Showing papers on "Morality published in 1997"

THE NEW GOLDEN RULE Community and Morality in a Democratic Society

Abstract: Contents Acknowledgments xi Preface: Virtue in a Free Society xiii 1 The Elements of a Good Society 3 2 Order and Autonomy? 34 3 The Fall and Rise of America 58 4 Sharing Core Values 85 5 The Moral Voice 119 6 The Implications of Human Nature 160 7 Pluralism Within Unity 189 8 The Final Arbiters of Community's Values 217 Notes 259 Index 307

Implicit theories and conceptions of morality

Abstract: In this article, the authors propose that individuals' moral beliefs are linked to their implicit theories about the nature (i.e., malleability) of their social-moral reality. Specifically, it was hypothesized that when individuals believe in a fixed reality (entity theory), they tend to hold moral beliefs in which duties within the given system are seen as fundamental. In contrast, when individuals believe in a malleable reality (incremental theory), one that can be shaped by individuals, they hold moral beliefs that focus on moral principles, such as human rights, around which that reality should be organized. Results from 5 studies supported the proposed framework: Implicit theories about the malleability of one's social-moral reality predicted duty-based vs. rights-based moral beliefs.

Values, assumptions, and practices: assessing the moral implications of psychological discourse and action.

Abstract: Despite an increased awareness concerning the role of values in psychology, psychologists lack clear guidelines to appraise the moral implications of their work To address this discrepancy, the author proposes a framework for examining the moral dimensions of psychological discourse and practice The framework contains 3 central elements: values, assumptions, and practices These components may be used to articulate and to challenge the ethical, social, and political implications of theories and practices To illustrate its applicability, the framework is used to evaluate the moral propositions of traditional, empowering, postmodern, and emancipatory communitarian approaches The author concludes with a vision for addressing the shortcomings of predominant models by proposing for psychology an emancipatory communitarian approach that promotes the emancipation of vulnerable individuals and that fosters a balance among the values of self-determination, caring and compassion, collaboration and democratic participation, human diversity, and distributive justice

In a very different voice: unmasking moral hypocrisy.

Abstract: Across 3 small studies, 80 female undergraduates were confronted with the dilemma of deciding whom-themselves or another research participant-to assign to a positive consequences task, leaving the other to do a dull, boring task. In Study 1, where morality was not mentioned, 16 of 20 assigned themselves to the positive consequences task, even though in retrospect only 1 said this was moral. In Studies 2 and 3, a moral strategy was suggested: either flipping a coin or accepting task assignment by the experimenter. In Study 2, 10 of 20 participants flipped a coin, but of these, 9 assigned themselves the positive consequences task. In Study 3, participants were significantly more likely to accept the experimenter's assignment when it gave them the positive consequences task. Overall, results suggested motivation to appear moral yet still benefit oneself. Such motivation is called moral hypocrisy.

The Ethical Demand

Abstract: This text presents an alternative understanding of interpersonal life, not only from utilitarianism and Kantianism, but also with Kierkegaard's Christian existentialism and forms of subjectivism. For Logstrup there is no Christian or secular morality, only human morality.

Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide

Abstract: PART ONE: MORAL CONFLICT Discovering Moral Conflict Understanding Conflict The Problem of Moral Conflict PART TWO: COMMUNICATION AND THE EXPRESSION OF DIFFERENCE The Quality of Public Discourse Patterns of Expressing Difference Fighting and Making Peace PART THREE: TOWARD A TRANSCENDENT DISCOURSE New Forms of Eloquence Model Projects in Transcendent Discourse Achieving Transcendence

Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law

Abstract: Trials of those responsible for large-scale state brutality have captured public imagination in several countries. Prosecutors and judges in such cases, says Osiel, rightly aim to shape collective memory. They can do so hi ways successful as public spectacle and consistent with liberal legality. In defending this interpretation, he examines the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials, the Eicnmann prosecution, and more recent trials in Argentina and France. Such trials can never summon up a "collective conscience" of moral principles shared by all, he argues. But they can nonetheless contribute to a little-noticed kind of social solidarity. To this end, writes Osiel, we should pay closer attention to the way an experience of administrative massacre is framed within the conventions of competing theatrical genres. Defense counsel will tell the story as a tragedy, while prosecutors will present it as a morality play. The judicial task at such moments is to employ the law to recast the courtroom drama in terms of a "theater of ideas," which engages large questions of collective memory and even national identity. Osiel asserts that principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized by fratricide when proceedings are conducted in this fashion. The approach Osiel advocates requires courts to confront questions of historical interpretation and moral pedagogy generally regarded as beyond their professional competence. It also raises objections that defendants' rights will be sacrificed, historical understanding distorted, and that the law cannot willfully influence collective memory, at least not when lawyers acknowledge this aim. Osiel responds to all these objections, and others. Lawyers, judges, sociologists, historians, and political theorists will find this a compelling contribution to debates on the meaning and consequences of genocide.

Hegel's ethics of recognition

Abstract: In this significant contribution to Hegel scholarship, Robert Williams develops the most comprehensive account to date of Hegel's concept of recognition (Anerkennung). Fichte introduced the concept of recognition as a presupposition of both Rousseau's social contract and Kant's ethics. Williams shows that Hegel appropriated the concept of recognition as the general pattern of his concept of ethical life, breaking with natural law theory yet incorporating the Aristotelian view that rights and virtues are possible only within a certain kind of community. He explores Hegel's intersubjective concept of spirit (Geist) as the product of affirmative mutual recognition and his conception of recognition as the right to have rights. Examining Hegel's Jena manuscripts, his Philosophy of Right, the Phenomenology of Spirit, and other works, Williams shows how the concept of recognition shapes and illumines Hegel's understandings of crime and punishment, morality, the family, the state, sovereignty, international relations, and war. A concluding chapter on the reception and reworking of the concept of recognition by contemporary thinkers including Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze demonstrates Hegel's continuing centrality to the philosophical concerns of our age.

The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy

Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements A note on references and abbreviations Introduction 1. Themes in the history of modern moral philosophy Part I. The Rise and Fall of Modern Natural Law: 2. Natural law: from intellectualism to voluntarism 3. Setting religion aside: republicanism and skepticism 4. Natural law restated: Suarez and Grotius 5. Grotianism at the limit: Hobbes 6. A morality of love: Cumberland 7. The central synthesis: Pufendorf 8. The collapse of modern natural law: Locke and Thomasius Part II. Perfectionism and Rationality: 9. Origins of modern perfectionism 10. Paths to God: I. The Cambridge Platonists 11. Paths to God: II. Spinoza and Malebranche 12. Leibniz: Counterrevolutionary perfectionism Part III. Toward a World on its Own: 13. Morality without salvation 14. The recovery of virtue 15. The austerity of morals: Clarke and Mandeville 16. The limits of love: Hutcheson and Butler 17. Hume: virtue naturalized 18. Against a fatherless world 19. The noble effects of self-love Part IV. Autonomy and Divine Order: 20. Perfection and will: Wolff and Crusius 21. Religion, morality, and reform 22. The invention of autonomy 23. Kant in the history of moral philosophy Epilogue: 24. Pythagoras, Socrates, and Kant: understanding the history of moral philosophy Bibliography Index of names Index of subjects Index of biblical citations.

