"Moral Laboratories is at once engaging ethnography and a groundbreaking foray in the anthropology of morality. It takes us on a journey into the lives of African American families caring for children with serious chronic medical conditions, foregrounding the uncertainty of their struggles for a "good life." Challenging depictions of moral transformation as only possible in moments of breakdown or exceptional limit experience, it offers a compelling portrait of the transformative powers embedded in ordinary existence. From soccer fields to dinner tables, the everyday emerges as a potential "moral laboratory" for reshaping moral life. Mattingly offers vivid and heart-wrenching case stories to elaborate a first person ethical framework, forcefully showing the limits of third-person renderings of morality. In so doing, she deals with a complex history of philosophical and anthropological thinking on ethics in an accessible and immediately relevant way"--
Moral Laboratories is an engaging ethnography and a groundbreaking foray into the anthropology of morality. It takes us on a journey into the lives of African American families caring for children with serious chronic medical conditions, and it foregrounds the uncertainty that affects their struggles for a good life. Challenging depictions of moral transformation as possible only in moments of breakdown or in radical breaches from the ordinary, it offers a compelling portrait of the transformative powers embedded in day-to-day existence. From soccer fields to dinner tables, the everyday emerges as a moral laboratory for reshaping moral life. Cheryl Mattingly offers vivid and heart-wrenching stories to elaborate a first-person ethical framework, forcefully showing the limits of third-person renderings of morality.
Recenzijos
"Mattingly convincingly bolsters her claims ... an excellent demonstration of ethnographic and theoretical work." -- Ezelle Sanford III Center for Medical Humanities
| Acknowledgments |
|
ix | |
| Prologue |
|
xv | |
|
PART ONE FIRST PERSON VIRTUE ETHICS |
|
|
1 | (58) |
|
1 Experimental Soccer and the Good Life |
|
|
3 | (30) |
|
2 First Person Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Morality |
|
|
33 | (26) |
|
PART TWO MORAL BECOMING AND THE EVERYDAY |
|
|
59 | (92) |
|
3 Home Experiments: Scenes from the Moral Ordinary |
|
|
61 | (19) |
|
4 Luck, Friendship, and the Narrative Self |
|
|
80 | (19) |
|
5 Moral Tragedy: The Perils of a Superstrong Black Mother |
|
|
99 | (23) |
|
6 The Flight of the Blue Balloons: Narrative Suspense and the Play of Possible Selves |
|
|
122 | (29) |
|
PART THREE MORAL PLURALISM AS CULTURAL POSSIBILITY |
|
|
151 | (68) |
|
7 Rival Moral Traditions and the Miracle Baby |
|
|
153 | (25) |
|
8 Dueling Confessions: Revolution in the First Person |
|
|
178 | (24) |
|
9 Tragedy, Possibility, and Philosophical Anthropology |
|
|
202 | (17) |
| Notes |
|
219 | (12) |
| Bibliography |
|
231 | (22) |
| Index |
|
253 | |
Cheryl Mattingly is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Division of Occupational Science at the University of Southern California. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. She is the award-winning author of The Paradox of Hope: Journeys through a Clinical Borderland and Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience and coeditor, with Linda Garro, of Narrative and Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing, among other books.
