Moral Boundaries

In Moral Boundaries Joan C. Tronto provides one of the most original responses to the controversial questions surrounding women and caring. Tronto demonstrates that feminist thinkers have failed to realise the political context which has shaped their debates about care. It is her belief that care cannot be a useful moral and political concept until its traditional and ideological associations as a "women's morality" are challenged. Moral Boundaries contests the association of care with women as empirically and historically inaccurate, as well as politically unwise. In our society, members of unprivileged groups such as the working classes and people of color also do disproportionate amounts of caring. Tronto presents care as one of the central activites of human life and illustrates the ways in which society degrades the importance of caring in order to maintain the power of those who are privileged.

The question of responsibility plays a critical role not only in our attempts to resolve social and political problems, but in our very conceptions of what those problems are. Who, for example, is to blame for apartheid in South Africa? Is the South African government responsible? What about multinational corporations that do business there? Will uncovering the "true facts of the matter" lead us to the right answer? In an argument both compelling and provocative, Marion Smiley demonstrates how attributions of blame—far from being based on an objective process of factual discovery—are instead judgments that we ourselves make on the basis of our own political and social points of view. She argues that our conception of responsibility is a singularly modern one that locates the source of blameworthiness in an individual's free will. After exploring the flaws inherent in this conception, she shows how our judgments of blame evolve out of our configuration of social roles, our conception of communal boundaries, and the distribution of power upon which both are based. The great strength of Smiley's study lies in the way in which it brings together both rigorous philosophical analysis and an appreciation of the dynamics of social and political practice. By developing a pragmatic conception of moral responsibility, this work illustrates both how moral philosophy can enhance our understanding of social and political practices and why reflection on these practices is necessary to the reconstruction of our moral concepts.

Drawing on postmodernist analyses, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries presents a feminist investigation into the marginalization of women within western discourse that denies female moral agency and embodiment. With reference to contemporary and historical issues in biomedicine, the book argues that the boundaries of both the subject and the body are no longer secure. The aim is both to valorise women and to suggest that 'leakiness' may be the very ground for a postmodern feminist ethic. The contribution made by Leaky Bodies and Boundaries is to go beyond modernist feminisms to radically displace the mechanisms by which women are devalued. The anxiety that postmodernism cannot yield an ethics, nor advance feminist concerns is addressed. This book will provide invaluable reading for those studying feminist philosophy, cultural studies and sociology.

The Politics and Morality of Deviance develops a theoretical framework and then applies it to four different and specific case studies in an explicit attempt to put the sociology of deviance back into mainstream sociology. It argues that deviance should be analyzed as a relative phenomenon in different and changing cultures, vis-a-vis change and stability in the boundaries of different symbolic/moral universes. It also argues that the legitimization of power should be thought of in terms of a moral order that in turn defines the societal boundaries of different symbolic/moral universes. Mills' concept of motivational accounting systems is utilized throughout the text in order to illustrate how the micro and macro levels of analysis can be integrated.

Joan Tronto's Moral Boundaries. A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (1993) is one of the most influential works in the short history of the ethics of care. In her book, Tronto rethinks 'care' as one of the central activities of human life and explains that it is shaped through politics. Since it is two decades ago that Moral Boundaries was published it seems more than worthwhile to take stock of its significance. This volume does so. It attempts to redraw the moral boundaries Tronto discusses and explores the impact and meaning of her thinking for care ethics as a developing discipline. This volume celebrates the anniversary of a book. Our 'author of honour' is Joan Tronto herself. The contributions of the other authors concentrate on three domains: political theory, professional ethics and the understanding of care as practice.

In Moral Boundaries, Joan C. Tronto provides one of the most original responses to the controversial questions surrounding women and caring and demonstrates that feminist thinkers have failed to realize the political context which has shaped their debates about care. Moral Boundaries contests the association of care with women as empirically and historically accurate, as well as politically unwise. In our society, other groups such as the working classes and people of color also do disproportionate amounts of caring. Tronto presents care as one of the central activities of human life and illustrates the ways in which society degrades the importance of caring in order to maintain the power of those who are privileged.