Alchemy and Beyond: Indexing the Defining Issues Test

Abstract: For over 20 years, the Defining Issues Test (DIT) has used the P index. In view of criticisms, a search has been underway for a new index. The authors propose a working definition of construct validity, systematically reanalyze existing data sets ("classic" studies) with new indexes, and make comparisons to trends obtained using the P index. The criteria for construct validity are (a) sensitivity to educational interventions, (b) differentiation of age-education al groups, (c) upward movement in longitudinal studies, (d) correlations with moral comprehension, (e) correlations with prosocial behavior, and (f) correlations with civil libertarian attitudes. As meta-analysis demonstrates, a new index, N2, generally outperforms the P index. In the early 1970s, Larry Kohlberg found amusement by comparing the research project on the Defining Issues Test (DIT) to alchemy. The alchemist's dream of the middle ages had been to transmute the "base metals" into gold. At the time, Kohlberg was beginning work on revising his scoring system and was mindful of the complexities involved in analyzing moral judgments and the arduous work required of a scorer. Kohlberg pointed out similarities between alchemy and the attempt to derive a measure of moral judgment from a multiple-choic e test. Obtaining moral development scores by simply asking participants to rate or rank statements seemed too good to be true—it was like trying to turn lead into gold. Nevertheless he was supportive of the exploration of new sources of information on moral judgment (Kohlberg, 1979), although he did make sure that we were alert to the possible problems with such an approach. Years later, once we had developed computer programs to score the DIT, we joked with Kohlberg about doing morality research "untouched by human hands'1—the very thought of which he also found preposterously amusing. For over 20 years, DIT researchers have relied on the P score to index moral judgment and for that long we have tried to find a better index. Not only did we aspire to find a

Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Morality 3. Application 4. Principalism 5. Malady 6. Competence 7. Consent 8. Confidentiality 9. Paternalism 10. Justification 11. Death 12. Euthanasia

Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture

Abstract: This book challenges standard accounts of early Christian exegesis of the Bible. Professor Young sets the interpretation of the Bible in the context of the Graeco-Roman world - the dissemination of books and learning, the way texts were received and read, the function of literature in shaping not only a culture but a moral universe. For the earliest Christians, the adoption of the Jewish scriptures constituted a supersessionary claim in relation to Hellenism as well as Judaism. Yet the debt owed to the practice of exegesis in the grammatical and rhetorical schools is of overriding significance. Methods were philological and deductive, and the usual analysis according to 'literal', 'typological' and 'allegorical' is inadequate to describe questions of reference and issues of religious language. The biblical texts shaped a 'totalizing discourse' which by the fifth century was giving identity, morality and meaning to a new Christian culture.

A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century

Abstract: A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts and ideas showing the relevance of philosophical queries on moral concepts and the importance of a historical account of ethics. A Short History of Ethics is an important contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. Ideal for all philosophy students interested in ethics and morality.

Constructing the Green Manager

Abstract: This article applies a social constructionist approach to senior managers' `green' selves and roles. In a qualitative, empirical study of the UK automotive industry, the social/political contexts of managers' organizational lives are explored as they interact with, and define, the green corporate agenda. Ethical dimensions of environmentalism are stressed – particularly the distinctions and tensions between private moral positions, enacted morality, and the conventional morality as disseminated by the corporation. The study reveals the way different stakeholders are construed, and how `green' territories are contested. The implications for organizational change and strategic formulation are discussed, especially the strengths and limitations of approaching corporate greening from enacted/normative moralities, or from a vision of a substantive transformation of values.

