures of care: solidarity among all members of society, and a recognition of people’s everyday practices and needs.

REFLEXOS DA COMUNICAÇÃO NO CUIDADO EM SAÚDE

This article aims to reflect on the communication process as a valuable tool for providing quality, ethical, and appropriate care as based on first-hand reports I have received throughout my career as a psychologist. From my experience working with patients diagnosed with chronic illnesses and irreversible conditions in a hospital specialized in long-term care in the city of Suzano, located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, it became clear to me how communication in the healthcare setting can promote relief, minimize suffering, and favor the success of the proposed treatment. Likewise, depending on the way it is practiced, not only can it negatively interfere with the biopsychosocial and spiritual spheres of patients and their families, but also harm the healthcare professional-patient relationship.

How ethical areas of post-normal science can invigorate mathematics education

Future experts, decision-makers, stakeholders and future citizens – they all go to school, which could be a place to prepare students to facing post-normal problems in their future roles. While the literature on mathematics and science education shows increased interest in post-normal science to critically understand contemporary problems, mathematics is still generally taught as a neutral subject with either correct or wrong answers. In this paper, I lean on post-normal science literature and the slowly growing literature on ethics and mathematics education to develop a framework for identifying how mathematics education can prepare students for ethical aspects of post-normal problems. Three areas of ethics associated with post-normal problems are explored through concepts from ethics and mathematics education: ethical perspectives of the problem, ethical perspectives embedded in knowledge, and ethics in interpersonal care in discussions and care for students’ self-esteem in participatory processes. This framework is used to analyse and discuss three classroom projects to provide examples of what these areas may contain. The projects partly align with post-normal science, and are about clothing and sustainability, traffic safety, and argumentation related to open an offshore area to oil exploitation. The ethical areas are discussed in terms of ethical awareness and democratic practices.

Intersectional care ethics in art therapy organizations

This article presents intersectional care ethics as a framework for inclusive, anti-oppressive organizational structures and practices. A brief literature review documents the increasing demand in the art therapy field for theory and practice that is politically engaged and rooted in social justice. Two frameworks for analyzing an organization’s alignment with justice and equity are discussed: intersectionality theory and care ethics. Barriers to creating and maintaining just, equitable, and ethical organizations are also described, and examples are provided for how these barriers have been enacted in one professional association. The article concludes with recommendations posed in the form of questions intended to inspire creative conceptualizations of how intersectional care ethics might become manifest within art therapy organizations.

What Are the Best Practices for Nursing Care during an Earthquake? A Scoping Review.

Among natural disasters, earthquakes have a considerable impact and are among the ten deadliest, with an extreme impact on the healthcare sector. This study aimed to analyze the best practices in nursing care for earthquake victims. An in-depth analysis was carried out by using a scoping review, a method used in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR recommendations, to identify best nursing practice in these circumstances based on searches of eight databases: MEDLINE via PubMed; Cochrane Library; Embase; VHL; PDQ-Evidence; Scopus; ProQuest; and Google Scholar. Twenty-one studies were selected. The nursing practices identified were grouped into two distinct dimensions, each subdivided into four subcategories: (i) care practices: (a) immediate care, (b) intermediate care, (c) psychosocial care, and (d) ethical care; (ii) care management and coordination practices, which cover (a) care coordination, (b) victim care network organization, (c) teamwork, and (d) training. By analyzing these nursing practices during care and relief operations for earthquake victims, this study identified the various actions carried out, the nursing skills to be developed, and the reinforcement of these advanced practices through the systematization of nurses' skills, in order to promote victims' rehabilitation, minimize their suffering, and improve their quality of life during and after an earthquake.

Knowing about the body, knowing through the body: health communication from an ethics of care

La pandemia de COVID-19 generó una crisis mundial que puso en tensión distintos planos de la existencia humana. En el plano de la salud, el modelo biomédico hegemónico imperó en los modos de explicar y ofrecer soluciones; sin embargo, su mirada biologicista resultó insuficiente, lo cual habilitó preguntas y reflexiones sobre la dimensión sociohistórica y situada de los cuerpos y puso en tela de juicio las formas de producción capitalista en sus vínculos con lo viviente. En este artículo se realiza una revisión crítica del modelo biomédico para, luego, dialogar desde los aportes de otros campos de conocimiento en lo que respecta a otros modos de pensar los cuerpos, desde los cuerpos y su relación con lo viviente. Se considera que, desde una comprensión densa y vitalista del concepto de salud, e incorporando algunas miradas desde el cuidado y debates feministas, se pueden construir otras tramas para pensar la comunicación en este campo.

