Moral Tension Research Articles

Keeping the market afloat: attachments, circuits of clientele, and personalized commodity exchanges in rural shopkeeping

ABSTRACT This paper questions the conditions of possibility and limits of the most intimate forms of emotional capitalism by studying the everyday working lives of female shopkeepers in rural France. Combining an ethnography of relational work with the sociology of market attachments, it examines how they cultivate customer relationships that border on friendship through affective and caring labor as well as personalized services, without becoming completely entangled in gift-giving exchanges and overwhelming social obligations. Beyond the dynamics of closeness, this article reveals three mechanisms that enable these intimate attachments to operate with little moral or economic tension: a symbolic hierarchization of customers within circuits of clientele; the earmarking of their most personalized commodity exchanges as gifts; and the avoidance of socializing outside the shop and excessive kindness in gift-giving. By expending time and emotions and skillfully balancing closeness with distance, generosity with profitability, shopkeepers can successfully secure a steady income through the personal loyalty of a small group of customers fueled by mutual feelings of affection and indebtedness. Paradoxically, the more emotional capitalism gravitates towards these intimate commercial attachments, the more it requires the simultaneous maintenance of affective and relational distance to preserve the very existence of the market.

<흥부전>의 ‘밥 먹는 대목’에 대한 비교예술학적 접근

In order to deepen our literary understanding of the rice eating scene in <Heungbujeon>, this paper compares <Heungbujeon> with paintings depicting a meal scene. The paintings of The Last Supper, which recreates the event of the Last Supper as recorded in the Christian Bible, and <Peasant Wedding>, painted by the 16th century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel, were examined. Eating is both a material cycle of nature that mediates life and an act of human civilization. I considered this duality as an important clue to understanding the uniqueness of the work, which deals with the overcoming of materiality and the isolation of the figure. ‘Overcoming Materiality’ is a discussion of how the figures overcome the materiality of the act of eating to achieve a level of civilization, and what that means. In the paintings of The Last Supper, the figures are reverent in the presence of food and isolate the betrayer Judas. The paintings of the Last Supper thus suggest that humans, as spiritual beings, should be oriented toward a community of faith. In <Peasant Wedding>, people eat, drink, and rejoice. In this way, human beings are not limited to spiritual beings, but physicality and social solidarity are affirmed. In <Heungbujeon>, Heungbu's family members cut gourds and eat gluttony. As such, they are seen as regressive beings. However, unlike Imugi and Nolbu, Heungbu's hunger is inherent in a moral tension, as Heungbu's family is committed to ethical eating. Thus, gluttony is understood as an act of satisfying the moral hunger inherent in hunger and rejoicing in the rewards of morality. If eating is an act of expressing and pursuing civilized meaning, that meaning will be realized differently for different people. This is because civilizational meaning belongs to the realm of the mind, and people are in different situations. In Leonardo da Vinci's <Last Supper>, Jesus is isolated. Jesus' calmness expresses that he is the savior and divine providence is transcendence. In Pieter Bruegel's <Peasant Wedding>, the bride is isolated. However, the distinction between the bride and her guests is only temporary, and the bride's smile expresses that the reception in the peasant community is an embodiment of humanity that should be respected. In <Heungbujeon>, Heungbu is isolated. He does not find sympathy from the rest of the family for his family's integrity, his belief in humanity, or his ethical obligation to wait for the wicked to be reformed. However, the good fortune of his brother shows that his isolation is not in vain. His isolation expresses his simple trust in humanity and the difficulty of that trust.

Exploring Social Interactions in the Context of Justice System Involvement: Perspectives of Patients and Psychiatric Nurses.

Psychiatric nurses who work with people who are involved with the justice system experience ethical and moral tension arising from their dual role (care and control). This is known to significantly affect the development of a therapeutic relationship between nurses and patients. (a) better understand how justice system involvement affects people living with mental disorders and the nurses who work with them; (b) explore the influence of judiciarization on social interactions between these actors. Grounded theory (GT) was used as the qualitative methodology for this research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. The study was carried out in three different units of a psychiatric institution: Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, Emergency Department, and Brief Intervention Unit. A sample of 10 patients and 9 psychiatric nurses was recruited (n = 19). Theoretical sampling was used to recruit participants. We followed the iterative steps of qualitative GT analysis (open coding, axial coding, constant comparison, and modelization). Three main themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (a) Experience of Justice System Involvement, (b) Crisis, (c) Relational Aspects and Importance of the Approach. These results will inform nurses and healthcare providers about the impacts of justice system involvement on people living with mental illness and how clinical practices can be better adapted to this population with complex health needs.

