Sociology of Ethics and Morality

What exactly keeps women ‘in’ inequitable care relationships, and how do we get ‘out’? This dissertation offers a timely response to a pressing societal problem – that of how to understand and organize care. Feminist scholarship and debates focus on the redistribution of care, considering how to shift care responsibilities from women to men or from individuals to the state. My research expands this work by critically reflecting on (shifting) relationships between women and the care economy with a focus on the moral dimensions of care work and on the narrative, intrasubjective work that women do.

The research mobilizes sociological theories of care work, gender and moral worth, and uses feminist life history and arts-based, auto-ethnographic methods to contribute to a conceptual reimagining of “care.” Taking an interpretive, narrative, feminist approach, I draw on 20 in-depth life history interviews with 12 participants, as well as on my own autoethnographic experiences as a live-in care worker at L’Arche. I analyze how women narrate renegotiating care responsibilities or expectations across our lives and in different paid and unpaid care contexts in Ontario, Canada. Making links to class, gender and conditions in the caring economy, the project contextualizes women’s narratives of orienting to projects of care, negotiating moral dilemmas at the limits of care, and stepping back from or renegotiating care responsibilities.

The study enriches feminist theories of care by developing a theorized account of the “relational care economy” that makes intrasubjective conditions, and the contradictions that people negotiate, central. I also contribute to a conceptual reimagining of “care” both by raising questions about whether “care as an ethic” should apply at the level of individual women’s lives, as well as by calling for a conception of care that makes limits central. Aiming to foster solidarity amongst carers in different roles, I ask tough questions about what we expect of ourselves and others, how we can stop setting women up for such intimate losses, and how our lives can be otherwise.

The twenty-first century workplace compels Americans to be more flexible. To embrace change, work with unpredictable schedules, be available 24/7, and take charge of one's own career. What are the wider implications of these pressures for workers' lives? How do they conceive of good work and a good life amid such incessant change?

In The Disrupted Workplace, Benjamin Snyder examines how three groups of American workers—financial professionals, truck drivers, and unemployed job seekers—construct moral order in a capitalist system that demands flexibility. Based on seventy in-depth interviews and three years of participant observation, he argues that the flexible economy transforms how workers experience time. New scheduling techniques, employment strategies, and technologies disrupt the flow and trajectory of working life, which makes the workplace a site of perplexing moral dilemmas. Work can feel both liberating and terrorizing, engrossing in the short term but unsustainable in the long term.

Through a vivid portrait of real workers' struggles to adapt their lives to constant disruption, Benjamin Snyder mounts a compelling critique of the costs of the flexible economy.

Evidence-based practice has become an important approach to social work practice. This paper highlights some of the ethical dilemmas which may be implicated by this approach, and encourages social workers and social work researchers to carefully consider these potential quandaries.

From concerns of dwindling care and kindness for others to an excessive concern with self and consumerism, plenty of evidence has been provided for the claim that morality is in decline in the West, yet little is known about how people make-sense of and experience their everyday moral lives. This insightful book asks how late-modern subjects construct, understand and experience morality in a context of moral uncertainty. With a focus on two areas of morality and human conduct – love and intimacy, and the human treatment of animals – the author draws on the work of Bauman, Ahmed, Irigaray, Foucault and Taylor to construct an innovative theoretical synthesis, which is combined with new empirical material drawn from online diaries or blogs to examine the complex and intriguing ways that contemporary subjects narrate and experience everyday moral-decision-making. Providing theoretical and empirical insights into the contemporary production of morality and selfhood in late-modernity, Everyday Moralities sheds new light on the ways in which people morally navigate a changing social world and advances sociology beyond models of narcissism, moral loss and community breakdown. As such, it makes an important contribution to an underdeveloped area of the discipline, explicitly addressing the everyday ways morality is lived and practiced in a climate of moral ambiguity.

This is a unique opportunity for early career researchers to join The Alan Turing Institute. The Alan Turing Institute (ATI) is the UK’s new national institute for data science, established to bring together world-leading expertise to provide leadership in the emerging field of data science. The Institute has been founded by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL and Warwick and the EPSRC.

