Moral Repertoires Research Articles

Elites and ordinariness in cross-status encounters: Adding Goffman's ritual interaction order to sociological interpretations

Elites and higher-class people often downplay – even conceal – their status when interacting with people of lower class/status than themselves. This finding has been reported from several countries in the Global North. It is also shown in research from disparate academic fields and disciplines: the sociology of class, psychology, cognitive decision-making, and microsociology. This paper reviews and synthesises the literature on elites and high-status people who downplay social differences in cross-status social interaction. It makes two main contributions: First, I show that the phenomenon is more widespread transnationally than especially Nordic researchers have assumed. The second contribution comes from tracing the theoretical interpretations in the research. I notice tendencies of an individual – structure dualism in some strands of research, with the relevant analytical levels being the broader moral repertoires and predispositions. Other strands of research suffer from overly individualist interpretations. I argue that what is missing in most current research on cross-status interaction, is an adequate theoretical grasp of the social situation. I discuss how the study of cross-status interaction can be fertilised by the classical microsociological idea of situations’ existence in themselves, a social domain that cannot be reduced to dispositions or broader culture. I engage here especially Erving Goffman's ritual interaction order. From this vantage point, I also highlight situational variation, something attended to by few studies of cross-status interaction.

Feeling rules in artificial intelligence: norms for anger management

The rapid spread of conversational AI, as well as the potential for personal conversations with chatbots, makes it relevant to examine what norms and values underlie chatbot responses. This article examines the feeling rules for anger implicitly communicated by a recent chatbot (ChatGPT). Querying the chatbot about appropriate and inappropriate anger, the study shows how specific feeling rules are articulated by AI. The chatbot communicates norms of productive, respectful, constructive, controlled and calm expression of anger through talk and, as such, relies on communication as a pervasive cultural repertoire. Based on a rereading of Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) economies of worth focusing on feeling rules, it is argued that different moral repertoires have implications for feeling rules. Using this theoretical framework to analyse the responses of the chatbot, it is evident that it primarily relies on both the industrial and the domestic orders of worth to assess anger. The chatbot articulates the problem of anger as unproductiveness and disrespect. The feeling rules implied in the responses of the chatbot reflect a neoliberal conception of self as individually responsible, productive, self-regulating, emotionally competent and able to find solutions. The seemingly neutral advice of the chatbot potentially depoliticises anger, disciplines people to remain productive and respectful and narrows the scope of anger expressions that are deemed acceptable.

Guanxi and Moral Articulation: Strategies of Corruption During China’s Anti-Corruption Drive

What explains failures of large-scale anti-corruption campaigns in reducing corruption? Theories on developing country corruption see corruption as either a problem of weak formal institutions that incentivize naturally opportunistic actors or as remnants of traditional behaviors that persist despite changing modern state boundaries and regulations. Neither helps explain how participants continuously strategize to reframe and articulate the morality of those questionable transactions. This paper, through multi-year fieldwork and 34 interviews with business elites in China’s Guangdong province, examines how officials and businesses reconfigured their strategies of corruption during a recent anti-corruption campaign. We find that key actors engaged in ‘moral articulation’ – devising moral repertoires and realigning common exchange practices to accepted meaning frames to safeguard interests and obfuscate their activities. In doing so, they challenged some aspects of state-initiated definitions of corruption while embracing others. Rather than eliciting conformity, the campaign prompted new ingenious action frames that helped internally justify corruption and allowed questionable exchange practices to continue on.

Sharing the burden of ethical responsibility: Developing a moral repertoire for news users

Sharing the burden of ethical responsibility: Developing a moral repertoire for news users

Legitimizing Inequality

Abstract Do people in different countries understand and frame the principle of meritocracy differently? This question is the starting point for this cross-national analysis of the moral repertoires of meritocracy in four countries: Germany, Norway, Slovenia and the United Kingdom. The authors pursue a mixed methods approach, using data from the European Social Survey 2016 and qualitative data from group discussions. In these discussions, citizens openly talked about issues like inequality and social policy, which allows us to study their understandings and framings of meritocracy. The authors show that the issue of unequal rewards does not only find different levels of support, but also that people – corresponding to the context they live in – have different understandings of which merits should count. The authors identify a ‘market success meritocracy’ in the UK, a work-centred understanding in Germany, a ‘common good meritocracy’ in Norway, and non-salience of this issue in Slovenia.

