What's care go to do with it? Feminism and the uncertain radical potential of care

Abstract

Feminist uses of the term ‘care’ actively contribute to ongoing debates about the kind of world we currently live in, as against the one we want to inhabit in the future – a contribution directed towards effecting positive change in the world. Unsurprisingly, the various ways feminists employ the term ‘care’ entail benefits and problems, as well as being the subject of intense debate. This paper aims to summarise and critically assess the main conceptual frameworks and associated debates within feminist perspectives on care. Analyses of care as labour, first- and second-generation feminist ‘ethics of care’, postmodern/poststructuralist and posthuman/new materialist uptakes and, finally, notions of ‘radical care’ are considered. In short, the paper explores the radical potential of care; specifically in feminist terms – that is, what is its potential for advancing progressive social change?

Keywords

ethics of care feminism radical care

Introduction

Feminist uses of the term ‘care’, in a nutshell, have been and continue to be crucially about value. ‘Care’, in a feminist context, is a term that is framed by advancing gender equality. More specifically, it is centrally concerned with contesting what counts (in human social life/social connection) and what is characteristic of and crucial to humanity and hence human sociality (human social life/social interconnection).¹ Therefore, feminist uses of the concept of care are aimed at contesting the adequacy of dominant understandings and practices regarding value in relation to these two key issues and, in the process, they promote and advance alternative perspectives. Moreover, the aim of feminist deployments of care is to dispute dominant accounts and practices regarding what is presently valued and what is valuable about us, in order to offer terminology that puts into question existing social arrangements. By this means, care as a feminist language allows us to imagine alternatives to these arrangements – that is, to develop new political imaginaries that might advance constituencies of counter-publics and progressive change (Cooper, 2016, 2022; Fraser, 1990). Care actively contributes to debates about the kind of world we live in now as against the one we want to inhabit in the future. It is crucial to keep this key orientation at the forefront as we contemplate what ‘leveraging feminist approaches to care’ might involve in the troubled times we are experiencing today.²

To this end, the paper provides an overview of key frameworks and associated debates within feminist theory regarding care. It begins by exploring analyses of care as labour, followed by an examination of first- and second-generation feminist ‘ethics of care’. Subsequently, it considers postmodern/poststructuralist, posthumanist/new materialist perspectives and, finally, the concept of ‘radical care’. The aim throughout is to examine critically the radical potential inherent in the term ‘care,’ particularly in its capacity to advance progressive change.

Overview: feminist theorising and care

In the wide-ranging international literature in the field, feminist thinking on care has coalesced around several key directions. The main theoretical frameworks and associated debates within the extensive feminist literature on care can be briefly summarised as follows:

Early feminist analyses of care highlight the economic subordination of women associated with their responsibility for unpaid labour in the private sphere (domestic and care work). Their focus is on the problem of recognition and value.

First ‘generation’ of feminist ethics of care dismiss notions of moral virtue regarding self and one's connections with others as located in objective, rational choice assumed to be a matter of autonomy/freedom from others. This rejection of the autonomous (disembodied, rational) self is associated with problematising reason/justice as the basis for social organisation. Instead, the approach foregrounds social connection and the creation of a moral citizenry founded upon social relationality.

Second ‘generation’ of feminist ethics of care is marked by a more expansive rejection of ‘atomistic individualism’ which asserts that the aim is not so much moral as material social reformation. This approach continues the first-generation focus on the issue of social relationality but turns this orientation towards developing a public ethics.

The postmodern/poststructuralist uptake of feminist ethics of care is not so much attentive to social activism regarding the welfare state as concentrated upon rethinking the relationship between self and other at a more philosophical level, generating attention to the problem of the vulnerability/precarity of the human.

Posthumanist/new materialist approaches reassess the theme of social connectedness by challenging its anthropocentric perspective. Instead, an expanded account of care that extends beyond the human realm is offered. The central concern is with the problem of placing human/Man as central and superior.

‘Radical’ care/care as political commentators focus upon caring ‘with’, rather than ‘for’ or ‘about’ – that is, the constituting conditions of care – tied to social reformation of structural inequality which could include posthumanist concerns with the environment.

As can be seen from this condensed overview, the term ‘care’ presents both advantages and challenges, sparking considerable heated debate. However, before we turn to a somewhat expanded, albeit still condensed, account of the diverse approaches and their associated critiques within feminist care theorising, it is crucial to note the scope of this overview. The approaches outlined do not provide a history of political activism around care, nor do they depict a linear progression in which each approach supersedes the previous one. Rather this chapter explores major feminist conceptual frameworks and these frameworks by no means involve the evolution of a singular path. Instead, despite commonly used vocabularies like ‘generation’ to describe certain approaches, they are often not only co-current and intertwined but also overlap with linked feminist theoretical discussions concerning relationality (Mackenzie, 2015; Mackenzie and Stoljar, 2000), emotion/affect (Ahmed, 2004; Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010), intimacy (Jamieson, 2005) and love (García-Andrade et al., 2018; hooks, 1999).

