Moral Contradictions Research Articles

Moral economy, performative materialism, and political rhetorics of sustainability accounting

Using the concepts of ‘moral economy’ and ‘performative materialism’ in a case study of a Sri Lankan bank that has received awards and commendations for its sustainability reports, this study explores and theorises moral contradictions of how sustainability is enacted in a corporate setting. Its specific empirical observation reveals how enacting sustainability involves four key elements: redefining corporate morality, mattering morality, objectifying morality through accountability, and valorising morality in a moral market. While attaching a new morality to corporate profits, these elements enable greenwashing to get institutionalised as a celebrated and rewarded business practice. This research contributes to critical accounting studies by empirically explaining how a new set of moral practices, objects, and markets are constructed in the name of sustainability reporting and by illustrating how the theoretical notions of moral economy and performative materialism can shed light on critiquing the ways sustainability reporting regimes are constructed.

Understanding the Magnitude of Hypocrisy in Moral Contradictions: The Role of Surprise at Violating Strong Attitudes.

Although two people could both enact similar forms of hypocrisy, one person might be judged as more hypocritical than the other. The present research advances a novel, theoretical explanation for a paradigmatic instance of this: the increased hypocrisy ascribed to contradicting a morally (vs. nonmorally) based attitude. In contrast to prior explanations, the present research shows that people infer targets holding morally (vs. nonmorally) based attitudes are more difficult to change. Consequently, when people are hypocritical on these stances, it elicits greater surprise, which amplifies the perceived hypocrisy. Through both statistical mediation and experimental moderation, we provide evidence for this process and show how our explanation generalizes to understanding heightened hypocrisy in other contexts, too (i.e., violating nonmoral attitudes held with certainty vs. uncertainty). Altogether, we provide an integrative, theoretical lens for predicting when moral and nonmoral acts of hypocrisy will be perceived as particularly hypocritical.

Chapitre 5. L’impact de la pandémie de COVID-19 sur l’évolution du paradigme éthique de la médecine clinique en Russie (« à la guerre comme à la guerre »)

The CОVID-19 pandemic became a catalyst for the transformation of the ideas of the existence of global ethics in favor of real moral pluralism, exposed the problem of abandoning the principles of personalized medicine in favor of public health ethics (collective ethics of civil society). The authors sequentially analyze the objective factors that influenced the change in the moral paradigm of the clinical medicine in Russia: the peculiarities of the course of infection, the lack of resources in the health-care sector, the inability to use advanced treatment methods in different groups of patients, the protection of medical workers, the provision of emergency and planned surgical interventions, and the prevention of further spread of infection. In addition, the moral consequences of the use of administrative measures to limit the spread of the pandemic are given: restriction of social contacts, the use of personal protective equipment, retraining of specialists, re-profiling of the bed fund, leveling problems of communication with colleagues, patients and students. Special attention is paid to the problem of “anti-vaxxers”, representing a significant part of society and hindering the implementation of the vaccination program of the population. We believe that active and passive protest against vaccinations lie not in a rational plane, but in an emotional one, in an immanent distrust of the state and its institutions. Thus arises a secondary ethical problem of the state’s responsibility for the life and health of every citizen, regardless of their beliefs. Contradictions in the moral principles of individual strata of the population (including groups like those who agree to get vaccinated, those who doubt, the indifferent ones, “active anti-vaccinators”) currently seem irreconcilable due to the state’s detachment from solving moral problems.Ethic divergence in the context of the pandemic has become real, stable and difficult to overcome, while the claims of a single, global, global bioethics are being questioned. The COVID-19 pandemic has formulated the ethical task of the 21st century, which will have to be the development of public policy and practice of clinical medicine in the context of serious moral contradictions and significant bioethical differences.

И.С. Тургенев — читатель драмы Э. Бульвера-Литтона «Деньги» (по материалам библиотеки писателя)