This is a targeted call, by which we intend to recruit researchers in subjects currently underrepresented by our fellowship cohort. Fellowships are available for 3 years with the potential for an additional 2 years of support following interim review. Fellows will pursue research based at the Institute hub in the British Library, London. Fellowships will be awarded to individual candidates and fellows will be employed by a joint venture partner university (Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL or Warwick).

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.

German version | Lecture (conference presentation, 2022)

In form of a short conference presentation, Marlon Possard analyzes the challenges associated with the further development of autonomous mobility. Above all, he examines ethical problem areas that can be assigned to the philosophy of technology. He also explains legal and social difficulties that need to be resolved before full autonomy can be implemented.

À quoi renvoie notre sidération face aux tueries perpétrées dans Paris le 13 novembre 2015 ? Comment expliquer l’ampleur de la réaction aux attentats de Charlie Hebdo et de l’Hyper Cacher ? Poser ces questions, c’est chercher à comprendre ce que vit une société lorsqu’elle se trouve mise à l’épreuve d’attaques terroristes. C’est tenter d’élucider ce qui fait que des millions de personnes se sentent concernées par ce qui arrive bien qu’elles n’aient de lien direct avec aucune des victimes. En sociologue, Gérôme Truc éclaire ces récents événements en revenant sur la façon dont les individus ordinaires que nous sommes ont vécu et ont répondu aux attentats du 11-Septembre, du 11 mars 2004 à Madrid et du 7 juillet 2005 à Londres. Analysant les discours politiques et les images médiatiques, les manifestations de solidarité et les minutes de silence, ainsi que des dizaines de milliers de messages adressés aux victimes, son enquête révèle toute l’ambivalence de notre rapport aux attentats islamistes. Et met au jour les ressorts de cette solidarité qui, dans nos sociétés individualistes, finit par se dire à la première personne du singulier plutôt que du pluriel : « Je suis Charlie », « Je suis Paris ».

What does the shockwave after the November 13th massacres in Paris reveal? How can we explain the extent of the reaction to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher Hypermarket? To ask these questions is to attempt to understand what happens to a society that finds itself facing the ordeal of terrorist attacks; to try to comprehend what makes millions of people feel concerned by the events, even though they have no direct link with any of the victims. In sociological terms, Géréme Truc elucidates the recent events by recalling how ordinary people, like us, experienced and responded to the 9/11 attacks, or those in Madrid on March 11, 2004, or July 7, 2005 in London. Analysing the political speeches and media images, the demonstrations of solidarity and minutes of silence observed, as well as the tens of thousands of messages sent to the victims, his investigation reveals all the ambivalence of our relation to lslamist attacks. (To be published in English by Polity Press in 2017.)

https://www.puf.com/content/Sid%c3%a9rations_Une_sociologie_des_attentats

En cas d'addiction sévère, il est rare d’aboutir à une guérison complète au sens de la disparition du désir pathologique qui pousse à retourner sans cesse vers l’objet addictif, malgré ses conséquences négatives. On peut néanmoins espérer « vivre avec » ce désir compulsif en contenant son emprise sur les pratiques ordinaires par des méthodes qui consistent par exemple à changer d’environnement ou de relations, à éviter les situations propices à son déclenchement quotidien et surtout à trouver de nouveaux objets de satisfaction capables de prendre le pas sur ceux qui ont conduit au développement de l’addiction. Une politique du rétablissement consisterait à appliquer ces méthodes aux pathologies majeures des sociétés contemporaines telles que l’incapacité à réduire l’empreinte carbone ou l’usage de produits toxiques en agriculture, l’optimisation économique au-delà de toute limite sociale, environnementale ou de civilité, les emballements spéculatifs des banques et organismes financiers, ou encore le pillage des données personnelles et de la disponibilité mentale par le despotisme numérique.

