Moral Opposition Research Articles

Dissent on the Belarusian Literary Front

Dissent on the Belarusian Literary Front Barbara Martin Tatsiana Astrouskaya, Cultural Dissent in Soviet Belarus (1968–1988): Intelligentsia, Samizdat, and Nonconformist Discourses. 232 pp., illus. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2019. ISBN-13 978-3447111881. €48.00. In recent years, the historiography of Soviet dissent has undergone a clear renewal and deideologization. Emancipation from Manichean Cold War era tropes of moral opposition to communism has allowed historians to enlarge their focus to manifestations of cultural dissent, study dissident cultures, but also explore the gray areas between the official and unofficial fields. Geographically, however, the focus is only beginning to shift from Moscow and Leningrad to the Russian peripheries and other Soviet republics. Belarus, with its image of political loyalty to Moscow, seems an unlikely place to look for manifestations of dissent or nonconformism. Yet, as Tatsiana Astrouskaya demonstrates in her study, the Belarusian intelligentsia found ways to voice its concerns over the status of its national language and history in both censored and uncensored publications. Far from delivering heroic narratives about Soviet dissidents, Astrouskaya brings to the reader's attention a case study characterized both by its liminality and peripherality. As the author underlines, "it is probably more challenging for the case of Belarus than in any other to merely divide intellectuals into two rival camps of nonconformists and collaborators, fighters and trimmers, Communist Party functionaries and opponents of the Party's monopoly, advocates of Russification and those who were 'nationally conscious'" (2). Using Homi Bhabha's concept of "third space," she writes that Belarusian intelligentsia "meandered between dissent and conformity, between self-printing and the state publishing houses" (11). While Belarusian writers were well-integrated into the Soviet system, mastered its codes, and knew how to navigate its hierarchies, they could also use this knowledge to circumvent accepted norms and introduce nonconformist ideas into censored print. Moreover, [End Page 650] authors who benefited from the privileges attached to the status of Soviet writer could also circulate their uncensored writings in samizdat. While such scholars as Ann Komaromi or Sergei Oushakine have explored the blurred boundary between official and unofficial fields, Astrouskaya shows that nationalist cultural discourse could also occupy this "third space."1 The notion of peripherality is no less important for Astrouskaya. It conditions the type of cultural dissent that is central to her study: discourses produced by the nationally conscious intelligentsia, set in opposition to the more universal democratic and moral opposition of Soviet human-rights activists in Moscow. Although she does not elaborate on this thesis, the author suggests that Russification was a product of "cultural colonization by Russian and Soviet imperialism" (116). Hence at the periphery, the task of national liberation superseded the more universal struggle for freedom that characterized dissent in the Russian capitals. Moreover, she emphasizes, the Belarusian intelligentsia was also marginal in so far as its national language and culture were always located at the crossroads of the Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Jewish, and Ukrainian worlds. Historically, Belarusian nationalists often took part in other national projects, only to realize that they did not fit, and incorporated these different perspectives into their own national project. Peripherality also imposed additional hurdles on Belarusian dissenters, such as the lack of access to channels of dissemination of their uncensored writings across the Iron Curtain and more limited access to samizdat from the capital. In addition, the lack of a significant Belarusian diaspora in the West, coupled with a lesser interest from Western radio stations, explain the relative paucity of Belarusian tamizdat. Being a borderland area, Belarus was also under stricter political control than more central areas of the Soviet Union. Astrouskaya states from the outset that she concentrates on "the intelligentsia that understood itself as national, wrote and published predominantly in the Belarusian language and perceived itself as deeply rooted in Belarusian tradition" (4), with a closer focus on "the writers' community and nonconformism" (8). The authors she considers, however, were variously integrated into the system, ranging from the acclaimed writer Vasyl´ Bykaŭ, who received the status of People's Writer of Belarus in 1980, to the poet Larysa Heniush, incarcerated in the Stalin era and with very few works that made their way into censored print. Astrouskaya convincingly shows...

