Moral Boundaries Redrawn

The Significance of Joan Tronto's Argument

for Political Theory, Professional Ethics,

and Care as Practice

Gert Olthuis, Helen Kohlen, Jorma Heier

50 E L I S A B E T H CONRADI A N D JORMA HEIER

Haraway, Donna J. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan© meets_ 4.

OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.
Heier, Jorma. 2012. „Wirkliche Gerechtigkeit i s t . . . Restoration, nicht notwendiger-
weise in den Zustand, wie er gewesen war, sondern in den, wie er wirklich sein
Privileged irresponsibility
sollte". In Gerechtig/ceit und Solidaritat im Gesundheitswesen, eds. Hermann
Brandenburg, Helen Kohlen. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 127-141.
Heier, Jorma. 2010. Repairing the Social Fabric after Collective Violence and Vivienne Bozalek
Wrongdoing. Conference paper, Emerging Forms of Sociality, University of Frank-
furt, 02.10.2010.
Lugones, Maria. 2003. Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and Loving Perception. I n Pil-
grimages/ Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Multiple Oppressions. Boulder,
CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 77-102.
Medina, Jose. 2012. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression,
Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mills, Charles Wade. [1997] 1999. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University "One of the privileges of the privileged is to be able to be oblivious to
Press. the life experiences of the subjugated. I don't believe healing can take
Narayan, Uma. 1995. Colonialism and its others: considerations on rights and care place i n a context where the privileged have n o t come to terms w i t h the
discourses. I n Hypatia 10 2, 133-140. existence of inequality. N o t o n l y must the privileged acknowledge
Robinson, Fiona. 2010. After Liberalism in World Politics? Towards an International the existence of marginalisation, they must find some way to appreciate
Political Theory of Care. I n Ethics & Social Welfare Vol. 4, No. 2, July, 130-144. the inequality and the suffering of the subjugated.
Tronto, Joan C. 2013. Caring Democracy. Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York, For the subjugated, there are different responsibilities. T h e most impor-
London: New York University Press.
tant of these is to find some way to regain one's voice. One cannot expe-
Tronto, Joan C. 2010. Creating Caring Institutions: Politics, Plurality and Purpose.
rience d o m i n a t i o n and subjugation and retain the whole strength of one's
In Ethics & Social Welfare Vol. 4, No. 2, July, 158-171.
voice, i t quickly becomes compromised. I t h i n k that there has to be a
Tronto, Joan C. 2005. Care as the Work of Citizens: A Modest Proposal. In Women
and Citizenship, ed. Marilyn Friedman. Oxford University Press, 130-145. concerted effort to regain that w h i c h has been taken away, that w h i c h
Tronto, Joan C. 1996. Politics of Care. Fiirsorge und Wohlfahrt. In Transit 12 (Win- has been lost. There have to be steps taken to reclaim one's voice, one's
ter), 142-153. heritage, one's history." (Kenneth Hardy 2001)
Tronto, Joan C. 1993. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care.
New York, London: Routledge. "Remoteness, or the sense of i t , and irresponsibility are greatly worsened
Walker, Margaret Urban. 2007. Reply to Govier, MacLachlan, and Spelman. In under the dominant global order. This allows privileged subjects to har-
Symposia on Gender, Race and Phibsophy, Vol. 3, No. 2, May, http://web.mit.edu/
bour illusions of ecological disembeddedness and invulnerability to an
sgrp.
extreme degree, far greater degree t h a n for other subjectivities." (Val
Williams, Fiona. 2010. Claiming and Framing in the Making of Care Policies. United
Plumwood 2002, 237)
Nations, Gender and Development Programme Paper Number 13, Geneva:
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
Young, Iris Marion. 2006. Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection
Since Joan Tronto's first writings o n privileged irresponsibility (Tronto
Model. In Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 23, 102-130. 1990; 1993), much has been written o n privilege and responsibility.