The article is devoted to Ivan Turgenev’s perception of English literature. The study focuses on the dramatic works of Bulwer-Lytton, which became the Russian writer’s main object of attention in the first half of the 1840s. The research material was taken from the personal library of Ivan Turgenev. His notes (ink marks and nail strikes) left on the separate text of the “Money” play (1841) are analyzed. They allow one to reconstruct a full picture of Turgenev’s perception. Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a real reformer of the English theatre who aimed at loading the melodrama seen on stage with ethical and social issues. Ivan Turgenev interpreted the “Money” play as a “manual” and an important source for a theoretical and practical study of dramatic art. The “Money” text revealed to the Russian author the daily life of the English society, in which a conflict unfolded on the basis of social and moral contradictions. Turgenev was particularly interested in the first two acts of the play. He was moving along the path of assimilation of the main image-symbol (this is confirmed by Turgenev’s notes). The writer refers to moments of the implementation of the money motive as the main one in the life of every member of society and of the society as a whole. He was interested in the figure of Sir John as a representative of the English aristocracy with his own “life philosophy”. In the course of careful reading, Turgenev highlights the idea of how financial solvency replaces personal dignity taking the scene of Statute and Glossmore fighting for a place in the Parliament an example. Turgenev found the fate of Clara and Evelyn particularly important in the world of distorted values. Turgenev paid special attention to the lyrical manifestations in the female character, and to the ironic nature of a male one. Graves, a character who was responsible for the comic component in the play, also aroused Turgenev’s interest.

“Knowledge-culture” as a new model of modern education

The transformation of higher education is associated with the search for new education methods. This problem should be solved by the philosophy of education and pedagogy. The formation of new intelligentsia - the bearer of the model of knowledge-culture – should play a special role. New pedagogy should develop new methods to develop a free creative individual capable of resolving moral contradictions and ethical issues and setting own priorities. Priorities of the post-industrial reality are called "projective culture" or "third culture" which forms a personality that will correspond to the dominant value system. It is necessary to develop new methods for the formation of an educated person, inscribed in the format of both global and narrowly professional culture. To solve this problem, all the methods of cognition should be combined: rational, subjective, and intuitive. They form analytical, substantial, and qualitative aspects of thinking. This systemic trinity is used to identify the integrity of objects. Ecological education, which has become part of humanitarian education, is indicative. The priority of knowledge of the STEC-enlightened generation is aimed at the synergy of natural and technical sciences, ecology, and social phenomena, at the ability to make rational decisions in various conditions. The humanization of new education will contribute to creative thinking within systemic thinking, open non-linear speculative operations. This principle of thinking is determined by categories taken from the aesthetic arsenal of the humanities.

The Brutal Face of the Violent Game of the Capitalist Competition: Squid Game

Globalization, which has gained momentum since the 1970s, is effective in almost every field, but its prominent dimension is economically based and it leads to increasing inequalities throughout the world. This inequality feeds an environment in which uncertainty, competition, risk and anxiety are intense in social life. The sense of weakness and defeat that people feel more and more, makes it easier for them to accept harsher and ruthless competition conditions and deepens the moral contradictions of modern man, who can risk everything for self-interest. Capitalist relations of production, where success is measured by money and where cooperation is replaced by competition, turns a large mass of people who fail in this game into a useless and unnecessary waste. In this study, the Squid Game series is analyzed through the concepts of capitalism, competition and game. The series, which describe people involved in a life-or-death game to solve their financial problems, shows the brutality of the competitive capitalist system in general. The study, in which the series is analyzed with descriptive analysis within the frame of the defined concepts, reveals the destruction of the exploitative system of today’s modern society on people.

Научно-технический прогресс и трансформация общества: ноономика и ноообщество. Часть 2

The theory of Noonomy, based on the study of modern trends in technological and socio-economic development, allows us to identify the causes of the contradictions that modern civilization faces – economic, social, environmental, moral contradictions. However, noonomy not only reveals the background of these contradictions, but also shows the maturing objective possibilities of getting out of these contradictions, overcoming civilizational dead ends, choosing a path at civilizational forks. The opportunities created by modern technology create the prospect of a transition from economics to noonomy, which means abandoning economic rationality, leading to an unrestrained pursuit of increasing production and consumption. The place of economic rationality is occupied by rationality based on the criteria of knowledge and culture. However, such a transition from economics to noonomy should be based on a change in the totality of social relations, and noonomy can be strengthened only within the framework of an integral system of the noosociety. The very nature of public relations and public relations of people, the nature of human socialization and socialization of society will orient social development to these new criteria. The ideological orientation of such a reformatting of society can be the ideology of solidarity, which grows out of the emerging opportunities to overcome the discord of socioeconomic interests of people based on the struggle for material resources.