This chapter constructs a sociological mantle for morality and the mind by specifying broad theoretical traditions in the sociological literature on structure, culture, and interaction amenable to neuropsychological models of morality. Moral action does not take place in a vacuum; people are embedded in culture and social structure. We belong to families, groups, organizations, societies that shape and are shaped by our actions, thoughts and feelings. Research in sociology is well established to provide the essential links between human mind – extensively focused on within moral psychology – with society and culture. A comprehensive science of morality not only tests the neurological mechanisms involved in morality in artificial settings but is anchored in sociological understandings about how morality is shaped and activated in everyday human life.

Link til forlag: https://www.unipress.dk/udgivelser/m/moralske-virkelighed,-den/
Den moralske virkelighed er en filosofisk undersøgelse af moral og etik i videst mulige forstand, der bunder i en frustration over oplevelser med den filosofiske etik. Den filosofiske etik skal vejlede os moralsk i vore handlinger, men det synes som om den hverken kan hjælpe os med det eller redegøre for moralen. Moral er et samfundsmæssigt fænomen, men det gør den filosofiske etik typisk ikke meget ud af. I en situation, hvor etikken er i krise, er det derfor værd at se på, hvad moralsociologien kan berige etikken med. Pointen er ikke, at sociologien skal afløse eller begrunde etikken. Idéen er, at udvikle en filosfisk etik, der er sociologisk informeret. I det perspektiv analyseres Émile Durkheim, Niklas Luhmann og Zygmundt Bauman, ligesom det afslutningsvist skitseres, hvordan en sociologisk informeret etisk refleksion kunne se ud.

This essay aims to show why it is important to ask questions about the way Christians raise the question of disability. The central, animating concern has to do with metaphysically thin and philosophically problematic understandings of disability and the way that concept is inflected within contemporary Catholic moral discourse in the areas of biomedical ethics and social theorizing. The essay has three parts. First, through the lens of Gaudium et spes, the author discusses the source of our contemporary questions about disability and related themes. Second, the author surveys overlapping ways of framing the concept disability, as formulated within biomedical ethics, American jurisprudence, the social critique from disability studies, and the sociopolitical subversion of the biomedical outlook from critical disability theorists. Third, given those contemporary frames and in conversation with Fides et ratio, the author sketches some preliminary considerations relevant to a faithfully Christian and distinctively Catholic account of disability. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 20.2 (Summer 2020): 277–310.

"La morale et l’éthique sont aujourd’hui invoquées dans les domaines les plus variés, qu’il s’agisse de politique ou d’économie, de guerre ou de sexualité, de justice internationale ou de recherche biologique. Si ces préoccupations ne sont pas entièrement neuves, la manière de les constituer collectivement en problèmes et d’en débattre dans l’espace public implique désormais un certain rapport aux valeurs et aux émotions qui définit ce qu’on peut appeler la question morale. Pour l’explorer, on propose ici un détour anthropologique.
Des classiques essais de Montaigne sur les cannibales aux travaux récents sur la science, la religion, l’humanitaire, la corruption ou les attentats suicides, les textes réunis, dont beaucoup sont inédits en français, présentent les grands débats contemporains autour du relativisme et de l’universalisme, du devoir moral et de la liberté éthique, de la responsabilité du chercheur et de la régulation de la recherche. Ainsi, d’horizons exotiques en rivages familiers, cette anthologie critique, la première réalisée sur ce thème, permet de penser à nouveaux frais des enjeux que nos sociétés tendent trop souvent à traiter de façon passionnelle et intuitive, au risque de la simplification et de l’ethnocentrisme."

Should society care about Christian morality? Are Christians out of touch with contemporary moral decision-making? CHRISTIAN MORALITY provides readers with a framework for identifying and applying Christian moral principles to divisive issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and racism.

Who would think that healing somebody would be a bad thing? Yet Jesus was accused of breaking one of God’s commandments about not working on the Sabbath! In response, Jesus used moral reasoning to show how his action was similar to an exception granted by his accusers. In this book, we will show how Christians can identify or formulate principles of morality.

