A political ethics of care perspective in researching emotions

Abstract

This chapter describes the five moral elements of the political ethics of care-attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust, as developed by Tronto (1993, 2013) and shows their relevance for methodologies in studying emotions in education. The political ethics of care is defined and described and contrasted to principle ethics. The five phases of care and the accompanying moral elements of these phases is presented, with each moral element in the normative framework being elaborated and described in detail in the chapter. To illustrate how the moral elements in the political ethics of care are important in investigating emotions, an example of South African social work students conducting research interviewing their own family members is used.