The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power

Abstract: The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power. BRUCE KAPFERER Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997; 367 pp. Bruce Kapferer presents a provocative existential and phenomenological analysis of Sri Lankan Sinhala sorcery, showing how Sinhala sorcery "strikes at the heart" (p. 86) of what it means to be human. Sinhala sorcery, he argues, denies its victims their agency and capacity for action (their "intentionality"), crushing them into the "anguish" of existential annihilation: as victims of an agencythreatening power, they are alienated from the very means of self, other, and world-construction that human action - "human being" - generates. Kapferer constructs his argument against familiar anthropological approaches that reduce sorcery to epiphenomena, such as a representation of social conflict, an alternative logic to science, or a cathartic release of emotional stress. After a thorough introductory review of the anthropology of sorcery, Kapferer constructs the core of his existential argument in three interpretive chapters on Suniyama, an anti-sorcery exorcism ritual performed by expert sorcerer/healers called aduras. Here, Kapferer effectively weaves myth and ethnographic description into an evocative exposition of the Suniyama. He begins by elucidating, through the myths of Suniyama, the originary paradox of sorcery. Sorcery is understood as a byproduct, a negative and socially destructive residue, of the social formation of a Buddhist moral order. Banished to society's exterior, sorcery nevertheless persists, ever ready to transgress boundaries -- between exterior and interior, impurity and purity, immorality and morality - and to penetrate into "regenerative root of human being" (p. 71). Sorcery's transgressive nature is depicted in myth and symbol as a rape that takes place in the most central and intimate interior of the Buddhist moral order: the king's bedchamber, the queen's body. Sorcery in everyday life displaces its victims into the exterior, transgressive world of negative, life-annihilating power. The Suniyama ritual moves the victim from this exterior, back to the interior and generative moral center of the universe conceived in a Buddhist idiom. Slowly, over the course of an entire night, the victim slowly progresses up the body of a snake, drawn on the ground. The snake extends from the outer edge to the interior of the ritual space at the center of which sits a constructed king's "palace," which represents -- which effectively is - the generative center of the Buddhist moral order. As the exorcist helps the victim regain agentive centrality, he simultaneously expunges the negative forces of sorcery from both the victim and the local community. Hence, Suniyama exteriorizes evils that while it reestablishes (dharmic) social and moral interiors of person and community. One important aspect of Kapferer's analysis of Suniyama is his reevaluation of Mauss's dictum on the gift, namely, the obligation to return. In Suniyama gifts play a double role: some gifts serve to rearticulate the victim's social relations (to gods, sorcerers, community); other gifts serve to destroy the evils that sorcery brings into the community. These latter gifts, of course, must never be returned, for it is their function to destroy evils and exteriorize sorcery. Rather, these gifts are obliterated through potlatch type destruction. Kapferer's analysis here fits well with other recent work on Indian Hindu gifts by Jonathan Parry and Gloria Raheja work of which Kapferer seems unaware. Both Parry and Raheja also counter Mauss's analysis of Brahminic gifts. From them, Kapferer might have taken some cues, for they show that it is not the "spirit" - a phrase Kapferer retains from Mauss but rather the materiality of the Indian gift that makes it a potential vehicle for exteriorizing evil in Hindu contexts. Parry and Raheja also both distinguish what Kapferer continues to conflate, namely impurity and evil. …

Ethics and Practical Reason

Abstract: Introduction Deciding how to Decide On the Hypothetical and Non-Hypothetical in Reasoning about Action Humean Doubts about the Practical Justification of Morality Practical Theory Moral Judgement and Reasons for Action The Structure of Practical Reason Practical Reason Divided: Aquinas and his Critics The Normativity of Instrumental Reason Kantian Rationalism: Inescapibility, Authority, and Supremacy A Theory of Freedom and Responsibility Reason and Responsibility Reasons and Reason The Amoralist Bibliography. Index.

Enemies of the People: The Moral Dimension to Public Health

Abstract: This essay explores the effects of morality on health policy. Moral images and stereotypes, I argue, have powerful political consequences. They are the differences between fighting poverty and fearing the poor, between expanding social welfare programs and cracking down on crime, between public health campaigns and drug wars. I begin by locating morality within traditional paradigms of American politics (which are designed to overlook the issue); I then suggest how moral stigmas are constructed; show how they are deployed in debates over public health issues, such as alcohol abuse and drug addiction; and briefly sketch an alternative approach to defining community and seeking public health.

The morality of nationalism

Abstract: Nationalism is one of the most serious political problems in the world today. This volume is a collection of papers which address the topic of the ethics of nationalism. The contributors include some of the most eminent political philosophers and political scientists active today. The bulk of the literature on nationalism is in the social sciences and tends to focus on descriptive and prescriptive themes and issues of policy. This collection, however, focuses on the deeper moral issues that must be addressed if a policy prescription is to be well grounded.