Today we confront different issues than did the early followers of Jesus. In many countries, women can visit clinics to end a pregnancy, but most Christian churches officially condemn abortion. After years of struggle, women still do not earn as much as men. And many churches do not let them serve as priests or senior pastors. People of the same sex can legally marry, but most Christians oppose same-sex marriage on moral grounds. Despite a civil war and civil rights legislation, African Americans are incarcerated at much higher rates than whites for the same crimes. These issues demand a thoughtful Christian response. Christian Morality provides examples of how to integrate Scripture with information from relevant sciences to formulate moral principles.

To speak the ‘language of state violence’ is for penal abolitionists to insist that irrespective of the conditions, architecture, or general resources available, the prison will always be a place that systematically generates suffering, harm and death.  Understanding prisons as a modus operandi of state violence may help abolitionists gain political momentum, for it leads to focus on both ‘institutional’ and ‘structural’ violence.  Ultimately Speaking the language of state violence provides a name for penal abolitionists to mobilise around and makes connections between the prison and social inequities.

Ἁπαγόρευση καὶ ἐπιβεβλημένη ἀπόλαυση9 ἠθικὲς συμβιώσεις: ολὺ συχνὰ ἀκοῦμε γιὰ κρίση ἀξιῶν, γιὰ τὴν ὑποχώρηση τοῦ καθήκοντος καὶ τὴν ἐπικράτηση τοῦ καταναλωτικοῦ ἡδονισμοῦ, γιὰ τὴν ἠθικὴ κατάπτωση τῶν σύγχρονων κοινωνιῶν. Ἡ πρόσφατη οἰκονομικὴ κρίση ἔδωσε λαβὴ γιὰ τέτοιου εἴδους σχόλια στὸ πλαίσιο τῆς σχεδὸν ὁμόθυμης καταδίκης τῶν λεγόμενων «γκόλντεν μπόυς» καὶ τῆς ἀπύθμενης ἀπληστίας τους. Ὡστόσο, ὁ εὔκολος στιγματισμὸς κάποιων ὀλίγων δὲν θὰ πρέπει νὰ μᾶς ἀποπροσανατολίσει, ἰδίως ὅταν ἡ ἐπίμαχη πρακτική τους δὲν φαίνεται νὰ παραβίασε κατ' οὐσίαν τὴν ἡγεμονικὴ ἠθικὴ προστακτικὴ τῶν ὑστεροκαπιταλιστικῶν κοινωνιῶν. Ἐκεῖνο ποὺ ἔχει μεγαλύτερη σημασία εἶναι, ἀσφαλῶς, νὰ διακρίνουμε τοὺς ὅρους δυνατότητας τέτοιων φαινομένων καὶ νὰ ἀποτιμήσουμε τὴν δυναμική τους στὸ μακρο-επίπεδο, καὶ μάλιστα στὸ ἐπίπεδο τῆς ἠθικῆς πρότασης, τοῦ πνεύματος, ποὺ δομεῖ καὶ ρυθμίζει σὲ κάθε συγκυρία τὸν κοινωνικὸ δεσμό, ἀπαιτώντας καὶ τὴν συμμόρφωση τῶν ὑποκειμένων. Καθὼς ὁ συντονισμὸς αὐτὸς ἀνάμεσα σὲ κοινωνικόπολιτισμικὸ πλαίσιο καὶ ὑποκειμενικὴ στάση ἀποτελεῖ προνομιακὸ ἀντικείμενο τοῦ ψυχαναλυτικοῦ στοχασμοῦ -στὸν ἄξονα Φρόυντ-Λακάν-, ἔχοντας παράλληλα ἀπασχολήσει διὰ μακρῶν τόσο τὴν κλασικὴ ὅσο καὶ τὴν σύγχρονη κοινωνικὴ θεωρία, ἡ διαύγαση τῶν παραπάνω ἐρωτημάτων θὰ ἐπιχειρηθεῖ ἐδῶ μέσα ἀπὸ τὴν σύγκλιση τῆς ψυχαναλυτικῆς μὲ τὴν κοινωνικὴ θεωρία.

