Relational Ethics and Moral Imagination in Contemporary Systemic Practice

This article discusses an approach to relational ethics in contemporary systemic practice. It explores the possibilities offered by traditions of moral philosophy in attending to problems from a relational ethics perspective. This includes a focus on relationships as a crucial element in the development and maintenance of a moral self and how couples and families construct an ethical platform together, both consciously and unconsciously; and also how relational ethics may inform ideas about the values‐driven problems people present in therapy. Finally, it suggests how ethical responsibility and accountability can be constructed as relational responsiveness. Despite our associations with morality as judgmental and rule driven, moral conduct and decision‐making can involve imaginative, creative and aesthetic possibilities.     

Moral Identity in Friendships between Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Students and Straight Students in College

People construct moral identities for being a supportive affiliate of stigmatized groups. To extend past research that focused on such identities within formal organizations, this study seeks to identify the process of moral identity construction in a personal setting—friendships between gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) people and straight people. Analyzing data from in‐depth interviews with college students, we show that straight students claim moral worth by emphasizing their deliberate decisions to develop and sustain friendships with GLB people and by highlighting how the friendships led them to personal enlightenment and political engagement. GLB students, as a stigmatized group, also claim moral worth by emphasizing their ability to transcend the community boundary and to be accepted in the larger society. Students make such claims as they strategically link these aspects of cross‐orientation friendships to existing moral discourses in the larger society and draw on resources available in the organizational and life course contexts.     

Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.     

Ethical turn in the social sciences

This paper discusses the ethical or moral turn of the social sciences, especially in sociology in the works of Zygmunt Bauman and in anthropology in the works of Didier Fassin. These scholars have embarked on relating morals or ethics to their particular area of specialization. We note that their contributions have highlighted the moral or ethical questions in their respective field works and empirical observations and have produced moral or ethical discourses or frameworks in their respective area or field. Ethics or morality (sometimes) morals is not just a theory but also practice in their respective disciplines and advocacies. This moral or ethical practice is translated into questioning our cognitive frameworks and political consequences of globalization or consumerism affecting some groups or individuals in contemporary world. We shall consider morality as human actions while ethics is the reflections on those actions.     

Moral distinctions and structural inequality: homeless youth salvaging the self

This paper explores the construction and contestation of moral distinctions as a dimension of contemporary structural inequality through a focus on the subjectivities constructed by young people who have experienced homelessness. Empirical material from two research projects shows that in young people's narratives of homelessness, material insecurity intertwines with the moral economies at work in neoliberal capitalist societies to construct homelessness as a state of moral disgrace, in which an ungovernable experience is experienced as a moral failure. When young people gain access to secure housing, the increasing stability and security of their lives is narrated in terms of a moral adherence to personal responsibility and disciplined conduct. Overall the paper describes an economy of worth organized around distinctions between order and chaos, self‐governance and unruliness, morality and disgrace, which structures the experience of homelessness. As young people's position in relation to these moral ideals reflects the material conditions of their lives, their experiences demonstrate the way that moral hierarchies contribute to the existence and experience of structural inequalities in neoliberal capitalist societies.     

Women's Morality: A Test of Carol Gilligan's Theory

The purpose of this paper is to analyze male and female perspectives of morality, using Carol Gilligan's theory of gender differences. The hermeneutic–dialectic mode of inquiry was used to understand the process and outcome of the participants' perspectives. Three discourses were utilized to examine the notion of morality of the women participants, the men participants, and a final discourse in which both sexes were brought together. The women demonstrated few personal boundaries in their understanding of morality whereas the men's approach remained abstract and detached. The majority of both group members, however, showed potential to understand the social realm of the others' dominant approach to morality, but no consensus was reached. The gender distinct moral language continued to persist throughout the final discourse and the subjective versus intellectual approach remained more comfortable for each respective group. The findings are consistent with Gilligan's theory and the causes are understood from both a psychological and sociological viewpoint.     