Coping with COVID-19. Dugnad: a case of the moral premise of the Norwegian welfare state

PurposeThis paper provides an analysis of the notion of dugnad (collective effort) in the context of the first weeks of the outbreak of COVID-19 in Norway. By appealing to people's sense of collective effort (dugnadsånd) Norwegian leaders successfully managed to coordinate the actions of the population and beat the outbreak.Design/methodology/approachThe argument builds on the pragmatic sociology associated with Boltanski and Thévenot and their “orders of worth”. Building on qualitative interview studies of the Norwegian middle and working classes a moral ideal type labelled “the socially responsible citizen” is identified.FindingsThe authors argue that dugnad is embedded in a moral repertoire of the socially responsible citizen that is indicative of a specific Norwegian welfare mentality and that is imperative for the sustainability and resilience of the Norwegian welfare model. This repertoire is found across social classes and has to be understood in light of the Norwegian welfare model and the role of civil society.Social implicationsThe analysis explains the societal impact of the appeal and endorsement of the notion of dugnad in the context of the outbreak of COVID-19.Originality/valueThe paper explores the roots and impact of a social phenomenon that has not been a matter for much sociological analysis.

Religion and Everyday Consumption Ethics: A Moral Economy Approach

As research on ethical consumers and consumption practices has continued to grow, a complimentary body of work concerned less with ethical consumption but more with ethics in consumption has emerged. Problematizing the divide between ethical and non-ethical consumption, this stream of research focuses on the domain of everyday and explores the moral struggles individuals face while engaging in ordinary consumption practices. However, the attention on the ordinary runs the risk of obscuring the contribution of the ‘extraordinary’ or the transcendental to the ethical concerns embedded in the mundane flow of the everyday. This study addresses this blind spot and explores the ways in which religion is implicated in everyday consumption ethics. In doing so, I go beyond a view of religion as an individual trait and emphasize its role as a major institutional structure of the contemporary political economy. The empirical context of the study is the controversy over the so-called halal nail polish. The debate over the products’ appropriateness for Muslim women provides a fertile setting to explore how an ordinary object becomes an ethical problem amid changing relations between religion and market. In order to trace and analyse the linkages between daily practices and institutional dynamics I draw from the moral economy framework and discuss the multiple and conflicting moral repertoires that shape the ethical evaluations of the object. The study offers several contributions to the existing theorizations of everyday consumption ethics and moral economies of consumption. It also highlights the potential of interdisciplinary approaches in providing a holistic understanding of the ethical and moral dimensions of consumption.

Repertorios de legitimación e impugnación moral de las desigualdades. Un estudio de las fronteras simbólicas de clase en Gran Córdoba, Argentina (2003-2015)

<p>Este artículo analiza los sentidos lego y las justificaciones morales que transmutan las desigualdades estructurales en diferencias significativas o simbólicas entre las clases sociales en familias de Gran Córdoba, Argentina. Para ello recupera tanto los relatos de las trayectorias de los agentes como sus valoraciones en torno al acceso a recursos económicos y laborales, explorando la ambivalencia de las lógicas y su síntesis en <em>sentidos prácticos</em> de distinción simbólica.</p><p>Los datos de esta investigación fueron producidos a partir de una combinatoria de metodologías de procesamiento estadístico multivariado –para la reconstrucción de la estructura social cordobesa- y metodologías de corte cualitativo –entrevistas en profundidad y registro etnográfico entre 2012 y 2015. </p>

Everyday Uncertainty Work: Making Sense of Biosynthetic Menthol

Although much public engagement with the field of “synthetic biology” has been conducted, there remains little work that develops an appreciation of how people make sense of this field and its concomitant promised futures from within their everyday lives. Using a case study, based on the compound “menthol” (a terpenoid from plants) which synthetic biologists have developed for production in E. coli, we explore how people make sense of uncertainties in promised or feared futures. Menthol is already an ingredient in many consumer products and the pre-existing use of such products may frame people’s everyday techniques for understanding biosynthetic menthol, with implications for their appreciation of synthetic biology more generally. We adopted a range of sensory methods, including “pop-up” stalls, sketch research, object elicitation interviews and home tours, to explore the everyday situations in which menthol already figures. Participants used a range of strategies, including deferring judgment, invoking other actors as mediators, using their own bodily experiences and using existing moral repertoires, to respond to biosynthetic possibilities. We deploy the concept of “everyday uncertainty work” and show that it is a useful one for understanding how people’s everyday epistemic cultures of uncertainty are routinely adapted to the anticipation of sociotechnical uncertainties, such as those that accompany promissory accounts of science. The implications for these findings for public engagement with technoscience and uncertainty are discussed.

