Care and Justice in Social Service: Toward a Political Ethics of Care

This paper explores a new possibility of care ethics for social service. The related problems are getting major issues in Korean society such as health insurance, free child care, and basic old age pension. As the needs for the care have been growing rapidly in various social fields, 'care' has been an important concept in envisioning a welfare state. This paper examined the contemporary studies on care ethics and social policy. Particularly, Kittay's care ethics - a public ethics of care and political ethics care in Tronto were focused on in order to explore a new possibility of care ethics for social service. However, due to the lack of proper ethics and political stance applied to the newly arisen needs and challenges, there exist lots of confusions and difficulties. First, this paper will examine the relationship of care and justice in social service, and it will discuss on the necessity of a political conceptualization for an integrative approach to care. This paper attempted to introduce a new political ethics of care that takes into account both care and justice properly for social service policy.