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Lynch, Kathleen
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Lynch, Kathleen
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Lynch, Kathleen
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- PublicationInequalities of Love and Care and their Theoretical ImplicationsIn this paper we use the framework developed in Equality: From Theory to Action to review some recent empirical research into caring relationships. This research shows that even within the context of care, inequality is multidimensional. It reveals complex patterns of inequality of work, resources, love and care, power and respect and recognition, shaped by many social factors including gender, social class, family status and disability. We also argue that this research raises important issues for normative political theory. In some cases the implications seem fairly straightforward. In others, it highlights questions that egalitarian theorists need to address more thoroughly.
1041 - Publication
627 - PublicationAffective Equality and Social JusticeAffective relations are not social derivatives subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. The nurturing work that produces love, care, and solidarity operates under principles of other-centredness, even when it fails in this purpose. Furthermore, neither love nor care are purely personal or intimate matters; care exists as a public practice, be it in terms of health care, environmental care, community care, educational care or public welfare; solidarity can be regarded as the political expression of such public care. Because the relational realities of nurturing (and their counterpoint, neglect) operate as a distinct set of social practices, love, care and solidarity relations are sites of political import that need to be examined separately in social justice terms. The lack of appreciation of affective relations leads to a failure to recognise their pivotal role in generating injustices in the production of people in their humanness. This paper outlines a framework for thinking about affective relations in structural social justice terms. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to the redistribution, recognition, representation debate about justice by making the case for a fourth dimension, relational justice. The framework is sociologically informed by theoretical work and empirical research undertaken on love, care and solidarity. It takes a structural rather than individualist approach to social justice, arguing that equality of conditions matter as it is impossible to have anything but weak forms of equality of opportunity in economically and politically (structurally) unjust societies.
321 - PublicationAffective Equality as a Key Issue of Justice : A Comment on Fraser’s 3-Dimensional FrameworkThe relational realities of nurturing constitute a discrete site of social practice within and through which inequalities are created. The affective worlds of love, care and solidarity are therefore sites of political import that need to be examined in their own right while recognizing their inter-relatedness with economic, political and cultural systems in the generation of injustice. Drawing on extensive sociological research undertaken on care work, paid work and on education in a range of different studies, this paper argues that Fraser’s three-dimensional framework for analyzing injustice needs to expanded to include a fourth, relational dimension.The affective relations within which caring is grounded constitute a discrete field of social action within and through which inequalities and exploitations can occur. Social justice issues are not confined to questions of redistribution, recognition or representation therefore; they also involve discrete sites of relational practice that impact on parity of participation, a principle which Fraser identifies as key to determining what is socially just.
887 - PublicationInequality in Education: What Educators Can and Cannot ChangeThis paper examines the anti-egalitarian forces that undermine the realisation of equality in education, from within and without, while exploring the possibilities that education itself offers for the realisation of equality from within. The first section is devoted to the examination of how economic inequalities undermine egalitarian policies within schools and colleges. It analyses the ways the unequal distribution of income and wealth, legitimated through the ideologies of meritocracy, reproduce social class, racial and disability-related inequalities in education. While education cannot be held responsible for failing to eliminate injustices that are not generated within education in the first instance, educators are accountable for their collaboration with the unrealisable myth of meritocracy in increasingly economically unequal societies. As education plays a key role in intellectual formation, it has great potential to challenge injustices from within. The second section of the paper highlights two ways in which it can do this, by developing emancipatory pedagogical practices and respecting the intelligences of all learners from all classes on the one hand, and through reframing what is defined as valuable knowledge in a way that is gender-respectful on the other.
712 - PublicationSocial Class Inequality in Ireland: What Role does Education Play?While inequalities outside of education impact on those within, the internal life of education neutral in class terms. Education, or more accurately, the schooling system, is intimately bound up with the reproduction of the class structures of our society. To begin with, the school system is largely designed, managed and controlled by those who are already the successful beneficiaries of that system, and these tend to be the same people who have power, status and money in other areas of economic, cultural and political life. Those who plan schools, design curricula, set and assess examinations are generally part of the cultural elite of society. And while the cultural elite (most of whom are middle class or upper middle class) are not necessarily part of the economic elite, there is deep overlap between the owners of wealth and the owners and controllers of cultural and social capital in Ireland and elsewhere (Bourdieu and Passerson 1977; Courtois 2018).
153 - PublicationThe relationship between poverty and inequality(2000-10)
; ; Paper prepared for the Combat Poverty Agency and the Equality Authority5659 - PublicationA framework for equality proofing(University College Dublin. Equality Studies Centre, 1995-04)
; ; ; Paper prepared for the National Economic and Social Forum823 - PublicationAffective equality : love, care and solidarity as productive forces(Institute of Thematic Gender Studies, LiU-ÖU; Center for Feminist Social Studies (CFS), 2010-05)
1447 - PublicationWritten submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills - Barriers to education facing vulnerable groups(2018-03)The equality principle governing Irish public policy, and particularly educational policy, is that of equality of opportunity which is theoretically based on merit. Those who adhere to the meritocratic position claim that those who work hard and are academically capable will do well in school regardless of their social background. The evidence does not support this claim: major social and economic inequalities inevitably undermine all but the thinnest forms of equality of opportunity in education because privileged parents will always find ways of advantaging their children in an economically unequal society. The inability of formal education to overcome social-class and related resource-based inequalities is a reflection of the general inability of liberal equal-opportunities policies to deliver social justice in an economically unjust society. This presents a major dilemma for educators; even when schools do their best to overcome the many social class (and increasingly ethnic/racial/disability-related) disadvantages that students experience within schools and colleges, they cannot eliminate the competitive advantage of the most advantaged in any substantive manner given the impact of out-of-school resources. Yes, there are individual exceptions, but the exceptions are deceptive and dangerous when taken as examples (role models) of what is possible for the majority; they prolong the meritocratic myth that hard work and academic ability are all that is required to succeed relative to others. What works for a few individuals from disadvantaged groups does not work for the majority within that group. We need to have a significantly more equal distribution of wealth and income to have substantive equality of opportunity in education. That is to say, to have equality of opportunity you need to equality of economic and political conditions. And, because all forms of inequality are intersectionally related, we need to address inequalities and barriers at macro, meso and micro levels simultaneously. For this to happen, fiscal, health, housing, transport, welfare, employment, childcare and educational policies need to be aligned with each other and framed in an egalitarian way. This means dealing with pre-distributional and post-distributional injustices in the taxation, welfare and other social systems, and addressing power respect, and care-related inequalities experienced by different groups at the same time. Finally, given the relational nature of all forms of inequality in education, and in particular how the competition for advantage in an unequal society drives educational practice, it is important to remember that the vulnerability of some is exacerbated by the perpetuation of the privilege of others.
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