ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes a diffractive method to put into conversation with each other the political ethics of care and feminist new materialist ethics, in order to reconceptualize response-able social work policies, practices, pedagogies, and scholarship. It describes how political ethics of care and feminist new materialist theorists conceptualize their relational ontological positions. The chapter considers what each of the concepts attentiveness, responsibility, competence, rendering each other capable, and trust. It also describes ways in which they can be put to use in social work practice. The chapter focuses on concepts that are central to the political ethics of care and posthumanist/feminist new materialist theorists. A response-able social work would be cognizant of and attentive to what is needed in the social work profession for those involved to flourish in their endeavors. Cultivating collective responsibility and accountability and the ability to respond to entangled heterogeneous partners are important.