The Dialectics of Care: Communicating Ethical Trade in Poland

This article is an empirical exploration of how ethical trade organisations draw on and appropriate in their communication the moral repertoire of ethical trade. Theoretically, it employs the notion of the “dialectics of care” to examine the tactics used in ethical trade communication to reconcile care for oneself and one’s close ones with care for distant producers. Empirically, this article is based on the discourse-theoretical analysis of two interviews with the representatives of Polish ethical trade organisations: (1) a fair trade firm, Pizca del Mundo, and (2) an NGO, the Institute for Global Responsibility. The analysis finds that ethical trade organisations seek to harmonise care for distant producers with the interests of the Polish public through (1) embedding it into the discourse of product quality, or (2) linking it to care for oneself, one’s family and society while raising awareness of the global interconnectedness.

The ambiguous figures of social enterprise: Gendered flexibility and relational work among the iAgents of Bangladesh

Trained by social enterprises as objects and instruments of development, Bangladesh's female “Information Agents” adopt the gendered flexibilities implied by new entrepreneurial livelihoods. Switching among multiple roles, these entrepreneurs defy social expectations and appear as ambiguous figures. “Social enterprise” thus incorporates the morally perilous results of gendered flexibility and the contradictions between emergent ethical discourses and their business logics. Market-driven enterprise becomes an inescapable feature of development and produces “the social” as a site of capital accumulation and organizational expansion for the development elite. It also offloads the risks of manipulating social relations onto the poor entrepreneurs of poverty capitalism, who often cannot translate between market-based moral repertoires and local community notions of sociality and ethical personhood. [social enterprise, financial inclusion, gender and development, relational work, ambiguity, flexibility, Bangladesh]

La prosperidad y la codicia: transformaciones en los repertorios morales y políticos en una ciudad intermedia de la Costa Atlántica bonaerense

By the middle of the twentieth century, Villa Gesell (located on the Atlantic coast about 350 km from Buenos Aires) became one of the fastest growing cities in Argentina. Through a rapid process of development fueled by land valuation, real estate speculation and commercial activities related to tourism, a small group of local entrepreneurs was able to secure a preeminent economic position, which in time, and sanctioned by a series of canonic moral repertoires, would convert into a political legitimacy which would allow the group to hold the reins of the city for more than three decades. By the end of the century, however, the moral resources that made this conversion possible would become disputed and challenged. In due time, alternative resources would be assembled within the frame of a new historical narrative, which would enable another process of conversion through which novel actors would seek to build their own legitimacy, disputing their predecessors’. On that basis, the following paper seeks to retrace the origins of this new repertoire, its main contents, and outline some of the ways in which they would be mobilized on the verge of a recent process of moral and political dispute between old and new political actors.

Prescriptions and proscriptions: moralising sleep medicines.

The pharmaceuticalisation of sleep is a contentious issue. Sleep medicines get a ‘bad press’ due to their potential for dependence and other side effects, including studies reporting increased mortality risks for long‐term users. Yet relatively little qualitative social science research has been conducted into how people understand and negotiate their use/non‐use of sleep medicines in the context of their everyday lives. This paper draws on focus group data collected in the UK to elicit collective views on and experiences of prescription hypnotics across different social contexts. Respondents, we show, drew on a range of moral repertoires which allowed them to present themselves and their relationships with hypnotics in different ways. Six distinct repertoires about hypnotic use are identified in this regard: the ‘deserving’ patient, the ‘responsible’ user, the ‘compliant’ patient, the ‘addict’, the ‘sinful’ user and the ‘noble’ non user. These users and non‐users are constructed drawing on cross‐cutting themes of addiction and control, ambivalence and reflexivity. Such issues are in turn discussed in relation to recent sociological debates on the pharmaceuticalisation/de‐pharmaceuticalisation of everyday life and the consumption of medicines in the UK today.