Young, Iris Marion. 2007. Global challenges. War, self-determination and responsibility Responsibility has been taken up as a serious topic by feminist writers
for justice. Cambridge: Polity Press.
such as Iris M a r i o n Young (2006, 2007, 2011), Margaret U r b a n
Young, Iris Marion. 2011. Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Walker (1998, 2006) and other philosophers such as Stephen Esquith
Press. (2010) and more recently by Tronto herself (2013), while other
authors such as Bob Pease (2010) and M i c h a e l K i m m e l & A b b y
 52 VIVIENNE BOZALEK
Ferber (2010) have written about privilege. W h a t is less prevalent i n
the literature, however, are considerations about the mechanisms
which lead to privileged irresponsibility, and the ways i n w h i c h p r i v i -
leged irresponsibility can be addressed hy countering these mecha-
nisms w h i c h serve to maintain it. I n this contribution, I revisit Joan
Tronto's n o t i o n of privileged irresponsibility w h i c h she first devised
in her 1990 paper entitled Chilly Racists, and which she later described
i n her book Moral Boundaries : A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care
(1993) and then significantly expanded i n her book, Caring Democ-
racy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (2013). Thus I examine how the
n o t i o n 'privileged irresponsibility' was initially explained and how it
has changed or been enlarged i n her further texts. I then look at the
mechanisms involved i n maintaining privileged irresponsibility, by
using Val Plumwood's (1993, 2002) n o t i o n of dualisms, after w h i c h
I describe how privileged irresponsibility could be challenged or over-
come. I n order to consider what can be done to challenge privileged
irresponsibility, I use an example of critical pedagogy i n South Africa,
where students were brought together across differences of institu-
tion, discipline, race, ethnicity, class and gender to foreground privi-
lege and marginalization and challenge monoculturalism and the
continued effects of apartheid i n South A f r i c a n higher education.
I consider how the mechanisms of dualism can be addressed through
providing opportunities for encounters across difference.
Privileged irresponsibility
The concept privileged irresponsibility was first used by Joan Tronto i n
1990 i n her address entitled Chilly Racists to the American Political
Science Association. I n this paper she commented o n the inability
of white women to acknowledge or imagine the hostile climate that
black women experienced i n the classroom of US higher education,
and how white women benefit from racism. I n considering the power
that racism confers on a majority group, she coined the phrase 'privi-
leged irresponsibility' by w h i c h she meant the ways i n w h i c h the
majority group fail to acknowledge the exercise of power, thus main-
taining their taken for granted positions of privilege. I n the paper Chilly
PRIVILEGED IRRESPONSIBILITY 53
Racists, she associates privileged irresponsibility w i t h institutionalized
racism, w h i c h she distinguished from personal racism. Personal racism
obscures the social nature of racism by individualising and privatising
racist acts. These acts are then seen as moral failings w h i c h induce
guilt, making i t difficult to recognise the ignorance necessary for
privileged irresponsibility. She distinguishes between guilt, w h i c h she
sees as psychological, and shame w h i c h she regards a social response.
G u i l t prevents whites from confronting the harm they inflict o n o t h -
ers, because they are busier justifying their o w n behavior and dealing
w i t h their o w n painful emotions regarding this, than paying attention
to the needs of others. Shame, on the other hand, is seen as a more
productive emotion i n that i t is social rather than individual (Calhoun,
2004). The politics of shame refers to both the acknowledgement of
collective responsibility through connections (Young, 2011), and pro-
vides the potential for the undoing of 'privileged irresponsibility'
through acknowledging historical and political circumstances.
I n Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care,
Tronto (1993) further develops the n o t i o n of privileged irresponsibil-
ity where she associates i t w i t h the ways i n w h i c h caring responsibili-
ties are unevenly balanced i n society. She describes privileged irre-
sponsibility i n the following way: "Those who are relatively privileged
are granted by that privilege the opportunity simply to ignore certain
forms of hardships that they do not face" (Tronto 1993, 120-121). I n
this definition, she is again foregrounding ignorance, w h i c h she sees
as an act w h i c h prevents the needs of marginalized others being
acknowledged or noticed by the privileged. A s Mary Swigonski
(1996) has also stressed, privileges make people feel at home i n the
world and take for granted that they are the centre of their world
where social, political, economic and other resources are available.