When abortion becomes public - Everyday politics of reproduction in rural Zambia.

This article takes the public reaction to the discovery of an aborted foetus in a rural Zambian community as the empirical starting point for exploring the everyday politics of reproduction. It builds on eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork on abortion and abortion policy in Zambia in 2017 and 2018, including participant observation in the community where the episode took place and interviews with clinic staff and neighbours. The article explores local dynamics of abortion opposition in a country where abortion is legally permitted on broad grounds. By analysing this case as an anthropological event, it discusses how opposition to abortion is dynamic and changes depending on the situation at hand. While abortions that avoid public attention may be silently tolerated, abortions that become openly known are harshly condemned. Through scrutiny of a specific case of collective moral judgement of abortion, the article examines how values like responsible motherhood, sexual virtue and protection of life emerge and are shared, allowing participants to protect and accumulate their own integrity in a moral economy that forges stronger social ties within the community. The article argues that even the harshest expressions of opposition to abortion may not be as categorical as they first appear. It calls for increased attention to dynamics of moral and political opposition to abortion to understand what is socially at stake for those who engage in it.

On the role of (and threat to) natural history museums in mammal conservation: an African small mammal perspective

The global environment is faced with growing threats from anthropogenic disturbance, propelling the Earth into a 6th mass extinction. For the world's mammals, this is reflected in the fact that 25% of species are threatened with some risk of extinction. During this time of species loss and environmental alteration, the world's natural history museums (NHMs) are uniquely poised to provide novel insight into many aspects of conservation. This review seeks to provide evidence of the importance of NHMs to mammal conservation, how arguments against continued collecting of physical voucher specimens is counterproductive to these efforts, and to identify additional threats to collecting with a particular focus on small mammals across Africa. NHMs contribute unique data for assessing mammal species conservation status through the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened species. However, NHMs' contributions to mammal conservation go well beyond supporting the IUCN Red List, with studies addressing topics such as human impacts, climate change, genetic diversity, disease, physiology, and biodiversity education. Increasing and diverse challenges, both domestic and international, highlight the growing threats facing NHMs, especially in regards to the issue of lethally sampling individuals for the purpose of creating voucher specimens. Such arguments are counterproductive to conservation efforts and tend to reflect the moral opposition of individual researchers than a true threat to conservation. The need for continued collecting of holistic specimens of all taxa across space and time could not be more urgent, especially for underexplored biodiversity hotspots facing extreme threats such as the Afrotropics.

ВАДИМ ІЛЛЄНКО Й ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ КІНОЗОБРАЖЕННЯ

ВАДИМ ІЛЛЄНКО Й ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ КІНОЗОБРАЖЕННЯ

Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities in the UN Anti-Trafficking Regime, 1947–1954

Abstract In the late 1940s, state socialist governments proclaimed that commercial sex did not exist under socialism. At the same time, they were enthusiastic participants in the drafting of a new UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. This article explores state socialist involvement in the global moral reform drive accompanying the 1949 Convention. It traces the ideological coherence between Socialist Bloc and ‘Western’ delegations on the desirability of prostitution’s abolition. Conversely, it highlights splits on issues of jurisdiction, manifesting in the Soviet call for the eradication of the draft Convention’s ‘colonial clause’, which allowed states to adhere to or withdraw from international instruments on behalf of ‘non-self-governing territories’. We argue that critiques of the colonial clause discursively stitched together global moral reform and opposition to imperialism, according socialist and newly decolonized delegations an ideological win in the early Cold War.

Confucian Ethics on the Commercial Use of Human Bodies and Body Parts: Yi (Righteousness) or/and Li (Profit)?

