ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we suggest that socio-ecological transformative movements need to be centred around an ethics of care, supported by analysis of the deficits of care within the movement. Transformative processes are driven by care for the world, for both humans and more-than-human beings across the globe; however, drawing four examples from experiences in academic space, the World Social Forum, food sovereignty through crop sharing, and health-promoting food movements, we highlight that each of the examples presents specific forms of care deficit which we identify and discuss—pointing out efforts of care that are entangled with that of gendered and racialized forms of violence. We address the care deficit through the medium of two insightful works: firstly, by revisiting Jo Freeman’s essay ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness” (1972), which underlines the need for intersectional and interspecies understanding of power and violence, and secondly, by introducing María Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017) three-dimensional notion of the ethics of care—labour/work, affect/affections, ethics/politics—with which such deficits could be addressed more holistically. Using the four examples based on the authors’ engagements in the movements, we suggest that centring the ethics of care will have important implications for the future of transformative movements.