“A delivery vehicle for change and democracy”: Exploring care and scale in digital engagement

The Special Issue defines ‘housing disruptors’ as the emerging ideologies, practices, and logics capable of changing the housing system. In this paper, I argue digital engagement technologies were a housing disruptor for combining an ethic of care and technological scale in order to reimagine planning democracy and ultimately the delivery of equitable housing. First, I outline the care ethics of digital engagement and connect it to a lineage of planning theory that values deliberative participation and agonistic urban politics. I then interrogate the meaning of scale in digital engagement and how it contributes to urban democracy and justice issues. However, the structural limitations that practitioners faced in practice put into question how possible it was to apply a scale logic from the technological and business world, which sought to streamline and grow, to a planning system (that is complex) and solutions to the housing crisis (even more complex). My concluding remarks suggest that digital engagement was symbolic for the changing value principles in planning, as one that was committed to a fairer and more equitable planning system; but how successful it was (or has been) able to provide an alternative planning structure remains uncertain.

‘Social’ robot and social relations in care settings: Undefined positionality and fixed temporality

Socially assistive robots in eldercare settings, i.e. ‘social’ robots, are currently being promoted and studied, particularly in Japan. Among these studies, clinical evaluation of their effectiveness in experimental research predominates, while studies that critically and analytically describe relations between actors in long-term care settings where robots are present are growing but still scarce. In this paper, we argue that understanding how older adults facing the loss of autonomy and their caregivers interact with robots in relational terms is helpful to explain the usage and non-usage of, and eventual resistance to social robots entering into care settings. This is why, in order to understand human relationships with social robots in elder care homes, this paper combines a ‘script’ approach and a ‘critical care’ one. Based on content analysis of a unique set of reports on trials of a social robot in multiple care facilities in Japan from 2018 to 2020, as well as interviews with stakeholders and ethnographic observations conducted in 2022, we answer two questions: 1) how do social robots shape social relations of care? 2) how do social robots affect social relations between care professionals, care recipients and robots? We proceed to discuss two of the characteristics emphasised in the ethics of care and examine them in depth: the positional and temporal aspects. Our major result is that, while the robot was easily adaptable to care environments because its position in relationships is not defined, embedded clock time flow in the robot was objective and linear, which indicates that some robot-created situations were seen as problematic by actors in care settings.

Ethics of Manufacturing and Supplying Bottled Water: A Systematic Review

Bottled water is one of the most consumed healthy beverages in the world. At a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3%, bottled water sales may surpass USD 500 billion by 2030. While this indicates how popular bottled water is among consumers, it does not underscore various ethical concerns raised against the product and its business concept. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the ethics of manufacturing and supplying bottled water. It uses a systematic review of the literature through the PRISMA method to determine the major ethical concerns surrounding these topics. A total of 107 articles were identified, and 31 were subjected to further reviews and analysis. The study found that the manufacturing and supply of bottled water may be unethical if it ends in deliberate pollution and artificial scarcity. Water is an essential product that should be made available and accessible freely to support lives. The use of bottled water has benefits because pollution is removed during processing, which prevents the spread of diseases. In addition, it is practical to transport and consume it. Water bottlers, however, seek to convert water into an exclusive product for profits. This draws attention to the ethics of justice, care, and professionalism which collectively protect consumers against corporate greed and exploitation. Water bottlers contribute to significant environmental pollution and have done little to recycle or reuse plastics to minimize the potential environmental damage. More than 80% of plastic bottles end up in waste and may be washed down into the oceans where they affect the marine ecosystem.

The Robarts Centre today and tomorrow: From the quest for self- knowledge to an ethics of care

The Robarts Centre today and tomorrow: From the quest for self- knowledge to an ethics of care

Autonomous Weapons in the Light of Care Ethics

The development of autonomous weapons systems is ongoing, and in the future, there may be a serious risk of deployment of these weapons without human control. The world is facing a possible new way of warfare separated from human intervention. This raises the urgency for conceptual, moral thinking on this matter. In this essay, care ethics provides constitutional elements to this moral reflection. According to care ethics, humans are intertwined, dependent on each other, and always related. In these relations, care is the central notion. The overarching goal of providing care is promoting and sustaining human dignity. The violation of this human dignity is the main argument to oppose the deployment of fully autonomous weapons.