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Vulnerability and Response-Ability in the Pandemic Marketplace: Developing an Ethic of Care for Provisioning in Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Susi Geiger

    (University College Dublin)

  • Ilaria Galasso

    (University College Dublin
    Technical University of Munich)

  • Nora Hangel

    (Technical University of Munich
    Leibniz Center for Science and Society (LCSS), University of Hannover)

  • Federica Lucivero

    (University of Oxford)

  • Gemma Watts

    (University College Dublin)

Abstract

This paper draws on the ethics of care to investigate how citizens grappled with ethical tensions in the mundane practice of grocery shopping at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. We use this case to address the broader question of what it means ‘to care’ in the context of a crisis. Based on a qualitative longitudinal cross-country interview study, we find that the pandemic transformed ordinary shopping spaces into places fraught with a sense of fear and vulnerability. Being forced to face one’s own vulnerability created an opportunity for individuals to relate to one another as significant others through a sense of “response-ability”, or the capacity of people to respond to ethical demands through situated ethical reasoning. We argue for a practical ethos of care in which seemingly small decisions such as how often to go shopping and how much to buy of a particular product serve as a means to relate to both specified and generalized others—and through this, ‘care with’ society. Our study contributes to displacing the continuing prevalence of an abstract and prescriptive morality in consumption ethics with a situated and affective politics of care. This vocabulary seems better suited to reflect on the myriad of small and unheroic care acts in times of crisis and beyond.

Suggested Citation

  • Susi Geiger & Ilaria Galasso & Nora Hangel & Federica Lucivero & Gemma Watts, 2024. "Vulnerability and Response-Ability in the Pandemic Marketplace: Developing an Ethic of Care for Provisioning in Crisis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 192(3), pages 441-459, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:192:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-023-05541-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-023-05541-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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