Defining Ethics and Morality

Abstract

Sociology has been a relative newcomer with regard to the renascence of debate about ethics over the course of the last few decades. In this chapter, I examine the distinctive contribution to be made by social scientists to this interdisciplinary discussion. A sociological contribution to the topic of ethics and morality can be mapped by examining the meanings of these terms, and the ways in which they circulate in different cultural contexts and within academic and scholarly literature.