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Emotions as Constituents for an Ethic of Care
Fabienne Brugère, Paris8 University, LLCP
Summary :
One cannot reflect on the ethics of care without subscribing to an anthropology of vulnerability of both the
cared for and the carers. I will argue that vulnerability presupposes a conception of human beings that restores
feeling as a motive for action that impregnates ethics. But, can caring be considered as love’s labour (to borrow
the title of Eva Feder Kittay’s book)? Love, caring and the construction of emotions produce relations that have
to do with the inequality of vulnerability. This inequality means irregularity and instability. Are emotions useful
for an ethics of care, especially in very asymmetrical relations as the protection of outsiders of the social world
(poor people, migrants, women without rights)? We will explore the theme of desentimentalized emotions as
an intelligent orientation in care, particularly if we consider social work.
The project of an ethics of care has to do with emotional factors. It engages moral relations which
stress the possibility of moral sentiments more than an abstract reason. More precisely, some kinds
of emotions are valued in contrast with the dominant rationalist approaches connected to Kantian
philosophy. From a care point of view, moral inquiries rooted on reason and rationalistic deductions
are considered as deficient and unjustly dominant. Typically, rationalistic moral theories reject
egoistic feelings and private interests that means favoritism and prevents universality. What sorts of
emotions are appreciated in an ethics of care? Of course, they are emotions with relational
capabilities and implicated in interpersonal and institutional contexts (as relations between a parent
and child, a patient and a nurse, a disabled person and a dependency worker, a homeless and a social
worker etc.). For an ethics of care, it is important to develop relations of caring that respond to the
perception of need and express a person’s concern.
These contextual moral theories question the philosophical acceptance of universalistic morality. For
example, it is easy to recognize an obligation for all parents to care for their children. But it does not
mean that all in actual fact relations between parents and children are satisfactory, that all children
live in a familial context favorable to their personal development. Obligations have to be combined
with relations of caring, with attitudes meeting dependent or vulnerable human beings. In other
words borrowed from Carol Gilligan two moral perspectives have to be recognized: the justice
perspective which is dominant and a care perspective forgotten by the intellectual tradition and able
to constitute an alternative perspective. This last orientation is based on an emotional and empirical
approach. As Carol Gilligan writes:
“Theoretically, the distinction between justice and care cuts across the familiar division between
thinking and feeling, egoism and altruism, theoretical and practical reasoning. It calls attention to
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the fact that all human relationships, public and private, can be characterized both in terms of
equality and in terms of attachment, and that both inequality and detachment constitute grounds
for moral concern. Since everyone is vulnerable both to oppression and to abandonment, two moral
visions –one of justice and one of care- recur in human experience”1.
This distinction between justice and care is a distinction between thinking and feeling, reason and
emotions. Caring relationships, from Gilligan’s point of view, are constituted “in terms of
attachment”: it implies that the sort of emotional relation constituted between a parent and a child
is a model of care. Attachments provide connections to others and are usually focused toward the
parent figure who brings physical and emotional security. For example, the “good enough mother”2
means a physical and emotional attachment, the early attachment to mother before the attachment
to transitional object ; it is a love between two imperfect people, the mother being capable of an
adaptation to the baby. The good enough mother provides physical care and meets her baby’s need
for emotional warmth and love. She also protects her baby against those parts of her from which
murderous feelings are brought forth when, for example, her baby screams and cries continuously.
By containing her own hateful feelings about her baby in that difficult moments, the good enough
mother facilitates her baby’s feelings and expressions of omnipotence. It is possible because the
mother is able to adapt caring to the baby’s needs until such time as the baby gradually begins to feel
safe enough to relinquish these feelings. At this stage the process of integration can start and the
baby begins to develop a sense of “me” and “not me”. An emotionally unavailable caregiver
endangers this process of formation. What is important is the concept of “dependence”, and for the
baby to follow a way from total dependence to relative dependence, by a gradual process and in
security, in order that the baby can begin to learn to tolerate the frustrations of the world outside of
himself and his mother.
The example of the “good enough mother” gives substance to a dependency that concerns our
needs. A baby is not self-sufficient; he or she is closely connected or linked to those who are useful
for sustaining his or her life. He or she is vulnerable to abandonment.
