chapter 5. The first section of the chapter explores arguments from criti-
cal theory and postmodernism, which offer some of the more promising
responses in international relations theory to the problem of social exclu-
sion on a global scale. I argue in favour of a social-relations approach to
difference and exclusion; this approach draws upon the strengths of criti-
cal theory but argues that the current world order demands an interper-
sonal, relational morality which focuses on the real contexts of relation-
ships among particular persons. Such an approach recognizes that
patterns of exclusion on a global scale are systematic and structural, and
that an adequate global ethics must address these patterns through the
adoption of an appropriate ontology, based on relationships, and episte-
mology, based on the social construction of knowledge.

Finally, chapter 7 explores a critical ethics of care in the sociopolitical
and economic contexts of international relations. I explore the notion of
ethical 'issues' in international relations and the preoccupation with the
problem of sovereignty and intervention. Through an analysis of ethical
approaches to humanitarian intervention and the wider problem of
poverty in a North-South context, this chapter demonstrates the ways in
which a critical ethics of care casts a new light on the moral nature of, and
appropriate moral responses to, global social and political relations. This
chapter does not argue that 'a more caring world' is one in which global
poverty and human suffering will be eradicated. Rather, it suggests that
the ways in which we confront the profound moral questions arising
from these issues will be radically and irretrievably altered when we re-
nounce our principled moral theories of obligation in favour of a vision of
ethics which recognizes the moral incompleteness, and the profound con-
textual inappropriateness, of an ethics which seeks to uphold impartiality
by maintaining a depersonalized, distancing attitude towards others.

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