The Ring of Gyges: Overridingness and The Unity of Reason *

Abstract: Does morality override self-interest? Or does self-interest override morality? These questions become important in situations where there is conflict between the overall verdicts of morality and self-interest, situations where morality on balance requires an action that is contrary to our self-interest, or where considerations of self-interest on balance call for an action that is forbidden by morality. In situations of this kind, we want to know what we ought simpliciter to do. If one of these standpoints over-rides the other, then there is a straightforward answer. We ought simpliciter to act on the verdict of the overriding standpoint.For purposes of this essay, I assume that there are possible cases in which the overall verdicts of morality and self-interest conflict. I will call cases of this kind “conflict cases.” The verdict of morality in a conflict case would be a proposition as to what we ought morally to do, or as to what we have the most moral reason to do; the verdict of self-interest would be a proposition as to what we ought to do in our self-interest, or as to what action is best supported by reasons or considerations of self-interest. These propositions are action-guiding or normative in a familiar sense. The conflict between morality and self-interest in conflict cases is there-fore a normative conflict; it is a conflict between the overall verdicts of different normative standpoints. I take it that the question of whether morality overrides self-interest is the question of whether the verdicts of morality are normatively more important than the verdicts of self-interest. In due course, I will explain the idea of normative importance as well as the ideas of a normative proposition and of a reason.

Caring: Nurses, Women and Ethics

Abstract: Preface. 1. Two Nurses. 2. A History of Subservience. 3. Advocacy or Subservience for the Sake of the Patients? 4. Ethics. 5. Women and Ethics - Is Morality Gendered? 6. Care Versus Justice : An Old Debate in New Clothes? 7."Yes" to Caring - but "No" to a Nursing Ethics of Care. 8. Just Caring at the End of Life. 9. Nursing - The Slumbering Giant. Bibliography.

Sources of variation in moral judgment: Toward a model of real-life morality

Abstract: To evaluate the extent to which the models of moral judgment advanced by Kohlberg (1984) and by Gilligan (1982, 1988) are able to account for real-life moral judgment, we investigated the relation of sex and type of moral dilemma to moral stage and moral orientation. Eighty young adult men and women made moral judgments about two hypothetical Kohlberg dilemmas, two real-life antisocial dilemmas, and two real-life prosocial dilemmas. We failed to find any sex differences in moral judgment. Moral stage and moral orientation varied across the three types of dilemma. Kohlberg's dilemmas pulled for justice-oriented Stage 4 moral judgments, real-life prosocial dilemmas pulled for care-oriented Stage 3 moral judgments, and real-life antisocial dilemmas pulled for justice-oriented Stage 2 moral judgments. The content of moral judgments was related to their structure. There was a positive relation between stage of moral judgment on Kohlberg dilemmas and on real-life dilemmas. The implications of these findings for a new, more interactional, model of real-life moral judgment are discussed.

Studying Morality Within the African Context: a model of moral analysis and construction

Abstract: For centuries researchers have studied the universality of matters of ethics and morality. Now, the challenge is to make theoretical contributions which account not only for the universals, but also for the life conditions and cultural circumstances of various people in different societies. This paper attempts to capture the essence of morality and ethics in the African context and to elucidate forms of moral wisdom and behaviour grounded in the web of the African community.

Ethical Considerations in Anthropology and Archaeology, or Relativism and Justice for All

Abstract: I argue that respect for other cultures and a commitment to studying them in the context of their own historical development need not prevent anthropologists from criticizing the morality of some practices of those cultures. Cultural relativism does not entail ethical relativism, and, moreover, a commitment to ethical relativism is inconsistent with the codes of ethics developed by various professional organizations of anthropologists. Two current public policy issues in which anthropologists have been involved, namely, protecting women from genital mutilation and preserving archaeological sites, reveal their commitment to ethical principles of justice that transcend individual cultures. An uncritical acceptance of the relativist view that there is no extracultural perspective from which one can make ethical judgments thus leads anthropologists into contradictions that interfere with their goal of promoting respect for others' beliefs, practices, values, and material culture.

The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant

Abstract: The Unity of Reason is the first major study of Kant's account of reason. Susan Neiman argues that Kant's philosophy reconceives the nature of reason, and she shows how that philosophy provides a basis for the unity of theory and practice. Exploring the historical background of Kant's notion of reason, as well as the role of reason in Kant's accounts of science, morality, religion, and philosophy, she provides a fundamentally new perspective on Kant's entire work.