I should like to argue that the question of vulnerability is very important for an ethics of care
conscious of the importance of emotions or feelings; child’s tie to his or her caregivers implies the
conception of an ego-relatedness where vulnerability and the sphere of emotions are essential. On
1 « Moral Orientation and Moral Development », in Justice and Care, Virginia Held ed., Westview Press, 1995,
p.32.
2 Daniel Winnicott, “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena; a study of the first not-me possession”,
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1953.
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the one hand, vulnerability presupposes a conception of human beings that restores feeling or
emotional relation as a motive for action that impregnates ethics. But, on the other hand, the
insistence on attachment is not insignificant and has to be discussed. Assembling love, emotion and
the relationship between a mother and her baby often means an association between moral theory
and women, moral theory and family, care and gender.
For Gilligan, the theme of care has to do with the different and erased voice of women that
represents an individuation with a basis for empathy, a capacity to experience another’s needs or
feeling and to take vulnerability into account. Differently, signs of detachment and lacks of concern
are qualified by Gilligan as more male than female. It is important to discuss this gendered
orientation and the connection between women and emotions. I will emphasize the theme of
desentimentalized emotions, of a good distance in caring relationships, a possibility for considering
the model of motherhood in a critical approach (as I wrote in L’éthique du care, 2011)3.
I. An anthropology of vulnerability and the sphere of emotions
The views of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers as Hutcheson, Hume and Smith imply an account on
moral life problematizing moral sentiments with the role of the concepts of “moral sense” and of
“sympathy”. They call into question the abstract rules of our dominant theories inhabited by the idea
that moral maturity is rational, expressing will or autonomy of human beings. People have real
emotional needs to be attached to something, to someone and it means a moral perspective.
Morality is essential for creating interaction between people, interdependence in conformity with a
model of a decent society different from the liberal one enrooted in individual autonomy and the
figure of a subject of rights. As Annette Baier writes about Gilligan’s In a different Voice, there are
two visions of morality that engage two visions of emotions: “the emphasis in Kantian theories on
rational control of emotions, rather than on cultivating desirable forms of emotion, is challenged by
Gilligan, along with the challenge to the assumption of the centrality of autonomy, or relations
between equals, and of freely chosen relations” 4. What does an emphasis on cultivating desirable
forms of emotion mean? Annette Baier explains it with the role of parents. Parents need to love their
children, not just to control their irritation or their caprice. The unequal infant does not choose its
place in a family (or nation). To assume parental responsibilities implies anything else than power
and control. It is important to care for children with a sort of attention and protection that does not
3 Fabienne Brugère, L’éthique du care, Paris, PUF, 2011.
4 « The Need for More than Justice », in Justice and Care, op. cit., p. 57.
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exclude the importance of emotions. This rethinking of ethical and social bonds combines the
emotional sphere with the preservation of life and the necessity to guarantee needs to everybody
because all human are vulnerable –more or less-.
I should like to insist on this concept of “vulnerability” that invites a subversion of modern
individualism and a new place for the sphere of emotions. One cannot reflect on an ethic of care
without subscribing to an anthropology of vulnerability, the vulnerability of both the cared for and
the carers (in the relational and the physical senses of care) from the fact of their lack of place in
society.
Vulnerability presupposes a conception of the human which rehabilitates feeling or emotion as a
motive for action. More precisely, it gives priority to delicate relationships, part of which may be
beyond our control. Vulnerability prompts thought on dependence, and what that may reveal. It is
the moment when we are formed by relations with others which escape our consciousness. These
relations of dependency, which reveal the vulnerability of a newborn for instance, constitute the
subject in an opaque way.
