A critique of Noddings’ care ethics from a trauma-informed perspective

Against a backdrop of growing educational interest in trauma-informed practices, this working paper offers a critique of Noddings’ care ethics from a trauma-informed
perspective. While we don’t reject Noddings’ broader ethical-educational project, we
do believe that her theory of care ethics is highly problematic. We consider some of the structural or conceptual problems with her framing of such key terms as reciprocity, recognition, and congeniality, and of her figure of the carer/cared-for dyad. We further question, in light of Noddings’ care ethics and care ethics more generally, the extent to which universities could possibly be caring. We suggest that Noddings’ model of care ethics cannot account for the many push-pull effects produced by the network of commitments and relationships in which we are always-already operating. We conclude by outlining the problems a trauma-informed standpoint poses to Noddings’ conception of recognition and receipt of care, arguing that she risks situating recognition and receipt within a transactional economy of gratitude. Such an economy, we argue, is contrary to care.