ABSTRACT
In the world as it is today, the people who are coded as part of the group of people who should be caregivers are also expected to be other-directed and caring in their attitudes, attention, and action. When members of this group do not comply with this expectation, they may be met with anger, hostility, and other penalties in all spheres of life: the family, the workplace, politics, and within many associations in civil society.
Moreover, because other-directed femininity and self-centered masculinity form a relational dyad, changes to the social roles that are linked to the expectation to give or to receive care are not merely differences in individual behavior. Instead, because caregiving arrangements are the spine of culture, changes to the distribution of these expectations will require adjustments to the matrix through which we understand one another. Therefore, strategies for achieving a just caregiving arrangement must respond to culture’s mediating role in interpersonal relationships as well as variations in our investments in existing social forms. This chapter sets out a typology of men. Drawing on Will Kymlicka’s liberal multiculturalism, Charles Taylor’s social thesis, and Joseph Raz’s account of social forms, it then evaluates resistance to achieving a society that is distributively just. Through critical discussion of Chandran Kukathas’s evaluation of the role of belonging in the life of Kartini, I argue that the value of “being at home,” rather than mere cultural membership or belonging, should guide strategies for change.
