In this tightly argued text, Olena Hankivsky examines “the potential of an ethic of care to transform the assumptions, content, concepts and meaning of social justice” (30). This is a big task for a small book but the author not only makes a persuasive theoretical case for an ethic of care but also manages to demonstrate the practical efficacy of her argument by showing how an ethic of care can inspire a reformation of social policy. The liberal case for social justice, the author contends, falls flat and remains abstract unless it is fundamentally transformed by the normative assumptions that arise from a moral landscape fully informed by the ubiquity of human interdependence. The liberal conception of social justice is shackled by its emphasis on the autonomous citizen and an abstract conception of humanity. It fails to recognize that rights arise from needs.

The central object of Hankivsky's critique is liberal social justice theory, its pervasive, negative impact on moral reasoning and the ways in which it distorts social policy. Citizenship conceived in terms of a set of inalienable rights upon which we all have equal claim privileges the public over the private, assumes human autonomy and separateness at the expense of interdependence and conceives human need as universal. It is thus “limited in its capacity to capture and respond to issues of diversity and difference” (6). The universal principles of rights on which a liberal theory of justice is based obscures the responsibilities that arise from the mutuality and interdependence of human life and the moral imperatives of compassion and concern for others that are embedded in the connective and relational nature of social life. The polity is a poorer place for its failure to recognize the “carer citizen” as the key agent at its moral core.

Three principles or precepts of an ethic of care that provide the analytical framework of the book (32–40) are “contextual sensitivity,” “responsiveness” and “consequences of choice.” “Contextual sensitivity is derived from the claim that people's needs vary because we are not all “equally situated or equally empowered” (6). As a precept it embraces knowledge derived from concrete relations rather than abstraction, from connectedness to, rather than distance from, others, from embodied particulars rather than from generic universals. For example, in relation to the widespread use of economic costing in social policy, Hankivsky suggests that the liberal social contract theory that underpins the quantification and commodification of life, health and loss fails to recognize that “people value reciprocity, altruism and responsibility towards others” (93). The precept of “responsiveness” refers to the valorization of the voices of those silenced by polity and policy derived from the modernist and liberal predilection to regard “social differences” as, at best, incidental variations on one, true, universal and essential human nature. Responsiveness suggests respect for the stories of ordinary people, for their views about “what their experiences have been, what their needs are, how these needs have arisen and how they can best be met” (35). An ethic of care demands that lay knowledge and experience become central to political decision making: “Instead of objectifying people, responsiveness empowers them” (96). “Consequences of choice” is a precept that requires reflexivity in relation to the social policy decision-making process. Policy has no way of assessing the harm that it does or might do. Minimizing the negative, practical, material effects of policy and how it impacts to the detriment of the lives of real people is, currently, not on the liberal agenda, and justice suffers for want of it.

These precepts are the critical tribunal against which Hankivsky measures the efficacy of Canadian social policy. This approach gives the book both a strongly practical as well as a normative, utopian edge. The book offers a portrait of Canadian social policy “as is” and contrasts it with what it would look like if it was built on the firm foundation of an ethic of care. The argument is well made and clearly articulated and it is clear that the feminist ethic of care, first voiced by Carol Gilligan, has discovered a new advocate, who has made an intelligent contribution to its development.

The weakest point in the normative framework of an ethic of care, in my view, lies in its propensity to be a source of oppression. Hankivsky does not avoid mention of this possibility. She notes that “pathological forms of care can emerge” and that in the literature these are usually associated with “maternalism, parochialism and colonialism” (22). One should add “disablism” to this list. The disability movement, for example, particularly in the UK, is suspicious of the concept of care. The discourse of care valorizes the caregiver and disempowers and infantilizes the recipient. It is not commensurate with the political goal of independent living. While Hankivsky should probably have used more space to describe some of the problems associated with the ethic of care, her pertinent and convincing argument against the liberal ethic of justice, sustained with great clarity throughout the text, is what makes this book worth reading.