Feminist views of care as labour

Early feminist theoretical work on the concept of care focuses on intersections between gender and class, specifically on the problems with non-recognition and non-valuation of women's unpaid private/domestic care work (Barrett and McIntosh, 1982; Perkins Gilman, 1898; Reid, 1934). The intention is to make visible labours that were largely invisible, to reveal and critique the unrecognised reliance of capitalism on (mostly) women's unpaid domestic work, and to uncouple this work from women, thereby rejecting the notion of the role of ‘housewife’.

This overarching approach addresses the value of caring labour. Such an approach is directed towards the failure to include care/domestic work in economic analysis and hence the requirement to develop a feminist political economy (Beasley, 1992, 1996; Delphy, 1984; Folbre, 1994; England et al., 2002; Waring, 1999 [1988]). The concern to affirm care's value relatedly generates the development of concepts like ‘wages for housework’ and ‘social reproduction’ (Dalla Costa, 1972; Federici, 1975; Bakker, 2007), attention to the invisibility and asymmetry of emotional/affective and sexual labours (Beasley, 1994; Lynch et al., 2009; Grummell et al., 2009) and consideration of the significance of care chains/care circulation throughout society and across national borders (Baldassar and Merla, 2013; Fudge, 2015; Hochschild, 2000; Sabio et al., 2022; Stewart, 2007). Moreover, the significance of care as labour has become ever more crucial in the global setting of racialised and colonial legacies of increasing economic and social inequality, shaping welfare state settings as well as those beyond national borders (Barker and Feiner, 2010; Bedford and Rai, 2010; Hoerder et al., 2015).

Debates regarding care as labour

Class and labour have generally diminished in importance within much feminist thinking in the Global North. Additionally, Marxism, a crucial framework for attention to labour, has become less influential, and feminist concerns with equality have branched out from economic conditions to a wider array of arenas. The lessening focus on economics, coupled with changing economic circumstances, saw the virtual disappearance of the ‘wages for housework’ approach. Early criticisms of this approach included concerns that giving wages for housework would commodify intimate activities associated with love and care, advancing capitalism's reach and reinforcing women's gendered roles in domestic and care work (see Luxton, 1997). Thus, this approach was seen as potentially exacerbating gender inequality.

However, such criticisms became redundant as more and more women entered the paid workforce in the Global North. Increasingly unpaid work was recognised as an integral part of capitalism and not outside of it. Moreover, the integration of women into the workforce did not seem to result in a more balanced allocation of unpaid domestic labour, including caregiving responsibilities. Instead, women engaged in waged work continued to be largely responsible for unpaid labour and thus typically faced a ‘double shift’ (Hochschild, 1989). Thus, feminist concerns with equality generally branched out from a focus on strictly economic/class conditions to encompass a more extensive range of issues.

Care as labour feminism has also been subject to criticism on the grounds that it presumed a gender binarism, implying distinctly different roles for men and women. However, it is important to recognise that when this scholarship emerged, the prevailing understanding was to see women and men as different and separate, with men overwhelmingly perceived as central and superior. While contemporary Western societies are moving away from a rigid binary view of gender, gendered hierarchies nevertheless persist (Young, 1990). Moreover, gendered hierarchies continue to be highly significant in settings which involve racialised labour relations and the ongoing impact of coloniality. Given this, the ‘care as labour’ approach continues to be a notable strand of feminist theorising and can be seen in ongoing struggles to advance the conditions for workers in areas historically associated with women and care, such as domestic work, childcare and aged care. Marilyn Waring's famous book Counting for Nothing: What Men value and what women are worth (1999 [1988]) remains a crucial resource for feminist scholars attempting to reconceive what is considered economic and as counting in budgets, law and policy. Such directions remain present in all manner of feminist materialist and environmental analyses as well as in feminist critiques of inequality within states and across the globe (Amrith and Sahraoui, 2018; Gutiérrez Rodriguez, 2013; Williams and Gavanas, 2008). However, it should be noted that in these analyses there is an evident increasing attention to complicating class-based accounts and any straightforward gender binarism.

Feminist ethics of care

In keeping with ‘care as labour’ feminism, the feminist ethics of care approach is fundamentally political (Tong, 1993: 160). What distinguishes it from ‘mainstream’ ethics, is the stance that all normative viewpoints (outlining what should be) – regardless of whether this is acknowledged or not – are inherently political. However, unlike care as labour feminism (which mostly drew on radical feminism and/or intersections with Marxism), feminist ‘ethics of care’ was in its first iteration closely linked to moral philosophy and discussion of moral character (Gilligan, 1982; Held, 1993). Then, in its second iteration, it was linked to the sociology of welfare states and institutions.

Feminist ethics of care has been routinely drawn upon to explain how relationality/interconnection motivates human choice and action in the social world (Sevenhuijsen, 2003; Tronto, 1993; Barnes, 2012). In short, the centrality of relationality is viewed as redressing misleading and partial, though dominant, conceptions of human beings and human interaction. Relationality is brought to the fore to contest the unquestioned dominance of atomistic individualism in contemporary societies, providing a critique of existing social arrangements in an alternative ontological conception of humanity which highlights the place of women and care. Women and their caring activities are thereby made visible and indeed exemplary. In more recent feminist approaches, this focus on relationality is extended beyond the human and is asserted to inform all matter – human and non-human (see Barad, 2003).