Ethics in Government: From a Winter of Despair to a Spring of Hope

Abstract: The issue of ethics in public service is as old as government itself. Yet "post-Watergate morality" has produced an enduring and unprecedented level of concern about the integrity of democratic governance (Garment, 1991). In the 1990s alone, the continuous stream of revelations, allegations, and investigations--involving presidents, presidential advisors, a U.S. Senator, a Speaker of the House of Representatives, a Ways and, Means Committee chairman, cabinet secretaries, a Supreme Court nominee, Gulf War syndrome spokesmen, campaign contributors, and numerous state and local official--suggests that this concern is unlikely to change any time soon. Nonetheless, this may be a Dickensian "tale of two cities": when there is despair, there also may be hope. Indeed, ethical considerations can hardly be overlooked in a time of popular reforms that attempt to transform the public service ethos in the name of productivity (Gore, 1993). They are of fundamental importance to the quality of democracy and its administration. "Questions of morality and right conduct," Jeremy Plant (1997) points out, "are now considered as significant as the traditional concerns of Wilsonian Public Administration" like efficiency. Driven by the increase in public attention (Adams, et al., 1993) and the recognition of the underlying importance of ethical conduct in government (Thompson, 1992), there have been several national ethics conferences (Park City, 1991; Tampa, 1995; St. Louis, 1996), a recently revised workbook (Mertins et al., 1994; also see Lewis, 1991), a case book (Pasquerella, et al., 1996), and a new journal (Public Integrity Annual 1996). In addition) much of the writing in the field has been codified (Madsen and Shafritz, 1992 and Richter, et al., 1990; also see Bowman, 1991; Frederickson, 1993; Cooper, 1994; Cooper and Wright, 1994; Reynolds, 1995). In the context of these events, the American Society of Public Administration (ASPA) promulgated its newly-revamped code of ethics in 1995. The association's Professional Ethics Committee subsequently requested that a membership survey, based on the senior author's 1989 survey of the same organization (Bowman, 1990), be conducted to obtain an initial assessment of the effectiveness of the code. This was especially propitious timing because the intervening years witnessed the passing of the Decade of Greed and the coming of the Decade of Reinventing Government, a period of turbulent change that has included innovations, downsizing, and, as noted, scandals at all levels of government. A questionnaire (consisting of agree-disagree statements as well as several multiple choice and open-ended items), with a copy of the ASPA Code of Ethics, was mailed in spring 1996 to a random sample of 750 administrators who are members of the society. Usable replies were received from 59 percent of those contacted, a respectable response rate for this methodology and one comparable to earlier research.(1) A profile of the respondents, which matches the ASPA practitioner membership, reveals a group that is predominantly white, male, well educated, experienced in local government, a middle or senior level manager, relatively high income, moderate to liberal in political philosophy, and holds at least a six-year membership in ASPA.(2) The results explore three topics in ascending order of emphasis: perceptions regarding ethics in society and government, the nature of integrity in public agencies, and ASPAs Code. The implications of the data, and the part that a professional organization can play to enhance honorable behavior, are then examined. Ethics in Society Several questions probed respondents' perceptions of ethical concerns in the nation. The findings indicate that these administrators do not believe that contemporary interest in morality is ephemeral. Most (83 percent) reject the claim that "The current concern of American society with ethics in government is a passing fad" (10 percent agree; the balance are undecided). …

Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction Taking Disagreement Seriously Mapping the Relativist Domain Relativism, Ethnocentrism, and the Decline of Moral Confidence The Empirical Underdetermination of Descriptive Cultural Relativism Cultural Authority, Cultural Complexity, and the Doctrine of Cultural Integration The Perspicuous "Other": Relativism "Grown Tame and Sleek" The Use and Abuse of History History, Ethnography, and the Blurring of Cultural Boundaries Relativism as a "Kind of Historiography"? Moral Debate, Conceptual Space, and the Relativism of Distance Plus ca change...:The Myths of Moral Invention and Discovery Morality and Its Discontents On the Supposed Inevitability of Rationally Irresolvable Moral Conflict Pluralism, Conflict, and Choice On the Alleged Methodological Infirmity of Moral Inquiry Does Pessimism about Moral Conflict Rest on a Mistake? Moral Inquiry and the Moral Life Moral Inquiry as an Interpretive Enterprise The Interpretive Turn and the Challenge of "AntiTheory" A Pyrrhic Victory? Objectivity and the Aspirations of Moral Inquiry Morality and Culture through Thick and Thin The Need for Thick Descriptions of Moral Inquiry Moral Conflict, Moral Confidence, and Moral Openness toward the Future Critical Pluralism, Cultural Difference, and the Boundaries of Cross-Cultural Respect The Strange Career of "Culture" Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index

The domestication of violence in mediation

Abstract: This article, based on an analysis of 30 community mediation sessions, provides a theoretical frame for tracking the emergence and domestication of violence stories in the sessions themselves. Challenging the Cartesian distinction between mental and physical violence, I use Scarry's 1985 work to identify the presence of violence stories as stories in which speakers (1) objectify pain through the discursive production of weapons and wounds, (2) describe the loss of voice itself, and (3) describe attempts to reappear as agents in the elimination of pain itself. Drawing on Minow's 1987 analysis of rights discourse, I offer a definition of the "domestication" of violence as a movement from "rights" to "needs" in the discourse of the session. With this framework. and consistent with Silbey and Sarat's 1989 research, I found that violence stories were domesticated in 80% of the sessions in which such stories emerged. Finally, drawing on Foucault (1979), I describe this domestication process as a function of the "microphysics of power" and track the rules of transformation through which violence is subducted into the discourse of mediation itself. I argue that the mediation process contributes to erase any morality that competes with the morality of mediation and, in the process, disappears violence. Critics of mediation have long argued that mediation operates as a site for the deregulation and decriminalization of violence, particularly violence against women (Lerman 1984; Rifkin 1989). However, advocates of mediation argue that cases where violence is an issue will, in fact, be referred to criminal legal settings; their presumption that mediation does not contribute to the decriminalization of violence reflects the assumption that the legal system will "fit the forum to the fuss" (Sander 1976), appropriately designating the process to address the complaint. The "multidoor courthouse" has, indeed, provided a model for articulating informal to formal processes, designating the informal settings as sites to address "minor" disputes where the alleged violence does not cross over into felonious criminal categories (McGillis 1986),1 preserving the formal (criminal) system for "serious" cases. Outside criminal legal codes, denied (and resisting) any substantive code for defining and redressing violence, mediation cannot intrude into the arena where bodies are injured and pain is materialized. Yet, critical legal scholars,2 as well as feminist legal scholars,3 have collectively decried the dangers of mediation for the "violated," arguing that mediation favors the continued oppression of women and the domination of state's interests (Harrington 1985; Abel 1982).4 Lerman (1989) and others (Rifkin & Harrington 1987; Rifkin 1989; Fineman 1988) have argued that informal processes reconstitute gender inequalities (Lerman 1989), decriminalizing violence against women (Stallone 1984) and reducing women's access to formal arenas where claims of injustice have the potential for social reform (Germane, Johnson, & Lemon 1985; Lerman 1984). Among this group, there is condemnation of the use of mediation for disputes that explicitly involve violence; some further claim that the diversion of violence to informal settings continues the historical practice of delegalizing family conflict and perpetuating women's inequality (Lefcourt 1984). These critics argue that mediation undermines the legal rights and literal safety of women and other less advantaged parties (Lerman 1984) precisely because mediation evaporates claims of rights; a discourse of rights is central to redressing violence because such a discourse names the victim, the victimizer, and the harm done to the victim (Bumiller 1988).5 One might draw an analogy to political repression by pointing out that whenever violence is "disappeared,"6 the victimizers go free, the victims are left socially isolated to manage the consequences of the violence, the harm goes unaddressed. …