These relations of dependency indicate a primary opacity of the self. There is a history of this primary
opacity of the self and of the vulnerability it implies. Philosophically, this history of vulnerability could
begin with Rousseau in Emile. Rousseau distinguishes two kinds of dependency, towards other
human beings and toward objects. The first is social, the second natural. The dependency towards
objects is not very important because it does not injure freedom. It is really different from the
dependency towards human beings. If a natural human being does not refer to anything else except
his own needs, a social human being is very dependent. The contract in the Discourse on Inequality
must be understood as a voluntary association which means a hidden servitude.5 Is dependency only
this kind of servitude? Perhaps not. There is another dependency in Emile (book 4) which is more
complicated and can be apprehended through the opacity of the self in formation. This dependency
reveals a kind of dignity which cannot be assimilated to servitude or submission. The example of the
child gives substance to a dependency which concerns our needs. A child is not self-sufficient; he or
she is closely connected (or linked) to those who are useful for the sustaining of his or her life. As a
5Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality ; in French, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les
hommes : « Tous coururent au devant de leurs fers croyant assurer leur liberté », second part, Oeuvres
complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Pléiade, 1964, III, p. 177 or Emile IV,GF-Flammarion, Paris, 1966, p. 307 : « Il y a
dans l’état de nature une égalité de fait réelle et indestructible, parce qu’il est impossible dans cet état que la
seule différence d’homme à homme soit assez grande pour rendre l’un dépendant de l’autre. Il y a dans l’état
civil une égalité de droit chimérique et vaine, parce que les moyens destinés à la maintenir servent eux-mêmes
à la détruire, et que la force publique ajoutée au plus fort pour opprimer le faible rompt l’espèce d’équilibre
que la nature avait mis entre eux".
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child, he or she does not know his or her social rank or place. The opacity of the self resides in an
incapacity to occupy a place because the child is too weak. The opacity is a mark of a primary
vulnerability. Rousseau writes about Emile as a child. Firstly, a child must feel his or her weakness but
must not suffer from it. Secondly, he or she is only subordinated to others as a result of his needs and
because they see more than he does what is useful for him. Thirdly, he must depend on others but
he must not obey.
The question of needs symbolizes the dependency of children and, not at all their submission,
but their interdependence; this means that dependency is structured through an aim: the
development of the child. This is how we can introduce an ethics of care: caring (taking care of a
child) has a limit: what is good for the child. But, dependency is complex and linked to a context in an
interdependent social world. We can characterize the world of care with this interdependence. Yet,
what does interdependence mean? It means an irregular or unstable world which has to do with
emotions and with the definition of love (for Rousseau, this is the kind of game we can elaborate
between self-love - amour propre - and love of others).
Caring can be considered as love’s labour (to borrow the title of a book by Eva Feder Kittay: Love’s
Labor). Love, and more generally the sphere of emotions, have to be associated with an ethic of care.
Love, caring and the construction of emotions produce relations which have to do with the inequality
of vulnerability. This inequality means irregularity, instability as well. What explains all these figures
of uncertainty is that the sphere of emotions takes place in a context or a situation: emotions have
to do with accidents. Normally, emotions are considered as intimate, unchosen and between
unequals. They produce problems of contradiction and conflict. When Adam Smith writes The Theory
of Moral Sentiments, he notices “the irregularity of sentiments” as a truth but it is not a fault. On the
contrary, it induces action :
“Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as
upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species”.6
“Nor is that irregularity of sentiments altogether without its utility, by which the merit of an
unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes,
appears to be imperfect. Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties
6Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Raphael and Macfie ed., Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1984, p.
105.
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such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favourable
to the happiness of all”.7
The irregularity of sentiments or emotions is not a danger for human beings; it constitutes a part of
the happiness of the species. More precisely, it is useful to engage individuals in all kinds of action.
An action means changes in the external circumstances. If the emotional sphere is irregular, it implies
that this sphere is plastic (that is to say, capable of changes to attain an aim).
So, to think about a world of care is to consider this sphere as philosophically important with
Rousseau in Emile, with Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It is attack on the pretensions of
reason. It can be read as an attempt to transgress the philosophical boundary between reason and
emotions. For Annette Baier, it is an attack on the whole patriarchal, theological tradition and on its
claims about the relative authority of various human voices. As Annette Baier writes, it is a
“debunking enterprise”.8 There is the same kind of enterprise with the ethics of care in order to
move the philosophical boundary between reason and emotion, to break the association between
reason and a masculine voice, between sentiments and a feminine voice. The ethical project consists
in a critical analysis of Kantian moral philosophies (such as John Rawls’s Theory of Justice). Such
philosophies forget that it is impossible to reduce sentiments or emotions to irrationality. They are
susceptible of a complex elaboration which takes place in a context, in an understanding of changes
in external circumstances. But, do they guarantee caring?