First generation of feminist ethics of care: care as moral value

The so-called ‘first generation’ of feminist care ethics has been associated with attempts to value human beings and social life in ways that foreground relationality/interconnection and thus offer a critique of the encroaching spread of competitive instrumentalist individualism. Care has, in short, been a means to advocate the development of social virtues (citizen attributes) to counter a perceived contemporary crisis in relation to sustaining social bonds and offer an alternative direction for social life.

While the development of a feminist care ethics involved recognition that the family could not be seen as the unproblematic centre of such a call for the realignment of society, it did highlight the caring responsibilities of women/mothers as the centrepiece and paid strong attention to bodily interactions. Thus, first-generation care theory directly or indirectly emphasised the constituting organisation of gender as the epistemological underpinning of the ethics of care.

Early proponents of care ethics (Gilligan, 1982; Held, 1993) constitute ‘care’ as a moral attribute and provide a perspective grounded in moral philosophy (see Beasley and Bacchi, 2005; Bacchi and Beasley, 2005). Against the reasoning or rational mind constructing a supposedly objective account of social morality, feminist ethics of care offer a fleshly embodied account of moral virtues founded in the essential connectedness of human beings – that is, we all rely on care to survive and integrate into society. On these grounds, the practice of mothering is endorsed as the model for generating caring citizens and a caring society (Noddings, 1984; Ruddick, 1980).

This account of the ethics of care is often recognised as associated with Carol Gilligan's (1982) critique of Lawrence Kohlberg's influential model of moral development. She delved into the nuances of moral development and identity disparities between men and women. Gilligan argued against traditional moral philosophy, including associated perspectives such as legal and political theory, on the grounds that it involves a prioritising of rights and autonomy (independence from others) over the values of responsibility and intimate connectedness with others. In this way, Gilligan put forward a ‘voice of care’ instead of a ‘voice of justice’. She asserted that mainstream accounts of moral virtues which stress the upholding of ‘freedom’, interpreted in terms of separation and individuation, are critically bound to masculinist conceptions of the self and society. The notion of justice as arising out of freedom from others, she says, is illusory and dangerous. Attachments to others, conceived as freedom through engagement with others (care), were not only as associated with women but are actually more realistic, fundamental and egalitarian for all. In this context, Gilligan stressed that a voice of care is ‘neither biologically determined nor unique to women’ (Gilligan, 1982: 209).

Debates regarding the first generation of feminist ethics of care

A range of criticisms have been bought to bear in responses to the first generation of feminist ethics of care scholars, including reinforcing conventional essentialist notions about women by associating sexual difference with morality, offering a homogeneous and romanticised conception of the practice of mothering, failing to engage with cultural, historical, economic and political forces that influence gender and morality (see, for example, Tronto, 1993), and relatedly failing to address differences among women such as ethnicity and class among others. The model of care endorsed by the first generation also tends to offer a limited version of what care might be and what forms of embodiment it might involve. Within this framework, and prevalent in feminist scholarship, caring is commonly characterised as the unpaid labour undertaken by family members in the private sphere. Moreover, gender is relatedly viewed as the dominant system of social relations that influences the structuring of this care. Thus, in the first generation of ethics of care, and in most subsequent feminist research on caring, care is often narrowly defined. It is primarily understood as a singular form of care, specifically the unpaid care provided by family members, and primarily analysed in the context of one structural division, namely gender. Consequently, the nuanced intersections of racial and class divisions within the realm of everyday caring are frequently overlooked (Graham, 1991).

Additionally, the hierarchical structure of mothering and many caregiving relationships are also often not noticed or fully acknowledged (Shakespeare, 2000; Hughes et al., 2005). Indeed, the inclination to miss ongoing inequality in care continues in most later iterations of care thinking, whether influenced by ethics of care or other approaches. There is also a common assumption that acquiring the ability to care within close, personal relationships will naturally extend to broader and compassionate concern for others, enabling the development of humane societies. The means through which an ethical framework developed from intimate interactions can be applied to public and subsequently macro international spheres are usually assumed rather than explicitly outlined (Beasley and Bacchi, 2005). Moreover, the first generation of feminist ethics scholars, like many other approaches critiquing modernising individualisation and aiming to develop social virtues (Beasley, 2017), are inattentive at the macro level of national identities and the global/international.

In short, this group of care scholars, while fundamentally questioning the supremacy of liberal justice-oriented perspectives, provide very thin theorising overall about exploring the interconnections between the micro and interpersonal aspects of social life and the broader macro perspective. The first generation offer little in the way of explaining how change might proceed from the former in a bottom-up rather than necessarily top-down fashion (Mahon and Robinson, 2011). There is a limited analysis of how social change arises, restricted attention to economic and racialized parameters of interpersonal interactions (Gunaratnam and Lewis, 2001; Hunter, 2021) and a reliance on the improvement of citizens’ virtues.

