Abstract
Care ethics as initiated by Gilligan, Held, Tronto and others (in the nineteen eighties and nineties) has from its onset been critical towards ethical concepts established in modernity, like ‘autonomy’, alternatively proposing to think from within relationships and to pay attention to power. In this article the question is raised whether renewal in this same critical vein is necessary and possible as late modern circumstances require rethinking the care ethical inquiry. Two late modern realities that invite to rethink care ethics are complexity and precariousness. Late modern organizations, like the general hospital, codetermined by various (control-, information-, safety-, accountability-) systems are characterized by complexity and the need for complexity reduction, both permeating care practices. By means of a heuristic use of the concept of precariousness, taken as the installment of uncertainty, it is shown that relations and power in late modern care organizations have changed, precluding the use of a straightforward domination idea of power. In the final section a proposition is made how to rethink the care ethical inquiry in order to take late modern circumstances into account: inquiry should always be related to the concerns of people and practitioners from within care practices.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
We differentiate this sociological attention for transformation in real life occurrences from mere philosophical and cultural theory approaches of Modernity. (Rosa 2016, 672) We restrict the argument to the western hemisphere and we do not enter, here, the debate on multiple modernities.
References
Amalberti, R. 2013. Navigating safety: Necessary compromises and trade-offs-theory and practice. Heidelberg: Springer.
Baart, A., and F. Vosman. 2015. De patiënt terug van weggeweest. Amsterdam: SWP.
Baecker, D. 2011. Organisation und Störung. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Baecker, D. 2013. Beobachter unter sich. Eine Kulturtheorie, Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Bee, P.E., P. Barnes, and K.A. Luker. 2009. A systematic review of informal caregivers’ needs in providing home-based end-of-life care to people with cancer. Journal of Clinical Nursing 18(10): 1379–1393.
Boonen, M.J.M.H., Vosman, F.J.H., Niemeijer, A.R. (2016). Is technology the best medicine? Three practice theoretical perspectives on medication administration technologies in nursing. Nursing Inquiry 23(2):121–127.
Brugère, F. 2011. L’éthique du care. Paris: P.U.F.
Bürger, P. 2001. Das Altern der Moderne. Schriften zur bildenden Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Castel, R. 2010. L’autonomie, aspiration ou condition. La Vie des idées, 26. http://www.booksandideas.net/Autonomy-Aspiration-or-Condition.html. Accessed 15 Aug 2016.
Charmaz, K. 2010. Grounded theory as an emergent method. In Handbook of emergent methods, eds. S. Nagy Hesse-Biber, and P. Leavy, 155–170. New York: Guilford.
Collins, S. 2015. The core of care ethics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Compagnon, C., and T. Sannié. 2012. L’Hôpital: un monde sans pitié. Paris: L’Éditeur.
Crozier, M., and E. Friedberg. 1981. L’acteur et le système. Paris: Seuil.
Dekker, S. 2004. Ten questions about human error: A new view of human factors and system safety. Cleveland: CRC Press.
Delbridge, R., and T. Edwards. 2013. Inhabiting institutions. Critical realist refinements to understanding institutional complexity and change. Organization Studies 34 (7): 927–947.
Ehrenberg, A. 2010. La société du malaise. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Engster, D. 2015. Review of S. Collins, The core of care ethics, New York: Palgrave, Hypatia. http://hypatiaphilosophy.org/HRO/content/core-care-ethics. Accessed 15 Aug 2016.
Giddens, A. 1990. The consequences of modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford Ca: Stanford University Press.
Hankivsky, O. 2014. Rethinking care ethics: on the promise and potential of an intersectional analysis. American Political Science Review 108(02): 252–264.
Held, V. 2006. The ethics of care. personal, political, global. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Innes, A.D., P.D. Campion, and F.E. Griffiths. 2005. Complex consultations and the ‘edge of chaos’. The British Journal of General Practice 55(510): 47.
Jurecic, A. 2012. Illness as narrative. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Kaissi, A. 2012. Primary care physician shortage, healthcare reform, and convenient care: challenge meets opportunity? Southern Medical Journal 105(11): 576–580.
Kannampalli, T., T. Chen, D.R. Kaufman, V.L. Patel 2014. Rethinking complexity in the critical care environment. In Cognitive informatics in health and biomedicine, eds. Patel, V.L. et al., 343–356. London: Springer.
