Affective Equality

This groundbreaking book provides a new perspective on equality by highlighting and exploring affective equality, the aspect of equality concerned with relationships of love, care and solidarity. Drawing on studies of intimate caring, or 'love labouring', it reveals the depth, complexity and multidimensionality of affective inequality.

An Irish Times Book of the Year, 2009 'This brilliant qualitative research explores the connections among emotional connection, moral obligation, and care provision. A diverse set of thoughtful and sensitive essays explain a profoundly important cause of persistent gender inequality.' - Professor Nancy Folbre, University of Massachusetts, USA 'This is a unique empirical and theoretical project...I can't think of another book like it...It is a definitive statement of a timeless problem - how to address the private sphere in all its complexity. Social policy is driving further into the private sphere and this book highlights just what is at stake. It is a book that anyone concerned about social justice cannot afford to ignore.' - Professor Madeleine Arnot, University of Cambridge, UK '...this book offers a wonderfully fresh and holistic perspective on the pervasive problem of inequality in the carrying out and the receipt of care and love.' - Gender& Development

KATHLEEN LYNCH is Professor of Equality Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. She is co-founder of the UCD Equality Studies Centre and the School of Social Justice. She is the co-author of Equality: From Theory to Action and Equality and Power in Schools. She chairs the UCD-wide Egalitarian World Initiative Network (EWI).    JOHN BAKER is Senior Lecturer in Equality Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland, and co-founder of the UCD Equality Studies Centre and the School of Social Justice. He is the author of Arguing for Equality and co-author of Equality: From Theory to Action. His main area of research is theoretical issues related to Equality Studies   MAUREEN LYONS is Senior Researcher and Director of Research Design and Methodology at the Equality Studies Centre, University College Dublin, Ireland. Previously she held research posts at The Homeless Agency, Dublin and the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin. She is co-author of Inside Classrooms: The Teaching and Learning of Mathematics in Social Context, Getting Out of the House: Women Returning to Employment, Education and Training and Marital Breakdown and Family Law in Ireland.