In China as elsewhere in the world, human bodies and body parts have long been used for a wide range of medical and non-medical purposes. In recent decades, China has played a considerable role in some of the public exhibitions of plastinated bodies and body parts, and the commercial trade in organ donations. These contemporary developments have raised numerous challenging ethical and governance questions. In spite of the growing role of China in these, there have been few studies devoted to Chinese ethical thinking that might govern its policies on the use of human bodies and body parts, and in particular on the issue of commercialization. The present study is an attempt to bridge this gap, and concludes that Confucian thinking stresses the primacy of righteousness over profits and utilities. This conclusion is reached directly by drawing on Confucian ethical responses to the peculiar practice of using human body parts, such as placenta and flesh, as drugs in traditional Chinese medicine in imperial China and what has been called "yili zhibian," the major Confucian discourse on yi (righteousness or justice) and li (profit or interest) in its long history. The principle of prioritizing righteousness over profit leads to a general moral opposition to the commodification of human bodies and body parts. While Confucianism may not place an absolute prohibition on any such use, it does require that any commercial uses are made subject to the fundamental moral principles, such as righteousness, as well as adequate ethical governance procedures.

Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500–1900: Democracy, Discourse and The State by Tony Fisher

Reviewed by: Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500–1900: Democracy, Discourse and The State by Tony Fisher Jim Davis THEATRE AND GOVERNANCE IN BRITAIN, 1500–1900: DEMOCRACY, DISCOURSE AND THE STATE. By Tony Fisher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017; pp. 290. Tony Fisher's monograph provides a new and original way of looking at the relationship between theatre and governance in Britain between 1500 and 1900. Through a series of case studies and an ongoing analysis of the philosophical basis for the perspectives he examines, he untangles the complex relationship between theatre and the state. While he covers familiar territory, he also offers new ways of reading Britain's theatrical past in a study that is well-grounded in both contemporary and historical discourses pertinent to the topics of government and theatre. In particular, he provides a valuable insight into Platonic notions of theatre and their impact on European thought. In Fisher's view, theatre was seen by government not only as a symptom of social corruption, but also as a potential instrument of reform. Consequently, as public theatres evolved alongside the expansion of the population in early modern Britain, so perceptions of the relationship between theatre and governance also changed. We move from the notion of theatrum mundi, wherein men and women are players on the stage of the world, to the "theatre of the multitude," focused more on the material conditions of everyday life. Within this context, Fisher suggests that anti-theatrical prejudice has less to do with puritan and moral opposition to the stage and is based more on a fear of disorder, sedition, and the instability and potential idleness of the common people. Insofar as theatre calls into question the authority of government by questioning the legitimacy of social and political order and hierarchy, it therefore represents the growing self-assertion of the laboring classes and their right to leisure. Thus two notions of community are at loggerheads: an ordered, unified community on the one hand, and a community of individuals (the multitude) on the other. The discourses around the threat of the [End Page 401] multitude and the threat of theatre coalesce, indicating the necessity of political governance over both common life and theatre. As new forms of power emerge in the late 1600s, the Restoration stage comes to represent an important moment in the development of theatre's relationship to governance in Britain. While anti-theatricalism, especially as represented by the opinions of Jeremy Collier, continues, freedom and conduct are more central to discourses of governmentality. In Restoration drama, this emphasis on freedom and conduct (and the possible tensions between them) is embodied by the character of the libertine, enabling a satirical emphasis on the public dimension of private conduct (in civil society rather than politics). Dramatists are not necessarily endorsing libertine conduct; rather, they could be seen as advocating appropriate governance (and self-governance) within the family through correct conduct. While Restoration comedy takes place in a predominantly upper-class milieu, it hints at the wider social consequences when liberty is not restrained by governance. Within this context, Collier's anti-theatricalism in this period can be seen as a social rather than moral critique of the theatre. In the early eighteenth century, as liberal governance absorbs the autonomous freedom of the individual, through various techniques of influence that curtail personal liberty, the question arises around the optimum license the theatre should be allowed within the public sphere. In his analysis of the events leading up to the Licensing Act of 1737, Fisher concludes that the emphasis is on keeping politics off the stage, and that the legislation aims to discipline rather than suppress theatre. Central to this discussion are the political satires of Henry Fielding, but whereas Fielding believed the stage should instruct through example and hold the powerful to account, the government believed that his satires, which often disparaged political figures, were a misuse of the stage. Fisher, however, suggests that another concern of the act was to regulate for appropriate behavior in the public sphere, and to prevent corruption and incivility among the lower orders. Prior to the act, the theatre was beginning to provide moral lessons in relation to...