Scientific and technological progress and transformation of society: noonomy and noosociety. Part 1

the theory of Noonomy, based on the study of modern trends in technological and socio-economic development, allows us to identify the causes of the contradictions that modern civilization faces – economic, social, environmental, moral contradictions. However, noonomy not only reveals the background of these contradictions, but also shows the maturing objective possibilities of getting out of these contradictions, overcoming civilizational dead ends, choosing a path at civilizational forks. The opportunities created by modern technology create the prospect of a transition from economics to noonomy, which means abandoning economic rationality, leading to an unrestrained pursuit of increasing production and consumption. The place of economic rationality is occupied by rationality based on the criteria of knowledge and culture. However, such a transition from economics to noonomy should be based on a change in the totality of social relations, and noonomy can be strengthened only within the framework of an integral system of the noosociety. The very nature of public relations and public relations of people, the nature of human socialization and socialization of society will orient social development to these new criteria. The ideological orientation of such a reformatting of society can be the ideology of solidarity, which grows out of the emerging opportunities to overcome the discord of socio-economic interests of people based on the struggle for material resources.

Научно-технический прогресс и трансформация общества: ноономика и ноообщество. Часть 3

The theory of Noonomy, based on the study of modern trends in technological and socio-economic development, allows us to identify the causes of the contradictions that modern civilization faces – economic, social, environmental, moral contradictions. However, noonomy not only reveals the background of these contradictions, but also shows the maturing objective possibilities of getting out of these contradictions, overcoming civilizational dead ends, choosing a path at civilizational forks. The opportunities created by modern technology create the prospect of a transition from economics to noonomy, which means abandoning economic rationality, leading to an unrestrained pursuit of increasing production and consumption. The place of economic rationality is occupied by rationality based on the criteria of knowledge and culture. However, such a transition from economics to noonomy should be based on a change in the totality of social relations, and noonomy can be strengthened only within the framework of an integral system of the noosociety. The very nature of public relations and public relations of people, the nature of human socialization and socialization of society will orient social development to these new criteria. The ideological orientation of such a reformatting of society can be the ideology of solidarity, which grows out of the emerging opportunities to overcome the discord of socioeconomic interests of people based on the struggle for material resources.

Научно-технический прогресс и трансформация общества: ноономика и ноообщество. Часть 2

the theory of Noonomy, based on the study of modern trends in technological and socio-economic development, allows us to identify the causes of the contradictions that modern civilization faces – economic, social, environmental, moral contradictions. However, noonomy not only reveals the background of these contradictions, but also shows the maturing objective possibilities of getting out of these contradictions, overcoming civilizational dead ends, choosing a path at civilizational forks. The opportunities created by modern technology create the prospect of a transition from economics to noonomy, which means abandoning economic rationality, leading to an unrestrained pursuit of increasing production and consumption. The place of economic rationality is occupied by rationality based on the criteria of knowledge and culture. However, such a transition from economics to noonomy should be based on a change in the totality of social relations, and noonomy can be strengthened only within the framework of an integral system of the noosociety. The very nature of public relations and public relations of people, the nature of human socialization and socialization of society will orient social development to these new criteria. The ideological orientation of such a reformatting of society can be the ideology of solidarity, which grows out of the emerging opportunities to overcome the discord of socioeconomic interests of people based on the struggle for material resources.

Научно-технический прогресс и трансформация общества: ноономика и ноообщество. Часть 1

The theory of Noonomy, based on the study of modern trends in technological and socio-economic development, allows us to identify the causes of the contradictions that modern civilization faces – economic, social, environmental, moral contradictions. However, noonomy not only reveals the background of these contradictions, but also shows the maturing objective possibilities of getting out of these contradictions, overcoming civilizational dead ends, choosing a path at civilizational forks. The opportunities created by modern technology create the prospect of a transition from economics to noonomy, which means abandoning economic rationality, leading to an unrestrained pursuit of increasing production and consumption. The place of economic rationality is occupied by rationality based on the criteria of knowledge and culture. However, such a transition from economics to noonomy should be based on a change in the totality of social relations, and noonomy can be strengthened only within the framework of an integral system of the noosociety. The very nature of public relations and public relations of people, the nature of human socialization and socialization of society will orient social development to these new criteria. The ideological orientation of such a reformatting of society can be the ideology of solidarity, which grows out of the emerging opportunities to overcome the discord of socio-economic interests of people based on the struggle for material resources.

