The Arrow of Care Map

This chapter demonstrates the need for the arrow of care map as a concept to identify distributive inequalities across a society in a way that can be analyzed by race, gender, social class, and any other sorting category. The arrow of care map is a systems-level analysis of caregiving arrangements that can track a variety of factors as distributive patterns impacting the distributive justice of the basic structure of society. It embeds within it the moral imperative to respond to vulnerability with care. In its descriptive use, it is a tool to identify actual distributions of caregiving labor and the receipt of care. It can be specified using a variety of social groups, including race, ethnicity, gender, and citizenship status to uncover group-based inequalities in care. As a model of potential arrangements, it enables visions of societies whose assignments of caregiving responsibilities differ from those with which we are familiar. In this way, liberal dependency care does not assume the immutability of existing conventions and norms for caregiving. The chapter locates this concept in the debate about ideal and nonideal theory to show how this abstract concept plays an important role in combatting oppression. It then contrasts the conception of fairness advanced with Jean Hampton’s feminist contractarianism and Susan Okin’s proposal for justice within families.