Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The New Sociology of Morality and Morality in Practice

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology ((PSRS))

  • 842 Accesses

Abstract

Here, Abbott provides a thought-provoking sociology of everyday engagement with morality in practice. Drawing upon sociological research into the maintenance of tact and secrecy in interactional practice (Goffman), the facing of complex moral decisions within the family, and ethical consumption and the presentation of self-identity, the chapter argues firstly that people do ordinarily engage with morality in routine practice, and secondly that people engage with everyday moral practice at varying levels of embodied responsiveness, mundane reflexive awareness, and more concerted dialogic rumination. This then feeds into the argument that it is in everyday practice that morality and moral phenomena as we know them are enacted, sustained, and transformed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Aboulafia, M. (1999). A (Neo) American in Paris: Bourdieu, Mead, and Pragmatism. In R. Shusterman (Ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (pp. 153–174). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Addams, J. (1902). Democracy and Social Ethics. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing LLC.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, B. (2000). Understanding Agency: Social Theory and Responsible Action (1st ed.). London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, C., Cloke, P., Clarke, N., & Malpass, A. (2005). Consuming Ethics: Articulating the Subjects and Spaces of Ethical Consumption. Antipode, 37(1), 23–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00472.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benhabib, S. (1992). Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloor, D. (2001). Wittgenstein and the Priority of Practice. In T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr-Cetina, & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (pp. 95–107). London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bottero, W. (2010). Intersubjectivity and Bourdieusian Approaches to ‘Identity’. Cultural Sociology, 4(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975509356750.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bottero, W. (2019). A Sense of Inequality. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brinkmann, J., & Peattie, K. (2008). Consumer Ethics Research: Reframing the Debate About Consumption for Good. Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies, 13(1), 22–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burkitt, I. (2008). Social Selves: Theories of Self and Society. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burkitt, I. (2016). Relational Agency: Relational Sociology, Agency and Interaction. European Journal of Social Theory, 19(3), 322–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431015591426.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burr, J. (2009). Exploring Reflective Subjectivity Through the Construction of the ‘Ethical Other’ in Interview Transcripts. Sociology, 43(2), 323–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038508101168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Cornell University Library.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational Thinking: A Critique of Co-deterministic Theories of Structure and Agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2008.00318.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1922). Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company. https://doi.org/10.1037/14663-000.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Donnelly, C. M., & Wright, B. R. E. (2012). Goffman Goes to Church: Face-Saving and the Maintenance of Collective Order in Religious Services. Sociological Research Online, 18(1), 18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dreyfus, H. L. (2014). Skillful Coping: Essays on the Phenomenology of Everyday Perception and Action (M. R. Wrathall, Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emirbayer, M., & Maynard, D. W. (2010). Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology. Qualitative Sociology, 34(1), 221–261. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9183-8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Finch, J. (1989). Family Obligations and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frega, R. (2015). The Normative Structure of the Ordinary. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, VII(VII–1). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.370.

  • Gergen, K. J. (1992). Social Construction and Moral Action. In D. N. Robinson (Ed.), Social Discourse and Moral Judgement (pp. 9–27). https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-088580-3.50005-7.

  • Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilligan, C. (1988). Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of Gender, Education, and Human Development, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday life. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Interaction. Oxford: Aldine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1968). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, E. (1983). The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address. American Sociological Review, 48(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grauel, J. (2016). Being Authentic or Being Responsible? Food Consumption, Morality and the Presentation of Self. Journal of Consumer Culture, 16(3), 852–869. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514541880.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halkier, B. (2010). Consumption Challenged: Food in Medialised Everyday Lives. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315573755.

  • Harré, R. (1998). When the Knower Is Also the Known. In T. May & M. Williams (Eds.), Knowing the Social World (pp. 37–49). Buckingham: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hayes, E. C. (1918). Sociology as Ethics. The American Journal of Sociology, 24(3), 289–302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hekman, S. (1995). Moral Voices, Moral Selves: Carol Gilligan and Feminist Moral Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heritage, J., & Sefi, S. (1992). Dilemmas of Advice: Aspects of the Delivery and Reception of Advice in Interactions Between Health Visitors and First Time Mothers. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings (pp. 359–417). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herman, B. (2000). Morality and Everyday Life. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 74(2), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/3219682.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hermann, J. (2015). On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice—A Wittgensteinian Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hitlin, S., & Vaisey, S. (2013). Back to the Future. In S. Hitlin & S. Vaisey (Eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Morality (pp. 3–14). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8_1.

