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The book series CDE Studies invites monographs (and collections) on issues in contemporary Anglophone dramatic literature and theatre performance. The book series is dedicated to the analysis and renegotiation of contemporary writers and plays and their historical, political, formal, theoretical and methodological contexts.

Increasing global competition has intensified the use of informal sector workforce worldwide. This phenomenon is true with regard to India, where 92% of the workers hold precarious jobs. Our study examines the dynamics of workplace dignity in the context of Indian security guards deployed as contract labour by private suppliers, recognising that security guards’ jobs were marked by easy access, low status, disrespect and precariousness. The experiences of guards serving bank ATMs were compared with those working in large reputed organisations. The former reported loss of dignity though their inherent self-worth remained partially intact, whereas the latter reclaimed dignity despite the precarious working conditions and the absence of unions. Guards from large reputed organisations evolved strategies by which they took advantage of the client’s  vulnerabilities, developed ‘thick’ relationships at work and immersed themselves in 'doing dignity work' to ensure that they are not disposable. ‘Doing dignity work’ was a visible device which involved actions that met or went beyond the norms laid down by the client and was used by security guards to limit the extent of their precariousness. Since the opportunity to reclaim dignity was facilitated by large reputed clients’ adherence to legal regulations, we see implications of the study for the moral economy.

Care ethics as initiated by Gilligan, Held, Tronto and others (in the nineteen eighties and nineties) has from its onset been critical towards ethical concepts established in modernity, like ‘autonomy’, alternatively proposing to think from within relationships and to pay attention to power. In this article the question is raised whether renewal in this same critical vein is necessary and possible as late modern circumstances require rethinking the care ethical inquiry. Two late modern realities that invite to rethink care ethics are complexity and precariousness. Late modern organizations, like the general hospital, codetermined by various (control-, information-, safety-, accountability-) systems are characterized by complexity and the need for complexity reduction, both permeating care practices. By means of a heuristic use of the concept of precariousness, taken as the installment of uncertainty, it is shown that relations and power in late modern care organizations have changed, precluding the use of a straightforward domination idea of power. In the final section a proposition is made how to rethink the care ethical inquiry in order to take late modern circumstances into account: inquiry should always be related to the concerns of people and practitioners from within care practices.

This paper explores whether and how moral space, as the unfolding of an expressive-collaborative process, can be fostered in a way that engages embodied, affective experiences in relational practices of responsibility. A care ethical constellation is a tool that aims to shed light on relational needs and responsibilities as experienced by participants in an institutional context. We present the theoretical backgrounds of this tool. Then the use of the tool in an eldercare organization is reflected on through a hermeneutical phenomenological analysis. We answer the following questions: (1) How are identities, relationships, and values in this organizational context experienced, as elucidated by the care ethical constellation? (2) Can this care ethical constellation be considered a suitable tool to foster moral space? Our findings show how this tool brought to the fore previously hidden experiences of distance and power struggles between several groups in the organization. It also sheds light on values at stake: a longing for connection and a shared sense of humanness. In the Discussion we look through a lens of “precariousness” to rethink the experience of power struggle, and to deepen our insight into the “political” of a political care ethics. There is a reflection on valuable features, challenges, and requirements concerning this tool for fostering a moral space that productively works with political care ethics in organizations. By inviting participants to share embodied experiences and paying attention to the political hegemonies at play, this approach highlights the embodied dimensions of political care ethics.

This ethnographic article addresses social work’s participation in exclusionary practices performed by migration authorities in Sweden, leading to extreme precariousness among young people searching for protection. Through ethnographic descriptions of young people who fled from Sweden to other European countries, we argue that Swedish social workers played an active role in depriving young people of their social rights. A central concept in the article is administrative violence. Such institutionalised violence risks being excluded from a moral assessment. We argue that moral responsibility is not about following state rules, but may instead involve acting in a way that rules do not support. If social work accepts the boundaries of the nation-state, its border work and the logics of neoliberal ideologies, it cannot live up to the ethical standards of social work and its emphasis on social justice.

This article makes a contribution to the on-going debates about universalism and cultural relativism from the perspective of sociology. We argue that bioethics has a universal range because it relates to three shared human characteristics,—human vulnerability, institutional precariousness and scarcity of resources. These three components of our argument provide support for a related notion of ‘weak foundationalism’ that emphasizes the universality and interrelatedness of human experience, rather than their cultural differences. After presenting a theoretical position on vulnerability and human rights, we draw on recent criticism of this approach in order to paint a more nuanced picture. We conclude that the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism has some conceptual merit, but it also has obvious limitations when we consider the political economy of health and its impact on social inequality.

This article provides a critical analysis of the manner in which prostitution and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation was ‘framed’ by official discourses in order to support the reforms in England and Wales contained within the Policing and Crime Act 2009. Drawing upon the recent work of Judith Butler, emphasis will be placed on how the schema of the vulnerable prostitute was fundamental to invoking emotional affects, which justified certain political effects, especially the move towards criminalising the purchase of sexual services. However, on closer analysis the article will uncover an agenda influenced by law and order/morality, immigration and a ‘fear of the enemy’. Furthermore, it will be argued that New Labour’s framing of the problematic enabled the State to avoid dealing with the more difficult, but more urgent, issues of the differential distribution of wealth, precarity and the engendering of an ethical and global responsibility for the other.

El presente texto (1) interroga el relativamente reciente retorno del concepto de lo humano a la filosofía política de Judith Butler –esto es, se pregunta por las razones de este retorno, por la condición de este retorno y por la concepción de lo humano que retorna– y (2) examina en qué medida este retorno transforma, matiza o modula la comprensión butleriana del cuerpo y de la vida. A partir de estos dos puntos, se tratará de arrojar luz sobre el llamado “giro ético” de Butler –que no supone en absoluto un abandono de la política, como algunos lectores han interpretado– y sobre la preeminencia que nociones como las de precariedad y vulnerabilidad han cobrado en sus teorías.

A partir de las consideraciones de Adriana Cavarero sobre el lugar del cuerpo en las modalidades que adquiere la violencia contemporánea, se plantea un recorrido conceptual por ideas de Jacques Lacan, Judith Butler y Kaja Silverman para sostener, por un lado, un giro onto-epistemológico que entiende al cuerpo como efecto de normas sociales y, por otro lado, una reflexión ético-política respecto a los niveles de exposición violenta a los que son sometidos aquellos cuerpos excluidos de los marcos de inteli- gibilidad que tornan una vida vivible. Finalmente, como alternativa a los modos hegemónicos en que la representación opera en la configuración del cuerpo como totalidad y unicidad –que la teoría lacaniana vincula con el espejo plano– se postula el espejo cóncavo como posibilidad de otros modos, alternativos, de representación del cuerpo.