Open care ethics

Discovering interdisciplinary diversity on my doorstep

For a long time I believed I was the only person in my department, and possibly in the whole of my university, with an interest in care ethics. But recently I was delighted to discover that Vince Mitchell, a colleague of mine in the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care at The Open University, shares my passion for the subject. Vince, who has a background in mental health nursing, earned his doctorate with a thesis exploring the philosophical foundations for the ethics of dementia care.

Vince and I began having regular conversations about our mutual interest and we came up with the idea of launching a care ethics group at The Open University, partly as a means of pursuing our own interest in this field of study, but also out of a desire to spread the word about care ethics. We sent out some tentative emails, firstly to academics in our own department, and then to other parts of the university, to see whether anyone else might want to join us.

I suppose we imagined that we might attract a handful of like-minded colleagues, and that they would be drawn mainly from our health and social care subject area. But, in the event, we were quite overwhelmed by the reaction. More than 40 people expressed an interest in joining the new group, with positive responses coming from right across the university, from academics in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, psychology, education, languages, geography, and classical studies. We were also pleasantly surprised to discover that some of those who signed up for the group – again, from a variety of academic disciplines – were already doing research that drew in some way on care ethics. So it seemed that we weren’t on our own after all.

The inaugural online meeting of our fledgling Open University care ethics interest group took place last week, with about 20 people attending. We had three main aims for the meeting: to come to a shared understanding of what we mean by care ethics; to exchange information about current work in care ethics across the university; and to discuss the next steps for the group.

Since there seemed to be some confusion about what might be encompassed by the term ‘care ethics’, and because we were aware that some colleagues had signed up for the group out of curiosity and a desire to learn more, Vince and I began the meeting with a short presentation under the heading ‘What is care ethics?’ Acknowledging the difficult of identifying an agreed definition among scholars in the field, instead we shared some quotations, from care ethicists and others, which we thought might help towards a common understanding:

We then gave a brief overview of the history, and current diversity, of care ethics, highlighting some key texts and key scholars, beginning with Carol Gilligan’s foundational In a Different Voice and early groundbreaking contributions by Nell Noddings and Sara Ruddick, as well as influential books by Joan Tronto, Eva Feder Kittay, Ruth Groenhout, Virginia Held and Maurice Hamington, and then introducing a range of more recent publications, demonstrating both the sheer diversity of work in care ethics, and also the ways in which recent scholarship has brought care ethics into dialogue with other fields of intellectual inquiry, such as political theory and the law:

To counterbalance the impression that care ethics has been the exclusive domain of Anglophone scholars, we also drew attention to influential voices from other countries, such as (pre-eminently) the Netherlands, at the same time highlighting the influential ‘Ethics of Care’ book series launched by Dutch colleagues and published by Peeters of Leuven:

We also mentioned developments, and some key figures, in care ethics elsewhere in Europe, including France, Italy and Spain. This was inevitably a selective overview and focussed on scholars with whose work we were familiar. However, we also made the point that the focus of care ethics has begun to move away from the Global North, giving the example of recent work emerging from India:

This provided a neat segue into the final part of our presentation, in which we drew attention to some recent developments in care theory, such as work on decolonising care ethics and promoting indigenous and marginalised voices, and also developments in the aesthetics of care, which was the focus of the most recent conference, earlier this year in Utrecht, of the international Care Ethics Research Consortium:

The next section of the meeting was an opportunity to share, albeit briefly, some of the fascinating work in care ethics that we’d discovered happening at The Open University, and we invited a number of colleagues, from a range of academic disciplines, to speak about their research.

Vince and I kicked off the discussion by speaking about our own work in care ethics. I gave an overview of my research on men, masculinities and care, describing how it had led me to a broader interest in care theory, and to my current project exploring the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel as a resource for an ethic of care. But I also mentioned my Careful Thinking podcast, and this Substack newsletter, as other ways in which I hope I’m making a contribution to the development and promotion of care ethics. Vince explained how his professional practice in nursing had led to an academic interest in the philosophical grounding of the ethics of dementia care, highlighting the influence on his doctoral study of Michael Slote’s notion of the virtue of receptivity.

We then heard from Carolyn Cooke, a Senior Lecturer in Education, who described the work of the Posthumanist Collective research group to which she belongs, in re-framing academic practices as ‘care-with’, building on the feminist new materialism of theorists such as Maria Puig della Bellacasa and Karen Barad.

Jacqui Wilmshurst, a doctoral student whose supervision team I recently joined, talked about her research project on ‘Caring Wildly’, which explores human-animal relationships from a care ethical perspective, based on her own work rehabilitating wild animals.

Parvati Raghuram, a Professor of Geography and Migration at The Open University, introduced her work on race and feminist care ethics, which sets out to rethink care for a postcolonial world and to relocate care ethics beyond the Global North. We also heard about the work of another OU geographer, Kim Kullman, which focuses on the relationship between care and cities, as exemplified by his research project on children, care and urban design in Chile. Kim is currently co-editing a special issue on ‘interdisciplinary perspectives on care and wellbeing in the city’ for the journal Sociology of Health and Illness.

     L to R: Vince Mitchell, Carolyn Cooke, Jacqui Wilmshurst, Parvati Raghuram, Kim
     Kullman

Other colleagues who were unable to attend the meeting have told us that they are currently researching topics as diverse as care, disability and visual culture; care, gender and the military; and care and ageing in ancient Greece; and we hope to hear from them at future meetings. These examples demonstrate not only that care ethics is alive and flourishing at The Open University, but also, once again, the relevance of a care ethical approach to a multiplicity of fields of intellectual inquiry.

We’re planning that future meetings of the group will provide opportunities to hear at greater length from colleagues about their research and the ways in which it intersects with the ethics of care. It’s our hope that bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds will lead to a dynamic exchange of ideas and approaches, generating new perspectives and opening up possibilities for collaborative research and writing across disciplinary boundaries.

We also hope to expand our focus beyond the OU and invite external speakers from the wider world of care ethics, as a way of keeping us in touch with new developments and current debates in care theory. This might include scholars who have already been guests on the Careful Thinking podcast - or even readers of this Substack - so don’t be surprised, if you’re doing innovative and interesting work in care ethics, and receive an invitation.

I’ll continue to provide updates on the work of our new group in future posts. In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear from any readers with experience of setting up similar groups or networks around care ethics at their institution or organisation.

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The header image shows the sculpture ‘Modern Misses’ by Zimbabwean artist Dominic Benhura, outside the Betty Boothroyd Library on the Open University campus in Milton Keynes, England (author’s photo).