Care Over Cruelty

Care over Cruelty integrates the pacifist and anarchist traditions with liberation ethics. This project seeks to understand ways in which spaces for participation among newcomers and the native-born population can be expanded. It contributes to the literature on refugees by arguing that engaging in practices of liberatory care as anti-war and peacemaking political praxis to improve the lives and conditions for newcomers is one way to do so. Moreover, (re)politicizing displacement and practices of resettlement as a form of resistance can point toward alternatives for more peaceful futures.

This book foregrounds opposition to the cruelty of the American state. The research argues that Americans have responsibilities to address the harm done by their government and military. The author argues that refugee resettlement is one way to begin the process of redressing harm, and that we have responsibilities, both general and specific, to others that transcend the boundaries of particular communities into which we were born and/or that we "imagine" we belong to. Moreover, enacting caring practices for and with newcomers can be an articulation of liberatory care as anti-war and peacemaking political praxis.