Geography 533: Globalizing Care and Responsibility
Winter, 2007
Victoria Lawson Tel:
543-5196
Office: Smith 303-D e-mail:
lawson@u.washington.edu
Introduction:
This course explores the centrality of care work
and care ethics to our lives and to society broadly. We will look at how shifts in contemporary
society (in the
The first part of the course will examine the
growing need to take care seriously in academic work, in public policy and in
our own lives. We will then think about
the possibilities and challenges of really caring across distance and to
respectfully engage with people in distant and different places. Finally, we will explore the myriad
theoretical and practical challenges of care ethics: how do we navigate the
research/politics boundary; how do we understand ourselves in a global frame;
what approaches to research enable a critical and yet analytical view; what do
care ethics mean for our professional practices and involvements? We will think through the challenges of
producing innovative and caring knowledge under ethical and responsible
relations to people with whom we work.
Course
A course reading packet will be available for
purchase at Rams Copy and Print on the Ave.
Course
Requirements:
i) Complete all
assigned readings before class meetings, and participating in critical
discussions of those readings.
ii) Write a ‘think
piece’ on 1 reading each week of the quarter. These will be one paragraph in length,
discussing your reaction to (at least) one of the readings for that week, these
will be circulated at the beginning of the class session and will be
incorporated into our activities for that session.
iii) Lead class
sessions (designed by you) that engage ideas from the readings.
iv) Comple a research
paper (20 pages) prompted by themes raised in class and guided by your own
research trajectory.
Important Dates
Monday Jan. 15th Martin Luther King’s
Birthday
Monday Feb. 19th President’s Day
** Monday March 12th paper due in my box **
COURSE OUTLINE
I. Introduction (Weeks 1-3)
Ø
The context
for Care – neo-liberal times and the intensification and devaluation of care
Ø
What are
critical feminist care ethics?
Ø
What does it
mean to talk about our ethical responsibilities to care?
II. Care as a Public Matter (Weeks 4-7)
Ø
The substance
of care-work – its marginalization and centrality in our lives
Ø
Understanding
care as produced through histories and institutions that reproduce oppression,
exclusion, poverty, environmental degradation, ill-health etc.
III. Care Ethics and Reframing Responsibility
(Weeks 8-10)
Ø
Building
relations of mutuality and interdependence
Ø
Considering
critical, ethical responsibility
READING LIST
Week 1
(Jan 3rd)
Discussion of intellectual framing of the
course. All participants will introduce
themselves and their interests. Class
discussion of learning goals and approaches to learning that are most
successful for each person. Discussion
of what brought students to the course and of what each person hopes to take
away.
Week 2
(Jan 10th)
Context for Care: neo-liberal times
Noddings, N.
2005. ‘Global Citizenship:
promises and problems’ in Noddings, N. (ed) Educating
Citizens for Global Awareness.
Peck, J.
2001. Workfare States.
Schram, S.
2000. After welfare: the
culture of postindustrial social policy.
Teller-Elsberg, J.,
Folbre, N., Heintz, J. 2006. Field Guide to the
McDowell, L.
2004. ‘Work, workfare, work/life
balance and an ethic of care’ Progress in
Human Geography 28(2): 145-163.
SAPRIN Executive Summary, 2002. ‘The Policy Roots of Economic Crisis and
Poverty’.
Walton,
J. and D. Seddon. 1994. Free
Markets and Food Riots. Chapters 1
and 2.
Week 3 (Jan 17th)
What are Critical Feminist Care
Ethics?
Lawson, V.
2007. Geographies of Care and
Responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, forthcoming
Tronto,
J. 1993.
Moral Boundaries. A Political
Argument for an Ethic of Care.
Kittay, E. 1999.
Love’s Labor: essays on women, equality and dependency.
Held,
V. Feminist
Morality.
Held,
V. 2002.
‘Care and the Extension of Markets’ Hypatia 17(2): 19-33.
Kobayashi,
A. and J. Proctor. 2003. ‘Values, Ethics and Justice’ in Gaile, G. and
C. Wilmott (eds) Geography in America at
the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century.
Week
4 (Jan 24th)
Folbre, N. 2006.
‘Demanding quality: Worker/consumer coalitions and ‘high road’
strategies in the care sector’ Politics and Society 34(1), 11-31.
Staeheli,
L. 2003.
‘Women and the work of community’ Environment and Planning A
35, 815-831.
Folbre, N. and M. Bittman
(eds). 2004. Family time: the social
organization of care.
Heyman,
J. 2005.
‘Can Working Families Ever Win?” The Boston Review 27(1) at http://bostonreview.net/BR27.1/heymann.html
Tronto, J. 2005. . ‘The
Value of Care.’ The
Skocpol, T.
2005. ‘The Political Bind’ The
Week 5 (Jan 31st)
Parr, H. 2003.
