Toward response-able social work

This chapter uses 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. Both care ethics and feminist new materialist ethics are predicated on relational ontologies that propose that individuals or entities do not preexist relationships, but rather that identities, or entities, come into being through relationships. A relational ethico-onto-epistemological position also starts from the premise that it is impossible to separate ethics, ontology, and epistemology (Barad, 2007). The chapter describes how political ethics of care and feminist new materialist theorists conceptualize their relational ontological positions. It examines their notions of flourishing, of living and dying well in relation to social work practices, policies, pedagogies, and scholarship.