Ethical climate and its relationship with attitude to teamwork in operating room nurses: A cross-sectional study

IntroductionIn the nursing profession, ethical climate is considered to be an important element of the work environment. Nurses are exposed to moral tension due to the volume and high work pressure; on the other hand, the stressful nature of this profession can have many negative effects on nurses and, as a result, the quality of care. Therefore, improving the conditions and ethical climate becomes very important. In the operating room, due to the special working conditions and the variety of available specialties, team work is of great importance among the operating room staff. Improving teamwork in the operating room reduces stress and anxiety, increases work efficiency, improves the quality of care, and increases the patient safety. ObjectiveThis study was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between the ethical climate and the attitude towards teamwork of operating room nurses in hospitals affiliated with Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. MethodThis research was a cross-sectional study conducted in 2022. The study involved a sample of 310 operating room nurses from hospitals affiliated with Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, selected using convenient and purpose-based sampling methods. In order to collect data, the questionnaires of demographic information, Olsan's ethical climate and attitude towards teamwork baker were used. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS V20. FindingsThe average score of the operating room staff from the ethical climate was 94.12±14.96, and that of the overall attitude towards teamwork was 121.92±11.74, which indicates a favorable attitude towards teamwork. There was a significant relationship between the scores of the ethical climate and the attitude toward teamwork among the operating room personnel (r = 0.339,p < 0.0001). ConclusionThe results showed that there is a significant relationship between the attitude towards teamwork and the ethical climate of operating room nurses. Managers of hospitals and operating rooms can strengthen the spirit of teamwork and create a suitable atmosphere in the operating room by holding training courses and increase safety and productivity there.

Building resilience: analysis of health care leaders’ perspectives on the Covid-19 response in Region Stockholm

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic has tested health care organizations worldwide. Responses have demonstrated great variation and Sweden has been an outlier in terms of both strategy and how it was enacted, making it an interesting case for further study. The aim of this study was to explore how health care leaders experienced the challenges and responses that emerged during the initial wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to analyze these experiences through an organizational resilience lens.MethodsA qualitative interview study with 12 senior staff members who worked directly with or supervised pandemic efforts. Transcripts were analyzed using traditional content analysis and the codes directed to the Integrated Resilience Attributes Framework to understand what contributed to or hindered organizational resilience, i.e. how organizations achieve their goals by utilizing existing resources during crises.Results/FindingsOrganizational resilience was found at the micro (situated) and meso (structural) system levels as individuals and organizations dealt with acute shortages and were forced to rapidly adapt through individual sacrifices, resource management, process management, and communications and relational capacity. Poor systemic resilience related to misaligned responses and a lack of learning from previous experiences, negatively impacted the anticipatory phase and placed greater pressure on individuals and organizations to respond. Conventional crisis leadership could hamper innovation, further cement chronic challenges, and generate a moral tension between centralized directives and clinical microsystem experiences.ConclusionsThe pandemic tested the resilience of the health care system, placing undue pressure on micro and meso systems responses. With improved learning capabilities, some of this pressure may be mitigated as it could raise the anticipatory resilience potential, i.e. with better health systems learning, we may need fewer heroes. How crisis leadership could better align decision-making with frontline needs and temper short-term acute needs with a longer-term infinite mindset is worth further study.

Implementasi Sikap Religius Pada Mata Kuliah Alislam dan Kemuhammadiyahan di Program Studi Magister Manajemen Universitas Muhammadiyah Tangerang

This research certainly has several objectives, including the following: (1) To explain the implementation of Al-Islam and Muhammadiyah Education (AIK) in the Master of Management Study Program, Muhammadiyah University, Tangerang. (2) To describe the role of Al-Islam and Muhammadiyah education in the religious attitudes of students at the Master of Management Study Program, Muhammadiyah University, Tangerang. This research is research using analytical descriptive methods with a qualitative approach. The researcher applied observation, interview and documentation techniques. Observations and interviews will produce primary data sources, will provide researchers with information about the Al-Islam and Muhammadiyah education process, and its role in improving students' religious attitudes. The factor that supports the success of the role of Al-Islam and Muhammadiyah education and improving students' religious attitudes is the existence of an education system that is uswah hasanah, so that interaction between students and lecturers can be achieved. Apart from that, secondly, physical facilities in the form of mosques and libraries which are representative facilities for worship and study. The third is an Information Technology system that can increase student information. The fourth is lecturer staff who meet the qualifications because they are activists with a teaching or teaching professional background, supported by comfortable environmental conditions, without any mental and moral tension among students. The obstacles are heterogeneity and habits of daily religious life.

“We Are All in This Together”: Which Memorable Moral Messages Guided Student Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed lessons about the moral bases of student compliance with pandemic health messaging, which is a vital concern for educational institutions where students learn and live in close proximity. Existing theoretical and empirical work suggests that audiences may be receptive when prescribed behavior aligns with memorable moral messages (MMM) received from family members or other valued sources. We report the results of two studies that examined the nature of MMM that students found relevant in the fall of 2020 and the moral values they appeared to invoke. In the first, focus group interviews and qualitative thematic analysis were used to identify underlying moral themes. Findings indicated that students were influencegd by MMM focused on empathy/caring, those that addressed communal versus individual responsibilities, and messages that prioritized virtues that were needed (e.g., patience) during the pandemic. During this first phase of the research, we also collected a verbatim list of MMM that students reported recalling and using. To determine if quantitative evidence supported the three-part categorization scheme, a second study asked a sample of 327 students to rate the influence of the MMM reported in Study One. Exploratory factor analysis largely confirmed Study One, with consideration for others, self-determination, and communal responsibility emerging as primary moral considerations. Findings of the two studies are interpreted as partial support for moral foundations theory and consistent with the expectations of negotiated morality theory. Recommendations for health educators and experts are offered, including framing compliance guidelines in a manner consistent with MMM received from family members and helping students navigate the moral tension between self and communal interests.

The pain lottery.

Moral challenges with addiction and overdosing have resulted from the abundance of opioids, but the coronavirus disease of 2019 has prompted reflection on ethical issues that could arise from a shortage. Driven by a duty to plan, some jurisdictions have formed committees to see if standard allocation considerations extend to cover a shortage of opioid pain medication. The problem, we argue, is that the standard allocation protocols do not apply to a shortage of opioids because prognosis only has limited relevance and the moral disvalue of pain is not dependent upon a patient's status as a frontline worker, age, or residence in a disadvantaged community. While the use of lotteries in allocation schemes has been deemphasized in standard allocation schema, we argue for and outline the details of a tiered lottery that first prioritizes opioids needed for emergent procedures and then moves on to allocate opioids based on the severity of a patient's pain. Additionally, we argue that some deception, in the form of withholding information from patients about the implementation and details of a pain lottery, is ethically permissible to address the unique moral tension between transparency and beneficence that arises for the treatment of pain in conditions of opioid scarcity.

Moral sensitivity and related factors in Iranian critical care nurses: A narrative review

This Review explores moral sensitivity and related factors among critical care unit nurses in Iran. A broad systematic search was performed at the international electronic databases such as Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and Persian electronic databases such as Iranmedex and Scientific Information Database using keywords extracted from Medical Subject Headings such as "Morals", "Ethics", "Moral Sensitivity", "Nurses", and "Critical Care Unit" from the earliest to June 1, 2023. The studies revealed that Iranian nurses working in intensive care units (ICUs), cardiac care units (CCUs), neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), and dialysis units had average moral sensitivity. Factors related to moral sensitivity in Iranian critical care nurses were divided into demographic and moral-professional factors. Demographic factors related to moral sensitivity in Iranian critical care nurses included age, average weekly working hours, work history and clinical experience, gender, marital status, education level, type of work shift, workplace sector, and employment status. Demographic factors related to moral sensitivity in Iranian critical care nurses included respecting the patient's rights, moral intelligence, compassion fatigue, communication with the patient, the dimension of professional knowledge, moral tension, work conscience, virtual training, moral principles in a narrative style, critical care unit nurses require high benevolence, professional knowledge, and skills in delivering bad news. They must also know the history of passing moral courses, handling moral distress, and heavy mental workload. Based on these nurses' moderate moral sensitivity, medical center managers should focus on increasing their moral sensitivity by addressing related factors.

Moral Coping or Simply Uncomplicated Soldiering? How Soldiers Avoid Moral Injury Through Simplification, Justification, Rationalization, and Compartmentalization

A substantial number of soldiers develop moral injuries, yet just as many do not. Therefore, it is important to explore the question: How do military service members generally interpret and cope with moral challenges related to their profession? This article analyzes the accounts of 80 (former) soldiers, examining how they perceived their profession and the coping strategies they tend to use in the face of moral challenges. The findings show that they generally did not experience as much moral tension as one might expect. Yet, when they did, they used coping strategies of simplification, justification, and rationalization, including doing good, rules and instructions, reciprocity, numbing, and compartmentalization. This leads to a middle position between the view that military personnel never experience moral challenges and the position that they find violence actually highly problematic, with important implications for research on moral injury, trauma, and soldiers’ experience.

Incident at Vichy

Incident at Vichy

Changing the paradigm of education in the conditions of today’s challenges

The article presents the results of the analysis of the current state of education in Ukraine and in the world. The beginning of the 21st century is characterized by extremely intensive changes at all levels of human life and the surrounding environment. Revolutionary scientific discoveries, the development of electronics and computer technology are changing the world beyond recognition and are already shaping the image of the 21st century. Political and social living conditions are also changing, pandemics, military conflicts lead to psychological and moral tension... In addition to anthropogenic changes, cosmic and planetary changes are taking place. For example, the so-called Schumann resonance frequency was unchanged on our planet for many centuries. This is the natural oscillation of the Earth (pulse of the earth) - a low-frequency wave that has begun to change in the last 20 years. External changes cause internal changes. The Schchumann resonance, and possibly other cosmic phenomena, affect a person and his health, accelerate the processes of change on the planet and in the human body. Thus, it is natural that children born in new conditions differ from their parents. It is clear that training for them should be different. At this stage, training methods do not have time to change and meet the challenges of today. The article presents the paradigms of changes in the system of education, training and upbringing of the younger generation in the period of rapid changes.

Is Medical Tourism Transcultural Hypogamy?

This article attempts to make a set of interrelated arguments. It claims that the epithet ‘medical tourism’, which is of recent provenance, tacitly subscribes to a particular and narrow understanding of ‘medicine’, namely, the Anglo-American variant of biomedicine. This variant, unlike its Continental European counterpart, does not countenance the spa (Kur, Kuur, Termas, etc.) as ‘medical’ therapy, a therapy that is part of orthodox biomedicine on the continent, albeit on its fringe and one where pleasure and therapy often coexist. The Anglo-American variant leads to an exclusive focus on what may be called organ-based therapy with an emphasis on surgical and technological intervention, where uninsured and under-insured ‘middle-class’ patients travel from the White world to wog-land. This is a reversal of older forms of medical travel where rich wogs travelled from wog-land to the White world for medical treatment. The reversal results in a binary of White vampires and wog victims and is responsible, in part, for the moral tension of the oxymoron called ‘medical tourism’, with the other part of the oxymoron being constituted by the contradiction between pleasure and therapy. The vampire-victim binary in turn often mutes the mediating virtuosos— doctors, hospitals, medical travel operators, firms, companies, websites and most importantly, medical expertise and technology—in the analytical and explanatory canvas. In light of this, the article not only suggests that the epithet ‘medical tourism’ requires careful scrutiny and needs to be situated as part of a longer genealogy and larger canvas to include all kinds of transnational, transcultural and transregional medical travel, but it also makes a plea for re-examining the kind of morality play that the epithet engenders by asking, among other things, if vampires could also be victims, and what happens to this binary when the biomedical fringe (the Continental spa/Kur/Kuur/Termas) and alternative systems of medicine (e.g., Ayurveda and host of other therapies) are brought into play, or when doctors and therapists undertake travel for medical/therapeutic expertise.

« La liberté en toute sécurité ». Analyse d’une tension morale et pratique du care via l’étude des dispositifs techniques de géolocalisation destinés aux résident·e·s dit·es « fugueur·euse·s » des Ehpad : de la séduisan

Cet article propose d’analyser les dispositifs techniques de géolocalisation destinés aux résident·e·s des établissements d’hébergement pour personnes âgées dépendantes (Ehpad). Ces technologies se destinent principalement à des personnes âgées dites « malades d’Alzheimer » et sujettes aux « fugues ». Il s’agit de s’intéresser aux « ambivalences de care » données à voir par ces technologies, et notamment au « dilemme » entre la liberté de circuler et la sécurité des résident·e·s dont se portent garant·e·s les professionnel·le·s. Les dispositifs techniques de géolocalisation sont porteurs de plusieurs promesses, dont une vise spécifiquement la conciliation de ces deux valeurs. Ainsi, je me demande dans quelle mesure les dispositifs de géolocalisation tiennent leur promesse de conciliation de la tension liberté de circuler/sécurité. Pour répondre à cette question, j’analyse d’abord les discours des promesses des industriels, pour m’intéresser ensuite aux appropriations difficiles des dispositifs techniques en institution.

Review: Katrina: A History, 1915–2015, by Andy Horowitz

Review: <i>Katrina: A History, 1915–2015</i>, by Andy Horowitz

Monitoring the psycho-emotional state of students as an important element of successful educational and professional activities

The authors of this article collected and analyzed research materials that reveal the essence of the concept of psycho-emotional state and its impact on the quality of educational activities of students in the new paradigm of higher education. The standards are based on a competency-based approach and share the philosophy (principles and values) of the European Higher Education Area as defined in the Bologna Communiqué and the European Commission's International Project on Harmonization of Educational Structures in Europeю.&#x0D; The competency approach is such that it is focused on the degree of formation of professional, general cultural competencies and not on the assessment of acquired knowledge and skills. This means that the field of education for the formation and improvement of a particular person is changing the ways of organizing educational systems. In the competency approach, systematic knowledge of the world around the graduate is replaced by a set of narrow-profile knowledge for orientation in the space of the profession, while they do not provide opportunities for young professionals to change that space. Given the fact that one of the main tasks of higher education in Ukraine is the creation of competitive human capital, the requirements for a person, his physical and mental qualities are changing. At present, it is important for an individual to learn to live fully in the new energy of social and moral tension, to be ready to learn throughout life, to work effectively in the context of globalization and multiculturalism.

The third ethical commentary to COVID-19 (two years later) — vaccination, solidarity, and trust

The systematic monitoring of ethical contents and events related to COVID-19 pandemic, carried out over the last two years, serves to develop a multi-professional discussion on one of the most relevant platforms Russian Journal Infection and Immunity. Two previous articles consistently presented the moral context of historically established regulatory and epidemiological paradigms and the analysis of readiness/unwillingness to follow them in the real-life conditions during the epidemic crisis. The contemporary moral cross-section of the pandemic, characterized by the state of global loss of values of social unity, trust and solidarity leaves virtually no doubt about the dominant role of ethics as a criterion for resolving conflicts of interest. The point of the peak moral tension was vaccine prevention at all levels of its introduction into an effective resource for containing COVID-19. According to the authors personal and professional responsibility, based on long-term scientific research of vaccination-related ethics, embodied in the books Ethics of Infectious Pathology (2014) and Ethics of Vaccination (Criterion of Scientific and Humanitarian Breakthrough (2018), account for our interest in writing this paper. In the Third Ethical Commentary presented to the readers the two ideologically related tasks have been set. First, to consider the ethically verified canon of vaccine prevention specifically exemplified by COVID-19 pandemic. Second, to expand the scope in the discussion of the ethics role by connecting the vaccination in the context of a regional cluster, namely the CIS member states. This opportunity took place owing the long-term cooperation to create ethical evaluation system within the framework of the WHO project Forum of Ethics Committees in the Commonwealth of Independent States (FECCIS) and the practice of developing model laws in the field of social policy and human rights of the IPA CIS. The perspective focus of this work is the need for an innovative approach to develop management decisions by enlarging the interdisciplinary range and expanding the areas of responsibility of social and bioethical meaning while protecting public health in epidemic crisis.

The moral and emotional world of police informants

The global pattern of implementing proactive policing to address crime and insecurity continues to drive undercover techniques, including the deployment of police informants. Our aim in this article is to reflect upon research on informants policing, setting out a more comprehensive agenda that appreciates the moral significance and power dynamics at play. Our starting point is that this practice embodies immense moral and emotional tension, both for the police officer and the informant. However, these deeper aspects have been largely underestimated by scholars. Research can garner new insights by conceptualizing the tactic in terms of vulnerability, morality and emotional labour.

Alexander’s Thesis of Value Generalization Reconsidered: Focusing on the 2008 Candlelight Vigils in South Korea

This article aims to reconsider Jeffrey C. Alexander’s thesis of ‘value generalization.’ I first review Alexander’s thesis of value generalization by tracking its origin to Weber’s value analysis, and then point out that norms occupy an ‘ambiguous’ status in Alexander’s model of value generalization. Further, I present an alternative that provides inner structures of not only values but also norms and goals, and places semantic and moral tension between values, norms, and goals at the center of cultural-sociological analysis. Specifically, I propose to define values, norms, and goals as a system of ‘axiological-existential symbols,’ a system of ‘moral-aesthetic symbols,’ and a system of ‘instrumental-strategic symbols’ as well as to bring back the generalization-specification scheme to the hierarchy of values, norms, and goals. I develop my own thesis of norm generalization, apply it to the 2008 candlelight vigils in South Korea, demonstrate the vigils as an analytic illustration of norm generalization, and then analyze why norm generalization occurred instead of value generalization. Lastly, I present two contributions, analytic as well as normative, of my study to Alexander’s thesis of value generalization.

Revolutionary Violence and the Rise of the Art Novel

Revolutionary Violence and the Rise of the Art Novel