Being at Home
Living Autonomously in an Unjust World
Published on 3. June 2026
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-0-19-781124-5 (ISBN)
Description
In Being at Home, Asha Leena Bhandary offers a bold reimagining of liberal political philosophy through the lens of intersectionality. Engaging deeply with race, gender, and caregiving relationships, Bhandary reorients traditional discourse around autonomy, establishing the significance of her lived experience as a biracial Asian American woman, philosopher, and mother in the American Heartland.
By shifting the focus from abstract individualism to embodied, relational autonomy, Being at Home reframes key debates in liberalism, multiculturalism, and feminist care theory. Bhandary argues that autonomy cannot be meaningfully theorized without attending to the values of belonging and care--especially for women of color, whose lives are often shaped by exclusion and systemic stress. Drawing on personal narrative and interdisciplinary scholarship--including Asian American philosophy, Black feminist thought, Latinx feminism, health disparities research, psychology, and reproductive justice--Bhandary develops a compelling framework for intersectional liberalism. This new approach to liberal theory confronts the realities of social hierarchy and group boundaries and offers tools for resilience, counterfactual living, and belonging.
Being at Home is essential reading for anyone seeking a more inclusive, care-centered vision of freedom, one that responds to the complexities of contemporary life and expands the possibilities of liberal thought.
By shifting the focus from abstract individualism to embodied, relational autonomy, Being at Home reframes key debates in liberalism, multiculturalism, and feminist care theory. Bhandary argues that autonomy cannot be meaningfully theorized without attending to the values of belonging and care--especially for women of color, whose lives are often shaped by exclusion and systemic stress. Drawing on personal narrative and interdisciplinary scholarship--including Asian American philosophy, Black feminist thought, Latinx feminism, health disparities research, psychology, and reproductive justice--Bhandary develops a compelling framework for intersectional liberalism. This new approach to liberal theory confronts the realities of social hierarchy and group boundaries and offers tools for resilience, counterfactual living, and belonging.
Being at Home is essential reading for anyone seeking a more inclusive, care-centered vision of freedom, one that responds to the complexities of contemporary life and expands the possibilities of liberal thought.
Reviews / Votes
Being at Home is an ambitious and brilliant rethinking of the notion of autonomy from a relational and intersectional perspective, bringing together liberalism and critical philosophy of race and gender in original ways. Bhandary's intersectional liberalism opens a new chapter in liberal political philosophy with a powerful normative framework grounded in experience and highly relevant for today's social realities. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the challenges of fighting for freedom and autonomy in an unjust world. * Jose Medina, Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University * This is a brilliant book! Asha Bhandary demonstrates why a robust defense of the liberal value of personal autonomy requires a full-throated commitment to 'being at home,' and offers us a novel concept, intersectional liberalism, to make sense of it. For such a reality to be possible for women of color and others who are marginalized, Bhandary explores how people in society's mainstream (who often engage in microaggressions) and those who live counter-factually (and who often suffer allostatic overloads) all need to adjust their ways of being. Weaving real life experience with philosophical reflection, Bhandary offers profound insights throughout this book. * Joan C Tronto, Professor Emerita, City University of New York and University of Minnesota * An artful synthesis of memoir, philosophy, law, and literature, this is a beautifully written meditation on home-making in an unjust world, and the practices of buoyancy and community that enable those who live 'counterfactually' to nevertheless be 'at home.' * Ashwini Vasanthakumar, author of The Ethics of Exile * In her unique defense of what she calls "intersectional liberalism" Bhandary explores what it would mean to resist expectations of deference to power in order to live meaningfully and autonomously. Outsider status is variable and complex, but Bhandary's reflections on her own experiences as an Asian-American in the Midwest-what she calls 'the view from here'-poignantly grounds readers and maps out a path to belonging, even in hostile terrain. * Lori Gruen, author of Entangled Empathy *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 148 mm
Width: 217 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
366 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-781124-5 (9780197811245)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Asha Leena Bhandary is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of Freedom to Care: Liberalism, Dependency Care, and Culture (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Caring for Liberalism: Dependency and Liberal Political Theory (Routledge, 2021). She is the founding director of the Iowa Care Lab.
Content
- Table of Contents to follow