We can draw a comparison. In the same way as the moral sentiments arguments of the Scottish
Enlightenment thinkers represent the “losing” side in moral thinking in the eighteenth century (with
the triumph of a Kantian and universalistic morality), caring represents a minority morality too
(which is not rooted in the impartiality of reason and in an abstract theory of justice). We can add
that caring has no value in our societies structured by capitalism and liberalism. Joan Tronto analyses
what she calls “marginalizing Care” or “Care as Weakness”. The point of view about caring does not
principally engage the conception of an emotional sphere (which has been reduced to a construct to
separate men and women, public space and privacy). The analysis is about care as a work. Care work
is devalued but care is also devalued conceptually through a connection with privacy, with emotion,
and with the needy. Since our society treats public accomplishment, rationality, and autonomy as
worthy qualities, care is devalued insofar as it embodies their opposites.9 Whether we consider care
7Ibid., p. 105-106.
8 Annette Baier, Moral Prejudices, Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 80
9Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries, Rouledge, 1993, p. 117.
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as a work or as a disposition, it is always devalued. Thus, care can be portrayed as a marginal aspect
of our society. If care is invisible, it is because it is misunderstood for several reasons.
II. Gender inequalities
Of course, the invisibility of care has to do with gender differences and with the role of emotions.
On the one hand, many of the thinkers who have written about care describe it only as an attitude
or disposition. For example, Nel Noddings formulates an ethic of caring which combines two feelings
or emotions: the sentiment of natural caring and the remembrance of the first in response.10 But, the
universality she invokes is puzzling: “The caring attitude that lies at the heart of all ethical behaviour
is universal. As a mother…”. For Noddings, there is no criticism of naturalism. She could not agree
with the idea that motherhood is a socially constructed institution regularly used to legitimize
women’s oppression.
On the other hand, in addition to care being associated with the emotional as opposed to the
rational, care is also devalued in its meaning through its related association with the private sphere.
Care is usually conceived of in our culture as, ideally, a private concern which has to do with women
as mothers and female sentiments. Women are expected to care for those who live under their roof.
It is because care has been elaborated in a private sphere with the force of feelings that it cannot be
recognized. So, there is a distribution of care which maintains the privilege of people who have the
opportunity simply to ignore certain forms of care: a certain ignorance serves to prevent the
relatively privileged from noticing the needs of others. We can talk about an ideological context of
care. Caring about, and taking care of, are the duties of the powerful. Care-giving and care-receiving
are left to the less powerful, women, poor people, migrant workers, ethnic minorities. There are
arenas, of course, where men of relatively high prestige “care”. It is symptomatic to notice that every
time a doctor is taking care of a patient, there are also nurses, orderlies, and lab technicians which
are the actual providers of hands-on care.11 When care has to do with the body or is involved in
private or local concerns it is given up by powerful people. So Tronto writes:
10
“Caring”, in Justice and care, op. cit., p. 9.
11Tronto, Moral Boundaries, op. cit., p. 115.
