This book provides an interdisciplinary series of essays on key social theorists of morality. It explores contributions to social moral theorising made by W. E. B. Du Bois, G. H. Mead, Jane Addams, Alasdair Mac Intyre, Carol Gilligan, Seyla Benhabib, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Jonathan Haidt. It thus seeks to integrate alternative voices at the “foundations” of sociological theorising about morality, while entering into dialogues with post-Enlightenment moral philosophy and contemporary moral psychology. In so doing, it engages with perspectives of pragmatism, virtue ethics, care ethics, feminist critiques, and moral foundations theory. The essays discuss key topics in social theories of morality, including moral action, socialisation, habit and reflexiveness, relationships, emotion, self, identity, racism and colonialism, universalism, and innateness. It centres crucial (but often overlooked) questions of moral power, and assesses the relationship between moral theorising and normative argument. The essays are conjoined by a running theme of moral agency—how it is constituted and how it is enacted—which orientates the book’s arguments and critiques.
Table of Content
1. Introduction.- 2. W. E. B. Du Bois’s Forgotten Sociology of Morality: Contesting the Foundations and Informing the Future of the Sociology of Morality.- 3. George Herbert Mead: Morality from the Perspective of the Act, Self, and Experience.- 4. Jane Addams’s Sociology of Moral Practice and Practice of Moral Sociology.- 5. Alisdair Mac Intyre: Virtue, Practices, Identity and Traditions.- 6. Carol Gilligan’s Different Moral Voice: Gender, Ethics of Care, and the Reconstitution of the Moral Domain.- 7. Seyla Benhabib: Interactive Universalism, the Concrete Other, and Discourse Ethics.- 8. Kwame Anthony Appiah: Ethics, Identity, and Idealization.- 9. Jonathan Haidt: Social Intuitionism and Moral Foundations Theory.- 10. Conclusion: A Social Perspective on Moral Agency.
About the author
Owen Abbott is Lecturer in Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK. He authored The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice, which was awarded the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Prize 2020 for best first, sole-authored book. His original restorative work on Du Bois’s studies of morality has been esteemed by the American Sociological Association’s Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity section. Abbott also co-authored Masking in the Pandemic: Materiality, Interaction, and Moral Practice. He has recently completed a Leverhulme Trust-funded empirical project exploring forgiving and not forgiving in personal relationships, continuing his interest in the moral dynamics of personal lives.
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