Relational Theory: Feminist Approaches, Implications, and Applications

Relational theory starts from the ontological fact of our being in networks of relationships and draws out what this means for theories of knowledge and for moral and political theory. This book uses insights from feminist relational theory to outline the ontological, epistemological, and moral/political implications of this theoretical approach. The chapters in this volume focus on relationships of power and oppression; how these relationships shape who is taken to have knowledge and who is dismissed or ignored; and what all of this means for theories of equality, justice, and moral and political theory more generally. A focus on relationships of power and oppression opens up an examination into structures such as colonialism and capitalism that shape interconnected networks of relationships between humans and human and non-human entities and ecosystems. This volume, that now includes eight additional chapters published both before and after the original special issue, offers a significant step forward in the development of feminist relational theory. Following early forays in identifying and criticizing mainstream liberal theory in the Western tradition, chapters in this collection draw on approaches by anti-oppression theorists found in critical disability, critical race, anti-colonial/decolonial, and non-Western theories, to further broaden the descriptions and analyses of relationships and networks of relationships and to extend and advance feminist relational theory and its applications. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Global Ethics.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Feminist relational theory 1. Toward a relational theory of harm: on the ethical implications of childhood psychological abuse 2. Reframing patient-doctor relationships: relational autonomy and treating autonomy as a virtue 3. Thinking through the death of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea: mourning and grief as relational and as sites for resistance 4. Crafting relations and feminist practices of access 5. Global health and the COVID-19 pandemic: a care ethics approach 6. Is the capability approach a sufficient challenge to distributive accounts of global justice? 7. The relationship between poverty and prosperity: a feminist relational account 8. The coloniality of time in the global justice debate: de-centring Western linear temporality 9. The moral fabric of linguicide: un-weaving trauma narratives and dependency relationships in Indigenous language reclamation 10. Relational value, land, and climate justice 11. Safety and Sacrifice 12. Revealing invisible inequalities in egalitarian political theory 13. Protection as connection: feminist relational theory and protecting civilians from violence in South Sudan 14. Integrating Peace, Justice and Development in a Relational Approach to Peacebuilding 15. ‘Re-existence’ of women Cambodian religious leaders: decolonial possibilities using insights from feminist relational theory and postsecular feminism 16. Towards an ethics of compassionate care in accompanying human suffering: dialogic relationships and feminist activist scholarship with asylum-seeking mothers 17. Connecting relational wellbeing and participatory action research: reflections on ‘unlikely’ transformations among women caring for disabled children in South Africa 18. Transnational solidarity in feminist practices: power, partnerships, and accountability