panel 16Relational Caring: A Soft Voice in Transforming Society
Andries Baart & Guus Timmerman
with a response by Maurice Hamington
Relational Caring: A Soft Voice in Transforming Society
Andries Baart & Guus Timmerman
with a response by Maurice Hamington
The newly published book Relational Caring and Presence Theory in Health Care and Social Work: A Care-Ethical Perspective addresses a deep and globally felt dissatisfaction, among citizens in general but also among professionals. In healthcare, the social domain, in education, in the domain of housing, but also in psychiatry, youth care, and, for example, public administration, things have too often gone off course. As a result, there is a growing gap between the regime of competent professionals and managers, on the one hand, and the lifeworld of patients, clients, pupils, and residents with their needs, concerns, and longings, on the other. And also a gap between the institutional logic of organisations and their administration and quality systems, on the one hand, and the everyday practice and practical wisdom of front-line professionals, on the other. In these interrelated gaps, disconnected competences, bureaucracy, aloofness, mismatches, and distrust are proliferating. The relentless improvements since the 1980s hardly repair these deficits because they are producing more of the same. People, both as citizens and as professionals, hardly feel seen. Their distrust toward fellow citizens, their dissatisfaction with their work and their receptivity to populism are growing.
The book elaborates the thesis that no form of care, help, or support can do without this relational core, with the risk that seekers of help feel abandoned. It is precisely this experience of not being included that fuels discontent worldwide. And not being allowed to practise relational caring is conducive to satisfaction fatigue and burnout of professionals. The elaboration of these themes as presence (theory and approach), is done in close alignment with the political interpretation of ethics of care, in this case with a strong empirical basis and inductive conceptualization. The intended practices are rooted in good patient observation and interpretation – a central theme of the CERC Conference 2025. Although most of the qualitative research it relies on is conducted in the Netherlands, the book is international in scope and relevance. During this book launch, the authors Andries Baart and Guus Timmerman will present some of the core chapters of the book. Maurice Hamington, author of Revolutionary Care: Commitment and Ethos (2024), will respond and kick off the discussion.
Andries Baart studied andragology (social pedagogics) and specialised as a practical theologian (both 1978); he obtained his PhD as a philosopher (1986). He has been (an extraordinary) professor from 1991 to the present, from 1991-2006 at the Catholic Theological University in Utrecht. Since 2007, he held the chair of Presence and Care, initially at Tilburg University and later at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. Since 2015, he has been an Associate Professor at North-West University in South Africa. From 2018-2023, he was a Visiting Professor at the UMC Utrecht, Department of Psychiatry. From 2004-2023, he worked with and from the Presence Foundation. He is the founder of presence theory. http://www.presentie.nl and http://www.andriesbaart.nl.
A.B. (Guus) Timmerman, PhD, has worked as a care ethicist and qualitative researcher at the Presence Foundation since 1 November 2014. Together with Professor Andries Baart, he publishes on relational caring and presence in healthcare and social work and on the methodology of qualitative research. He has researched the care and practical wisdom of general practitioners at the sick and deathbeds of their patients; the lifeworld of people in the Dutch city of Rotterdam who use the bed-bath-bread provision for irregular migrants and rejected asylum seekers; and what it is like to be a person with advanced dementia. His current research is on narrative accountability in care for older persons: giving insight to relevant interlocutors through stories. With Andries Baart, he published Relational Caring and Presence Theory in Health Care and Social Work: A Care-Ethical Perspective with Policy Press, 2025.
Maurice Hamington is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Faculty of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Portland State University. He writes about the theory and application of feminist care ethics. His latest book, Revolutionary Care: Commitment and Ethos (Routledge 2024), argues that we need a care revolution right now, and you can participate. He is the author of Embodied Care (2004) and co-author of Care Ethics and Poetry (2019) with Ce Rosenow. Hamington edited or co-edited Feminism and Hospitality: Care Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Traditions (2022), Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity (2021), Care Ethics and Political Theory (2015), Applying Care Ethics to Business (2011), Socializing Care (2006), and Gender in the Host/Guest Relationship (2010). He is a Fulbright Specialist who will spend November 2024 in Kyoto working with Japanese feminist care ethicists. mhamington.com
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
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