The Ethics of Care: A Feminist Approach to Human Security

4. Humanitarian Intervention and Global Security Governance

80 | CHApTER 3 Colleen o’manique has argued, we must move beyond a focus on “male domination” toward an examination of a system of extreme masculine characteristics, which are reflected in the valorization and celebration of war and violent masculinity, and the devalorization of the labor of social reproduction more typically performed by women (2006: 174). It is again important to stress that claims about the construction of hegemonic forms of masculinity are not the same as claims about the behavior of individual men. Indeed, essentialist arguments—about, say, male aggression or female passivity—cannot accommodate the many “variations that exist among both men and women in terms of their attitudes toward, and participation in, acts of violence” (Whitworth 2004: 154). moreover, to refer to “hegemonic masculinity” is not to deny the existence of multiple visions of masculinity (and femininity) that may coexist; rather, it is to acknowledge the social practices through which one vision may predominate over others to become “culturally exalted” or hegemonic (Connell, quoted in Whitworth 2004: 154). Finally, as a pattern of hegemony in the Gramscian sense, rather than a pattern of simple domination based on force, socially dominant masculinities are maintained by cultural consent, discursive centrality, institutionalization , and the marginalization or delegitimation of alternatives (Connell and messerschmidt 2005: 846). If we are really concerned about human security, maybe we ought to consider redirecting our attention toward the ways in which these forces are at work today in the global context. The Ethics of Care, Human security, and “Women’s Work” The domestic and caring sector is often referred to as feudal, involving servitude and servility. How is it that these social phenomena are looked on so uncritically within Western societies? —Agustin 2003 Using a critical feminist ethics of care as a moral framework through which to view human insecurity related to transnational care work and sex work shifts attention toward an examination of the wider context in which these activities take place. Rather than regard female care and sex “WomEn’s WoRK” | 81 workers, their employers and clients, and their immediate and extended families as autonomous individuals who either possess or lack agency to make moral decisions, a critical ethics of care regards all people as embedded in networks of relationships. Relative power, degrees of agency, and moral responsibilities are mediated through these relationships . some of these relationships may be nurturing and life sustaining, while others may be exploitative or violent; in all cases, however, it is the relationships that are central to determining the conditions affecting human security and insecurity in this context. A feminist care ethics approach to human security facilitates a critique of the stereotype of care as “bottomless feminine nurturance and self-sacrifice” (m. Walker 1999: 108). Critics of care ethics—including some feminists—have argued that an ethic of care can serve to reinforce gender stereotypes and can “look like the lamentable internalization of an oppressively servile social role” (108). An ethics of care that is essentialist, uncritical, and “unpoliticized” risks romanticizing the activities of care and of using women’s “natural responsibility” to care as a justification for female servitude. That care could be degraded in this way—to legitimize sexual and domestic service and the violence associated with it—however, is a result of the development of particular moral understandings, including hegemonic forms of masculinity, that are mediated through gendered relations of power. As Jan pettman argues, the domestication of women naturalizes men’s sex right to women’s bodies, labor, and children. Women are there to service men, providing domestic and sexual labor, which is assumed to be a labor of love (pettman 1996: 186). While there is no essential picture of what good caring relations should look like, a critical ethics of care emphasizes the benefits to all people of an image of care that recognizes responsibility and responsiveness to particular others as positive expressions of both masculinity and femininity. Feminist ethics must reclaim the role of caring values as a positive , valuable aspect of all societies and of caring labor as an important practice of contemporary citizenship. In the context of global politics, it asserts that the adequate provision of care, and equitable distribution of responsibilities for care, is a basic prerequisite for human security. In Chapter 1, I introduce and develop the relationship between hegemonic masculinities, neoliberal globalization, and the feminization 82 | CHApTER 3 of care as an important normative structure contributing...