The Moral Repertoires Behind Social Citizenship

Dean (2004)’s taxonomy of moral repertoires explains contradictory and complex responses to questions about social citizenship in Britain. But are the moral repertoires identified in Britain relevant to other English-speaking ‘liberal’ welfare states? Analysis of interview and focus group data finds the taxonomy is useful for exploring ambivalent attitudes towards social citizenship in New Zealand, where popular discourse regarding responsibility and conditionality is more flexible and varied than that promoted by political elites. Responses do not always fall neatly within Dean’s (2004) taxonomy and context does matter in some cases, but the New Zealand findings largely support his view that popular discourse’s complexity and contradictions offer a space for galvanising social citizenship.

Voicelessness and the Limits of Agency in Early Modern Finnish Narratives on Magic and the Supernatural

Introduction: Self, Narrative, and VoicelessnessGiven that research has shown narration to be an innate trait human species (Abbott; see also Barthes; Nussbaum 230), concept culture encompasses vast domain. Here I define it as system conventions1 for representing temporally ordered events, conventions that are shared by group. Such groups tend to be coterminous with linguistic communities. This definition implies that conventions given culture that are intelligible to one group may not necessarily be intelligible to another. Narrative culture is historically transmitted and inherited and can change over time. According to Cliffford Geertz (93), culture acts as in two senses, being both of and for. In similar fashion, culture gives meaning or conceptual form to our social and psychological experience reality by both reflecting way in which its users understand themselves and world around them and by shaping that understanding in first place. This article is specifically concerned with role culture in social construction self2 and agency through narrative, what theorist Martin Kreiswirth (309) calls inquiry into narrative identity: how we use to construct our sense ourselves as developing moral agents, with pasts, presents, and futures.Narrative-by which I mean a representation or series events (Abbott 12), is our only tool for understanding ourselves as agents operating through time (Abbott 3, 123). Conceptualizing our lives in terms thus facilitates experience self-continuity through time and explains why people have tendency to perceive themselves as living out their lives in temporally ordered with beginning, middle, and end. Referring to this need for self-continuity, Anthony Giddens (54) portrays self-identity as the capacity to keep particular going.However, if we want to express and describe our experiences to others and ourselves through language, we cannot do it in any fashion whatsoever. We use our cultural conventions narration to convey our identities, our personal histories, more intelligibly to others, thereby constructing coherent social reality. People also use characters they encounter in narratives as means to express their selfhood. These characters are always flattened and typecast, in contrast to fully rounded, constantly changeable and phenomenologically complex persons encountered in real life, because characters are functions cultural norms used to tell stories. Norms for what is internally possible in story are in turn shaped by kinds agencies seen to be possible, probable, and acceptable in real life. Such on-the-ground theories personhood encapsulated in are not just ways expressing reality, they also shape how we experience it (Harre 22, 193). We seek to model ourselves after kinds characters narratively possible in our culture, since these will be stereotypes and storylines others recognize. The limits our traditions are thus limits our identity, as sociologist Nikolas Rose (237-78) explains:3We use stories self that our culture makes available to us, with their scenarios emotions, their repertoires motives, their cast-list characters, to plan out our lives, to account for and give them significance, to accord ourselves an identity as hero or victim, survivor or casualty within plot our own life, to shape our conduct and understand that others. . . . Rules this grammar individuals-language games-produce or induce moral repertoire relatively enduring features personhood in inhabitants particular cultures, and one that has morally constraining quality: we are obliged to be individuals certain sort. …

Morality and the Middle Class: The European Pattern and the Norwegian Singularity

The article presents one of the main findings from a recent study of the culture of the highly educated middle class in Norway; namely, the significance of morality in their discourse and the composition of this value universe, and suggests elements of cultural-historical continuity to explain the pattern observed. Such a result diverges in certain ways from the conventional wisdom of social theory. In the article, we argue for the existence of a Nordic case of middle class culture, by examining our evidence in the light of some central contributions to Western, comparative social history and cultural sociology. Our point of departure is the project on the European Burgertum led by German historians, and the study by Michele Lamont comparing the upper middle classes in France and the United States. In a methodological argument, we suggest that the question of what constitutes classes historically in existing social formations needs to be revisited in terms of cultural processes as well as forms of societal interaction. The content of Norwegian middle-class morality emerges as different cultural repertoires that can be represented by two ideal, moral types: “The Good Samaritan” and “the socially responsible citizen.” In the last part of the article, we discuss a set of hypotheses to explain such findings in terms of moral repertoires historically embedded in Norwegian culture, and suggest the existence of a specific regime of moral action.