Kaplan, M. 2010. Friendship fictions: The rhetoric of citizenship in the liberal imaginary. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Keller, R. 2011. Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Kernick, D. 2004. Complexity and healthcare organization: A view from the street. Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing.
Klaver, K., E. van Elst, and A. Baart, 2014. Demarcation of the ethics of care as a discipline. Nursing Ethics 21(7): 755–765.
Kunneman, H. 2010. Ethical complexity. In Complexity, difference and identity, eds. P. Cilliers, and R. Preiser, 131–164. Dordrecht: Springer.
Laugier, S. 2011. Le care, le souci du detail et la vulnérabilité du réel. In Grammaires de la vulnérabilité, eds. M. Gaille, and S. Laugier, 39–58. Paris: PUPS.
Le Blanc, G. 2007. Vie ordinaires, vies précaires. Paris: Seuil.
Macintyre, A. 1984. After virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Macpherson, C.B. 1976. The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marchart, O. 2013a. Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Marchart, O. 2013b. Das unmögliche Objekt. Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Morin, E. 1992. Context and Complexity. New York: Springer.
Nicolini, D. 2013. Practice theory, work, and organization: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ogien, A. 2014. Revenir à l’ordinaire, l’exercice de la connaissance et situation d’intervention. In S. Laugier, M. Gaille, Retour à la vie ordinaire. Dossier Raison Publique. Arts, Politique et société, no. 18, Spring 2014, 77–91. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Plsek, P.E., and T. Greenhalgh 2001. Complexity science: The challenge of complexity in health care. British Medical Journal 323(7313): 625–632.
Pols, J. 2015. Towards an empirical ethics in care: Relations with technologies in health care. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 18(1): 81–90.
Reckwitz, A. 2012. Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Rosa, H. 2013. Social acceleration. A new theory of modernity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rosa, H. 2016. Resonanz - Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Berlin: Suhrkamp, pp. 672.
Schatzki, Th.R. 1996. Social practices: a Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, Th. 2015. Nie wieder Qualität. Strategien des Paradoxie-Managements.[Habilitation]. Wildtal & Kersiguenou.
Sims, S, H.G. Hewitt, and R. Harris. 2015. Evidence of a shared purpose, critical reflection, innovation and leadership in interprofessional healthcare teams: a realist synthesis. Journal of Interprofessional Care 29(3): 209–215.
Standing, G. 2011. The precariat. The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Tronto, J. 1993. Moral boundaries. London: Routledge.
Tronto, J. 2013. Caring democracy. markets, equality, and justice. New York: New York University Press.
Tufford, N. 2010. Bracketing in qualitative research. Qualitative Social Work 11(1): 80–96.
Vosman, F. 2016. Kartographie einer Ethik der Achtsamkeit—Rezeption und Entwicklung in der europäischen Wissenschaft. In Praxis der Achtsamkeit. Schlüsselbegriffe der Care-Ethik, eds. E. Conradi, and F. Anonymous, 40–81. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
Vosman, F., J. den Bakker, and D. Weenink. 2016. How to make sense of suffering in complex care practices? In Practice theory and research. Exploring the dynamics of social life, eds. G. Spaargaren, D. Weenink, and M. Lamers, pp. 117–130. New York: Taylor and Francis.
Wagner, P. 2009. Moderne als Erfahrung und Interpretation. Konstanz: UVK.
Wagner, P. 2012. Modernity. Understanding the present. Cambridge: etc.:Polity.
Willms, B. 1979. Revolution und Protest oder Glanz und Elend des bürgerlichen Subjekts—Hobbes, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Marcuse. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Wilson T., Holt, T., and Greenhalgh, T. 2001. Complexity science: complexity and clinical care. BMJ 323(7314): 685–688.
Acknowledgements
The authors are hugely indebted to the anonymous reviewers who have put a great deal of effort in commenting on previous versions of this article, thereby improving it substantially. The authors would also like to thank Anne Mackie for her editorial work on the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vosman, F., Niemeijer, A. Rethinking critical reflection on care: late modern uncertainty and the implications for care ethics. Med Health Care and Philos 20, 465–476 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9766-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-017-9766-1