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The Uses and Abuses of Sociality: A Reply To Kimberley Brownlee

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Notes

  1. Kimberley Brownlee, Being Sure of Each Other: an Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

  2. Elizabeth Brake, “Rights to Belong and Rights to Be Left Alone?: Claims to Caring Relationships and Their Limits,” in Kimberley Brownlee, David Jenkins, and Adam Neal (eds.), Being Social: The Philosophy of Social Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

  3. In fact, Brownlee is now writing a paper in progress on interactional wrongs, extending her program in ways which may fill this gap.

  4. Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Chiara Cordelli, “Justice as Fairness and Relational Resources,” Journal of Political Philosophy 23(1) (2015): 86-110; Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); for an overview, see Anca Gheaus, “Personal Relationship Goods,” in E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition) <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/personal-relationship-goods/>.

  5. Elizabeth Brake, “Fair Care: Eldercare and Distributive Justice,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 16(2) (2017): 132–151.

  6. Brownlee 2020, 97.

  7. Brownlee 2020, 50.

  8. Laura Valentini makes similar points in “What’s Wrong with Being Lonely? Justice, Beneficence, and Meaningful Relationships,” in Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume XC (2016): 49–69.

  9. Brake, forthcoming.

  10. On these points, and for references to empirical and legal literature, see Elizabeth Brake, “Paid and Unpaid Care: Marriage, Equality, and Domestic Workers,” in E. Brake and L. Ferguson (eds.), Philosophical Foundations of Children’s and Family Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) 75–94.

  11. Brownlee 2020, 67–69.

  12. Brownlee 2020, 67.

  13. As discussed by Linda Villarosa, “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis,” The New York Times Magazine, April 11, 2018 (accessed online: < https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html>).

  14. Brownlee does acknowledge this general point, in Chap. 5, Sect. 4.

  15. See, e.g., Ellie Anderson, “Hermeneutic Labor: The Gendered Burden of Interpretation in Intimate Relationships Between Women and Men,” forthcoming in Hypatia; S. L. Bartky, Femininity and Domination (New York: Routledge, 1990); Brake, forthcoming.

  16. Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

  17. Brownlee 2020, 130.

  18. Brownlee 2020, 131–132.

  19. Brownlee 2020, 184.

  20. For an entry into some of the controversies and difficulties in this area, see Manne 2018; Valentini 2016; Gina Schouten, Liberalism, Neutrality, and the Gendered Division of Labor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Christie Hartley and Lori Watson, Equal Citizenship and Public Reason: A Feminist Political Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Amy Baehr and Asha Bhandary (eds.), Caring for Liberalism: Dependency and Political Theory (New York: Routledge, 2021).

  21. Brownlee 2020, 60.

  22. Brownlee 2020, 139.

  23. See Brownlee 2020, Chaps. 4–6.

  24. Brownlee 2020, 141.

  25. Brownlee 2020, 117.

  26. Brownlee 2020, 135.

  27. Brownlee 2020, 61.

  28. Brownlee 2020, 112.

  29. Brownlee 2020, 52.

  30. Brownlee 2020, 141.

  31. Brownlee 2020, 133.

  32. Brownlee 2020, 22, and see 38 and 24–29; R. F. Baumeister and M. R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 497–529.

  33. Brownlee 2020, 28.

  34. Baumeister and Leary 1995, 513.

  35. See also Marsha Garrison, “Promoting Cooperative Parenting: Programs and Prospects,” Journal of Law and Family Studies 9 (2007): 265–279; D. Perlman, “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: The Place of Close Relationships in Psychology and Our Daily Lives,” Canadian Psychology 48(1) (2007): 7–18.

  36. Baumeister and Leary 1995, 513–514; italics in original.

  37. See the CDC, “Intimate Partner Violence,” <https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/fastfact.html>, accessed April 2, 2022; the data is drawn from their ongoing National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.

  38. Brownlee 2020, 9, 25, 50.

  39. On the lack of evidence for counselling efficacy in high-conflict marriages, see Garrison 2007, 274; see Leigh Goodmark, Decriminalizing Domestic Violence (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018) on the broader systemic issues.

  40. Brownlee 2020, 67.

  41. Brownlee 2020, 52.

  42. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, ed. Susan Moller Okin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988) 36.

  43. Brownlee 2020, 51 − 2.

  44. See Brake 2018; Anca Gheaus, “Arguments for Nonparental Care for Children,” Social Theory and Practice 37(3) (2011): 483–509.

  45. Brownlee 2020, 157.

  46. For legal approaches, see Melissa Murray, “The Networked Family: Reframing the Legal Understanding of Caregiving and Caregivers,” Virginia Law Review 94(2) (2008): 385–455; Naomi Schoenbaum, “The Law of Intimate Work,” Washington Law Review 90(3) (2015): 1167–1244.

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  1. Philosophy Department, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Elizabeth Brake

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Correspondence to Elizabeth Brake.

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Brake, E. The Uses and Abuses of Sociality: A Reply To Kimberley Brownlee. Criminal Law, Philosophy 17, 463–474 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-022-09642-8

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