How do values shape technology design? An exploration of what makes the pursuit of health and wealth legitimate in academic spin‐offs

By actively supporting cooperation between academia, clinical settings and industry, several policy initiatives assume that the two policy agendas of health and wealth can be reconciled through the development of health technology. Our goal in this article is to shed light on the way the concurrent pursuit of health and wealth operates in practice by examining the valuation schemes, actions and decisions that shaped technology development in three Canadian spin-offs. Drawing on the sociology of judgement, our analytical framework conceives of technology development as a purposive collective action that unfolds in a normatively heterogeneous context (one pervaded with both corporate and public service mission values and norms). Our qualitative empirical analyses explore four valuation schemes and their corresponding regimes of engagement that characterise why and how technology developers commit themselves to addressing certain clinical, interactional, organisational and economic concerns throughout the development process. Our discussion suggests that the ability to reconcile health and wealth goals is to be found in the moral repertoires that provide meaning to, and render coherent technology developers' participation in corporate activities driven by economic growth.

Dor, sofrimento e luta

Este artigo examina algumas modalidades de imbricação entre religião e política no contexto de violência vivido no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Discute como categorias e práticas religiosas têm sido experimentadas e mobilizadas por moradores de favelas cariocas vítimas da violência estatal para confrontar os dispositivos discursivos favela e favelado, que os identificam com o campo do crime e da marginalidade, e acessar o espaço público na busca por justiça e reparação moral. Analisa, com base em um caso etnográfico, como essa operação lhes permite expressar o sofrimento e a indignação pelo assassinato de um familiar por policiais militares, prestar-lhe homenagens fúnebres, restaurar-lhe a dignidade moral em rituais para a dor no espaço público e acessar um repertório social e moral que associa as dimensões política e jurídica na tematização da violência e na responsabilização de seus autores.

“My God Wants Me to Live Simply”: The Constructed Selfhood of Faith‐Based Simple Livers

This study examines how participants in the faith‐based voluntary simplicity movement, referred to here as “Simple Livers,” draw on the complex interactions of ideology and emotions as they construct a moral identity focused on social change. Drawing on qualitative data from participant observation and interviews, I examine the use of moral repertoires—combinations of principles, practices, and feelings, including guilt, pride, and frustration, grounded in both the Christian faith and the tenets of voluntary simplicity. I engage with the new literature on lifestyle movements to argue that the moral repertoires of Simple Livers reinforce these ideologies, resulting in the construction of an over‐conforming moral self.

Guardianes del paraíso. Génesis y genealogía de una identidad colectiva en Mar de las Pampas, Provincia de Buenos Aires

La localidad balnearia de Mar de las Pampas (Buenos Aires, Argentina) ha experimentado en la última década un proceso inédito de expansión de su infraestructura edilicia y de servicios dirigidos al turismo. Al mismo tiempo, la inmensa mayoría de sus residentes permanentes perciben este crecimiento como una amenaza a su proyecto de construcción colectiva de una comunidad “virtuosa” argumentada en torno de valores como la “ecología”, lo “natural” y la “calidad de vida”. Nuestro texto busca mostrar algunas de las formas en que los residentes permanentes plantean y responden las preguntas acerca de qué es, qué debe ser y qué no Mar de las Pampas – así como los repertorios morales a los que los mismos recurren - en el marco de una narrativa moral que opone un proyecto “virtuoso” y “auténtico” de “comunidad” a los intereses “espurios” de una “especulación inmobiliaria” y un “progreso desenfrenado” que buscarían corromper el proyecto de estos “vecinos”, así como la manera en la cual estas disputas contribuyen a la consolidación de una identidad colectiva compartida para sus pobladores.