While studies have consistently observed an association between pornography use and depressive symptoms, data limitations have precluded understanding the nature of this relationship. Drawing on data from a representative panel study of American adults, and building on insights from stress process theory, this article demonstrates that the connection between pornography use and depressive symptoms hinges on (1) the (in)congruence between Americans' moral beliefs about pornography and their viewing practices and (2) gender. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses reveal that American men (not women) who believe viewing pornography is always immoral but watch it anyway are more likely to experience depressive symptoms compared to others who do not report this incongruence. Results also suggest the connection between viewing pornography and depressive symptoms is bi-directional, contingent on men's moral evaluation of its use. For male porn users who morally reject it, pornography use predicts depressive symptoms at low frequencies, likely stemming from cognitive stress or dissonance. For those who do not morally reject porn, however, only viewing it at the highest frequencies is associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms, which suggests reverse causation―depressed men likely view higher levels of pornography as a coping aid, especially they do not view it as immoral.

Pourquoi Freud, mort depuis 1939, fait-il encore régulièrement scandale dans les grands médias ? Plus encore que la psychanalyse, c’est sa personne qui est régulièrement attaquée. Dernier éclat en date : la parution en 2010 du Crépuscule d’une idole, de Michel Onfray, qui affirmait que Freud n’était qu’un simple affabulateur. Le siècle écoulé compte ainsi une série de scandales qui, au lieu d’atteindre Freud, l’ont édifié en mythe. Car dénigrer Freud, c’est le populariser. Mieux : c’est accomplir une prophétie qu’il n’a lui-même cessé de prédire.

Samuel Lézé enseigne à l’École normale supérieure de Lyon, au sein de laquelle il est également responsable de l’équipe DSM (Dire la santé mentale) à l’Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités (IHRIM). Il est l’auteur de L’Autorité des psychanalystes (Puf, 2010) et codirecteur de La Question morale (Puf, 2013).

Education and cultural influence have been two very significant factors contributing to one’s ethical and moral values. Such values and principles play a vital role in everyone’s life and they contribute to the universe. Whether the contribution is big or small, every action and decision matters even if it is seen by everyone or remains unseen. My purpose and motivation for writing this essay were to self-reflect on some of the concepts of ethics and the ineffectiveness by trying to understand some of the root causes of unethical practices and the grey areas in general. My efforts in this essay are also to help others to self-reflect, present a different perspective and look at the bigger picture while learning about ethics, not only while pursuing higher education but at every point in life through spirituality and a higher sense of consciousness.

There is a continuing popular debate in the Western world about values, and in particular those values by which we conduct our private lives. This debate reflects a genuine confusion about morality; it seems that we are more unsure about where right and wrong may lie than at any previous point in our history. In The Demoralization of Western Culture Ralph Fevre undertakes an explanation of these difficulties. He argues that their most important source lies in the popularity of a particular sort of reasoning, a sub-category of rationality called 'common sense' which came to dominate our thinking during the twentieth century. He looks at why this sort of reasoning has proved so persuasive and so much more powerful than the alternative modes of thinking offered by those who want to resist it.

Drawing on evidence from surveys, polls, journalism and various forms of cultural commentary, as well as works of social theory, The Demoralization of Western Culture breaks free of the conventions of academic social science, moving instead into the territory of public philosophy. This is a tradition which, the author argues, forces us to engage in ethical reflection as well as the simple evaluation of argument.