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“Out of this association of “taking care of” with masculinity, “caring about” also becomes gendered,
raced, and classed: men and people of greater privilege take care of; they care about public and
broader issues”.12
How can an area of care be recognized when it comprises a variety of unrecognized
activities? Carol Gilligan’s book, In a Different Voice,13 is instructive here because it raises the
issue of “care” and women’s silenced voices. According to Gilligan, moral questioning is
rooted in the observation of gender inequality: women do not approach moral problems the
same way men do, and their voices are made vulnerable in the name of defending a rational
morality that considers itself free from divisions when in fact it excludes from the domain of
moral action everything resembling empathy with the other, or worse, responsibility with
respect to the vulnerability or needs of others. Women’s voices are no different from men’s,
but masculine domination has made them inaudible by creating a correlation between moral
feelings, the private or family arena, and a supposed feminine nature (particularly in the 18th
century, when the conception of the public sphere was tied to contracts and excluded any
dependent persons—primarily women, but also slaves, domestic servants, and poor
laborers). Gilligan calls for once again valuing women’s voices to establish equality between
two moralities: one referencing subjects of rights capable of distancing themselves from
their activities, which Gilligan calls an ethic of justice based on the ideal of a neutral public
sphere; and one referencing subjects of need who must be “taken care of,” which requires
subjects acting in favor of others and an ethic of responsibility. Of course, such an ethic—of
responsibility or “care”—must vindicate the forgotten experiences of women, which have
been poorly evaluated in masculine moral psychologies (such as those of Kohlberg, cited by
Gilligan). But above all, it must transform gender relationships and eliminate the inequalities
that lead to socially positioning men and women to the detriment of the activities involving
concern for others that women perform. In short, a feminist ethic is needed to democratize
society and promote equality between voices, which would shift the barriers (too hastily
erected in the name of a normalizing rational identity of individuals) between reason and
feeling, public and private, moral and political. Such an ethic must make women aware of
the need to leave behind the imposed, conventional goodness of “care” as self-sacrifice in
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Ibid.
13 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press, 1982.
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favor of a relational morality that combines concern for the self and concern for others,
while being aware, of course, of situations and chains of vulnerability (between caregivers
and recipients, women, the poor, migrants, etc.).
Restoring equality in the area of care thus means considering vulnerability within the
framework of an ethic that, instead of expressing the moral weakness of women, expresses
a relational maturity, a sense of collective responsibility (with regard to all forms of need);
an ethic that, having deconstructed gender inequalities, could be applied to humankind and
enable us to relate to others in a way that reflects a concrete, rather than a generalized,
other.14 This involves accepting a particularist, as opposed to a universalist, morality, or even
calling for an “interactive” universality that recognizes the plurality of human lifestyles.
This relational maturity is a way for women to experiment a new sort of caring attitude.
Women have to abandon a typical feminine attitude: the self-sacrifice which means a
concern for others and no concern for the self. The deconstruction of gender inequalities
supposes that women (against the history of women) establish a distance with others, a sort
of limitation or control of their empathy, being capable of distancing themselves from their
activities of care, improving de-sentimentalized emotions.
III. From gender inequalities to the conception of a Social Care Work
Let us consider that “caring” for the vulnerable constitutes an interpersonal accompaniment
and should be developed in social policies concerning non-autonomous individuals.
However, it cannot be developed without respecting some form of the capacity to act, be or
say. Treating vulnerability does not mean losing sight of the care recipient’s ability to be
productive: assistance must not be confused with charity. Moreover, in the area of gender
inequality, one could say that the naturalization movement, which linked the future of
women to emotions and solicitude within the family sphere (I wrote a book entitled Le sexe
de la sollicitude, 2008), was replaced with the need for a certain number of women to
consider care as work and take poorly paid, invisible jobs that turn their dependence (so
decried by Simone de Beauvoir) into exploitation in precarious jobs. How do the vulnerable
14
See Seyla Benhabib, “The Generalized and the Concrete Other,” in Feminism as Critique, Benhabib and
Cornell, eds., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1986, p. 77-95.
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themselves relate to the more vulnerable when inequalities are intensified far from the
centers of power?
Stressing the struggle against inequalities, (gender inequalities) means to argue that caring
relations are not only interpersonal relations. “Vulnerability” and “feelings” or emotions are
not merely given properties of individuals. More precisely, vulnerability, needs, as well as
emotions and affects cannot be condemned to silence: they conceive “concrete” others as
Seyla Benhabib writes. But “concrete” others or a more integrated vision of ourselves do not
exclude the conception of a Welfare State and both social and political relationships. If
relationships have an affective or emotional constitution, it does not mean that caring
relations are only interpersonal.
For Paul Ricoeur, in a book entitled Soi-même comme un autre, (Oneself as Another), to
consider the other as one considers oneself involves a notion of living-well which cannot
limit itself to interpersonal relationships but extends to institutions, and to the need for
them to be just.15 Ethics is always both social and political. Furthermore, when it occupies
itself with the care of others and human vulnerability, it cannot but extend itself into the
establishment of as just as possible a historical community. Institutions must play their part
in producing a care society in which vulnerability may be shared and responsibility
collectively assumed in the face of different forms of dependence.
