Lynch, KathleenKathleenLynch2010-09-292010-09-292010 The a2010-07http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2479Paper presented at the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology : sociology on the move, Gothenburg, Sweden, July 11-17th 2010This paper examines the significance of care relations for the pursuit of equality and social justice in society. It highlights the importance of affective equality for producing a society governed by principles of deep egalitarianism and equality of condition. This paper builds on research with my colleagues in Equality Studies on the theory of equality (Baker, Lynch, Cantillon and Walsh, 2004, 2009) and on the subject of affective equality in particular (Lynch, Baker and Lyons, 2009). It begins by acknowledging the role of feminist scholars in opening up the affective domain to research. It then briefly defines affective equality and inequality going on to outline the core assumptions underpinning affective egalitarian thinking. From there, it explores the neglect of affective relations in egalitarian theory and outlines a new framework for egalitarian thinking, one that takes account of affective relations and highlights their inter-relationship with other social systems. This is followed by a discussion of the implications of relationality at the heart of affective equality and a short comment on the links between affective relations, ethics and politics. The paper concludes with some comments on why social scientific and political thought needs to change to take account of the affective and the normative in social life.87273 bytesapplication/pdfenEqualityAffective equalityRedistributionRecognitionSocial science and valuesCare and justiceFeminismEqualitySocial justiceCaringFeminismConference Publicationhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/