  • Holdsworth, C., & Morgan, D. (2007). Revisiting the Generalized Other: An Exploration. Sociology, 41(3), 401–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507076614.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, H. (2019). Unpicking Contemporary Thrift: Getting on and Getting by in Everyday Life. The Sociological Review, 67(1), 126–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026118797837.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jacobsen, M., & Kristiansen, S. (2015). The Social Thought of Erving Goffman. London: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483381725.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, R. (2014). Social Identity (4th ed.). New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Joas, H. (1990). The Creativity of Action and the Intersubjectivity of Reason: Mead’s Pragmatism and Social Theory. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 26(2), 165–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joas, H. (1996). The Creativity of Action (1st ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joas, H. (1997). G.H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, G. (1999). ‘The Same People in the Same Places’? Socio-Spatial Identities and Migration in Youth. Sociology, 33(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/S0038038599000012.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keller, M. (1984). Resolving Conflicts in Friendship: The Development of Moral Understanding in Everyday Life. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, Moral Behavior, and Moral Development (pp. 140–158). New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lengermann, P., & Niebrugge, G. (2014). The Explanatory Power of Ethics: The Sociology of Jane Addams. In V. Jeffries (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity: Formulating a Field of Study (pp. 99–122). https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391865_5.

  • Lichtenberg, J. (2010). Negative Duties, Positive Duties, and the “New Harms”. Ethics, 120(3), 557–578. https://doi.org/10.1086/652294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Low, K. E. Y. (2009). Scents and Scent-Sibilities: Smell and Everyday Life Experiences. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacIntyre, A. (1985). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mandelbaum, M. H. (1955). The Phenomenology of Moral Experience. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • May, V. (2008). On Being a ‘Good’ Mother: The Moral Presentation of Self in Written Life Stories. Sociology, 42(3), 470–486. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038508088836.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • May, V. (2013). Connecting Self to Society: Belonging in a Changing World. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maynard, D. W. (2003). Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNay, L. (2000). Gender and Agency: Reconfiguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist: 1 (C. Morris, Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, M. (2014). The Poverty of (Moral) Philosophy: Towards an Empirical and Pragmatic Ethics. European Journal of Social Theory, 17(2), 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431013505016.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pleasants, N. (2008). Wittgenstein, Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty. Inquiry, 51(3), 241–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201740802120673.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rapp, R. (2000). Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America (1st ed.). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawls, A. W. (2013). Social Order as Moral Order. In S. Hitlin & S. Vaisey (Eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Morality (pp. 95–121). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8_6.

  • Reay, D. (2004). ‘It’s All Becoming a Habitus’: Beyond the Habitual Use of Habitus in Educational Research. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 25(4), 431–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ribbens McCarthy, J., Edwards, R., & Gillies, V. (2003). Making Families: Moral Tales of Parenting and Step-Parenting. Retrieved from http://www.socialpsychologyarena.com/books/Making-Families-isbn9781903457054.

  • Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rouse, J. (2007). Practice Theory. Division I Faculty Publications, 43. Retrieved from https://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div1facpubs/43.

  • Sanghera, B. (2016). Charitable Giving and Lay Morality: Understanding Sympathy, Moral Evaluations and Social Positions. The Sociological Review, 64(2), 294–311. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sayer, A. (2005). The Moral Significance of Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, M. B., & Lyman, S. M. (1968). Accounts. American Sociological Review, 33(1), 46–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sie, M. (2015). Moral Hypocrisy and Acting for Reasons: How Moralizing Can Invite Self-Deception. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 18(2), 223–235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9574-8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smart, C. (2011). Families, Secrets and Memories. Sociology, 45(4), 539–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038511406585.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smart, C., & Neale, B. (1999). Family Fragments? Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sterponi, L. A. (2003). Account Episodes in Family Discourse: The Making of Morality in Everyday Interaction. Discourse Studies, 5(1), 79–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456030050010401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Synnott, A. (1993). The Body Social (1st ed.). London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, C. (1999). To Follow a Rule…. In R. Shusterman (Ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (pp. 29–44). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turowetz, J. J., & Maynard, D. W. (2013). Morality in the Social Interactional and Discursive World of Everyday Life. In S. Hitlin & S. Vaisey (Eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Morality (pp. 503–526). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8_27.

  • Varul, M. Z. (2009). Ethical Selving in Cultural Contexts: Fairtrade Consumption as an Everyday Ethical Practice in the UK and Germany. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 33(2), 183–189. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2009.00762.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warde, A. (2016). The Practice of Eating. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, L. (1973). Philosophical Investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmerman, D. H. (1970). The Practicalities of Rule Use. In J. D. Douglas (Ed.), Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge (pp. 221–238). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Owen Abbott

Authors
  1. Owen Abbott
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Owen Abbott .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Abbott, O. (2020). The New Sociology of Morality and Morality in Practice. In: The Self, Relational Sociology, and Morality in Practice. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31822-2_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31822-2_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31821-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31822-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation