Moral Boundaries Redrawn

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. 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.

This book engages Christian love theologies, feminist economics, and political theory to identify elements of a Christian ethic of dependent care relations.

The aim of this book is to show how feminist perspectives can extend and advance the field of nursing ethics. It engages in the broader nursing ethics project of critiquing existing ethical frameworks as well as constructing and developing alternative understandings, concepts, and methodologies. All of the contributors draw attention to the operations of power inherent in moral relationships at individual, institutional, cultural, and socio-political levels. The early essays chart the development of feminist perspectives in the field of nursing ethics from the late 19th century to the present day and consider the impact of gender roles and gendered understandings on the moral lives of nurses, patients and families. They also consider the transformative potential of feminist perspectives to widen the scope of nursing and midwifery practices to include the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of moral decision-making in health care settings. The second half of the book draws on feminist insights to critically discuss the role of nurses and midwives in leadership, healthcare organisations, and research as well as the provision of particular forms of care e.g. care in the home and abortion care.

Cultivating Moral Character and Virtue in Professional Practice is a pioneering collection of essays focused on the place of character and virtue in professional practice. Professional practices usually have codes of conduct designed to ensure good conduct; but while such codes may be necessary and useful, they appear far from sufficient, since many recent public scandals in professional life seem to have been attributable to failures of personal moral character. This book argues that there is a pressing need to devote more attention in professional education to the cultivation or development of such moral qualities as integrity, courage, self-control, service and selflessness. Featuring contributions from distinguished leaders in the application of virtue ethics to professional practice, such as Sarah Banks, Ann Gallagher, Geoffrey Moore, Justin Oakley and Nancy Sherman, the volume looks beyond traditional professions to explore the ethical dimensions of a broad range of important professional practices. Inspired by a successful international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, the book examines various ways of promoting moral character and virtue in professional life from the general ethical perspective of contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theory. The professional concerns of this work are of global significance and the book will be valuable reading for all working in contemporary professional practices. It will be of particular interest to academics, practitioners and postgraduate students in the fields of education, medicine, nursing, social work, business and commerce and military service.

This book offers a unique and critical explication of teachers’ understanding and experience of care during a period of regulatory scrutiny and ‘notice to improve’. Written following research in a primary school in the north of England, it draws on the findings of an institutional ethnography to reveal the mediation of the teachers’ everyday work.

Short case studies, based on real stories from the health care arena, ensure that each chapter of this book is rooted in descriptions of nursing practise that are grounded, salient narratives of nursing care. The reader is assisted to explore the ethical dimension of nursing practice: what it is and how it can be portrayed, discussed, and analysed within a variety of practice and theoretical contexts. One of the unique contributions of this book is to consider nursing not only in the context of the individual nurse – patient relationship but also as a social good that is of necessity limited, due to the ultimate limits on the nursing and health care resource. This book will help the reader consider what good nursing looks like, both within the context of limitations on resources and under conditions of scarcity. Indeed, any discussion of ethical issues in nursing should be well grounded in a conceptualisation of nursing that nursing students and practising nursing can recognise, accept and engage with. Nursing, like medicine, social work and teaching has a clear moral aim – to do good. In the case of nursing to do good for the patient. However it is vital that in the pressurised, constrained health service of the 21st century, we help nurses explore what this might mean for nursing practice and what can reasonably be expected of the individual nurse in terms of good nursing care.

The path to good care-giving can be challenging, particularly where practices are characterised by crisis, moral panic and cultural complexity. How can we respond ethically when there is pressure to meet targets, work faster and implement quick, short-term fixes? This book offers a solution in the form of slow ethics.