This article provides a sociological explanation for urban "greening," the normative practice of using everyday signifiers of nature to fix problems with urbanism. Though greening is commonly understood as a reaction against the pathologies of the industrial metropolis, such explanations cannot account for greening's recurrence across varied social and historical contexts. Through a study of greening in Germany's Ruhr region, a polycentric urban region that has repeatedly greened in the absence of a traditional city, I argue that greening is made possible by a social imaginary of nature as an indirect or moral good, which I call urbanized nature, that is an outcome of, and subsequently becomes a variable in, urbanization. I draw on processual accounts of urbanization and the sociology of morality to explain urbanized nature's emergence in the Ruhr at the beginning of the twentieth century, and its use to fulfill two competing visions of urban democracy in the postwar period. I find that rather than an ideological reaction against cities, greening is an aspirational practice that can be mobilized by a range of actors in a variety of places and times. By showing how a new social imaginary made new forms of moral action possible, and how those ideals were then materialized in urban space, this article draws attention to the role of cultural imaginaries in urban change, and to the material consequences of moral beliefs.

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

I argue that Theodor W. Adorno is best understood as a moral perfectionist thinker in the stripe of Stanley Cavell. This is significant because Adorno’s moral philosophy has not received serious interest from moral philosophers, and much of this has to do with difficulties in situating his thought. I argue that once Adorno is situated in this way, then, like Cavell, he offers an interesting moral perspective that will be of value to a variety of moral theorists. My argument proceeds in two broad steps: first, I show that Cavell and Adorno share a distinct epistemological orientation, one that centers around the impossibility of knowledge in certain situations, and trades on a Kantian and post-Kantian picture. Second, I show that their moral perfectionism fundamentally rests on such epistemology.

We thank C. S. I. Jenkins and Neil Levy for their thoughtful comments on our article about love and addiction (Earp, Wudarczyk, Foddy, & Savulescu, in press). While we do not have room for a comprehensive reply, we would like to touch on a few main issues.

The aim with the present study was to investigate bystander actions in bullying situations as well as reasons behind these actions as they are articulated by Swedish students from fourth to seventh grade. Forty-three semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with students. Qualitative analysis of data was performed by methods from grounded theory. The analysis of the student voices of being a bystander in bullying reveals a complexity in which different definition-of-situation processes are evoked (a) relations (friends and social hierarchy), (b) defining seriousness, (c) victim’s contribution to the situation, (d) social roles and intervention responsibilities, and (e) distressing emotions. There are often conflicted motives in how to act as a bystander, which could evoke moral distress among the students. Our analysis is unique in that it introduces the concept of moral distress as a process that has to be considered in order to better understand bystander actions among children The findings also indicate bystander reactions that could be associated with moral disengagement, such as not perceiving a moral obligation to intervene if the victim is defined as a non-friend (‘none of my business’), protecting the friendship with the bully, and blaming the victim.

İnsanların dünyadaki hayatlarında birarada yaşamak zorunda oluşları, aralarında “ortak iyi”ler  oluşturma veya bulma çabalarına sebep olmuştur. Ortak iyi ’nin kapsamı ve fonksiyonları kavramsal olarak ahlak ilimine/bilimine karşılık gelmektedir...

Emmanuel Levinas (1906 - 1995) is widely considered one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the last century. Renowned for his thesis that ethics is first philosophy and his concepts of the ‘Other’ and the ‘face’, Levinas thematizes teaching as central to his conception of subjectivity. While his writings in this area continue to gain influence within broad aspects of educational theory, their political relevance has been somewhat overlooked.

Levinas, Subjectivity, Education examines how the philosophical writings of Levinas lead us to reassess the concept of education, paving the way for a new understanding of ethical and political responsibility. Offering a new interpretation of Levinas’s philosophy that addresses the importance of the figure of the teacher in his writing, Anna Strhan demonstrates the challenge of his work for contemporary debates on autonomy, marketization, and political subjectivity in education. She draws also on Levinas’s writings on religion - both to analyse its practical implications within religious education and to consider how this philosophy relates to his pedagogy. By broadening the interpretive aspects of Levinas’s educational writings, Levinas, Subjectivity, Education sheds important new light on the on-going relevance of one of the towering figures of twentieth-century philosophy.