Those who occupy privileged positions are generally unaware of how
these positions have influenced their lives (Hardy 2001; Swigonski
1996; Schiele 1996; Tronto 1993). Privileged irresponsibility occurs,
according to Tronto (1993) where the caring process and the phases
of care are not seen holistically. Rather, responsibilities are divided
into those who provide resources for care and those who do the
54 VIVIENNE BOZALEK
hands-on work of giving care. I n these instances, privileged groups of
people such as men or whites see themselves as only responsible for
providing resources to address a problem and do not see the necessity
of being involved i n the actual hands-on process of giving care. I n
Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, as i n her
earlier work o n privileged irresponsibility, Tronto (1993, 121) again
focuses o n the example of racism, w h i c h she sees as being maintained
by 'white skin privilege', where those w i t h these privileges do n o t
notice the needs of blacks nor do they recognize that they are privi-
leged i n the first place. I n their ignorance of their privileges, they
remain oblivious to their o w n prejudice. Furthermore, they feel no
need to take responsibility for their privileges or those who do not
have privileges, thus perpetuating institutional racism. W i t h p r i v i -
leged irresponsibility, only the needs of those who are privileged are
regarded as legitimate and important, whereas the subjugated's needs
remain unrecognized and ignored. This means that the caring needs
of the privileged are more likely to be adequately met than those who
are marginalized or subjugated. W h a t has been identified by critics of
the ethic of care as a problematic consequence of care (Tronto,
1993)—parochialism—encourages people to see their o w n needs or
those who are close to them as more legitimate and important than
those who are distant or unrelated. Thus parochialism can be seen as
directly responsible for privileged irresponsibility—as Tronto puts i t
"a way to excuse the inattention of the privileged" (1993, 146).
I n South Africa, historically and also currently to a large extent
the needs of one group of people (whites) have been regarded as
important and have been serviced by the needs of another group of
people (blacks). T h r o u g h othering and inferiorising blacks i n t o
homogenised categories of 'maids and factotums', whites were assured
that an extended population, designated specifically to provide ser-
vices for them and meet their everyday needs, would be available.
Thus, through being categorised as maids and factotums, blacks as
others were objectified and regarded only as instruments to fulfill
white needs. As Tronto (1993) points out, this process is largely ren-
dered invisible and thus becomes very difficult to challenge.
PRIVILEGED IRRESPONSIBILITY 55
I n her most recent work Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and
Justice, Tronto (2013) further extends her ideas o n privileged irre-
sponsibility. I n her deliberations about care and democracy, she
devotes a great deal of space i n the book to the n o t i o n of privileged
irresponsibility. She sees democracy as being concerned w i t h the way
i n w h i c h caring responsibilities are allocated i n society and the rep-
resentation and participation of people i n the decisions of the ways
i n w h i c h these responsibilities are allocated. Privileged irresponsibil-
ity occurs w h e n those who are privileged absent themselves from any
responsibilities that are allocated to caring practices—she calls this
getting a free "pass" out of the responsibility of caring for themselves
or others (Tronto 2013, 70). Getting a "pass" out of the responsibility
means that one does n o t have to justify n o t doing hands-on caring
work and furthermore, the subjugated group feels obligated to take o n
these responsibilities. I n other words, privileged groups of people end
up getting out of responsibilities, while those who are not privileged
end up w i t h more responsibilities for the k i n d of caring work that the
privileged justify to themselves that they should not be responsible
for. I n Tronto's recent work, as she did i n her previous work, she again
relates privileged irresponsibility to ignorance, but this time labels i t
'epistemological ignorance' 1 —where the privileged do n o t feel the
need to know anything about the lives or needs of the subjugated
group. A s Lorraine Code observes, '"orthodox liberal-affluent epis-
temic subjects cannot bear—indeed are rarely called upon to h e a r —
too much t r u t h " (2006, 230) This impacts greatly o n the willingness
to take o n responsibilities for care and the view of care as a political
practice w h i c h includes caring for society as a whole and incorporates
public and private aspects of care rather t h a n a dyadic caring
relationship.
