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98 | CHApTER 4 institutions, and structures. Indeed, it may be that the lenses of postcolonial theory have important contributions to make to an international political theory of care, especially in the context of human security and humanitarianism. For example, while the government and people of Haiti may be temporarily and inevitably dependent on donor countries, especially after the recent earthquake, this fact should not blind us to the agency of Haitians not only in responding to the “crisis” but also in their everyday struggles with poverty. moreover, the ongoing engagement of the international community with Haiti should reflect not just benevolence but a recognition of the common history of colonialism, slavery, occupation, and “development”—a history that is shared by most states. placing existing relationships in a wider and longer historical perspective also reminds us that relations of dependence are subject to constant change. seen in this way, our responsibilities to help alleviate poverty and deprivation arise not out of charity or even contemporary obligations of “development” or “cosmopolitan justice” but out of a common history and an interdependent future (F. Robinson 2010: 138–139). At the international level, an ethics of care must not be seen to translate simply into benevolent and humanitarian practices through which the strong states and organizations that make up the international community “care for” weaker, vulnerable populations. While I eschew a strongly normative care ethics, the critical potential of the ethics of care goes beyond the ontological arguments about relationality. Also crucial to care ethics is the argument that practices of care are the basic substance of morality. Thus, recognition of responsibilities to particular others and an understanding of the nature of those responsibilities are just the first steps. The next steps involve sustained attention to people not as autonomous rights-bearers but as relational subjects who are both givers and receivers of care. These ideas may be applied to our moral understandings of contemporary humanitarian situations. In the light of the recent earthquake, “Haiti” is constructed as a vulnerable population in need of benevolence and care. But a critical ethics of care reveals the moral and practical complexity of care in this context. A critical ethics of care asks, “What are the care needs in this context?” and “How are these needs being met?” Answering these questions requires attention not just to the most basic, immediate care needs of those in grave physical condition—the HUmAnITARIAn InTERvEnTIon AnD GloBAl sECURITy GovERnAnCE | 99 needs of “bare life”—but also to the wider landscape of care in this context . It calls for thinking about how relationships and communities that previously attended to care have been dismantled by events, and what can be done to repair or rebuild those relations, or to find alternative means of providing care. It involves consideration of the distribution of the material, physical, and emotional burdens of care and how these are affected by constructions of gender and race. While recognizing that the negotiation of care provision is fundamentally political, it does not shrink from an explicit consideration of power relations in this context. Contrary to widespread perceptions, rights and interests are important aspects of a critical ethics of care. Rights are crucial in the context of both giving and receiving of care; however, they must always be understood relationally and always as embedded in and realized through existing social and political arrangements. Considering the complex landscape of relations and responsibilities of care in this way is not a short-term process; rather, it is an ongoing task of practical ethics that must always be cognizant of the past, the present, and the short- and long-term future. The aim of this line of argument is not simply to turn the autonomy-dependency dichotomy on its head; on the contrary, it is to demonstrate that the nature and extent of dependence and interdependence in social, political, and economic life are constantly shifting and evolving, with different kinds of costs and benefits for different actors. Increasingly, the relationships between dependence and power in global politics are not always clear. As previously illustrated, while income-rich states, and individual families within those states, may be dependent upon migrant women to fill the gaps in care provision in their countries , the migrant women themselves are rarely empowered by this relationship . To say this is not to underestimate the agency of these women or the sacrifices they make to provide for their children. yet as agents they still remain embedded in a wider, structural inequality...

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