We’ve all seen the images from Abu Ghraib: stress positions, US soldiers kneeling on the heads of prisoners, and dehumanizing pyramids formed from black-hooded bodies. We have watched officials elected to our highest offices defend enhanced interrogation in terms of efficacy and justify drone strikes in terms of retribution and deterrence. But the mainstream secular media rarely addresses the morality of these choices, leaving us to ask individually: Is this right? In this singular examination of the American discourse over war and torture, Douglas V. Porpora, Alexander Nikolaev, Julia Hagemann May, and Alexander Jenkins investigate the opinion pages of American newspapers, television commentary, and online discussion groups to offer the first empirical study of the national conversation about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib a year later. Post-Ethical Society is not just another shot fired in the ongoing culture war between conservatives and liberals, but a pensive and ethically engaged reflection of America’s feelings about itself and our actions as a nation. And while many writers and commentators have opined about our moral place in the world, the vast amount of empirical data amassed in Post-Ethical Society sets it apart—and makes its findings that much more damning.

Australian philosopher of science Redner argues that cultural life consists of three fundamental aspects: representation, ethos, and technics. This is the second of four volumes setting out a comprehensive theory of human culture. The first is A New Science of Representation, the third and companion to the second will be Aesthetic Life, and the third will be The Triumph of Technics. His conclusion at the end of the series is that the contemporary global culture is a triumph of technics over representation and ethos. c. Book News Inc.

A 1986 study of the British ethical societies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dr Mackillop's comprehensive account explores these societies, which became havens of discussion, rallying-points for progressive campaigns and places of secular worship along with the significant events and personalities in the history of the ethical movement.

The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how ethics arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history—and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others. Certain to provoke debate, Ethical Life presents an entirely new way of thinking about ethics, morals, and the factors that shape them.

Graham Hill's pioneering classic remains the seminal work on missional ecclesiology. The bestselling first edition redefined theology for the missional church. Hill builds biblical foundations in conversation with major theologians, including Sarah Coakley, John Zizioulas, Stanley Hauerwas, Miroslav Volf, and Jurgen Moltmann. In this major update, he offers new insights and provides fresh examples of missional churches. In the first edition, Hill interacted with twelve major theologians to build a missional ecclesiology. In this thoroughly updated edition, he interacts with sixteen major theologians from the Western world. This edition includes five new chapters and an expanded treatment on the key convictions of global missional theology. It also offers a new study guide that has been uploaded on an innovative website linked to this book. This expanded edition now becomes volume 1 in a series on missional ecclesiology. In volume 2, Hill will turn our attention to voices from the Majority World. Known for his groundbreaking approach to theology--theology for the global missional community--Hill shows how God is releasing his global church to mission, across all cultures and Christian traditions. This extensive update to Hill's influential work offers pioneering theology and practices that will continue to shape the global missional church for generations.

A general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective.

"The Politics of Civil Society offers a wide-ranging analysis of recent shifts in ideas and paradigms that underpin social policy. Since the 1980s the renaissance of civil society has introduced new ideas about the nature of power, citizenship and human rights, with such slogans as 'active citizenship' and 'participation' radically challenging the dominance of the state, the power of professionals and the welfare system itself." "Frederick Powell traces the historical roots of these apparent changes and movements, demonstrates in detail their often paradoxical results and speculates about the whole future of social policy. He has produced an entirely original synthesis, as well as a major guide to social policy, that goes well beyond traditional interpretations of civil society as the voluntary and community sector." "The book covers a breadth of material which is not generally found in social policy literature and offers a unique opportunity to rethink existing paradigms. This is not just a book for the specialist reader but raises a whole range of issues of much wider interest to the social sciences. A concluding chapter on the practical and policy implications of the analysis is of special relevance to welfare practitioners and policy-makers."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume explores the development and consequences of morphogenesis on normative regulation. It starts out by describing the great normative transformations from morphostasis, as the precondition of a harmonious relationship between legal validity and normative consensus in society, to morphogenesis, which tends to strongly undermine existing laws, norms, rules, rights and obligations because of the new variety it introduces. Next, it studies the decline of normative consensus resulting from the changes in the social contexts that made previous forms of normativity, based upon ‘habits, ‘habitus’ and ‘routine action’, unhelpfully misleading because they no longer constituted relevant guidelines to action. It shows how this led to the ‘Reflexive Imperative’ with subjects having to work out their own purposeful actions in relation to their objective social circumstances and their personal concerns, if they were to be active rather than passive agents. Finally, the book analyses what makes for chance in normativity, and what will underwrite future social regulation. It discusses whether it is possible to establish a new corpus of laws, norms and rules, given that intense morphogenesis denies the durability of any new stable context.

Distant Harms, Distant Markets looks at moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, early Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today. The author skillfully explores the causal and moral responsibilities which consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.