Muslim Women,Moral Visions: Globalization and Gender Controversies in Indonesia

Since 1998, Indonesia’s democratization has produced contentious public debates, many of which revolve around issues of gender and sexual morality. Yet such controversies not only often focus on women, but also involve women as participants. This article examines how Muslim women activists in two organizations adapt global discourses to participate in important public sphere debates about pornography and polygamy. Indonesia’s moral debates demonstrate an important way in which global discourses are negotiated in national settings. In the debates, some pious women use discourses of feminism and liberal Islam to argue for women’s equality, while others use Islam to call for greater moral regulation of society. My research demonstrates that global discourses of feminism and Islamic revivalism are mediated through national organizations which shape women’s political activism and channel it in different directions. Women’s political subjectivities are thus shaped through their involvement in national organizations that structure the ways they engage with global discourses. The Indonesian case shows not only that the national should not be conflated with the local, but also demonstrates the significance of national contexts and histories for understanding global processes.     

The neoliberal mom: how a discursive coalition shapes low-income mothers’ labor market participation

Research has elucidated the conflict low-income mothers face when trying to comply with the imperatives of the neoliberalism and mothering discourses. Feminist scholars have argued that low-income mothers’ alternative conceptions of morality and behavior constitute an act of resistance to inferiorizing definitions embedded in these discourses. Drawing on this literature, I offer a new conceptualization of the seemingly contradictory discourses. Based on interviews with 48 low-income Israeli mothers, I suggest that the neoliberal ideology is not limited to the neoliberal discourse, which primarily measures the individual's commitment to the labor market, but rather has diffused into the mothering discourse, which sets the standards for good mothering. This diffusion constructs a discursive coalition of ‘neoliberal moms’, wherein the current hegemonic notion of good mothering and the neoliberal call for personal responsibility intersect and shape mothers’ perceptions and decision-making processes. Moreover, the neoliberal mom constructs an alternative morality: moral motherhood. Accordingly, the moral component of good mothering means taking personal responsibility to act in ways that promote one's children's future inclusion. I argue that the discursive coalition framework helps us to better understand mothers’ labor force entries and exits, and how these constitute a way of negotiating paths to social inclusion.     

Olfactive frames of remembering: theorizing self,senses and society

By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta‐narratives including sensory relations (pertaining to familial and other ties), sensory memory, time and space, and sensoryscapes. This article also elucidates upon the various moral, cultural and aesthetic codes that may be discerned in biographical narrations of social actors drawn from narrative interviews. Furthermore, it highlights a need to consider sensorial‐bodily experiences in qualitative inquiry and thereby conceptualize how actors articulate their sense of self, and how they reformulate their experiences and relationships with others vis‐à‐vis emotional discourses of happiness, sadness and nostalgia in the maintenance and continuity of selfhood. The paper therefore contributes to sensuous scholarship by explicating how smells and memories operate in conjunction toward shaping self‐identity and social relations.     

Moral Schemas in Articulation and Intuition: How Religious People Evaluate Human Reproductive Genetic Technologies

As new and more effective human reproductive genetic technologies (RGTs) rapidly develop, religious voices remain an important part of public discussion about the moral standing of such technologies. Here, we compare how individuals from different religious traditions evaluate disease RGTs (detecting genetic diseases in vitro) when compared to enhancement RGTs, allowing parents to select features of a child. Findings are gleaned from analysis of 270 interviews with individuals from 23 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious organizations, with supporting data from a national survey of more than 10,000 Americans. We find that respondents engage in clearly defined discursive moral reasoning to evaluate the propriety of disease RGTs while moral intuitions manifest themselves in responses to enhancement RGTs. We argue that schemas provide resources for moral discourses while also shaping moral intuitions expressed through emotions. Our results have implications for how religious people respond to new technologies when their institutional and denominational structures do not have readily discernable moral frameworks to guide responses.     

Do as I Say,Don’t Do as I Do: Differences in moral judgments do not translate into differences in decisions in real-life trolley problems

Many people judge that it is permissible to harm one person in order to save many in some circumstances but not in others: it matters how the harm comes about. Researchers have used trolley problems to investigate this phenomenon, eliciting moral judgments or behavioral predictions about hypothetical scenarios where five people can be saved at the cost of harming one other person. We operationalized trolley problems in the laboratory, with economic incentives and real-life consequences, allowing us to observe not only judgments but actual decisions. We varied whether the five were saved by clicking a switch that diverted the harm to the one or by dragging the one in front of the harm. We found differences in moral judgments between the two tasks, but no differences in behavior. The judgments of actors and observers also differed, with observers judging it more right to act. Our results suggest that the difference between moral judgments and actions arises because participants think that doing the right action still involves doing something morally discreditable, and that the morality of taking action does not exhaust the normative reasons for acting.     