Apotheois of life in the philosophy of Russian cosmism: moral contradictions and the anthropological impasse

Apotheois of life in the philosophy of Russian cosmism: moral contradictions and the anthropological impasse

Научно-технический прогресс и трансформация общества: ноономика и ноообщество. Часть 1

The theory of Noonomy, based on the study of modern trends in technological and socio-economic development, allows us to identify the causes of the contradictions that modern civilization faces – economic, social, environmental, moral contradictions. However, noonomy not only reveals the background of these contradictions, but also shows the maturing objective possibilities of getting out of these contradictions, overcoming civilizational dead ends, choosing a path at civilizational forks. The opportunities created by modern technology create the prospect of a transition from economics to noonomy, which means abandoning economic rationality, leading to an unrestrained pursuit of increasing production and consumption. The place of economic rationality is occupied by rationality based on the criteria of knowledge and culture. However, such a transition from economics to noonomy should be based on a change in the totality of social relations, and noonomy can be strengthened only within the framework of an integral system of the noosociety. The very nature of public relations and public relations of people, the nature of human socialization and socialization of society will orient social development to these new criteria. The ideological orientation of such a reformatting of society can be the ideology of solidarity, which grows out of the emerging opportunities to overcome the discord of socio-economic interests of people based on the struggle for material resources.

Problems of integration of the Russian Federation into the system of international standards of auditing

Russia's integration into the international legal economy is extremely difficult. The main reason for this is the much later transition of the Russian Federation to a market-based economic system. The Russian Federation is more focused on domestic legislation, and although international sources of regulation are recognized on its territory, they do not have the same authority as in the legal systems of the Western world. Therefore, an important part of Russia's integration into the international economy is the synchronization of financial regulation in national systems. The article is devoted to one of the key points of Russia's integration into the international economy: the implementation of international accounting regulations and audit rules. In turn, the international standards for the regulation of auditing activities, their main goal is to create a single legal regulation of accounting statements. The relevance of the topic is determined on the one hand, by the importance of international markets and the attractiveness of Russia for foreign investors, and on the other, by the many problems that arise when trying to implement the norms of international law in the national legal field. The article examines the immediate difficulties and problems, as well as legal conflicts that arose in the process of implementing the norms of international financial law in the Russian Federation. The basis of the study was the cause-and-effect relationships, which become the basis for the occurrence of the above-mentioned problems. The article analyzes the linguistic, legal, moral and ethical contradictions that accompany the process of implementing the norms of international financial law in the national legal system of the Russian Federation. The analysis involves the consideration of problems in accordance with the moments of their occurrence. Further in the article the ways of solving the mentioned problems, the possibilities of overcoming legal conflicts, the ways of overcoming social and ethical contradictions are considered. In addition to the analysis of the legal essence of the process of implementation of international financial reporting standards, the article examines the situation of the modern market of audit services and the impact of audit practices on the system of regulation of the legal relations under study.

Nurses’ Moral Distress in Caring for COVID-19 Patients

Dear Editor romoting the principles of professional practice is an approach to build trust among individuals concerning the medical profes sion. Individuals’ trust in nurses plays a cru cial role in patient care; thus, is of signifi cant importance. The main cornerstone in nursing care is the existence of nurses with professional ethics. Due to the epidemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), numerous patients have been hospital ized in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and some have expired in Iran and around the world. COVID-19 high lighted various difficult ethical issues encountered by healthcare providers in caring for patients and families. Nurses, as frontline healthcare workers, spend most of their time with patients; therefore, it is essential to ad dress the ethical concerns they face [1]. Attention to safety in nurses In the fight against COVID-19, ensuring the safety of nurses and other forefront healthcare workers is an important ethical concern. Nurses have to work under conditions that pose fundamental and uncertain risks to their health. Although nurses often voluntarily care for patients in high-risk situations, deficiencies and inappro priate conditions (e.g. the lack of protective facilities), prolonged presence in the wards to compensate for staff shortages, and patient care threaten their health; accord ingly, such conditions jeopardize more effective patient care. Due to these limitations, nurses cannot provide ef fective care and experience moral distress, psychological distress, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) [2]. Providing healthcare resources for patients COVID-19-induced conditions have necessitated more serious (and ethical) attention to the prioritization of care and resources in different care units. Making the right decision about the patient is among the ethical as pects that nurses encounter in special wards; it imposes a great moral burden on the healthcare staff. Nurses must provide care, justice, transparency, and protection in a way that does not incur legal and conscientious re sponsibilities. Patients with COVID-19 are admitted to hospital wards with different care needs. They require adequate medical care, beds, ventilators and oxygen therapy, medicine, and so on. When nurses are unable to provide effective care due to a large number of hospital ized patients and the lack of facilities, they face moral contradictions. Even in the UK, due to a large number of patients, the situation changed; normally, in the ICU, the ratio of nurses to patients was 1: 1, i.e., altered to 1: 6. Consequently, it affected care and caused ethical