Second generation of feminist ethics of care: care as social practice

The moral and rather personalised approach in first-generation writings was largely overcome, at least in relation to the national stage, with the emergence of second-generation feminist ethics of care scholars. This approach articulated the link between care and welfare provision, an articulation which gave more substance to the analysis of social change that was presumed to follow from dissemination of care. Subsequent advocates of care ethics, such as Joan Tronto (1993, 2015) and Selma Sevenhuijsen (1998, 2003) made efforts to address what were seen as the problematic features of the first generation's moral philosophy approach, overcoming ‘the dangers of essentialism, parochialism, and paternalism by politicizing ethics of care’ (Mahon and Robinson, 2011: 4). These scholars stress the significance of recognising care as a vital social practice, urging its inclusion in political discussions concerning society-wide services addressing needs. They advocate for the development of a concept of care that would enable ‘rethinking … the terrain of current moral and political life’ (Tronto, 1993: 101). This shift moves the conversation away from a focus on moral disposition to an ethically informed politics and from an emphasis on intimate relationships to institutional/societal support systems (see Engster, 2004). In the process it revisits in some ways the care as labour approach outlined earlier by giving attention to and revaluing, at a macro social level, the existing unpaid labours of citizens, who are often women.

Debates regarding second generation

Nevertheless, while second-generation care ethicists put embodied interconnection on the political/governmental agenda, like the first generation they attend exclusively to certain aspects of care and embodiment. This approach is typically concerned with tasks related to physical upkeep and nurturing, in particular care of older people and children (Beasley and Bacchi, 2005). However, caring practices like these constitute only one element of contemporary social interconnection. Re-visioning ethical community requires, we suggest, a more expansive conception of embodied intersubjectivity. Moreover, discussion of how care, as a practice undertaken largely by women in personal, intimate caring practices, might translate in more distant institutional forms that would continue to have a feminist progressive impact on social life – that is, how the micro might inform the macro – remains somewhat limited.

Perhaps most importantly, critical considerations of second-generation ethics of care have cohered around questions of how to interrogate the asymmetry of ‘care’ (Beasley and Bacchi, 2007; Cooper, 2007). Foundational political structures and ideologies in liberal societies are built upon hierarchical differentiations, delineating those considered autonomous and those not accorded such status (Gunew, 1990: 17). Subjects with the capacity for autonomous thinking and action are conceived as individuals who can be afforded full citizenship status, requiring minimal government intervention. They are distinguished from those perceived as less proficient, necessitating governance or protection (Flax, 1995). Second-generation care ethicists advocate for a compassionate exchange between competent citizens and those who are cast as dependent, which demands active support for the welfare state. This stance is clearly an advance on the atomistic framing of competitive individualist capitalism. All the same, this more compassionate framing of social relations rests upon a paternalist protectionism that represents a limited challenge to existing social conditions and hardly invokes the humane society these care thinkers suggest would be the far-reaching result of taking up a feminist ethics of care. Second-generation scholars pre-emptively assume a social imbalance that aligns their framework with a narrowly reformist political agenda aimed at safeguarding the vulnerable from the most severe consequences of inequality, while simultaneously paying relatively little attention to the continuing legacies of racism-colonialism in the constitution and practices of nations states and the global order.

Feminist inflected postmodern/poststructuralist approaches: care as shared embodied vulnerability

The postmodern/poststructuralist uptake of feminist ethics of care is less focused on overcoming the moral and personal orientation of the first generation or extending or altering the social orientation of the second generation. Instead, it concentrates on rethinking the relationship between self and other at a more theoretical and ontological level. Though such writers employ terms like ‘caritas’, ‘responsibility’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘precarity’, they replicate the compassionate action of care ethics. In this context, we turn to the work of Emmanuel Lévinas and Rosalyn Diprose as exemplars. Lévinas has had considerable influence on a wide variety of postmodern/poststructuralist thinkers, including Iris Marion Young (1990), Jacques Derrida (1994) and Julia Kristeva (2002), in terms of explorations of ethical subjectivity and sociality (Beasley and Bacchi, 2005: 52; Burke, 2000; Dunphy, 2004). Writers such as Lévinas posit an unwavering, non-negotiable connection of responsibility between the Self and the Other (Lévinas, 1996: 160). Along with Lévinas, Diprose (2000) underscores the inescapable responsibility for others as an inherent condition of human existence. Both thinkers cast care's relational and altruistic orientation – its ‘seductive promise’ – in a foundational light, a light which gives care an elemental status beyond the seeming uncertainties of moral or socio-political underpinnings associated with previous iterations of ethics of care thinking frameworks (Drakopoulou, 2000: 207). This move towards the ontological may be seen as avoiding a range of difficulties evident in the previous approaches. In this setting, care has continued to be a widely recognised and employed terminology (Nedelsky, 2012), even as some have persisted in questioning whether care is the feminist panacea for our troubled times (Drakopoulou, 2000).