On Physician-Assisted Death and the Killing of Innocents

This essay highlights an argument for the moral impermissibility of physician-assisted death based on the prohibition of killing innocents that unfolds in four phases. First, I identify the operative moral principle and then develop a moral argument based upon it. Second, I raise challenges to such an argument designed to mitigate the force of the conclusion. Third, I sketch out a potential defense of the argument in light of these counter-responses for those who want to maintain moral opposition to physician-assisted death based upon the prohibition of killing innocents. Finally, I conclude with a brief postscript that highlights the limits of the philosophical approach taken in this essay in conversation with the role of moral psychology in moral judgment.

Pharmacological Cognitive Enhancement: Examining the Ethical Principles Guiding College Students’ Abstention

To understand the ethical principles guiding college students' abstention from pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE), and to determine the correlates associated with endorsing different principles. One-stage cluster sampling was used to implement a paper-based survey among undergraduate students attending one university in the U.S. Thematic analysis was used to explore the ethical principles guiding PCE abstention. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to examine sociodemographic correlates associated with endorsed ethical principles. Of the 499 eligible students who completed the survey (student response proportion: 94.7%), 259 students had a negative attitude towards PCE, did not engage in PCE, and provided reasons for abstention. The thematic analysis resulted in the identification of eight themes, with respondents often endorsing more than one theme per response. The three themes most endorsed were non-malfeasance (i.e., avoiding PCE to prevent harm), disapproval of drugs (i.e., a moral opposition to substance use) and dosage beneficence (i.e., adhering to dosage guidance to promote health). The sociodemographic correlates associated with endorsing each theme varied across themes. Students abstain from PCE for a multitude of reasons, many of which are guided by ethical principles. These findings may be incorporated into future prevention programming messages.

Why Consumers Don't see the Benefits of Genetically Modified Foods, and what Marketers can do about It

Evidence from four studies suggests that the moral opposition toward genetically modified (GM) foods impedes the perception of their benefits, and critically, marketers can circumvent this moral opposition by employing subtle cues to position these products as being “man-made.” Specifically, if consumers view the GM food as man-made, and if they understand why it was created, moral opposition to the product diminishes, and the GM food's perceived benefits increase, which subsequently increases purchase intentions for the product. This effect is replicated in the field (in both controlled and naturalistic settings), in a laboratory experiment, and with an online consumer panel. The results suggest that marketers can help consumers better consider all information when assessing the merits of GM foods by using packaging and promotion strategies to cue consumers to view the GM food for what it is (i.e., a man-made object created with intent). The findings have implications for the recent GM food labeling debate.

“Direita, sem vergonha”

Como a “nova direita” se diferencia e se aproxima das tradições do campo conservador brasileiro? Em que medida o fenômeno da “direita envergonhada” é afetado pelo discurso desses grupos? O artigo discute tais questões por meio da análise do discurso de um dos principais polos da direita contemporânea no Brasil – o deputado Jair Bolsonaro. Entendendo as narrativas como importantes mecanismos para a conformação de grupos políticos, busca-se compreender como esse ator contribui para as transformações no campo através de suas operações discursivas: quais os valores, atores e práticas atribuídos aos campos da esquerda e da direita pelo parlamentar. Como material primário, foram usados seus discursos na 54ª e 55ª legislatura para análises quantitativas e selecionadas entrevistas e declarações para análises qualitativas. Os resultados apontam para uma baixa relevância de questões econômicas no discurso do parlamentar, com ênfase em questões de cunho moral e na oposição aos governos petistas. Percebe-se grande valorização do período militar e uma reatualização do discurso anticomunista, vinculando-o ao antipetismo.