Responsibility, o n the other hand, acknowledges that we are some-
how implicated i n something and that we are able to act o n i t . A s
Tronto (2013) observes, if one does not see the necessity regarding a
set of practices such as caregiving, one would not see oneself as being
responsible for them. Tronto (2013, 104) indicates that her views of
privileged irresponsibility differ f r o m the feminist writer Peggy
56 VIVIENNE BOZALEK
M c i n t o s h (1988), who also proposed that whites and males are taught
not to recognize their privileges. Mcintosh's (1988) famous 'knap-
sack' list of privileges developed from her o w n personal observations
i n w h i c h she delineates the ways i n w h i c h she benefits from white
privilege i n her everyday life i n contrast w i t h the lives of her A f r i c a n
American co-workers. Tronto perceives M c i n t o s h as promoting con-
sciousness raising as a solution to giving up privileges once they are
viewed as unjust. However, i t is clear from Mcintosh's writings that
she does not believe that privileged irresponsibility of race or gender
would end only if consciousness was changed, since she also sees the
privileges as structurally located, i n social systems.
Ways of avoiding caring responsibilities
I n Tronto's (2013) work, she identifies a number of rationalisations
w h i c h privileged groups use to extricate themselves from responsibil-
ity. She had already mentioned i n her (1993) work that privileged
irresponsibility arises out of an imbalance i n the elements of care—
caring about, caring for, caregiving and care-receiving. She now
elaborates on this argument by looking at the various ways i n w h i c h
men i n particular, i n conforming to what is expected by hegemonic
masculinities manage to remove themselves from caring responsibili-
ties—these are protection, production, private care and personal
responsibility w h i c h are elaborated o n i n the sub-sections below.
Protection can be seen as a form of care, and is a prominent con-
cept i n social work ( C h i l d Protection is a large field of social work,
w h i c h is generally seen as a feminised profession). Tronto (2013)
refers to more masculine forms of protection such as police work and
maintains that by obfuscating the caring aspects of protection, one
maintains the gendered hierarchy. People who are protecting others
get "passes" (Tronto 2013, 72) out of caring tasks because they are
doing other more important work. Young (2005) alerts readers to the
problematic nature of the logic of masculinity-role of the male head
of the household as protector, and male leaders as protectors of the
population. Rather than seeing this as benign, she shows how the
male portrays himself as a protector who shields his family from risks
PRIVILEGED IRRESPONSIBILITY 57
and dangers. This results i n subordination of those he protects, defer-
ence to his decision-making and uncritical obedience, thus greatly
undermining the potential of democracy. I n addition to this, as Young
observes, " [ i ] t is only fitting that she should minister to his needs and
obey his dictates" (2005, 18). Young (2005) applies this logic of mas-
culinist protection or protection racket to the authoritarian state,
w h i c h protects its citizens by expecting their patronage and
subordination.
Production is where the privileged group is involved i n the impor-
tant work of acquiring economic resources, and a position of p r i v i -
leged irresponsibility would argue that this group should be released
from ordinary hands-on caring responsibilities. This is a more preva-
lent rationalisation i n neoliberal times. I t is dependent on belief i n
the work ethic. The work ethic is both individualistic and gendered
and, as Tronto points out, fits i n well w i t h neoliberal ideology. The
work ethic discounts such phenomena as context, emotions and rela-
tions of power, focusing only o n equality of opportunity, and assumes
that we are all starting off from an equal playing field. I t insists that
humans are autonomous beings, who must work hard to get their o w n
needs met, and that one generally gets what one deserves—those who
work hardest w i l l get the most resources. The work ethic is dependent
on the separation of public and private spheres, where citizen-workers
are engaged i n valued paid labour as part of the public sphere and
care-giving, and non-citizens are involved i n reproduction to the pri-
vate sphere, w h i c h is devalued. The worker- citizens from a neoliberal
standpoint, should be as unencumbered as possible w i t h caring bur-
dens, and they receive a 'pass' from caring tasks because they are too
busy doing the important work of paid labour. The fact that auton-
omy requires a great deal of caring work to be done for an individual
i n this position is unacknowledged.