Debates regarding postmodern/poststructuralist accounts of ethical responses to vulnerability

While the postmodern/poststructuralist uptake of care ethics thoughtfully extends the second generation's emphasis on human social requirements to an ontological given that goes beyond institutional formations, this concern with not only the pervasive but intrinsic significance of care fails to overcome certain difficulties. The hierarchical divide between the vulnerable or needy and those addressing their requirements, for instance, resurfaces in Lévinas’ reflections on ethical responsibility. Lévinas, like first- and second-generation feminist care ethicists, assumes a ‘radical asymmetry’ in the ‘apprehension of the Other’, thereby maintaining an emphasis on ‘the fragility of the other’ and the ‘radical generosity of altruistic existence’ (Wyschogrod, 2003: 63). In his accounts, along with other postmodern/poststructuralist writers, the caring ‘exchange’ is consistently perceived as altruism.

Like the first and second generations of feminist care ethicists, postmodern/poststructuralist approaches establish benevolence, compassion, gift giving, altruism, or generosity as foundational ethical principles. Such a beginning entails an understanding of care for others as a commendable and sought-after moral quality, disposition, or character trait inherent in individual subjects. As observed in the context of first-generation scholarship, this approach overlooks or downplays potential connections between care and power, consequently perpetuating asymmetries of power and wealth. However, it also involves constituting an eternal relationship between Self and Other that cannot deal with possible dangers of self-sacrifice or of being the object of sacrifice (see Minow, 1990; Bacchi and Beasley, 2004).

For instance, Diprose, positions the self/other relationship beyond the scope of social practice and creativity, transcending historical contexts (Diprose, 2000). Such a perspective constrains the ability of this particular version of care ethics to acknowledge social hierarchies, framing corporeal interconnection primarily in terms of vulnerability. This undermines the recognition that interconnection, viewed through this lens, could be stifling, subordinating, and perpetuate self-abnegation for both those deemed vulnerable and their ‘helplessly responsible’, dedicated ‘helpers’. Diprose argues – like Lévinas – that embodied interconnection between self and other is fundamental to the very essence of ‘being’, constituting a fixed universal that precedes history and politics (Diprose, 2012: 155–156). In this framework, ethical responsibility for the other, connectedness, becomes unquestionable and inescapable. While postmodern/poststructuralist and other ethics of care thinkers share a feminist conception of sociality as embodied interconnection (and consequently requiring care), the ontological foundation of the former also presumes in advance that this foundation will generate necessarily laudable or predictable processes and results. Indeed, emphasis on the ontological in relation to care may be said to lead to an ‘epistemic closure’ (Borgerson, 2001: 183), to an essentialising as fundamental and unavoidable which is contingent and agonistic. If the first and second generations of feminist care ethicists do not undertake a very persuasive account of how intimate activities translate to wider formats, the postmodern/poststructuralist writers on ethical responsibility for others do not articulate how an ontological given might inform these formats, other than falling back on faith in a generalised underlying imperative.

Care, in various arguably limited ways, offers a distinct challenge to dominant conceptions of the autonomous self and recognises human embodied interdependence. However, the term is strongly debated on a number of grounds. Perhaps most crucially, the continuing emphasis upon altruism is concerning. Even if this focus on altruism is tempered by an insistence that everyone requires care and is vulnerable, it must also be considered in terms of the paternalist impact of an always already given hierarchical distinction between ‘strong/capable’ and ‘weak/dependent’. Uncertainties arising from care's entanglement with altruism continue when considering the broader framing of interdependence/interconnection beyond a focus on the human.

Feminist inflections of posthumanism/new materialism: care as beyond human embodied interdependence

With the rise of what may be described under a combined terminology as posthumanism/new materialism (PH/NM), the threads identified thus far as continuing issues within previous iterations of feminist-oriented care perspectives are reassessed. In brief, as the movement evident in postmodern/poststructuralist scholarship towards a more ontological register is further expanded in PH/NM, the attention to human embodiment and human connection that marks all previous care theorising is displaced.

Despite the heterogeneity of the scholarship that might be included under the rubric of PH/NM, a conglomerate of frameworks and associated thinkers is recognisable. Notable examples include Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Braidotti (2011), Barad (2007), Bennett (2010), DeLanda (2006) and Meillassoux (2010) (also see Cifor, 2017; Dolphijn and van der Tuin, 2012: 38–47; Lemke, 2017; Ringrose et al., 2019). Not all of these frameworks are straightforwardly feminist inflected but whatever the conglomerate of orientations and thinkers that is described, PH/NM is strongly connected to a reassessment of matter, even though matter is variously understood (Barad, 2003, 2007; Fox and Alldred, 2018).

Such an emphasis alters long-established Western conventions about knowledge which have generally tended to distinguish hierarchically between animate and inanimate, social and natural, human and non-human, and mind and matter. In this setting, PH/NM thinkers are inclined to adopt a critical view of what they deem to be a contemporary (postmodern/poststructuralist) turn towards language, towards discourses, and hence acceptance of an anthropocentric obsession with social/human constructionism.³ Instead, PH/NM scholarship reassesses the conception of ‘Man’/human (Parpart and Zalewski, 2013; see also Plumwood, 1993: 192).

