Joan Tronto's Radical Politics of Care: Power, Gender, and Democracy

Joan Tronto's work fundamentally reorients care from a moral sentiment to a political principle. With Berenice Fisher, she dissected care into four phases: caring about, taking care of, care giving, and care receiving. Yet Tronto insists care is always a social system and power relation, not an individual one. She argues care is not feminine but its gendered distribution is a feminist issue, also intersecting with racial and colonial inequalities. For Tronto, care is a primary political principle, not a supplement to justice. Her book "Moral Boundaries" (1993) posits care as an alternative to abstract justice theories, demanding democratic discussion and equal power access. The French translation title "Un monde vulnérable" risks reducing care to a general ethics of vulnerability, but Tronto's focus remains on political and social relations among humans. Care extends globally, creating a livable political world. The article identifies three obstacles to Tronto's reception in France: moralistic reduction of care to "good feelings," social reduction to gender critique, and the challenge of integrating justice with care. Tronto's work must be continued and deepened, joining her insights with those of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to fully grasp power within care.