"After the Wrath of God is a subtle, discerning analysis of religious responses to AIDS that goes far beyond the usual attention to the Christian Right. Petro brings ecumenical Protestants, Roman Catholics, biomedical officials, and ACT UP protestors into view alongside their evangelical compatriots and in doing so creates a richly polychromatic picture of American religion, sexuality, and moral debate in the wake of the AIDS epidemic."
--Leigh Eric Schmidt, Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, Washington University in St. Louis

"The AIDS crisis was not an epoch that we survived. It is a battle that we are still fighting. In this remarkable work of historical intervention Anthony Petro explores the extraordinary religious ferment that accompanied the emergence of AIDS in the United States. Petro shows that when Americans talk about AIDS they are rarely just talking about a scientific problem or a pharmaceutical solution. They are instead offering a sociology of suffering and a plan for spiritual warfare. After the Wrath of God is required reading for anyone interested in the way this powerful religious past will shape our political future."
--Kathryn Lofton, Professor of Religious Studies, American Studies, History and Divinity; Chair, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale University

"Anthony Petro's novel account of the role of American Christianity in the AIDS crisis moves beyond expected narratives of the rise of the right to encompass a diversity of religious responses across the 'long 1980s.' Illuminating and important."
--Margot Canaday, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University

My purpose here is to discover the universal foundations of morality and to expose how humans can avoid the hypocrisy of engaging in moral contracts that are socially irreconcilable and incompatible with their inherent nature. The discourse is mainly descriptive and analytical rather than prescriptive. Rooted in historicism, it does not seek to chart the direction of our moral conduct but, instead, to reinstate the foundation of morality as a subjective guide derived from human construct.

- Result of “the Onlife Initiative,” a one-year project funded by the European Commission to study the deployment of ICTs and its effects on the human condition
- Inspires reflection on the ways in which a hyperconnected world forces the rethinking of the conceptual frameworks on which policies are built
- Draws upon the work of a group of scholars from a wide range of disciplines including, anthropology, cognitive science, computer science, law, philosophy, political science

What is the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the human condition? In order to address this question, in 2012 the European Commission organized a research project entitled The Onlife Initiative: concept reengineering for rethinking societal concerns in the digital transition. This volume collects the work of the Onlife Initiative. It explores how the development and widespread use of ICTs have a radical impact on the human condition.

ICTs are not mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency). In each case, ICTs have a huge ethical, legal, and political significance, yet one with which we have begun to come to terms only recently.

The impact exercised by ICTs is due to at least four major transformations: the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality; the blurring of the distinction between human, machine and nature; the reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things, properties, and binary relations, to the primacy of interactions, processes and networks.

Such transformations are testing the foundations of our conceptual frameworks. Our current conceptual toolbox is no longer fitted to address new ICT-related challenges. This is not only a problem in itself. It is also a risk, because the lack of a clear understanding of our present time may easily lead to negative projections about the future. The goal of The Manifesto, and of the whole book that contextualises, is therefore that of contributing to the update of our philosophy. It is a constructive goal. The book is meant to be a positive contribution to rethinking the philosophy on which policies are built in a hyperconnected world, so that we may have a better chance of understanding our ICT-related problems and solving them satisfactorily.

The Manifesto launches an open debate on the impacts of ICTs on public spaces, politics and societal expectations toward policymaking in the Digital Agenda for Europe’s remit. More broadly, it helps start a reflection on the way in which a hyperconnected world calls for rethinking the referential frameworks on which policies are built.

The aim of this paper is to investigate and describe the content in school rules by developing a category system of school rules, and thus making the logic behind different types of rules in school explicit. Data were derived from an ethnographic study conducted in two primary schools in Sweden. In order to analyse the data, grounded theory methodology was adapted. The analysis resulted in a category system of school rules, containing the following main categories: (a) relational rules, (b) structuring rules, (c), protecting rules, (d), personal rules and (e) etiquette rules. In the light of this categorisation, more consciously pedagogical and professional work with rules can be conducted. The category system can counteract vagueness and unreasonableness, as well as highlighting the content, logic and functions of different school rules.