LEAVENED APPREHENSIONS: BREAD SUBSIDIES AND MORAL ECONOMIES IN HASHEMITE JORDAN

This article analyzes the microprocesses that imbue bread with meaning and the macropolitics that shape its subsidized provision. It begins by outlining bread’s multiple forms of value and significance, some easily quantifiable, others not. It problematizes the predominant approach to studying moral economies before putting forth an alternative framework. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in Jordan, the following empirical sections examine the different ways in which bureaucrats, bakers, and ordinary citizens portray the government’s universal subsidy of Arabic bread. I unpack the diverse opinions encountered in the field and discuss their links to the Hashemite regime’s polyvalent legitimating discourse. The article then dissects the politics of provisions that contribute to the bread subsidy’s paradoxical persistence. It concludes by considering the relationship between moral economies, opposition politics, and authoritarian power in the context of Jordan’s ongoing food subsidy debate.

Ethical concerns regarding animal use mediate the relationship between variety of pets owned in childhood and vegetarianism in adulthood

Plant-based and vegetarian diets have been shown to have diverse health and environmental benefits and also serve to reduce farmed animal exploitation. It is therefore worthwhile to gain a better understanding of the factors that play a role in the decision to refrain from animal products. Past studies have shown that childhood pet ownership predicts the likelihood of adherence to a vegetarian diet in adulthood. Building on this research, we tested the hypothesis that the number of different types of pets owned in childhood is positively associated with degree of restriction of animal products in adulthood, and that this relationship is mediated by pro-animal attitudes. A self-selected convenience sample of 325 participants (77.2% female; mean age = 30.23 ± 12.5) reported on their vegetarian status and completed the Animal Advocacy Scale and Child Pet Ownership Questionnaire. The number of different pets owned in childhood was positively correlated with degree of vegetarianism in adulthood (p < 0.001), but was no longer a significant predictor when controlling for moral opposition to animal exploitation. A significant Sobel test (z = 4.36; p < 0.001) confirmed the presence of full mediation. Findings support the hypothesis that individuals who owned a greater variety of pets in childhood endorse more concerns regarding animal use. This, in turn, appears to predict the decision to refrain from animal products in adulthood. The possibility that an enhanced ability to generalize empathy from companion to laboratory, farm, and wildlife animals underlies this relationship should be examined in future research.

Terminating a Child's Life? Religious, Moral, Cognitive, and Emotional Factors Underlying Non-Acceptance of Child Euthanasia.

Is opposition to child euthanasia motivated only by ideology, or also by other personality characteristics and individual differences? In Belgium, the first country to legalize child euthanasia (in 2014), we investigated religious, moral, emotional, and cognitive factors underlying the (dis)approval of this legalization (N = 213). Disapproval was associated with religiousness, collectivistic morality (loyalty and purity), and prosocial dispositions, in terms of emotional empathy and behavioral generosity, but not values (care and fairness). It was also associated with low flexibility in existential issues and a high endorsement of slippery slope arguments, but not necessarily low openness to experience. A regression analysis showed that in addition to religiousness, low flexibility in existential issues and high empathy and generosity distinctly predicted opposition to child euthanasia. Whereas most of the findings parallel those previously reported for adult euthanasia, the role of prosocial inclinations in predicting moral opposition seems to be specific to child euthanasia.

