The ethics of care : a feminist approach to human security /

Robinson (Carleton Univ., Canada) builds on her earlier work, Globalizing Care (1999), in continuing to explore how care ethics and human security are related. She argues that care ethics and human security are not simply women's issues and argues for a broader conception of both ideas. In this work, she applies the feminist-based care ethic to analyzing several problems, including AIDS health policy, environmental security, humanitarian intervention, and international trafficking in women as child-care or sex workers. In doing so, she suggests that contemporary arguments about the care ethic sometimes misapply the concept, leading to a reliance on "care" as an excuse for military interventionism, or a dismissal of care as primarily a type of undervalued women's work performed by those who are subordinates in the family unit, in society, or in the international system. She presents a new ontology of care, arguing that its dominant features are that it creates intimacy and relationships and shapes new bonds. The argument is unique and far-reaching and will have significant ramifications in the international relations literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. M. B. Manjikian Robertson School of Government, Regent University