Abstract
Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance to immoral authority has served as a model for civil rights leaders and activists globally. Likewise, social psychologist Stanley Milgram refers to Gandhi in his 1974 book on his controversial “obedience experiments” which tested the conditions under which ordinary people obey immoral commands. However, Milgram commentators have largely ignored both resistance and morality in the experiments. This chapter examines what Milgram can tell us about moral action under conditions of situational constraint. Drawing on 117 audio recordings of the experiments, we challenge Milgram’s “obedient–disobedient” outcome dichotomy, arguing that all participants resisted and complied to varying degrees. What distinguishes the two outcome groups is not the fact of resistance, but how it was interactionally performed and sustained. We conclude with implications for scholars of Gandhi and civil disobedience.
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Turowetz, J., Hollander, M.M. (2022). Situated Moral Practice: Resisting Authority in Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience” Experiment. In: Kool, V.K., Agrawal, R. (eds) Gandhi’s Wisdom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87491-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87491-9_11
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