Corruption and Public Values in Historical and Comparative Perspective: An Introduction

What are our public values? That question can perhaps best be answered by considering it in a deeper historical perspective. It is only through in-depth, case-by-case studies that we can hope to comprehend the meaning of public values and their change over time.In this regard, episodes of conflict are extremely important in discerning which public values are really salient, and how such values change as a result of such conflicts. We argue that public values, as they relate to corruption or other matters, are often only visible in moments of crisis or in moments of scandal.That is why we have focused on corruption cases that signal changes in the development of public values. These cases are almost always, by definition, “scandals,” states of affairs which generated public emotion and vigorous debate. “Scandals,” in contrast to “normal” corruption cases, are often indications of a changing mindset among key actors in the public sphere about the moral (un)acceptability of certain public practices. Most typically, scandals signal public moral opposition to practices to which hitherto had been considered acceptable or at least condoned. By analyzing such cases, and historically contextualizing them, we hope to come to better historical understanding of how the public values of the present day found their “genesis.”

Incommensurability and Trade

Nir Eyal* and Emma Tieffenbach'This one standard which truly measures all things is demand. This includes all commutable things inasmuch as everything has a reference to human need. Articles are not valued according to dignity of their nature, otherwise a mouse, an animal endowed with sense, should be of greater value than a pearl, a thing without life. But they are priced according as man stands in need of them for his own use.-Aquinas (1964 [c. 1263], lecture 5, ch. 3, para. 981)INTRODUCTIONMany forms of trade-for example, trading for human organs, beaches, votes, and works of art-incur moral opposition.1 For some opponents, makes trade of these forms so morally wrong is incommensurability of relevant value bearers with they are traded for, e.g., money. Different commentators variably complain that goods or services exchanged are incommensurate, incomparable, unsubstitutable, nontradeable, inalienable, or irreplaceable. This is not only possible underlying complaint. Alternatively, one could explain that a market in votes, for example, is wrong because it undermines democracy, and not because of anything like incommensurability. Still, many thinkers anchor their condemnation of such exchanges in incommensurability (or incomparability, and so forth).For example, Margaret Jane Radin criticizes tort practice of paying victims of bodily injury in alleged compensation for they have suffered, because that conceives of harm to injured victim as commensurable with money, as if victim's interest in free of injury were same as or a fungible commodity she possessed (Radin 1993, 59). But, Radin says, the value to victim of freedom from pain and suffering be reduced to money (Radin 1993, 70).Radin opposes additional practices such as gestational surrogacy and prostitution on similar grounds. For her, things like sexuality, wisdom, character, work, and bodily integrity are to (1987). But when they are put on sale, they are conceived as being equivalent to a sum of money, and that can be alienated (1987, 1861). Their commodification, she says, is threatening to personhood because it detaches from person that which is integral to (1987, 1881). She concludes that personal attributes are market-inalienable, meaning that they should not be sold, priced, or even referred to in market terms.Similar thinking has been applied to additional areas of law:Legal theorists like Margaret Jane Radin, Cass Sunstein, and Richard Warner have argued that since merits of certain items-e.g. body parts, pristine beaches, and love relationships-cannot be measured by money, it follows that economic approaches to valuation such as cost-benefit analysis are inappropriate for these goods. (Chang 2001b, xvii)Earlier, legal thinker Joseph Raz asked is wrong with accepting a significant amount of in return for leaving one's spouse for a month. He answered that to do so would carry an undue symbolic significance, and what has symbolic significance is very judgment that companionship is incommensurable with money (Raz 1986,350).Such claims have been made by nonlegal philosophers as well. Michele MoodyAdams seems to ground her objection to surrogacy for pay in irreplaceability of babies with money:Surrogacy for pay requires couple to attempt to put a price on very entity which they believe to be beyond price [for no amount of will compensate them should they be deprived of child]; thus their own assumptions commit them to rejecting surrogacy for pay as morally indefensible. (Moody-Adams 1991, 188)Moody-Adams casts this consideration in Kantian terms: couple cannot consistently resist absolute prohibitions against treating persons as marketable commodities [that] are an important part of . …