Who stole the ram? The “New Interpretations” of the “Analects” (13.8) and the most recent discussions on the “effective admonition” by the scholars from the Peoples’ Republic of China

The article offers a historiographic survey followed by an assessment of a big-scale discussion, which deals with the “new interpretations” of the famous fragment − “Stealing a ram” from the “Analects” (Lun Yu, 論語) a large collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius and his contemporaries (Analects, 13.18). The origin of the Analects dates back over two millennia. Regardless of “advanced age” it does still attract within the Chinese society significant attention and is discussed both by the scholarly and public audience. In general, this discussion remains recurrent. The discussion unfolded in the Peoples Republic of China in 2000–2016 was covered by numerous articles in the American scholarly literature and therefore has found a vivid response among the Sinologists within the English language milieu. The author asks a question whether these recent interpretations as came from the 2000-2016 discussion are innovative indeed or they just “rephrased” old approaches already recorded in the scholarly literature. To answer it, he compares the key approaches by the modern Chinese scholars to those by Russian Sinologists, particularly, the interpretations by Professor Lydia I. Golovacheva (1937–2011). According to her, the famous sentence “a father would [plead guilty to] cover a son, a son would [plead guilty to] cover a father” implies the idea of correction of the wrongdoings (“upright the crooked”) using the internal moral imperative or waking the conscience of the wrong person. The analysis of the debates held by the scholars from the Peoples Republic of China has revealed the need to bring back into circulation this relatively little-known, however, holistic, consistent and adequate interpretation as well as to increase the awareness of it among both Russian and foreign sinologists. According to the author, this interpretation removes all the alleged legal vs. moral contradictions in the fragment (Analects 13.18).

Ultimum dilemma Брута или Возможно ли моральное оправдание убийства Цезаря?

The article examines how to apply moral and philosophical reflection in the commission of a crime. An action is the result of solving an equation with many variables. This is overcoming legal, moral, philosophical, and emotional contradictions. However, modern legal and ethical thought closes the way for understanding its causes and motives. As an example, we examine the conspiracy and murder of Caesar in Rome in 44 BC. The article reveals objective differences in the understanding of morality in antiquity and in modern ethical science. Here we analyze the philosophical and ethical grounds that will help solve this dilemma. First of all, we considered the philosophical and political works and letters of Cicero. His reasoning about the duties of a citizen might have influenced Brutus' decision to participate in the conspiracy against Caesar and accept the moral choice as his fate. Brutus did not act as a murderer, but as an exponent of public purpose and public utility, for whom the purpose of the act was the public good, incompatible with tyranny.

The Alabama Human Life Protection Act: criticità giuridiche, contraddizioni assiologiche e dinamiche politiche evolutive

SOMMARIO : 1. Oggetto del presente contributo e metodologia di ricerca - 2. Analisi giuridica e rilievi critici - 3. Il paradigma morale interno - 4. La dinamica evolutiva - 5. Conclusioni. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act: juridical criticisms, moral contradictions and policy implications ABSTRACT: The paper aims at analyzing and highlighting potential juridical criticism of the recent abortion law referred to as The Alabama Human Life Protection Act and verifying if the positive judgments, expressed by the international pro-life movement, and the potential legal, social and policy developments, triggered by this legislation, are consistent with the moral principles of the movement itself.

Jean Dubuffet’s Beautiful People

The circumstances surrounding the inception of Dubuffet’s 1946–47 portrait series are well documented. Following an introduction by Jean Paulhan, Dubuffet became a regular at the weekly lunches held by the American socialite and arts patron, Florence Gould. Prompted by Gould’s suggestion that he paint some of her ‘amis’, Dubuffet began work on an expanded, year-long project resulting in a series of over one hundred and eighty works, which included portraits of several of Gould’s guests (Paulhan, Paul Léautaud, Marcel Arland, Marcel Jouhandeau, Ėdith Boissonnas, Henri Michaux, René Bertelé), but also of friends and acquaintances from his own social circle with no connection to the Thursday salon (e.g. Francis Ponge, Georges Limbour, Jean Fautrier, Antonin Artaud, Pierre Matisse, Charles Ratton, René Drouin, Michel Tapié). Inevitably, since Gould’s guests included both collaborators (and, during the Occupation, German officers) and at least one resistant, the series has been interpreted as a commentary on the period’s moral contradictions and tensions. This article has a rather different focus, arguing that these images are to be read primarily as a sustained meditation on the nature of portraiture, in which the pursuit of a good likeness of an individual has been displaced, as a core objective, by the exploration of a more fundamental likeness among human beings; in particular, the portrait serves as a means of celebrating the common embodiment that is the foundation of our connectedness with our world and each other. The coterie in which the series originated is eclipsed by more general perceptual/representational concerns, the sitters visually and—through the titling—verbally recontextualized within very different networks of association.