In fact, even if ethics of care proclaim that we are all more or less vulnerable, it still stands
that care supposes concrete asymmetrical relations, a difference between the carer and the
cared-for which is a knot of problems for a "philosophy of equality". Paul Ricoeur states the
need for institutions in this framework of relations and practices. Institutions allow us to
break free from dyadic relations that are initially asymmetrical. They must make "the search
for equality through inequality" inevitable 16 through recognition of the value of the other.
Now, this recognition cannot be carried by a relation which is not guaranteed by the
presence of institutions. Relating to another supposes being able to view them as another
self, which implies a plurality of human relations and a common world that cannot be
reduced to dialogic relations.
15
Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, Paris, Seuil, 1990, p.211.
16 Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, op.cit.,p.225.
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The institution defines a common power to the anonymous that are also the vulnerable.
From this point of view the definition of the institution must be broad. According to Ricoeur,
by institution we must mean: "the structure of living-together of a historical community –
people, nation, region, etc. a structure that cannot be reduced to interpersonal relations and
yet they are linked to them".17 Good-living is not limited to interpersonal relations. It must
be extended to the level of institutions that determine a concrete or historic living-together
through which the demand for equality can be made. How is it possible to introduce care in
the level of institutions with the idea to act for concrete others? How is it possible to
maintain what care implies: empathy and concern for others, but in a professional or
institutional way? The point is necessary a reconsideration of the sphere of feelings,
emotions or affects, and expresses the possibility to render them more professional; it
means a sort of desentimentalized attitude. The emotional sphere has to be combined with
responsibility, strong communication skills, etc. The caring attitude is not only constituted by
solicitude, compassion or altruism.
To conclude, I will consider what Dublin Institute of Technology (Social Sciences and Law DIT
School) explains about social care work, constituting a very clever difference between “social
workers” and “social care workers” with the following problem: what is social care?
"Social care workers plan and provide professional individual or group care to clients with
personal and social needs. Client groups are varied and include children and adolescents in
residential care; young people in detention schools; people with intellectual or physical
disabilities; people who are homeless; people with alcohol/drug dependency; families in the
community; or older people. Social care workers strive to support, protect, guide and
advocate on behalf of clients. Social care work is based on interpersonal relationships
which require empathy, strong communication skills, self-awareness and an ability to use
critical reflection. Teamwork and interdisciplinary work are also important in social care
practice.
The core principles underpinning social care work are similar to those of other helping
professions, and they include respect for the dignity of clients; social justice; and
17
Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, op.cit., p. 227.
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empowerment of clients to achieve their full potential.
Social care practice differs from social work practice in that it uses shared life-space
opportunities to meet the physical, social and emotional needs of clients. Social care work
uses strengths-based, needs-led approaches to mediate clients’ presenting problems”18.
It means that social care workers meet people’s needs in an environment or a context and
they use their emotions (empathy, for example) in a professional way, associated with other
qualities. In that way, there is a sort of neutralization from empathy, a professionalization of
emotions that is a distance from the emotional sphere (altruism, compassion in difficult
circumstances). Maturity (calm professionals), trustworthiness and reliability are important.
Emotions are constituent for an ethics of care. But they have to be combined and associated
with other qualities.
This association of emotions with other qualities is fundamental because a social care
worker work in a direct person-to-person capacity. He has to protect the other and himself
against the abuses of an emotional sphere (which would become sentimental). It is different
for a social worker:
“A social care practitioner will typically work in a direct person-to-person capacity with
clients. He or she will seek to provide a caring, stable environment in which various social,
educational and relationship interventions can take place in the day-to-day living space of
the client. The social worker's role, on the other hand, is to manage the 'case', for example
by arranging the residential child care placement in which a child is placed, co-ordinating
case review meetings, negotiating the termination of a placement and responding to child
protection concerns in a given area”19.
18
http://www.dit.ie/study/undergraduate/programmes/dt571/
19 http://www.dit.ie/study/undergraduate/programmes/dt571/
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