Le interdipendenze del sistema globale e la Rete come sua espressione e strumento espongono il soggetto a un overload simbolico e informativo che, a fronte della crisi dei legami tradizionali, destabilizza le sicurezze e incrementa la domanda di identità. La capacità del Web di favorire autonarrazioni e autorappresentazioni individuali e collettive orienta la fruizione dei media in questa direzione. Priva del supporto di un’adeguata mediazione sociale e culturale, la costruzione dell’identità alimenta così l’autoreferenzialità di un soggetto che produce, riceve o gestisce informazione senza estendere l’esperienza “al di là del proprio sé”, non riuscendo pertanto a sfruttare il potenziale conoscitivo e relazionale dei nuovi media.
I modelli interpretativi del pensiero critico della società di massa ritornano attuali in questo contesto, indicando la crisi della soggettività nell’età tecnocratica come un problema allo stesso tempo etico e antropologico, che esige il ricorso a operazioni di tipo cognitivo e conoscitivo per riattivare nei soggetti la capacità di elaborare e di gestire l’esperienza condizionata dalla fruizione mediale.
Con questa finalità, le pratiche narrative e l’esperienza artistica sono qui assunte come paradigmi alternativi al paradigma informazionale, in quanto capaci di dar luogo a un distanziamento dal piano della comunicazione tecnologicamente mediata necessario a riaffermare il primato dell’alterità e della relazione nei processi comunicativi e a riabilitare una soggettività morale in grado di comprendere, relazionarsi e agire in una società complessa e altamente informatizzata.

Critical Ethics (as a unified account of normative and meta-ethics) uses critical thinking to get around the limitations of personal belief and indoctrination to get to what ought to be done and why to improve the human condition.  For, if we teach only moral beliefs (whether as a set of absolutistic or relativistic normative codes)—no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be to a particular culture or community—the adherent will have a hard time distinguishing, or simply may not be able to distinguish, good from bad as an act of personal responsibility and free choice.  Moreover, without critical thinking the adherent could possibly end-up believing all kinds of false or inconsistent things and moral beliefs may well end-up in conflict with better established background information. This would very likely lead to cognitive dissonance and inconsistency in a person’s actions; and, when generalized, would have devastating consequences for the survival of the human species because a person’s beliefs would not align or
match with (at times dangerous) reality. Accordingly, it is crucial that we learn how to evaluate and to select among alternatives to do the thing that must be done, when it ought to be done, using critical thinking.

This paper aims to understand how the Qur’an prescribes relations between humans and animals. I discuss the Qur’anic epistemologies of morality and bring them into conversation with esoteric claims of hypernomian versus baseline morality. Various Sufi scholars consider morality to be tiered, with taqlīd serving as a baseline. This paper will argue why treatment of animals beyond what is required might be considered hypernomian and not antinomian. I seek to negate the association of hypernomian moral decisions such as vegetarianism with sacrilege by arguing why they are an extension of, and not in defiance to, shari’a morality. I reference similar delineations of that which is permitted versus that which is preferred, such as in the case of qisas and remittance. This paper will also necessarily deliberate on the meaning (or meanings) of taqwā, and how it relates to human ethical formation. 
On the level of the problematic, this paper will engage with interpretations of Genesis and the role of man as khilafa of the world, as well as the epistemological and circumstantial significances of sacrifice, personhood, dominion, property and custodianship.

Applying the Roman Catholic Church’s set of moral principles on social concerns called Catholic social teaching (CST) on charity, distributive justice, private property and the common good, and utilising some secondary data and scientific literature, this article argues that establishing distributive justice for the global distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines must be a priority than donating millions of doses in the name of charity to address vaccine scarcity. Catholic social teaching teaches that the right to private property is a basic right but has moral limits and is subordinated to the moral principles on the universal destination of earth’s goods and the common good. Contribution: The current COVID-19 vaccines are developed by people and organisations outside the pharmaceutical companies and largely funded using taxpayers’ money. Thus, by virtue of justice, these vaccines must belong to all nations as global public health goods. Patents are to be suspended to allow poor countries to reproduce the popular vaccines and address the current vaccine shortage.