Agonizing care: care ethics, agonistic feminism and a political theory of care

Abstract

'Care' is central to nursing theory and practice, and has been described in a variety of ways. Intense conversations about care have been developing in other fields of study as well, from the social sciences to the humanities. Care ethics has grown out of intellectual exchange between feminist thought, moral theory and the critique of traditional western political philosophy. However, care ethics is not without its critics, as these accounts of care have also sparked vigorous challenges. This paper traces the construct of care through nursing theory, care ethics, feminist critiques of moral and political theory and agonistic feminism to outline a set of problematics that a political theory of care should engage. It discusses how care is conventionally posited in more or less essentialist, universalizing and naturalizing terms. It introduces the ideas of feminist theorists who resist dichotomizing care and the political, and situate care in the context of power and politics. The tensions between care feminism and agonistic feminism are highlighted in order to explore the potential of theorizing both care and nursing in political terms.

Nursing textbooks’ conceptualization of nurses’ responsibilities related to the ideal of a holistic view of the patient: A critical analysis

“…[27,28] Furthermore, qualities in the personal relationship between a nurse and patient enable the nurse to meet the patient's needs and help them to endure the uncertainty. [56] The impersonal gaze does not see the individual patient, but only the diagnoses or the sick body, which is the same distinction criticized in the field of biomedicine. The use of various measuring instruments is described as a nursing action involving professional competence independently of personality, with focus placed on the relationship between the nurse and the instrument.…”

Teachers' care in higher education: contesting gendered constructions

“…Thus when scholars turned their attention to the development of care ethics, they explicitly linked care to the feminine and the maternal (Gilligan 1982;Noddings 1984;Ruddick 1989). However, these care ethics have attracted criticisms of gender essentialism (Cloyes 2002;Lauritzen 1989), devaluing autonomy (Clement 1996), ignoring unequal power relationships and social structures (Hoagland 1991) andbeing 'colour-blind' (Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2005;Thompson 1998). A more detailed investigation of how care is conceptualised is required in order to reveal how it is gendered.…”

Nursings’ need for the idea of spirituality

“…Caring ethics, arising from the feminist ethics of Gilligan (1982) and Noddings (1984), provided perspectives for nursing that seemed to address the limitations of religious and biomedical principlism. However, caring ethics generated critique in that it polarized caring and justice and failed to take into account contextual relations of power and oppression (Cloyes 2002). Caring, according to some, lacked ethical grounding for a practice discipline (Salladay and Shelly 1997).…”