In the first instance, PH/NM challenges the privilege attached to the category of masculinity/men (Beasley, 2005: 177–240; Kimmel and Bridges, 2020). In common with the inclinations of previous feminist approaches to care thinking, feminist iterations of PH/NM call into question the entitled status accorded to Man in social terms and the corresponding disregard for caring activities, deemed to be associated with women. Second, feminist-influenced variants of PH/NM extend the scope of this critique of Man by expanding existing eco-feminist approaches (see Foster, 2021; Merchant, 1980; Plumwood, 1993; Salleh, 1997; Mellor, 1997; Sandilands, 1999; Warren, 2000) which reject masculine mastery over the environment and understand care as an ethics for the planet. A crucial feature of feminist versions of PH/NM is therefore not only to dethrone Man from centre stage and – as eco-feminist perspectives propose – to refuse the binary of human/nature, but additionally to downgrade the place of the Human. In brief, this perspective foregrounds matter, with no particular material form (including humanity) having any more integral significance than any other. Rather than human embodied connection as a moral, social or ontological foundation for care, PH/NM finds dynamic relationality throughout the panoply of the cosmos and accords matter a primordial ontological status. This reassessment opens up a range of possible ethico-political implications and related concerns.

Debates regarding feminist-influenced PH/NM

Feminist-influenced PH/NM may be seen as enabling a broader scope for and strengthened account of care ethics that can escape existing criticisms of care as particularised, suffocating, paternalistic and hierarchical. However, its focus on materiality – including bodily materiality, its corresponding emphasis on an even more all-encompassing ontological agenda, and uncertainties attached to de-emphasis upon the human – give rise to some continuing and new questions.

Feminist-inflected PM/NM approaches engage in a sustained scholarly examination of materiality, including to ‘lived material bodies and evolving corporeal practices’ (Cifor, 2017: 5; see also Barad, 2003; Coole and Frost, 2010; Lemke, 2017: 84). However, concern with embodiment in PM/NM – a concern which is shared with other feminist approaches to care – is not of itself politically progressive (Apostolidou and Sturm, 2016). For example, Agamben (2021) urges that the COVID-19 pandemic has provided the means to legitimate state responses that are used to impose despotic limits on populations and thus are mobilised for reasons other than health (Jack, 2021: 40–43). While Agamben's perspective may itself be deemed rather a totalising and questionable anti-statist account (see Bratton, 2021; Huneke, 2021), it is also a reminder that foregrounding the body can have problematic or even simply inadvertent or unforeseen dangers associated with providing justifications for totalising governance. Likewise, in research on older people (Beasley and Holmes, 2021: 129–136), it is evident that renewed stress on bodies can be a double-edged sword. This critique can be applied to all versions of feminist care theorising but is especially pertinent in relation to a framework which rests so heavily on materiality.

In a more general sense, the ontological focus upon matter within PM/NM, which refuses human-Man exceptionalism and anthropocentric foundational agency (Bayne, 2018: 1), cannot presume that what flows from this ontological focus is necessarily valuable or foreseeable, let alone politically progressive in feminist terms. Foregrounding ontology, which extends the notion of care as about social relations between human beings to encompassing attention to all matter, does not entail a particular ‘ethico-political’ stance, beyond a presently relatively schematic commitment to situated interconnectedness (Engelmann, 2019: 516). Indeed, as noted earlier in relation to postmodern/poststructuralist approaches, this marked emphasis on the ontological can lead to a ‘closure’ of active engagement with consideration of potential alternative ways of thinking (Beasley and Bacchi, 2007; Gordon, 2000: 145–147). In the case of PH/NM it may lead to an essentialising of matter as somehow sufficient, even an unquestionable and totalising foundation to theoretical and political analysis (Beasley, 2023; see also Stephens, 2014). Relatedly, PH/NM perspectives, with their focus on all matter as heterogeneously agentic (see, for example, Bennett, 2010: 37), may be considered to give rise to concerns regarding human activism and responsibility (Lemke, 2018: 42; Rekret, 2018).

In this context, Ansell-Pearson (2017) suggests that a post-anthropocentric stance must attend to the potentially politically dangerous implications of dethroning the human in terms of evaporating human responsibility. This is an especially telling issue when human activity has been crucial to the production of a planetary climate crisis and human beings are likely the only agentic force that might be able to counter this self-induced cataclysm.⁴ Ironically, a failure to intervene would further exacerbate the destructive impact of existing human interventions. Indeed, Ansell-Pearson (2017) argues that PH/NM commentaries on the issue of anthropocentrism misread the sources of their own perspective. Given the crucial contribution of Gilles Deleuze to PH/NM, he insists that placing the human out of the picture is at odds with Deleuze's account of matter. For Ansell-Pearson, ‘Deleuze's project cannot be aligned with a new materialism … that does away with an ethical distinction between the human and the nonhuman’ (Ansell-Pearson, 2017: 88).

PH/NM offers a perspective which is intended to surpass the human-centric orientation of care ethics, offering an expanded framework that proposes not merely ethical sociality but also a new ethico-political stance encompassing all matter. To the degree that this dethroning of the human entails refusal of human specificity, criticisms of the perspective are likely to be ongoing. After all, human specificity need not be regarded as equivalent to reinstating humans as external objective observers of the world nor that human capacities somehow render redundant the agentic properties of all matter. Advocating for human responsibility does not necessarily mean reinstating human mastery of the world.

Radical care: expanding process, a move beyond altruism?

The concept of radical care responds to the well-established critique of care as tied to altruism and thus asymmetry. Problematic features of care as a hierarchical, paternalistic ‘exchange’ led to renewed exploration of the constituting factors that shape care, including a focused examination of underlying social conditions within specific contexts (see Maher et al. and Cover within this special issue). This model of care builds upon Tronto's (2015) ideas of ‘caring for’, ‘caring about’, and ‘caring with’ and particularly pays attention to the issues at stake in the latter account. According to Arora and Van Dyck (2021: 255), radical care ‘points to the pluralization of ways of relating with neglected or vulnerable others in societies and ecologies, which diverge from the colonial relations of extractive toxicity and supremacist control driving the modern world’. The model of care is exemplified in Clark-Kazak's (2023) three principles of radical care: (1) centred on relationships; (2) entails a proactive stance in averting harm; and (3) recognises the ‘productive work of emotions’ (Clark-Kazak, 2023: 1153–1154). Accordingly, radical care perspectives are informed by early feminist and racial justice activists and theorists (including bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Nancy Fraser).

More recently, these perspectives have also been influenced by queer and trans feminists who claim that current understandings of care fall short in addressing contemporary issues – such as rethinking of the relationship between self-care and collective care (e.g., Judith Butler), as well as by environmental and posthuman approaches that insist that radical care requires attention to the natural world and often to the perspectives of First Nations custodians of that world. In conceptualising this continuity of care from the self to the collective and to nature as radical care, Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart and Tamara Kneese define radical care as ‘a set of vital but underappreciated strategies for enduring precarious worlds’ (2020: 2). Thus, radical care is premised on a sense of solidarity and on collective cooperation and aid, as well as non-paternalistic strategies and behaviours (Rozmarin and Simhi, 2023). Such attention to the constituting conditions of care involves developing strategies which move beyond mere readjustment or review of current practices; instead, radical changes are necessary to present an ‘otherwise’, which is ‘at odds with dominant, and dominating, modes of being’ (Povinelli, 2015). As Hobart and Kneese (2020: 3) assert, it requires ‘audacity to produce, apply, and effect care’ despite the danger of reinforcing asymmetrical histories and futures.

Radical care ethics are characterised by their alignment with alternative movements that prioritise care and solidarity. The approach emphasises the need to separate care work from an agenda focused on accumulating economic and social capital within patriarchal racial and capitalist frameworks at the expense of other values or considerations, potentially reiterating existing hierarchies and inequalities (Chatzidakis et al., 2020). Most importantly, radical care ‘contains radical promise through a grounding in direct action and nonhierarchical collective work’ (Hobart and Kneese, 2020: 10). To fulfil this promise, support for caring individuals and communities is essential at the state, national, and global level for it to be effective. This backing ensures that everyone has access to the time, resources and necessary social and physical infrastructure for both providing and receiving care. Radical care theorists argue that only with such comprehensive support can the ‘otherwise’ or radical change be fully realised (for a positive instance, see Zizzo et al., 2021).

Debates regarding radical care

While radical care is often associated with fostering positive political transformations by offering hope in challenging times, Hobart and Knesse (2020) also acknowledge its potential limitations. They note that radical care does not arise in a vacuum but rather is necessarily entwined with systemic inequality which may result in the generation of new means of surveillance and additional under-resourced or unpaid labours. Moreover, in its efforts to address inequality, radical care has the potential to exacerbate or create divisions between groups in terms of decision-making regarding who is considered deserving of care (Hobart and Knesse, 2020: 2). It may become a mechanism precisely for invoking power differentials.

In their study on the impact of ‘smart care’ technologies bought into the home, Key et al. (2021: 13) noted that application of radical care faced two issues: the requirement that designers be transparent about their involvement and invest in strategies that entail listening to the voices of ‘concrete others’. As in the case of earlier iterations of care thinking, this example demonstrates that there is considerable faith placed in the moral disposition of those enacting this approach. Moreover, the utilisation of radical care language can serve as a method to conceal inequitable processes and outcomes (referred to as ‘carewashing’) or problematically promote overly optimistic intentions regarding the subversion of hierarchical power relations. The expression of care for others, the act of listening to others, and engaging in horizontal, mutual or non-hierarchical interchange may not necessarily be immune to appropriation. Feminist histories of peer-to-peer exchanges – such as women's consciousness raising groups – have not always provided immunity against the veiled or naked resurgence of hierarchy (see Freeman, 1972). If previous versions of care thinking have found it difficult to articulate how intimate behaviours can become public and international, or how altruistic perspectives and practices can avoid asymmetry, radical care does not provide a strongly articulate account of how a commitment to, strategy concerning or even investment in solidarity can evade reiteration of existing power relations.