Incentives and Ethics in the Economics of Body Parts

Recent research shows that properly devised economic incentives increase the supply of blood without hampering its safety; similar effects may be expected also for other body parts such as bone marrow and organs. These positive effects alone, however, do not necessarily justify the introduction of payments for supplying body parts; these activities concern contested commodities or repugnant transactions, i.e. societies may want to prevent certain ways to regulate a transaction even if they increased supply, because of ethical concerns. When transactions concern contested commodities, therefore, societies often face trade-offs between the efficiency-enhancing effects of trades mediated by a monetary price, and the moral opposition to the provision of these payments. In this essay, I first describe and discuss the current debate on the role of moral repugnance in controversial markets, with a focus on markets for organs, tissues, blood and plasma. I then report on recent research focused on understanding the trade-offs that individuals face when forming their opinions about how a society should organize certain transactions.

Historical tradition and community mobilisation: narratives of Red Clydeside in memories of the anti-poll tax movement in Scotland, 1988–1990

Contemporary scholarship has shifted focus from a ‘labour history’ focused on industrial movements to a more comprehensive ‘working-class history’, encompassing the broader social parameters of protest with community and industrial struggles unified in material interest and consciousness. This article locates the poll tax non-payment campaign of 1988–1990 on Clydeside, a major expression of working-class mobilisation which contributed to the demise of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, within this international historiography. The analysis is based on oral history interviews with twelve activists who represented all the major political trends from the non-payment campaign. The anti-poll tax movement was embedded in traditions of community mobilisation shaped by a moral economy of housing and amenities, which had roots in the First World War era ‘Red Clydeside’ struggles, and developed through the post-Second World War predominance of public sector housing. The analysis demonstrates how activists constructed narratives of their own resistance in the anti-poll tax movement within a powerful cultural circuit, where the collective memory of past mobilisations and the consciousness associated with the moral economy of housing and amenities informed contemporary perspectives and political activity. The campaign was not politically monocultural. Differences between political groups involved in the non-payment campaign are analysed showing that the need of composure (of memories) led to contrasting interpretations of Red Clydeside. These were influenced by geographical distinctions between traditional working-class areas with strong tenants’ organisations and the peripheral estates where such organisation was weaker. The impact of deindustrialisation and the welfare policies of the Thatcher government created a popular resentment in these areas. This strengthened moral economy opposition to the poll tax, whilst the traditions of community mobilisation provided effective means of harnessing this through non-payment and direct action against sheriff officers.

Evidence for Absolute Moral Opposition to Genetically Modified Food in the United States

Public opposition to genetic modification (GM) technology in the food domain is widespread (Frewer et al., 2013). In a survey of U.S. residents representative of the population on gender, age, and income, 64% opposed GM, and 71% of GM opponents (45% of the entire sample) were “absolutely” opposed—that is, they agreed that GM should be prohibited no matter the risks and benefits. “Absolutist” opponents were more disgust sensitive in general and more disgusted by the consumption of genetically modified food than were non-absolutist opponents or supporters. Furthermore, disgust predicted support for legal restrictions on genetically modified foods, even after controlling for explicit risk–benefit assessments. This research suggests that many opponents are evidence insensitive and will not be influenced by arguments about risks and benefits.

“How Low Can Humans Plunge!”: Facilitating Moral Opposition in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

In this article, we examine how religious leaders teach their followers to protect themselves and others from pornography. Based on archival materials from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, LDS Church, or Mormons), we analyze how LDS leaders, responding to the expansion of pornographic influence over the past 40 years, facilitated moral opposition to pornography by teaching their followers to (1) set moral examples for others, (2) save their women, and (3) protect their children. In so doing, however, LDS leaders, regardless of their intentions, reproduced cultural and religious discourses that facilitate the subordination of women and sexual minorities. Likewise, these discourses suggest strong negative outcomes associated with pornography. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding the facilitation of moral opposition across religious traditions, and the consequences these actions may have for the reproduction or reduction of social inequality.