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36 | CHApTER 1 adequate manner? It is important to address the politics of masculinities and violence relating to the ethics and politics of care in order to answer these questions. As noted earlier, while the literature on care ethics has engaged extensively with femininity and the feminization of care, it has been relatively silent on masculinity and its relationship with the values and practices of caring.3 There are at least two reasons for this. First, in the care ethics literature, there has been a trend toward antiessentialism as feminist moral and political philosophers seek to counter the charges of essentialism often leveled at early work on care ethics, especially the work of Carol Gilligan and nel noddings. second, as virginia Held has noted, many—including many feminists—doubt that the ethics of care can appropriately address violence against women, from violence in intimate relations to the so-called public violence of wartime. she quotes Claudia Card, who argues that “attending to the kinds of violence women have suffered historically is thus important for identifying limitations of care ethics” (quoted in Held 2006: 138). As Card notes, “Women’s care-taking of those who benefit from sex oppression is part of the problem that a feminist ethic needs to address” (quoted in Held 2006: 138). moreover, in the literature on care work, especially the literature on welfare regimes and the global care economy, emphasis is often placed on the material basis of the feminization of care—including analysis of the world of work and of the effects of neoliberal restructuring by international financial institutions. In this literature, care is widely regarded as a social and economic issue; care is analyzed as a type of labor—usually one that is under- or unremunerated and unevenly distributed along gender, and sometimes racial and class, lines. only rarely does this literature address the values, norms, or discursive practices that underwrite and support the feminization of care work both within states and at the global level.4 slowly, this neglect of images of masculinity and the activities of men is being challenged. In their study of care and welfare regimes, paul Kershaw, Jane pulkingham, and sylvia Fuller argue that feminist schol3 A notable exception is Kershaw, pulkingham, and Fuller 2008. 4 For exceptions, see F. Williams 2001; Daly 2002; and mahon and Robinson, forthcoming. THE ETHICs oF CARE AnD GloBAl polITICs | 37 arship must expand the subject of analysis to include “the male abuser, the promiscuous male, and the male free-rider on female care” as a primary focus of the active citizenship literature (2008: 186). The point, as Kershaw and colleagues argue, is to “interrogate cultural norms and practices which distance care provision from many social conventions that define fatherhood and masculinity” (197). This study focuses on how studies of the gendered dimensions of welfare regimes tend to rely on an “employment-oriented vision of active citizenship.” The authors argue that this vision distracts attention from male violence against women and male neglect of child rearing that often precipitate entrance onto welfare for many lone mothers (182). This argument is of great importance in that it begins to create links between the economic and physical dimensions of security—primarily, although not exclusively, for women. It is important because it demonstrates how norms surrounding the values and activities of caring constitute not only female roles that legitimize the feminization of care and care work but also masculine roles of autonomy and disconnection that may legitimize neglect or, in the worst cases, violence. The authors are careful to stress, however, that they are not proposing measures that target individual men, especially as seen in the mainstream U.s. discourse on fatherhood that focuses on poor and racialized men. Indeed, they argue that this discourse “does injustice to the scope of the problem of male irresponsibility and violence” (Kershaw, pulkingham, and Fuller 2008: 201). Building on this argument, I suggest that the challenge must be taken further; thus, we must not only renew our attention to “contemporary failings of fatherhood, which include violence and the patriarchal division of care” (Kershaw, pulkingham, and Fuller 2008: 198) but also try to understand how these two “failings” are linked. In other words, the challenge is to conceptualize the ideational and material links between violence, on the one hand, and contemporary moral understandings of the values and activities of care, on the other. I do not suggest a causal or necessary connection between men’s lack of involvement in caring...

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