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>> xvii Acknowledgments I am honored to be able to acknowledge the assistance that I have received from others in writing this book. The questions considered here have so preoccupied my mind that there is hardly a talk I have given, a conversation I have had, in the past nearly twenty years in which I did not learn from speaking to my interlocutors. To those who have agreed with me and those who have not, let me express my gratitude for your questions and arguments, your expressions of support and of indignation. I have learned from them all. A number of institutions have provided material support. I have received teaching and research opportunities that forwarded this project from the University for Humanist Studies in the Netherlands; Princeton University Center for Human Values; the City University of New York (CUNY); Yale University; Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main; the Fulbright Foundation; Göttingen University; CIRSFID at the University of Bologna; and the University of Minnesota. Many colleagues have served as close interlocutors throughout this project. None of my work on care would have been possible without the initial cooperative work that I did with Berenice Fisher, and I am forever in her debt for our long and productive conversations. Even when I am disagreeing with Berenice, I am thinking about her ideas. Selma Sevenhuijsen not only remains an inspiring colleague, but she also taught me about creating a long-distance and yet deep intellectual community. Over the years, a varied group of care scholars has emerged, and even when I disagree with them, or they with me, I learn constantly from Virginia Held, Nel Noddings, Fiona Williams, Julie White, Nancy Folbre, Kari Waerness, Olena Hankivsky, Paul Kershaw, Daniel Engster, Guy Widdershoven, Marian Verkerk, Hank Maschot, Deborah Stone, Rafaella Sarti, and Jennifer Nedelsky. Many other scholars and students, including Margaret Urban Walker, Martha Ackelsburg, Molly Shanley, Nancy Hirschmann, Jane Bayes, Joan Callahan, Lorraine Code, Alison Jaggar, Liane Mozere, Vivienne Bozalek, Sonia Michels, Wendy Sarvasy, Carol Nackenoff, and xviii > xix My editors at NYU Press have been more patient than I can describe. Ilene Kalish has been thoughtful and helpful, and, even though it was not warranted, has continued to be cheerful and encouraging. Aiden Amos has also been remarkably helpful in bringing the manuscript to its end. The anonymous reviewers of the manuscript and Jorma Heier provided useful comments on nearly final drafts for which I am grateful. Chapter 4 began its life as the essay “Vicious and Virtuous Circles of Care: When Decent Caring Privileges Social Irresponsibility,” published in 2006 in Socializing Care: Feminist Ethics and Public Issues, edited by Maurice Hamington and Dorothy C. Miller. I am grateful to Rowman and Littlefield for granting permission to reprint it in revised form in this book. My final thanks are prospective: I want to thank in advance the readers who will come to this book and take the arguments offered here seriously. I offer the book both to scholars of democratic theory and life as well as to ordinary citizens who are looking for a way to make sense of our political possibilities at the present. These have been hard times for those of us who believe in democracy. I have sustained my hope that we can yet change the subject of political life to what really matters, that is, to what we do, and should, really care about. This page intentionally left blank ...

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