To Be Cared For: The Power of Conversion and Foreignness of Belonging in an Indian Slum, by Nathaniel Roberts

What does it mean for Dalits living in India’s urban slums to convert to Pentecostal Christianity today? The literature on Dalit conversions generally ranges from vicious denunciation from majoritarian nationalists to an ambivalent disapproving tolerance from elite secular and even scholarly circles. Whether religious conversions are understood to be a result of dangerous foreign influence or as violent irreparable rupture from an authentic cultural selfhood, the realities and perspectives of the converts themselves, who are overwhelmingly from among the poorest in Indian society, are often ignored. Eschewing these dominant representations of conversions as external agency or internal rupture and exposing the common assumptions that undergird them, Nathaniel Roberts argues in this timely, Chennai-based ethnography that the main draw of Christianity in the slum was its “ability to mediate endogenous moral contradictions . . . that covertly pitted slum dwellers against one another.” As such, “slum Christianity integrated the slum community as a whole irrespective of religious affiliation” (11).The main moral contradiction internal to the slum that Roberts focuses on involves an idealized moral discourse on belonging and those excluded from it. For the slum residents, being human and belonging meant mutuality: to care for others and to be cared for (78). The social difference between the “rich” outsiders and the “poor” residents—the preferred vocabulary of difference by the residents of the nearly homogenous Dalit slum—results from the consistent lack of care shown by the outsiders. Roberts argues that this deliberate usage of class idiom “is not merely a euphemism for caste [but] a theoretical challenge to it” (63). This explanation of the predicament of those suffering was, however, not extended to women in the slum who either faced marital strife or were debt ridden—both devastating situations for the women who were dependent economically on their husbands and socially on networks of lending/borrowing with other women (109). It was these women isolated from care who primarily converted to Pentecostal Christianity, whose god Jesus was known in Anbu Nagar to specialize in issues faced by women. Moving through the concentric circles of dispossession, from the dalit slum to its women residents, Roberts sets the frame to draw out the micropolitical significance of conversion and turns his attention to the assumptions—scholarly and popular—that make it otherwise invisible.Roberts argues that a standard view that conversion involving mutually exclusive identities leads to violent social conflict—the bedrock view behind India’s anticonversion laws fiercely advocated by Hindu nationalists and upheld by the Supreme court—ultimately rests on “secular modern understanding of religion as culture” with its functionalist Durkheimian echoes (9, 116). The residents of Anbu Nagar understood religion not in this reified sense of cultural identity or social function but in terms of the reality of deities and their ability to provide this-worldly benefits. It is this difference between the theological realism of slum residents—Christian and Hindu—and the nominalism of the anthropologist, Roberts argues, that explains the discrepancy between the expected communal strife of the elite national imagination and the lack thereof in Anbu Nagar (160).For the women of Anbu Nagar caught in its moral fault lines, Pentecostalism provided two sources of power, one in the form of pastoral care sensitized to their concerns, and a new social network of their own making, a prayer network. With this account of slum Christianity suturing internal moral contradictions on its own terms Roberts challenges existing accounts of Pentecostalism, arguing that in this context it was marked not by discontinuity but rather a message that “intensified slum dwellers’ existing moral understanding and radicalized it” (243). The final chapter identifies elements in the slum that are unique to its Christian residents: a rhetoric of future millennial revolutionary justice for all humanity that was seamlessly connected to a discourse of divine alleviation of everyday suffering. These two sections stand in an interesting contrast next to each other. Counterintuitively, Roberts notes that the uniquely Christian elements do not feature in the converts’ own accounts as to what drew them to Christianity, and he warns against “resorting to the explanatory deus exmachina of ‘hidden motives’” (241). A fair warning, but some readers might find the tension between these continuities and discontinuities unresolved. Positively, this can lead the reader to reflect on other possibilities left unexplored in the book.To Be Cared For is a brilliant synthesis that will challenge scholars on religion and culture and caste. It makes visible the thought, hopes, and actions of the dispossessed among the dispossessed while simultaneously mounting a devastating critique of the hopelessly stale yet hegemonic assumptions that have served to obscure and reproduce caste/class inequalities.