The Problem of Consent in Feminist Practical Ethics

The article analyzes the topical problem of consent in modern feminist theory as a way of achieving public consensus on the goals and forms of women?s emancipation. The emancipation of women is one of the most important achievements of modern society and an ongoing process. Therefore, the issues that are being discussed within the framework of feminist ethics are appropriate. For example, the extent to which men who hold power and dominance for thousands of years can genuinely liberate women and share with them equal rights and opportunities. There is also an acute problem of the extent to which women them- selves are willing to show solidarity and their consent on social and political issues. These issues and dis- cussions by contemporary feminists, who deserve the attention of a wide range of experts in applied ethics, argumentation theory, social and political theory, are addressed in this study.

Ìwà l’ẹwà: Towards a Yorùbá Feminist Ethics

This paper explores a narrative path towards foregrounding what it calls a gender-relative morality as a core dimension of female subordination. It takes a feminist approach to ethics, which stresses specifically the political enterprise of eradicating systems and structures of male domination and female subordination in both the public and the private domains. The theoretical implications of Feminist narrative ethics is then applied to the philosophical imports of Yorùbá proverbs about women as a way to tease out how female subordination is grounded in Yorùbá ontology and ethics. Spe[1]cifically, the essay interrogates the ethical and aesthetical trajectory that leads from ìwà l’ẹwà (character is beauty), a Yoruba moral dictum, to ìwà l’ẹwà obìnrin ([good moral] character is a woman’s beauty). Within this transition, there is the possibility that the woman is excluded from the category of those properly referred to as ọmọlúwàbí.

Promiscuous Care in Movement-Based Research: Lessons Learned from Collaborations in Manhattan's Chinatown

Decolonial and feminist studies scholars have long recognised the intricate ways in which the personal and academic are deeply interwoven and that the co-production of knowledge is essential for social transformation. This article examines the cultural organising of the Chinatown Art Brigade, an intergenerational collective of artists, activists, writers, educators and practitioners driven by the fundamental belief that cultural, material, and aesthetic modes of production have the power to combat gentrification. Specifically, I situate the collective within a longer lineage of Asian American cultural organising in Manhattan Chinatown and draw from years of movement-based research as a member of the collective. Incorporating personal reflection and interviews conducted with brigade members, this article speaks to how the themes of power, temporality and affectivity show up in movement-based research. How can we think more capaciously about academic and non-academic collaboration, to push the boundaries and explore new possibilities that honour the time, expertise and trauma of directly impacted communities? In reflecting on my work with the Chinatown Art Brigade, I discuss the nuances of intergenerational co-production of knowledge and interrogate how a feminist ethics of promiscuous care can uncover new possibilities for collaboration between cultural workers, organisers and movement-based scholars within and beyond the neoliberal academy.

Where’s the Love? Recentering Indigenous and Feminist Ethics of Care for Engaged Climate Research

Across a range of environmental change and crisis-driven research fields, including conservation, climate change and sustainability studies, the rhetoric of participatory and engaged research has become somewhat of a normative and mainstream mantra. Aligning with cautionary tales of participatory approaches, this article suggests that, all too often, ‘engaged’ research is taken up uncritically and without care, often by pragmatist, post-positivist and neoliberal action-oriented researchers, for whom the radical and relational practice of PAR is paradigmatically (ontologically, epistemologically and/or axiologically) incommensurable. Resisting depoliticised and rationalist interpretations of participatory methodologies, I strive in this article to hold space for the political, relational and ethical dimensions of collaboration and engagement. Drawing on four years of collaborative ethnographic climate research in the Peruvian Andes with campesinos of Quilcayhuanca, I argue that resituating Participatory Action Research (PAR) within a feminist and indigenous ethics of care more fully aligns with the radical participatory praxis for culturally appropriate transformation and the liberation of oppressed groups. Thus, I do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, rather this article provides a hopeful reworking of the participatory methodology and, specifically, participatory and community-based adaptation (CBA) practices, in terms of a feminist and indigenous praxis of love-care-response. In so doing, I strive to reclaim the more radical feminist and Indigenous elements – the affective, relational and political origins of collaborative knowledge production – and rethink research in the rupture of climate crises, relationally. The ethico-political frictions and tensions inherent in engaged climate scholarship are drawn into sharp relief, and deep reflection on the responsibility researchers take on when asking questions in spaces and times of ecological loss, trauma and grief is offered.

“Looking After Yourself Is Self-Respect”: The Limits and Possibilities of Men’s Care on a Night Out

Notions of masculinity have played a central role in social and cultural research on men’s drinking events. Within this context, masculinity is regularly called on to explain the problematic disparities that mark men’s alcohol consumption, including men’s disproportionate involvement in drinking and a range of alcohol-related harms. More recently, however, researchers have begun to emphasize men’s drinking events as sites of care and support, leading some to suggest that men’s drinking masculinities are evolving in affirmative and health promoting ways. While unsettling the tendency of scholars to problematize men’s drinking masculinities, foregrounding the possibilities of men’s care potentially obscures its complexities and constraints. In this paper, we are concerned to critically re-examine the relationship between masculinity, care, and events of men’s alcohol consumption. Where some authors have positioned men’s care as an innate or uncomplicated good, we draw on a feminist ethics of care approach to explore its complexities, constraints, and exclusions. Through focus group discussions with 101 men, our analysis describes how ideals of masculine autonomy emerged through men’s accounts of drinking events, fundamentally shaping the constitution, practice, and possibilities of care. For the men in our study, the valorization of autonomy fostered ambivalence and tension around care, hindering their capacity as care givers and receivers. In turn, opportunities and accountability for care were overlooked, avoided, or displaced onto women. By highlighting the complexity of men’s care, our account complicates existing scholarship on men’s drinking while also gesturing toward new avenues for public health practice. We conclude by outlining how a more concerted focus on care may be integrated into public health policy, research, and programming and, in the process, contribute to the promotion of more health affirming and ethical modes of masculinity.

Humanitarian Communication Through the Lens of Feminist Ethics of Care

Ethics are the driving force of the humanitarian field, a domain that has been governed by general and universal ethical principles. Researchers have largely focused on studying the organizational commitment to these principles, paying less attention to the role-specific ethics of this field. Moreover, researchers who consider the humanitarian field from a media studies lens have often focused on media representation, while questions about communication as practice are sidelined. In this paper, I approach humanitarian ethics with a particular focus on role morality and communication practices. With a particular focus on the role of a humanitarian communications specialist, I argue, in this paper, that the feminist ethics of care is a useful ethical framework that can guide communication specialists to better practices when they are in the field of operation. I also answer the following research questions: What are the main ethical principles that humanitarian communication specialists are expected to observe as humanitarians? Why are these principles insufficient? How might feminist ethics of care fill the gap left by current humanitarian principles and what would be the added value of this framework for practicing humanitarian communication? To answer, I ground my approach in an experiential understanding built from my personal experience as a humanitarian communications specialist. Second, I offer a literature review to highlight the common ground between humanitarian ethics and the feminist ethics of care and the added value of the feminist ethics of care why applied by humanitarian communication specialists. Third, I provide some examples of communications practices that may follow the feminist ethics of care model.