Feminist Care Ethics has received extensive attention in a variety of fields over the past quarter century including political science, philosophy, education, social work, sociology and more. There has been relatively little discussion of Care Ethics in the field of Religious Studies. Surprisingly, given that virtually all mainstream religions hold care and compassion as a major tenet. Care Ethics and Religion will be a volume of original essays that fills this intellectual gap.
Editors Maurice Hamington, Carlo Leget, Inge van Nistelrooij, and Maureen Sander-Staudt invite papers on the topic of Care Ethics and religious teachings, traditions, identities, practices, practitioners, as well as atheism and humanist spiritual traditions. All contributions should engage feminist Care Ethics as exemplified by scholars such as Marian Barnes, Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings, and Joan Tronto.
Prospective contributors should submit a 500 word abstract to SanderStaudtM@gmail.com by April 15, 2019.
Description
Care Ethics is a moral theory and interdisciplinary field of studies/enquiry, rooted in relations of interdependency and universal human needs for care. The ethic departs from moral theories such as Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Neo-Liberalism in critiquing their individualistic, rationalistic, and abstract elements as distortions of lived human lives.
Care Ethics postulates that humans are universally born in need of embodied and social-psychological care. Making care ontologically prior to moral concerns such as justice. Despite the universal need for care which makes care-giving an essential practice without which human life would cease, the ethic situates care giving practices in particular places, times, and identities.
Given the extent to which care giving overlaps with richly diverse religious and spiritual identities, beliefs, rituals, and traditions, this volume seeks to expand the field of Care Ethics to consider how religion, construed for global religious and secular audiences, potentially enhances but can also destabilize the goals of care.
Commentary and analysis
The editors of this anthology invite critical commentary and analysis on how religion, both organized and less formally arranged, may facilitate or erode the normative goals associated with Care Ethics. To the extent that many religions recognize the human and embodied need for care, and valorize the moral obligation to give and take care as having a divine component, it is sometimes the case that religious practices enrich care.
At the same time, as a feminist ethic, Care Ethics is well situated to uniquely critique and question a wide variety of religious motifs, practices, and teachings in light of how well they do and do not succeed in completing the goals of care in ways that are competent and just. This volume seeks to initiate discussion of the possible affinities and strains between Care Ethics and religion, broadly construed, and to indicate areas in need of future study.
Topics
Possible questions/topics may include but are not limited to:
- How does religion contribute to caring identity and practice?
- Are caring virtues also religious virtues, and the converse?
- Ideal syntheses of care ethics and religion/spirituality
- Care-ethical and religious perspectives on precarity and compassion
- Care as a religious motif
- Care ethics, atheism and secular humanism
- Care ethics and non-supernatural spiritual traditions (e.g. Buddhism, Taoism)
- Care, religion, and anthropocentrism/relations with the natural world
- Care as instrument of religious colonialism and oppression
- Religion as catalyst for care completion and social equity
- Care ethics and theology on love and compassion
- Care ethics as a critique of religious theory and practice
- Coping with suffering, death, and loss
- Queering care ethics and religion
- Spiritual violence and care
- Care as a gendered and intersectional religious theme
- Care, religion and sexuality
- Care as a marginalized, disenfranchised, and appropriated concept in religion
- Care and religion as slave moralities
- The role of embodiment in religion and care
- Contested concepts: care, love, compassion in religion
- Care and God; the divine; good/evil; heaven/hell; the afterlife