Private care is similar to Tronto's (1993) observation that parochi-
alism encourages the view that caring for one's o w n exempts one
from caring for more distant others. Private care is bolstered by the
separation of the public and private spheres where care is devalued.
Those who are doing well competitively i n society are actually
58 VIVIENNE BOZALEK
dependent o n others to meet their needs, but this is n o t acknowl-
edged. I n examining privatized care, Tronto (2013, 22; 105) uses Kari
Waerness's distinction between necessary care and personal service.
Necessary care is care that one cannot give to oneself and personal
service is care one could give to oneself but chooses n o t to. Privileged
irresponsibility happens w i t h personalised service rather than neces-
sary care i n that the recipient of care does not have to acknowledge
the care they are getting—they simply presume an entitlement to this
care, and i t is not acknowledged or spoken about. Inequality is per-
petuated by the recipients' ignorance of these entitlements to care
and the unbalanced nature of caring responsibilities that ensue from
personalized service. Breaking these inequalities w i l l require a sense
of a collective social responsibility for care. Tronto (2013) reiterates
the p o i n t that privileged irresponsibility allows those who benefit
from being i n superior positions i n a hierarchical system to remain
oblivious about the part they themselves play i n maintaining the
system. I n a culture that emphasizes caring for our o w n , husbands
may continue to feel good about themselves that they are the primary
breadwinners and their wives the primary caregivers, r i c h people w i l l
continue to feel virtuous about providing employment for domestic
workers, even though i t is an inadequate wage and barely enough for
them to care for their o w n family member's needs.
Neoliberal t h i n k i n g requires one to take care of oneself and one's
o w n community w i t h o u t any regard to historical inequalities or
exclusions. I f one is not flourishing as a human being i t is one's o w n
fault, as it means that one has n o t been able to meet one's personal
responsibility, without paying attention to the realities of people's lives
and the resources they require to flourish (Tronto 2013, 133-145).
The feminist philosopher Val Plum wood (2002, 85), i n her writings
on the ecological crisis of reason i n environmental culture, notes that
"[bjecause socially privileged groups can most easily purchase alterna-
tive private sources (clean water for example) they have the least
interest i n maintaining i n generally good condition collective goods
and services". Privileged groups remain unaware of their o w n vulner-
ability as they have the means to buy services to extricate themselves
PRIVILEGED IRRESPONSIBILITY 59
from difficult circumstances. This insulates them from the realization
of their o w n vulnerabilities and of those who are marginalized who
cannot afford to buy themselves out of h a r m f u l circumstances.
Because of their alienation and remoteness from ecological and other
harms, privileged groups according to Plumwood (2002) are the worst
groups to be allocated decision-making powers.
How is privileged irresponsibility maintained?
I n addition to Tronto's (1990, 1993, 2013) work o n privileged
irresponsibility, I believe that Val Plumwood's (1993) analysis of the
mechanisms of dualism is useful for us to consider how i t is possible
to maintain privileged irresponsibility i n human relationships. Her
work dovetails well w i t h Joan Tronto's i n that i t provides greater
depth to the discussion regarding the ways i n w h i c h privileged irre-
sponsibility can be understood through various forms of justification.