Everyday morality in families and a critique of social capital: an investigation into moral judgements,responsibilities, and sentiments in Kyrgyzstani households

This article examines individuals’ lay understandings of moral responsibilities between adult kin members. Moral sentiments and practical judgments are important in shaping kinship responsibilities. The article discusses how judgments on requests of support can be reflexive and critical, taking into account many factors, including merit, social proximity, a history of personal encounters, overlapping commitments, and moral identity in the family. In so doing, we argue that moral responsibilities are contextual and relational. We also analyze how class, gender, and capabilities affect how individuals imagine, expect and discuss care responsibilities. We also offer a critique of social capital theory of families, suggesting that their versions of morality are instrumental, alienated, and restrictive. Although Bourdieu’s concept of habitus overlaps with our proposed moral sentiments approach, the former does not adequately address moral concerns, commitments, and evaluations. The article aims to contribute to a better understanding of everyday morality by drawing upon different literatures in sociology, moral philosophy, postcommunism, and development studies.     

Nihilism and urban multiculture in outer East London

This paper discusses nihilism as it relates to contemporary urban multiculture in outer East London. It addresses how contemporary discourses on, and performances of, nihilism signal shifts in the constitution of urban multiculture. Attention is paid to acts of anti‐sociability (and sociability) for what they reveal about contemporary urban rearrangement, and in particular the re‐formation of urban multiculture in a moment defined by globalization, virtual communication, ethnic diversity and neoliberal marginalization. Through addressing discourses on, and performances of, nihilism the overall argument of the paper is for a renewal of the terms on which we understand and engage with urban multiculture, and for an appreciation of how relations between class, race and culture have shifted since key texts on the subject were published.     

Michel Foucault,Body Politics and the Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy*

Abstract The New Science and the arts flourished vigorously in the seventeenth century Netherlands. Of special importance were the anatomical theatres in Leiden. Delft and Amsterdam. These theatres were important cultural centres in the sense that they were centres of arts and sciences, meeting places for artists and scientists, and places with a public function. What role did anatomy played in the rise and expansion of modern science. Many scholars assume that religion, and more generally speaking, morality, was strongly opposed to anatomy, but then it is difficult to explain how anatomy and anatomical theatres could be of such central significance. It is Michel Foucault's thesis, however, that there was no hindrance by religion and morality, but an antagonism between two medical discourses, the clinical (life) and the anatomical (death). This thesis is tested by exploring anatomy practices and regulations in early-modern Italy. Holland. England and France. The results indicate that, not only antagonism between medical discourses, but also conflicting opinions on teaching and the conditions for scientific progress, and. most of all, the interest taken by government in anatomy, played a part. The question as to whether moral standards were a hindrance to the advance of science, was primarily dependent on body politics.     

‘Being friends means helping each other,making coffee for each other’: reciprocity in the friendships of people with intellectual disability

Friendship is an issue of concern for many people with intellectual disability. The aim of the research presented in this paper is to understand how people with intellectual disability experience friendship and what friendship means for them. A focus group was held with seven people with intellectual disability, who are members of a self-advocacy group. An inductive thematic analysis approach was used to analyse the data. The people that the research participants identified as their friends were fellow self-advocates, family members, support workers and co-workers. They also identified behaviours and actions that foster friendship and those that undermine it. The analysis shows how the research participants identified as friendships those relationships which had an element of reciprocity, while linking a lack of reciprocity with the absence of friendship. It is very important for non-disabled people to understand the perspectives of people with intellectual disability they live and work with.     

The Making of Childhood Mortality in Modern South Africa

This article examines the ways in which childhood mortality as an ideological tool is constituted as a shared moral order in modern society. The examination of record‐keeping as an ideological practice that produces a governable and self‐regulating population allows us to identify how and where it is incorporated into social life as an everyday morality. Under this moral order, death must be constituted as a medical necessity, rendering it culturally relevant, in order for social life to continue to be considered a meaningful and purposeful endeavour. The child's status in society as a sacred citizen ensures that children's deaths are constituted in even more particular ways, so that the possibility of medically ‘unnecessary’ child death remains morally unthinkable and thus does not expose the ideological underpinnings that continue to produce social life as a moral and thus meaningful affair.     

Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on knowledge and the knowledge society within the Sustainable Development Goals

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to analyze discourses of knowledge and the knowledge society in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discourse analysis is a collective name for a number of scientific methodologies for analyzing semiosis, namely how meaning is created and communicated though written, vocal or sign language. Employing a genealogical approach which locates discourses in the field of prior discourses, two prior discourses of the knowledge society are identified in the key document of the SDGs. The concepts knowledge and knowledge society are found to have a marginal position within the main policy document “Transforming our world,” adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. The techno‐scientific‐economic discourse is found to be dominant at the level of implementation and of goals, while there is some evidence of the pluralist‐participatory discourse at the level of vision and strategy. Analysis of some of the policy advice provided by international organizations and civil society indicates that more pluralist‐participatory discourses on knowledge were represented when the SDGs were being formulated. Developed countries and the corporate sector were very influential in determining the final text and were probably instrumental in excluding more transformational discourses and maintaining the status quo.     

Class and comparison: subjective social location and lay experiences of constraint and mobility

Lay perceptions and experiences of social location have been commonly framed with reference to social class. However, complex responses to, and ambivalence over, class categories have raised interesting analytic questions relating to how sociological concepts are operationalized in empirical research. For example, prior researchers have argued that processes of class dis‐identification signify moral unease with the nature of classed inequalities, yet dis‐identification may also in part reflect a poor fit between ‘social class’ as a category and the ways in which people accord meaning to, and evaluate, their related experiences of socio‐economic inequality. Differently framed questions about social comparison, aligned more closely with people's own terms of reference, offer an interesting alternative avenue for exploring subjective experiences of inequality. This paper explores some of these questions through an analysis of new empirical data, generated in the context of recession. In the analysis reported here, class identification was common. Nevertheless, whether or not people self identified in class terms, class relevant issues were perceived and described in highly diverse ways, and lay views on class revealed it to be a very aggregated as well as multifaceted construct. It is argued that it enables a particular, not general, perspective on social comparison. The paper therefore goes on to examine how study participants compared themselves with familiar others, identified by themselves. The evidence illuminates social positioning in terms of constraint, agency and (for some) movement, and offers insight into very diverse experiences of inequality, through the comparisons that people made. Their comparisons are situated, and pragmatic, accounts of the material contexts in which people live their lives. Linked evaluations are circumscribed and strongly tied to these proximate material contexts.The paper draws out implications for theorizing lay perspectives on class, and subjective experiences of inequality.     

A theory of prudential values and a rule utilitarian theory of morality

Ethics can be divided into a theory of prudential values and a theory of morality in a narrower sense. My paper proposes a utilitarian — a rule-utilitarian — theory of morality. But it deviates from most of the utilitarian tradition by rejecting the hedonistic and subjectivistic accounts of prudential values favored by many utilitarian writers. While economists tend to define people's utility levels in terms of their actual preferences, ethics must define them in terms of their informed preferences. To prefer A over B does not mean to have a stronger desire for A than for B. Rather, it means to regard one's access to A as being more important than one's access to B. Even though different people often have quite different preferences, their basic desires seem to be much the same. We must choose our moral rules, and our society's moral code as a whole, by their social utility. An important factor in determining their social utility are their expectation effects. Unlike the rule — utilitarian more code, the act — utilitarian moral code would be unable to give proper weight to these expectation effects. It would also unduly restrict our individual freedom. Finally, I shall argue against Kant that morality is primarily a servant of many other human values rather than itself the highest value of human life.     

Young People as Moral Beings: Childhood,Morality and Inter‐Generational Relationships

This article uses the work of Goffman to explore how a group of older children presented a moral self in a study of inter‐generational relationships. By reflecting critically on their own behaviour and that of other young people and adults, they presented themselves as morally competent agents, whilst questioning the taken‐for‐granted moral competence of adults. Their presentation of a moral self involved portraying themselves as moral beings, whilst acknowledging that they are also moral becomings. The findings highlight how the embedded authority and associated moral accountability of adults in relation to children militate against recognising children's moral agency.