The Faces of Human Vulnerability

The notion of vulnerability is one of the beliefs of a recent current of moral and political philosophy, namely care ethics. Stemming, especially, from the North American feminist movement, this care ethics, based on the rejection of a universal and abstract morals, privileges the relational dimension based on the orientation towards human vulnerability.Subject to the weight of the tyranny of normality and perfection, contemporary societies, glorifying the individual who is useful and performant, struggle to hide, or more often than not deny the vulnerability of human beings. The notion of vulnerability appeared not only as a mutual sign of any person who is in a dependent situation, but also as one of the constitutive dimensions of the essence of living beings and of their life environment. In this article, the notion of vulnerability will be studied by identifying the representative themes of human vulnerability particular to their life and its conditions of being. Firstly, the hypothesis proposed by Freud in Le malaise dans la culture (2010)represents the underlying basis of this study on human vulnerability. Next, two important concepts guide the study proposed: the vulnerability inherent to human subjectivity, from the perspective of Lévinas, and the one akin the process of socialising of human beings, from the perspective of Habermas.

Looking into the kaleidoscope of activism: the engagement of care ethics and global bioethics for a refined health security

During public health crises, the United States utilizes a statist approach for securing its population’s health, which places state structures at the center of a (mainly economic) health security. The fairness of this approach relies on a distribution of resources to “trickle down” from institutions to individuals. Yet, “fairness,” in this regard, is determined a priori, that is, without reference to specific individuals who are receiving resources of health. This ignores contextual needs that arise from the disproportionate damage that epidemics and pandemics have on vulnerable populations. A statist approach can make a more equitable impact on global society if it integrates care ethics into its distributive justice. In this paper, I demonstrate how an ethic of care can substantiate health security. First, I show how an ethic of care can be engaged anywhere embodiment is recognizable—not just in the one-on-one setting of the clinical encounter—but in the (inter)national contexts through which public health crises have a full effect on. Second, I provide a methodology for state institutions to recognize the social embodiment necessary to engage an ethic of care in these contexts, specifically engaging the social embodiment that manifests through the social activism of vulnerable populations during public health crises. Third, I demonstrate how the social embodiment that activism lives through forces an encounter with state institutions, mimicking in this manner a clinical encounter on a macrocosmic scale. Finally, I assign an ethic of care to this encounter, meshing caring values to the criteria of distribution.

Cultural Probes as a Carefully Curated Research Design Approach to Elicit Older Adult Lived Experience

There is growing recognition that methods that elicit the perspectives of vulnerable and marginalized people are essential in understanding the needs and aspirations of this group and therefore necessary when developing impactful policies, services, and environments that support them. Creative elicitation methods, which privilege participant voice, can be useful for conducting research with such populations. This chapter explores how research informed by care ethics, appreciative inquiry, and communicative methodology can support participant self-determination through the achievement of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. By advancing deliberate, iterative, and care-full research design that emphasizes belonging, dignity, and justice, cultural probes provide practical potential and ethical utility as a research method. The effectiveness of this care-full cultural probe approach is demonstrated and examined through a case study of a co-design research project concerned with designing for health and well-being at home with and for older adults.

Breaking the Mould: A Theory Explaining How Young Adults Living with WS Learn Life Skills through Music

This article presents a theory explaining how young adults living with Williams syndrome (WS) learn life skills through music. The article answers the question: What theory explains how young adults living with WS learn life skills through music? The theory presented in this article is informed by principles of care ethics and compassionate music education and theories of wellbeing and flourishing. The theory is further informed by empirical data, including data collected during semi-structured interviews, casual conversations, observations, field notes, and social media and blog posts collected at Berkshire Hills Music Academy, Massachusetts, USA, over six weeks. Thematic analysis was the data analysis strategy. The theoretical proposition represented by the findings is: (i) If young adults living with WS have the opportunity to learn through engagement in music activities within a safe environment in which they are engaged, supported, appreciated, motivated, feel that they belong and feel that they are competent, and (ii) if educators are willing to focus on the abilities of these young adults by putting their needs first, (iii) then young adults living with WS should be able to overcome various challenges and ultimately develop the life skills they need to live well.

Care Ethics Management and Redesign Organization in the New Normal

The pandemic period has placed the organizations in a state of great tension. It has generated a situation of confusion, lack of rules, and production-related criticalities that have called into question the very existence of many productive realities. This article aims to highlight the dimensions of care and ethics put in place by HR managers in COVID-19. The objective that animated the authors have focused on the HRM level of medium and large companies in Italy to highlight the protective actions toward people and the organization in the period COVID 19, highlighting what were the ethical values and actions of care put in place. In this article, we wanted to give voice to managers (N = 45, including 21 women and 24 men, aged between 40 and 55 years old) who had management tasks in their organizations by asking them to tell us how they dealt with the challenges imposed by the emergency. In the research, we start from a way of understanding workplaces understood as a “process of ongoing social relationship” within which the HR function is dedicated to the care of the quality of relationships. HR managers have to manage a complex role of mediating between the interests of people and employers by trying to find good mediations.