Furthermore, the sheer practicality of radical care ethics may be questionable. This model of care is highly dependent on investment of time and financial support in an environment which works against its claims to benefit individuals and communities, a model at odds with a neoliberal capitalist economy. In other words, while the crisis in care can ‘open spaces for political mobilization’ (McGee, 2020: 58), there is also the problem that care is ‘too expensive when market principles are applied to every aspect of daily life’ (McGee, 2020: 41) and/or may result in commercial failure in its application (Cohen, 2024).

Concluding comments

This paper emphasises the significance and relevance of the concept and practice of ‘care’, providing insights into its development over the last 50 years. Throughout the paper we acknowledge that care carries a gendered and racialised dimension, with women and migrant workers predominantly shouldering the responsibilities of both paid and unpaid care (The Care Collective, 2020). The devaluation of care work has a long history. With the rise of neoliberal capitalism and individualism, care work has been marginalised and labelled as unproductive, resulting in consistently lower pay and social status. Furthermore, neoliberal nation states have encouraged the perception that various forms of care are individual responsibilities, stemming from a reluctance to acknowledge our common vulnerabilities and interconnectedness. While a range of approaches to care exist, in this paper we have concentrated on representative feminist perspectives dealing with care theorising.

We identified certain overarching feminist perspectives on care: challenging the economic subordination of women by valuing care labour in the private sphere, developing and practising a feminist ethics of care, imagining ways of extending an ethics of care beyond human relationships, and reassessing the conditions for a progressive ethics of care. These considerations were linked to six dominant frameworks within feminist scholarship – care as labour, first-generation ethics of care, second-generation ethics of care, postmodern/poststructuralist approaches, PH/NM approaches, and ‘radical’ care. In doing so, we hope to show that understanding the term ‘care’ involves critical examination of different directions in feminist articulations of care theory. Moreover, by outlining, scrutinising and establishing connections among them, this paper offers a contribution towards progressing debates about the potential of the term to advance feminist re-imaginings of the social and natural world.

In this context, what might be care's radical potential? Care offers a powerful antidote to the dismissal of caring for, about and with others. It underscores, at the very least, the crucial necessity for embodied/emotional relationality between human beings and between human beings and their natural environment. Crucially, it advocates for ethical relationalities in which inequality is subject to question. If offers the hope of reimagined relationalities that can enhance the flourishing of humans and nature, steadfastly refusing to disallow this hope. Yet, at the same time, care often involves acts of faith or, at the very least, optimistic leaps that frequently fail to acknowledge or even purposefully ignore hierarchical disparities and the challenges in overcoming them. In other words, care is a vocabulary that is often assumes a presumptuous tone and is used to sidestep scrutiny by presenting itself as an obvious good.

For us, care serves as a widely used shorthand for promoting equitable interconnection, making it challenging to discard. As of now, no other vocabulary has effectively emerged to take its place. Words like ‘vulnerability’ and ‘precarity’, in our view, verge too closely towards the paternalistic elements of care and/or too readily highlight the bodily aspect as a means to accessing solidarity. Alternatively, words like ‘trust’, ‘generosity’, ‘respect’, and so on bring us back to unreliable dependence on moral dispositions and/or unquestionable foundations (see Beasley and Bacchi, 2007). While its radical potential is flawed, care appears to be rather less flawed than available alternatives. If this endorsement seems less than wholehearted, it is not an outright refusal. Rather than adopting a conceptual pessimism towards care, or an optimistic embrace of it (Gramsci, 1994 [1920], I: 300n1), we propose that the ‘proof’, as is often the case, lies in the political pudding – in specific practices. In sum, within the context of feminist futures, care as a term cannot in our view stand-alone. It is a potential starting point, but one that requires accompanying elaboration. Such elaboration, as we note, has often been rather thinly developed in the various feminist interpretations of it thus far. Care, in short, is something of a curate's egg. Like the proverbial curate, we tend overall to note its pitfalls while keeping in mind its recourses to feminist possibilities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the support of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, University of Adelaide, South Australia, in developing this paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Christine Beasley is Emerita Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations. She founded and was inaugural co-director of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, University of Adelaide. Her research attends to feminist, gender, masculinity and sexuality scholarship, as well as to areas such as care, intimacy, and cultural politics. Her recent books include Living Legacies of Social Injustice (Routledge 2023, with P. Papadelos), Internet Dating (Routledge 2021, with M. Holmes), The Cultural Politics of Hollywood Film (Manchester University Press 2019, with H. Brook).

Pam Papadelos is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies and current co-director of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide. Her teaching and research focus on the ways gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality, and her publications include Living Legacies of Social Injustice (Routledge 2023, with C. Beasley) and From Revolution to Deconstruction: Exploring Feminist Theory and Practice in Australia (Peter Lang 2010).

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