Policy, Places, & People: Feminist Bioethics in Singapore

The FAB Congress in Singapore looks at the global aging population and feminization of it, which includes issues of migrant women elder care workers in a global economy, notions of ecological citizenship and human and nonhuman interdependency.

I’m attending the 8th International Congress of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, where the stirring plenary speech by Lisa Eckenwiler examines our interdependency globally in health care and as ecological citizens.  Her plenary speech was entitled “Thinking Ecologically: Long-term Care and Transnational Justice” and was inspired by her reflection on the connections between elderly grandmothers and mothers ranging from Washington D.C. to Haiti to the Philippines.  She started out that “These connections, forged in part by from the policies and practices of government officials, international bankers, health care executives, and human resources personnel, as well as recruiters, employers, and the choices of individuals, tend to be obscured in discussions of long term care policy, yet they raise complex and pressing questions of global responsibility and ecological citizenship.”

One of the more eloquent comments in this talk was the following: “Theories of justice are notoriously silent on the matter of dependency and our shared need for care.  The social contract is especially guilty. As philosopher Martha Nussbaum notes, the conception of the persol embedded within this tradition is premised upon ‘the fictions’” of competent, independent, self-reliant adulthood and equality among persons.  This idealization obscures a fundamental all of societies to provide circumstances under which humans can be cared for and thrive, given their differing degrees of frailty and vulnerability.  Morever, it ignores, our our peril, the caring relationships between persons between persons that make survival and thriving possible.”

Anyone who is familiar with my writing and my research knows that it is all about interdependency—we do not exist in a vacuum, we cannot promote human welfare without consideration of its wider impact on other beings and our biosphere. 

Needless to say, I think I’m going to enjoy this conference; I feel like I’ve found my philosophical home.