By dualism Plumwood (1993, 2002) means something different from
a dichotomy or a distinction i n that dualism implies a hierarchical
relationship where i t is not possible to have equality, but where "the
culture, the values and the areas of life associated w i t h the dualised
other are systematically and pervasively constructed and depicted as
inferior"(Plumwood 1993, 47). I n a similar vein, i n order for p r i v i -
leged irresponsibility to occur, there must be a hierarchical relation-
ship where one party is regarded as 'less than' and where there is no
possibility of continuity between the two parties. Dualism, and by
implication, privileged irresponsibility, is fed by processes of inferiori-
sation, interiorisation and othering. lnferiorisation is central to V a l
Plumwood's (1993, 2002) definition of dualism, i n w h i c h the margin-
alised groups are constructed as mentally, physically or emotionally
inferior to the accepted norm, and found to be 'wanting' or 'less t h a n '
this norm i n various ways. Interiorisation happens when those who are
subjugated accept, uncritically embrace and collude w i t h the way that
they have been negatively construed by those i n privileged positions/
dominant culture. Othering is also central to dualism. By ' o t h e r i n g ,
I mean the way i n w h i c h the marginalised are illegitimated by being
regarded as 'them' (objects) rather than 'us' (subjects), i n other words,
60 VIVIENNE BOZALEK
regarded as unimportant, different, marginal, strange or alien, and
having negative qualities attributed to them (de Beauvoir 1997; Hart-
sock 1998; Plumwood 1993). Thus dualism is dependent o n what
Plumwood (2002, 101) terms a 'hegemonic centrist conceptual struc-
ture'. Plumwood (1993; 2002) identifies five characteristics of dualism
w h i c h are used to maintain this hegemonic structure:
1 . Backgrounding — this is the most similar to Tronto's (1993)
idea of privileged irresponsibility as i t requires using the services of
the other for the masters needs at the same time as denying depend-
ency, through trivializing and ignoring the other's contributions.
These contributions would be considered "simply not 'worth' notic-
i n g " (Plumwood 1993, 48), — the caregiver would thus be seen
merely as a background to the care receivers' foreground. Both Tronto
(1993) and Plumwood (1993) surmise that denial of dependency hap-
pens because those who master fear, hate, and deny their o w n depend-
ency because, as Plumwood (1993, 49) notes ' i t subtly challenges his
dominance'. I n a study of racism w h i c h used South A f r i c a n social
work students accounts o n how i t affected their family members (see
Bozalek, 2004 for more details of this study), one student recounts:
"...whites viewed us [as] people with less skills and less education. The
parents experienced humiliation and harassment at their workplaces due
to the fact that they are black. They were made to be also the servant of
their masters and even the children of them" (Family Profile, 29).
I n this account, the student demonstrates the misrecognition of fam-
ily members i n terms of the internal injuries of h u m i l i a t i o n as well as
the institutional misrecognition of being harassed at their workplace
solely due to their ascribed racial markers. The sense that students
and their family members were viewed only as servants, available to
masters and their children to provide daily care and to meet their
every need is conveyed i n this excerpt.
2. Radical exclusion — w h i c h is also referred to by Plumwood
(1993, 2002) as hyper-separation. Here the objective is to create as
much distance between those who are privileged and those who are
marginalized, so that there is no possibility of identifying w i t h the
PRIVILEGED IRRESPONSIBILITY 61
other through commonalities. I n addition to this, the differences
between the groups are maximized and essentialised. A n extreme
example of this is the system of apartheid, w h i c h geographically sepa-
rated whites and blacks, and where blacks were allowed into residen-
tial areas only to service the needs of whites and to perform cheap
labour. Unfortunately, the legacy of apartheid remains geographically,
maximizing separation between those marked as white and middle
class and those marked as black and working class. This also plays
itself out i n the schooling system and i n higher education, w h i c h
continue to operate largely i n two different worlds—that of the p r i v i -
leged and that of the marginalized. Because of the lack of contact
between these groups, the stereotyping as a form of essentialism is rife
w i t h the marginalized group being seen as completely different and
lacking for example, i n higher order t h i n k i n g skills. The justification
that a marginalized group of people are only fit for manual labour
follows from this type of reasoning. As Verwoed, the prime minister
of South A f r i c a and the architect of apartheid put i t :
"There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the
level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu
child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite
absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportuni-
ties in life, according to the sphere in which they live." (Clark &. Worger
2004, 48)
This idea changed the education system and denied black children
access to mathematics and science, w h i c h continues to impact o n
South Africa today 2 . This policy is a clear f o r m of radical exclusion,
where 'the slave is forced to exclude f r o m his or her makeup the
characteristics of the master, to eschew intellect and become submis-
sive and lacking i n initiative' (Plumwood 1993, 50).
3. Incorporation — this is where the inferior side of the dualism is
negated, being defined as what is missing or as inferior and the supe-
rior side as what is normal and desirable—the reference point. The
other is defined only i n relation to the self and according to the
master's needs. Hegel's (1977) original n o t i o n of misrecognition, i n