‘Medical geography: care and caring’ Progress
in Human Geography 27(2), 212-221.
Staeheli,
L. and Brown, M. 2003. ‘Where has welfare gone? Introductory remarks on the geographies of
care and welfare’ Environment and Planning A 35, 771-777.
Brown, M. 2003.
‘Hospice and the spatial paradoxes of terminal care’ Environment and
Planning A 35, 833-851.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. 2000. ‘The International Division of Caring
and Cleaning Work’ in Care Work.
Gender, Labor and the Welfare State.
Coltrane, S. and Galt, J.
2000. ‘The History of Men’s Caring’ in
Harrington-Meyer, M. (ed) Care Work.
Gender, Labor and the Welfare State.
Russell, R. 2007.
‘The Work of Elderly Men Caregivers’ Men and Masculinities 9(3),
298-314.
Milligan, C. 2001. Geographies
of Care.
Week 6 (Feb 7th)
Pogge, T. World
Poverty and Human Rights: cosmopolitan responsibilities and reforms. Chapters Introduction, 2 and 4.
Sayer, A. and Storper,
M. 1997.
‘Ethics Unbound: for a normative turn in social theory’ Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 15: 1-17.
Massey, D. 2004. ‘Geographies of Responsibility’ Geografiska Annaler 86B(1), 5-18.
Farmer, P. 2003. Pathologies of Power.
Week 7 (Feb 14th)
Corbridge,
S. 1993.
‘Marxisms, modernities and moralities: development praxis and the claims
of distant strangers’ Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 11, 449-472.
Robinson,
F. 1999.
Globalizing Care. Ethics,
Feminist Theory and International Relations.
Slater, D. 1997.
‘Spatialities of power and postmodern ethics – rethinking geopolitical
encounters’ Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 15: 55-72.
Examine
Jubilee Campaign’s mission and projects online at: http://www.jubileeusa.org/
Jaggar, A. 2003.
‘Vulnerable Women and Neoliberal Globalization: Debt Burdens Undermine
Women’s Health in the Global South’ in Fiore, F. and Nelson, H. (eds) Recognition, Responsibility and Rights.
Schutte, O. 2001. ‘Dependency Work, Women and the Global
Economy’ in Kittay, E. and Feder, E. (eds) The
subject of care: feminist perspectives on dependency.
Week 8 (Feb 21st)
Care and Responsibility
Cloke,
P. 2002.
‘Deliver us from evil? Prospects for living ethically and acting
politically in human geography’ Progress
in Human Geography 26(5), 587-604
Young, I. 1990.
‘The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference’ in Nicholson, L.
(ed) Feminism/Postmodernism.
Fraser, N. 1995.
‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a
‘Post-Socialist’ Age’ New Left Review
212: 68-93.
Fraser, N. 2005.
‘Mapping the Feminist Imagination: From Redistribution to Recognition to
Representation. Constellations 12(3).
St. Clair, A. 2006.
‘Global Poverty: Development Ethics Meets Global Justice’ Globalizations 3(2), 139-157.
Wildung-Harrison, B. Justice
in the Making. Chapters 2 and
6.
Week 9 (Feb 28th)
Spivak, G. 1998.
‘Cultural Talks in the Hot Peace: Revisiting the “Global Village”’ in
Cheah, P and Robbins, B. (eds). Cosmopolitics: thinking and feeling beyond
the nation.
Monhanty, C. 2003. Feminism
without Borders: decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Duke: Duke University Press. Introduction and chapter 9.
Staeheli,
L. and Nagar, R. 2002. ‘Feminists Talking Across Worlds’ Gender, Place and Culture 9(2): 167-172.
Silvey,
R. 2002. ‘Sweatshops and Corporatization of the University’ Gender, Place and Culture 9(2): 201-207.
Nagar,
R. 2002.
‘Footloose Researchers, ‘Traveling’ Theories, and the Politics of
Transnational Feminist Praxis’ Gender,
Place and Culture 9(2): 179-186.
Routledge,
P. 2003.
‘Convergence space: process geographies of grassroots globalization
networks’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28,
333-349.
Week 10
(Mar 7th)
Practicing Care Ethics II or
Professional Responsibilities?
Valentine, G. 2005.
‘Geography and ethics: moral geographies? Ethical commitment in research and teaching’ Progress in Human Geography 29(4):
483-487.
Hart, G. 2006.
‘Denaturalizing Disposession: Critical Ethnography in the Age of
Resurgent Imperialism’ Antipode Vol
38(5): 977- 1004
Visweswaran, K. 1994. Fictions
of Feminist Ethnography. Chapter
6. Mineapolis:
Davis,
C. 2006.
‘Sylvia’s Story’ Qualitiative
Inquiry 12(6): 1220-1243.