Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction: A Relational Sociology of Morality in Practice -- 2. An Overview of Relational Sociology -- 3. From Rationalism to Practices, Dispositions and Situated Subjectivities -- 4. From Holism and Individualism to a Relational Perspective on the Sociology of Morality -- 5. The New Sociology of Morality and Morality in Practice -- 6. The Self and a Relational Explanation of Morality in Practice -- 7. Conclusion - A Relational View of Moral Phenomena --

Abundant research in adjacent disciplines shows forgiveness (including forgiving, not forgiving, being forgiven and not being forgiven) to be an ordinary feature of how personal relationships are maintained, repaired and rescinded. Sociologists, however, have scarcely considered forgiveness at all. This article shows why sociologists of personal life should be interested in forgiveness, and how this contributes to sociological interpretations of conflict and repair in relationships. It is argued that sociologists of personal life should be interested in forgiveness because it seems to be part of the ordinary vernacular through which relationships are made sense of. It is also argued that sociologists of personal life can deliver a perspective on forgiveness in relationships that is missing from existing forgiveness research agendas.

Du Bois's work, especially his early work, was explicitly concerned with morality, including dedicated studies into the moral lives of black Americans and their perceived moral standing in American society. His wider oeuvre was also regularly concerned with the role of stratified moral status and power-laden judgement as instruments of oppression. Yet, the long-overdue revival of Du Bois's contribution to sociology has given little credence to his work on morality. Likewise, the resurgent sociology of morality has scarcely engaged with Du Bois's work at all. The primary intention of this article is thus to introduce and explore Du Bois's work on morality. In so doing, the article sets out the aims of Du Bois's work on morality, explores his empirical investigations into the topic, and argues that recognition of Du Bois's ongoing concern for the relationship between racialisation and moral status allows the moral content of his more familiar writings and concepts to come to the fore. Throughout, it is argued that Du Bois's work on morality anticipates many of the features of contemporary sociologies of morality in its emphasis on moral contestation and power, in its focus on practices and care, and in its intention to use the study of morality for the purpose of social reform. But his work also goes beyond current approaches in its recognition of the significance of moral judgement to processes of racialisation. How Du Bois's work contributes to the future of current sociologies of morality is the focus of the conclusion.

Noting that Benhabib's ethical theory has seldom been engaged with by sociologists of morality, this article introduces and interrogates Benhabib's ethical theory from a sociological perspective. It is argued that Benhabib's critiques of Enlightenment conceptions of morality complement sociological theories of morality. Her concepts of the 'concrete' and 'generalized' other and 'interactive universalism' can potentially inform recurrent debates in the sociology of morality about the extent to which cultural plurality precludes the possibility of sociologists providing normative judgements, and the extent to which certain features of moral experiences can be taken to be universal. However, Benhabib's argument that discourse ethics can provide a procedural means to judge between competing moral claims leads her to prioritize the perspective of 'postconventional' Western modernism as the means to adjudicate between the moral tolerability of cultural beliefs and practices. This leads her to characterize 'conventional' moral systems as subordinate, which succumbs to postcolonial critiques of the role of processes of domination in organizing the validity of moral claims.

AbstractThis paper provides a critical comparison of two leading exponents of the relationship between morality and selfhood: Charles Taylor and George Herbert Mead. Specifically, it seeks to provide an assessment of the contribution each approach is able to make to a social theory of morality that has the self at its heart. Ultimately, it is argued that Taylor's phenomenological account neglects the significance of interaction and social relations in his conceptualisation of the relationship between morality and self, which undermines the capacity of his framework to explain how moral understandings and dialogic moral subjectivity develop in a world of shared meaning. I then argue that Mead's pragmatist interactionist approach overcomes many of the flaws in Taylor's framework, and offers a grounded conceptualisation of the relationship between self and morality that is able to provide a basis for a properly social account of moral subjectivity.

This article applies the philosophical perspective of posthumanism to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A posthumanist perspective attempts to break with the notion of human exceptionalism by recognising the performative agency of the non-human. It is maintained that such an approach is necessary to understanding how the disaster occurred in the first place, the calamitous initial responses the disaster, and its long-term consequence – including the environmental restoration that has occurred in the exclusion zone. Indeed, it is argued that much of the previous literature on the disaster takes the perspective of human exceptionalism, which has led to a failure to accurately interpret how the disaster unfolded and how it continues to emerge.

In this article we argue that menthol-containing products, like chewing gums, vapour rubs and mouthwashes, are used as moral things within everyday practices. They take on moral functions because of how their material qualities contribute to sensory experiences. Specifically, we focus on scenarios in which menthol products become associated with the moral work of care and highlight the temporal dimension of what people do with moral things. We review the literature on morality as a practical, everyday accomplishment and stress the embodied nature of caring practices to outline how care is bound up with sensory experience. We draw on rich qualitative data generated through creative methods, including film, photography and sketching, as part of object-elicitation interviews, focus groups, home tours and 'pop-up stalls'. We develop three concepts regarding the function of moral things: manifesting, anchoring and conserving moral relations to describe how time, morality and the sensory are entwined.

Chapter 1 – Introduction: Masks in the Pandemic, Masks in Everyday Life -- Chapter 2 – Masks and Materiality -- Chapter 3 – Masking and the (Re)making of the Public Realm -- Chapter 4 – Masks, Lay Moralities -- and Moral Practice -- Chapter 5 – Conclusion: Masks and Uncertainty.

Bringing together contributions from anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and philosophy, along with ethnographic case studies from diverse settings, this volume explores how different disciplinary perspectives on the good might engage with and enrich each other. The chapters examine how people realize the good in social life, exploring how ethics and values relate to forms of suffering, power and inequality, and, in doing so, demonstrate how focusing on the good enhances social theory. This is the first interdisciplinary engagement with what it means to study the good as a fundamental aspect of social life