Protecting the World: Military Humanitarian Intervention and the Ethics of Care

Abstract

Feminist care theorists Virginia Held and Joan Tronto have suggested that care is relevant to political issues concerning distant others and that care can provide the basis for a more comprehensive moral approach. I consider their approaches with regard to the policy issue of military humanitarian intervention, and raise concerns about exceptionalist attitudes toward international law that entail a collection of costs that I refer to as "the problem of global worldlessness." I suggest that an ethic of care can overcome these concerns, and offer an Arendt-inflected rereading of some of Tronto's work to show how this is possible.

Reconceptualizing Work and Building Ruddick's Feminist Solidarity Transnationally

“…Importantly, feminist solidarity extending across borders differs from care ethics in the international arena (Held 2006; Kyle 2013; Tronto 2008). The latter is an expansion of empathy or care; Held (2006, 17) considers expanding care more promising than “rational recognition” of the rights of others.…”

“…The expansion of care, in contrast, aims not at a particular political goal but rather to establish the conditions of care and mutuality on which standard international political goals may be met, such as the respect for human rights. Kyle (2013) offers Arendt's concept amor mundi , or care for the world, as an additional care ethic for global concerns in contrast to an expansion of interpersonal caring. Accordingly, care is directed at the whole world.…”

Naming the dead: DNA-based identification of historical remains as an act of care

“…Nevertheless, care theorists have long held that the approach has utility outside these areas, and more recent work has tried to move beyond the traditional forms of caregiving to consider global, public and political issues, and to widen the scope of interactions to include international and policy relations (Barnes 2012;Kyle 2013). Extending care theory beyond the home or clinic has required it to be reconceptualized in less explicitly interpersonal terms than before.…”

Le féminisme du care et la pensée politique d’Hannah Arendt

“…Cette auteure n'est pas la première à proposer un rapprochement entre Arendt et le care. Sara Ruddick (1995), Carol Gilligan (1987Gilligan ( et 1995, Bonnie Mann (2002) et Jess Kyle (2013) soulignent également la pertinence de divers concepts arendtiens pour l'articulation d'une éthique du care féministe et émancipatrice (pensons, par exemple, aux concepts de monde 2 , de natalité ou encore d'amor mundi). Pensons aussi à Joan Tronto qui, dans Moral Boundaries (1993 : 128-129), se tourne brièvement vers Arendt pour penser le jugement politique et l'une des qualités essentielles au « bon care », soit l'attention.…”