Fieldwork In Familiar Places

Author : Michele M. Moody-Adams
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2009-06-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0674041194

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Fieldwork in Familiar Places by Michele M. Moody-Adams Pdf

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.

Author : Cheshire Calhoun
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 399 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780195154757

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Setting the Moral Compass by Cheshire Calhoun Pdf

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.

Author : Cheshire Calhoun Professor of Philosophy Colby College
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2003-11-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 019803525X

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Setting the Moral Compass : Essays by Women Philosophers by Cheshire Calhoun Professor of Philosophy Colby College Pdf

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.

Author : Natan Elgabsi,Bennett Gilbert
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2023-01-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781350279117

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Ethics and Time in the Philosophy of History by Natan Elgabsi,Bennett Gilbert Pdf

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.

Author : Richard B. Miller
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2016-07-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780231541558

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Friends and Other Strangers by Richard B. Miller Pdf

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.

Author : Raymond Madden
Publisher : SAGE
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2017-09-18
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9781526416810

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Being Ethnographic by Raymond Madden Pdf

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.

Author : Richard A. Spinello
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2022-04-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781000549690

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Global Capitalism, Culture, and Ethics by Richard A. Spinello Pdf

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.

Author : Akeel Bilgrami,Jonathan R. Cole
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 449 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2015-02-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780231538794

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Who's Afraid of Academic Freedom? by Akeel Bilgrami,Jonathan R. Cole Pdf

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."

Author : Thomas BorŽn
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2009-04-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783898217392

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Meeting Places of Transformation by Thomas BorŽn Pdf

What happened to the urban spaces of everyday life when the Soviet Union collapsed? And how may this change be understood? Based on long-term qualitative fieldwork in post-Soviet Russia, this study draws upon time-geographic, social and semiotic theory to formulate a model of how urban space is formed. Mirrored through the case of Ligovo/Uritsk, a high-rise residential district situated on the outskirts of Sankt-Peterburg (St Petersburg), the changing relation between the lifeworlds of people and the system of governance is highlighted with regard to the transformation of Soviet and Russian society over the last decades. The empirical material presented here documents a number of processes within urban identity formation, spatial representations and local politics. The resulting findings add both empirically and theoretically to the knowledge of urban cultural geography in Russia—a field of research that until recently was closed to Western researchers, and seems currently to be closing again.The book will be of interest to researchers with an interest in social, semiotic and geographic theory as well as to students and researchers of cultural and urban studies, urban life and Russian affairs. The study could be also helpful to professionals working in fields related to post-Soviet urban identity, spatial representations and local politics.

Author : Duncan Ivison
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2002-11-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521527511

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Postcolonial Liberalism by Duncan Ivison Pdf

This book presents an account of postcolonial liberalism, and argues the case for its sustainability.

Author : Tim Connolly
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2015-06-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781780936284

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Doing Philosophy Comparatively by Tim Connolly Pdf

Critics have argued that comparative philosophy is inherently flawed or even impossible. What standards can we use to describe and evaluate different cultures' philosophies? How do we avoid projecting our own ways of thinking onto others? Can we overcome the vast divergences in history, language, and ways of organizing reality that we find in China, India, Africa, and the West? Doing Philosophy Comparatively is the first comprehensive introduction to the foundations, problems, and methods of comparative philosophy. It is divided into three parts: - A wide-ranging examination of the basic concepts of comparative philosophy, including "philosophy†?, "comparison†?, "tradition†?, and "culture†? - A discussion of the central problems that arise in extending philosophy across cultural boundaries: linguistic, justificatory, and evaluative incommensurability; projection and asymmetry; and the validity of cultural generalizations - A critical look at the dominant contemporary approaches to comparative philosophy. Presenting a basic tool-kit for doing philosophy at the cross-cultural level, this textbook draws on many examples from the past and present of comparative philosophy and engages readers in sustained reflection on how to think comparatively.

Author : Kwame Gyekye
Publisher : CRVP
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 156518193X

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Beyond Cultures by Kwame Gyekye Pdf

Author : Joseph Heath
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2008-10-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0199708274

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Following the Rules by Joseph Heath Pdf

For centuries, philosophers have been puzzled by the fact that people often respect moral obligations as a matter of principle, setting aside considerations of self-interest. In more recent years, social scientists have been puzzled by the more general phenomenon of rule-following, the fact that people often abide by social norms even when doing so produces undesirable consequences. Experimental game theorists have demonstrated conclusively that the old-fashioned picture of "economic man," constantly reoptimizing in order to maximize utility in all circumstances, cannot provide adequate foundations for a general theory of rational action. The dominant response, however, has been a slide toward irrationalism. If people are ignoring the consequences of their actions, it is claimed, it must be because they are making some sort of a mistake. In Following the Rules, Joseph Heath attempts to reverse this trend, by showing how rule-following can be understood as an essential element of rational action. The first step involves showing how rational choice theory can be modified to incorporate deontic constraint as a feature of rational deliberation. The second involves disarming the suspicion that there is something mysterious or irrational about the psychological states underlying rule-following. According to Heath, human rationality is a by-product of the so-called "language upgrade" that we receive as a consequence of the development of specific social practices. As a result, certain constitutive features of our social environment-such as the rule-governed structure of social life-migrate inwards, and become constitutive features of our psychological faculties. This in turn explains why there is an indissoluble bond between practical rationality and deontic constraint. In the end, what Heath offers is a naturalistic, evolutionary argument in favor of the traditional Kantian view that there is an internal connection between being a rational agent and feeling the force of one's moral obligations.

Author : Neil Levy
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2014-10-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781780744544

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Moral Relativism by Neil Levy Pdf

On September 11 2001, thousands of people died in the attacks on the United States. How could the terrorists justify these acts? A young man kills his sister to protect his family's honour. How could this be 'right' These are just some of the questions tackled by Neil Levy in an incisive and elegant guide to the philosophy of moral relativism - the idea that concepts of 'rightness' and 'wrongness' vary from culture to culture, and that there is no such thing as an absolute moral code. Opening with a comprehensive definition of this controversial theory, the book examines all the arguments for and against moral relativism, from its implications for ethics to the role of human biology and the difficulty of separating cultural values from innate behaviour

Author : Jason D. Hill
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 073913843X

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Beyond Blood Identities by Jason D. Hill Pdf

In this highly original work, Jason D. Hill argues that strong racial, ethnic, and national identities function according to a separatist logic that does irreparable damage to our moral lives. Drawing on scholarship in philosophy, sociology, and cultural anthropology, the author boldly develops a new version of cosmopolitanism he coins posthuman cosmopolitanism, according to which only individual persons-not cultures, races, or ethnic groups-are the bearers of rights and the possessors of an inviolable status worthy of respect. Book jacket.