Women, Welfare, and a Public Ethic of Care

Welfare is not only a poverty issue, it is a woman’s issue. We need to formulate a foundation of the political will to shape and support a welfare policy that can serve women raising families without stigmatizing them in the process. The paper attempts to formulate such a foundation

Interpreting the Vajra Rosary: Truth and Method Meets Wisdom and Method

This essay, accompanied by the first full English translation of the Vajramala or Vajra Rosary, one of the explanatory Tantras of the Buddhist Guhyasamaja, or Secret Community, Tantric system, and a partial translation of Alamkakalasa's Commentary, sets out a novel hermeneutic method by which twenty-first century scholars of religion might approach the interpretation of the Tantra and other texts

A Kantian Critique Of The Care Tradition: Family Law And Systemic Justice

Liberal theories of justice have been rightly criticized for two things by care theorists. First, they have failed to deal with private care relations’ inherent dependency, asymmetry and particularity. Second, they have been shown unable properly to address the asymmetry and dependency constitutive of care workers’ and care-receivers’ systemic conditions. I apply Kant’s theory of right to show that current care theories unfortunately reproduce similar problems because they also argue on the assumption that good care requires only virtuous private individuals. Giving up this assumption enables us to solve the problems regarding both private care relations and systemic injustice

On hypocrisy1

I explore what and when hypocrisy is a moral wrong by interrogating the case of hypocrisy of Julien in Stendhal's The Red and The Black. I conclude hypocrisy is most morally vexed in those sphere where sincerity is required

DEPENDENCY

Dependency is a keyword in disability studies. The article reviews the negative force of the term and why disability researchers and activists have made the case for the independence of disabled people. But dependency, I claim, is a feature of any human life and I argue that disability studies needs to neutralize the term and appropriate dependency as that which binds people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. I argue that we can acknowledge dependency and work toward an ideal of "managed dependency.

LIKE IN SIMILES – A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC VIEW

The paper examines the meaning of like as used in similes in the light of relevance theory. Similes, even though superficially indistinguishable from literal comparisons, are found to be closer to metaphors. Therefore, it is proposed that like in similes is different from like employed in literal comparisons. In particular, it is claimed that, contrary to the current relevance-theoretic position on this issue, like in similes introduces an ad hoc concept. This like is seen as both conceptual and procedural and, as such, it is distinct from both the conceptual like used in literal comparisons and the procedural like functioning as a pragmatic marker. Such a solution accounts for the similarities and differences between similes, metaphors and literal comparisons

(Un)caring communities: processes of marginalisation and access to formal and informal care and assistance in rural Russia

The marginality of rural life, understood in structural, economic, political and geographic terms, has been an underlying theme in both historical and contemporary studies of the Russian countryside. Much less attention has been paid to marginality as relational and the moral discourses of (un)belonging and (un)deservingness through which moral centres and peripheries are constructed within rural Russian contexts. This paper explores the ways in which both fixed, structural and constructed, personalised explanations of hardship are employed by rural people and how these relate to processes of integration into or exclusion from ‘caring’ and ‘moral’ communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Burla village, western Siberia, in 2008-10, and focusing primarily on the activities of the Centre for Social Assistance to Families and Children located there, the paper discusses the ways in which affiliation with the ‘moral centre’ facilitates access to both formal and informal forms of care and assistance from which those at the ‘moral periphery’ are more often excluded

Abuse in the caregiving relationship between older people with memory disorders and family caregivers: A systematic review

Aim To synthesize what is known about elder abuse and relationship factors associated with abuse between caregivers and older people with memory disorders at home. Background Concerns about abuse in the caring relationship between older people with memory disorders and family caregivers have increased. Abuse is associated with negative outcomes on older people's health, quality of life, and zest for life. Abuse in the caring relationship manifests in financial exploitation, neglect, mistreatment, and physical issues. Design Systematic review. Data Sources Databases including Scopus, PubMed/Medline, SveMed+, Cinalh, SonINDEX, and ProQuest were searched using keywords about abuse in the caring relationship between older people with memory disorders and family caregivers at home. Articles published between 2005–2019 were retrieved and underwent data analysis and knowledge synthesis. Review Methods The review was presented under the categories of the dyadic approach of elder abuse in connection with the role of caregiver (risk) and care recipient (vulnerability) by Fulmer et al. (2005). Results The search process led to 12 quantitative studies, including an intervention, a prospective, nine surveys, and a cross‐sectional structural interview. Findings were synthesized and presented under ‘personal’, ‘physical and psychological’, and ‘social’ domains indicating the bilateral roles of caregiver and care recipient leading to abuse. Conclusion This review depicted factors influencing abuse in the caring relationship between older people with memory disorders and their family caregivers at home. They included family caregivers’ psychological issues, knowledge of memory disorders and modifications, previous caring relationship, social support, number of care recipients, and care recipients’ functional level. Impact This review identifies what influences elder abuse by family caregivers using the dyadic approach and explains how abuse can be prevented through suggested strategies. The review findings are relevant to multidisciplinary healthcare providers and can guide the provision of support, screening and assessment, educational programs, and legislative initiatives

Affective equality: love matters

The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation