Fieldwork In Familiar Places

The persistence of deep moral disagreements--across cultures as well as within them--has created widespread skepticism about the objectivity of morality. Moral relativism, moral pessimism, and the denigration of ethics in comparison with science are the results. Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take moral disagreement seriously and yet retain our aspirations for moral objectivity. Michele Moody-Adams critically scrutinizes the anthropological evidence commonly used to support moral relativism. Drawing on extensive knowledge of the relevant anthropological literature, she dismantles the mystical conceptions of culture that underwrite relativism. She demonstrates that cultures are not hermetically sealed from each other, but are rather the product of eclectic mixtures and borrowings rich with contradictions and possibilities for change. The internal complexity of cultures is not only crucial for cultural survival, but will always thwart relativist efforts to confine moral judgments to a single culture. Fieldwork in Familiar Places will forever change the way we think about relativism: anthropologists, psychologists, historians, and philosophers alike will be forced to reconsider many of their theoretical presuppositions. Moody-Adams also challenges the notion that ethics is methodologically deficient because it does not meet standards set by natural science. She contends that ethics is an interpretive enterprise, not a failed naturalistic one: genuine ethical inquiry, including philosophical ethics, is a species of interpretive ethnography. We have reason for moral optimism, Moody-Adams argues. Even the most serious moral disagreements take place against a background of moral agreement, and thus genuine ethical inquiry will be fieldwork in familiar places. Philosophers can contribute to this enterprise, she believes, if they return to a Socratic conception of themselves as members of a rich and complex community of moral inquirers.

Setting the Moral Compass brings together the (largely unpublished) work of nineteen women moral philosophers whose powerful and innovative work has contributed to the "re-setting of the compass" of moral philosophy over the past two decades. The contributors, who include many of the top names in this field, tackle several wide-ranging projects: they develop an ethics for ordinary life and vulnerable persons; they examine the question of what we ought to do for each other; they highlight the moral significance of inhabiting a shared social world; they reveal the complexities of moral negotiations; and finally they show us the place of emotion in moral life.

Setting the Moral Compass brings together the (largely unpublished) work of nineteen women moral philosophers whose powerful and innovative work has contributed to the "re-setting of the compass" of moral philosophy over the past two decades. The contributors, who include many of the top names in this field, tackle several wide-ranging projects: they develop an ethics for ordinary life and vulnerable persons; they examine the question of what we ought to do for each other; they highlight the moral significance of inhabiting a shared social world; they reveal the complexities of moral negotiations; and finally they show us the place of emotion in moral life.

This interdisciplinary volume connects the philosophy of history to moral philosophy with a unique focus on time. Taking in a range of intellectual traditions, cultural, and geographical contexts, the volume provides a rich tapestry of approaches to time, morality, culture, and history. By extending the philosophical discussion on the ethical importance of temporality, the editors disentangle some of the disciplinary tensions between analytical and hermeneutic philosophy of history, cultural theory, meta-ethical theory, and normative ethics. The ethical and existential character of temporality reveals itself within a collection that resists the methodological underpinnings of any one philosophical school. The book's distinctive cross-cultural approach ensures a wide range of perspectives with contributions on life and death in Japanese philosophy, ethics and time in Maori philosophy, non-traditional temporalities and philosophical anthropology, as well as global approaches to ethics. These new directions of study highlight the importance of the ethical in the temporal, inviting further points of departure in this burgeoning field.

Friends and Other Strangers argues for expanding the field of religious ethics to address the normative dimensions of culture, interpersonal desires, friendships and family, and institutional and political relationships. Richard B. Miller urges religious ethicists to turn to cultural studies to broaden the range of the issues they address and to examine matters of cultural practice and cultural difference in critical and self-reflexive ways. Friends and Other Strangers critically discusses the ethics of ethnography; ethnocentrism, relativism, and moral criticism; empathy and the ethics of self-other attunement; indignation, empathy, and solidarity; the meaning of moral responsibility in relation to children and friends; civic virtue, war, and alterity; the normative and psychological dimensions of memory; and religion and democratic public life. Miller challenges distinctions between psyche and culture, self and other, and uses the concepts of intimacy and alterity as dialectical touchstones for examining the normative dimensions of self-other relationships. A wholly contemporary, global, and interdisciplinary work, Friends and Other Strangers illuminates aspects of moral life ethicists have otherwise overlooked.

Being Ethnographic is an essential introductory guidebook to the methods and applications of doing fieldwork in real-world settings. It discusses the future of ethnography, explores how we understand identity, and sets out the role of technology in a global, networked society. Driven by classic and anecdotal case studies, Being Ethnographic highlights the challenges introduced by the ethnographers' own interests, biases and ideologies and demonstrates the importance of methodological reflexivity. Addressing both the why and how questions of doing ethnography well, Madden demonstrates how both theory and practice can work together to produce insights into the human condition. This fully updated second edition includes: New material on intersubjectivity Information on digital inscription tools A practical guide to qualitative analysis software New coverage of cyberethnography and social media Expanded information on ethnographic possibilities with animals Filled with invaluable advice for applying ethnographic principles in the field, it will give researchers across social sciences everything they need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

This book seeks to deepen the reader’s understanding of the complex ethical and social disputes that corporations and managers face in an increasingly globalized world. It reviews the history and nature of global capitalism along with the role of the multinational within the global economy. Special attention is paid to emerging and frontier markets where there is economic potential but also major challenges due to institutional voids. Globalization is a constantly evolving field. In addition to exploring basic economic concepts and ethical frameworks, this second edition takes into account many new developments across different industries, ranging from "Big Tech" to "Big Pharma." It reviews some of the controversies that have affected those industries including bribery, censorship, the politics of computer networking, sweatshops, divestment, and the intensifying crisis of climate change. The book now includes short case studies to help spur creative reflection. Also, the revised content is highlighted in two new chapters – "Bribery and Corruption" and "Emerging and Frontier Markets." The book is ideal for use as a textbook on globalization, and specifically for courses that want to introduce a social responsibility or ethical component at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In these seventeen essays, distinguished senior scholars discuss the conceptual issues surrounding the idea of freedom of inquiry and scrutinize a variety of obstacles to such inquiry that they have encountered in their personal and professional experience. Their discussion of threats to freedom traverses a wide disciplinary and institutional, political and economic range covering specific restrictions linked to speech codes, the interests of donors, institutional review board licensing, political pressure groups, and government policy, as well as phenomena of high generality, such as intellectual orthodoxy, in which coercion is barely visible and often self-imposed. As the editors say in their introduction: "No freedom can be taken for granted, even in the most well-functioning of formal democracies. Exposing the tendencies that undermine freedom of inquiry and their hidden sources and widespread implications is in itself an exercise in and for democracy."