Money,morality and new forms of exchange in postsocialist Ukraine

One of the legacies of Soviet socialism is a moralizing lens through which to evaluate wealth and consumption practices. A contrast between the moral underpinnings of generating and consuming wealth under capitalism and those emerging in postsocialist Ukraine shows that socioeconomic differences are emerging as proxies for moral indictments that strain the social fabric. Soviet-era economic practices and exchange networks of favors are giving way to cash-based forms of exchange that are redefining moral commitments to social obligations. When legal codes are mobilized in diverse ways in response to divergent moralities the forging of moral consensus to shape emerging economic practices is rendered elusive.     

Problematic character coding methods in morphology and their effects

The effects of different coding practices in morphological phylogenetic analysis are well documented. In many cases, we can determine that certain practices can be regarded as undesirable and should be avoided. Certain coding practices do not correctly translate the expected information to the cladistic algorithm. It may go unnoticed that expressions of character information in character lists, which may be entirely logical to any reader, do not necessarily reflect the mathematics employed by a phylogenetic algorithm. Despite a wealth of literature on coding procedures and documentation of these issues, problematic character coding practices are still common. A review is provided of different coding and character formulation practices, particularly relating to multistate character information that may either: (1) lead to a failure to capture grouping information implied in the character list; (2) cause problematic weighting or spuriously high certainty in particular optimizations; and (3) impose congruence artificially, by linking more than one variable character to a particular state. Each of these is reviewed and presented with a hypothetical example. Recommendations for avoiding these pitfalls are described in light of how parsimony algorithms work with character data. Character lists must be drawn up not only to present character variation logically, but also with consideration for how computer algorithms implement cladistic logic. The widespread use of problematic character coding procedures may account for some of the perceived problems with morphological data. Therefore, an exploration of the effects of these methods and standardization of methods should be a goal for the very near future. © 2011 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2011, 104 , 489–498.     

Chocolate and Cognac: Gifts and the Recognition of Social Worlds in Post-Soviet Russia

This paper examines the culture of gift-giving in contemporary urban Russia, illuminating in the process broader post-socialist deliberations about social identity and personal worth. Drawing upon ethnographic research in St. Petersburg (1998-99), I consider how marketization influences, informs, and overlaps with logics of gift-giving and with the social networking practices so central to Soviet-era consumer strategies. In contrast to most previous analyses of such phenomena, this article attends closely to the items of exchange themselves, asking why certain goods are chosen as gifts in particular contexts (such as the chocolate and cognac typically given as tokens of gratitude to doctors, teachers, and others whom one wishes to thank for services well provided). Social theorists have commented on the 'misrecognition' inherent in such gift-giving, in that transactors tend to view these presents not as pragmatic investments but simply - as Russian teachers put it - 'signs of attention' Yet here I push further to consider what it is people are actually recognizing about their shifting social worlds in these activities, as they take stock of one another's claims to cultural and moral value (as well as material wealth) and conceptualize the kind of 'society' in which they are participating.     

Humanity at the Edge: The Moral Laboratory of Feeding Precarious Lives

At the heart of anthropology and the social sciences lies a notion of human existence according to which humans and animals share the basic need for food, but only humans have the capacity for morality. Based on fieldwork in a pig laboratory, a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and a dementia nursing home, we follow practices of feeding precarious lives lacking most markers of human personhood, including the exercise of moral judgment. Despite the absence of such markers, laboratory researchers and caregivers in these three sites do not abstain from engaging in questions about the moral status of the piglets, infants, and people with dementia in their care. They continually negotiate how their charges belong to the human collectivity and thereby challenge the notion of ‘the human’ that is foundational to anthropology. Combining analytical approaches that do not operate with a fixed boundary between human and animal value and agency with approaches that focus on human experience and virtue ethics, we argue that ‘the human’ at stake in the moral laboratory of feeding precarious lives puts ‘the human’ in anthropology at disposal for moral experimentation.     

The (extra)ordinary ethics of being HIV‐positive in rural Papua New Guinea

HIV/AIDS continues to be intimately entwined with the moral domain, and thus a positive diagnosis can cast doubt on a person's moral status. I draw on recent literature in the anthropology of ethics and morality, as well as feminist moral philosophy, to analyse the post‐diagnosis practices of HIV‐positive women in Papua New Guinea as they attempt to recuperate their moral personhood and make their ethical commitments visible to others. I argue that they carve out a repertoire of (extra)ordinary ethics from the ‘ordinary’ domain and that their practices tend towards a deontological ethics, rather than a virtue ethics, orientation.     

The Lakhota Giveaway:

Abstract

Reciprocal gift-giving among Lakhota of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation is examined as a tradition promoting social alliance, interdependence. and the redistribution of wealth. Ceremonial Giveaways provide a context for the distribution of goods to non-kinsmen, a practice which extends kin-like obligations and benefits beyond the immediate. or extended family. Gift-giving is viewed as a mechanism of social control in that it prevents the uneven accumulation of wealth and directs negative sanction toward those reluctant to share their resources. Reciprocal exchange plays a fundamental role in reinforcing the moral value of generosity, a local system of insurance essential to modern reservation living.     

Toward a Science of Welfare for Animals in the Zoo

Although the accredited institutions of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums have all committed to enhancing the welfare of nonhuman animals, acceptable standards and best practices are still under debate. Currently, experts from zoos and the field hold widely divergent opinions about exhibition and management standards for elephants. Standards and practices for managing nonhuman primates provide a model for other nonhuman creatures exhibited in zoos and aquariums. Examining the key issues for primates demonstrates the value of applying scientific data before promulgating standards. The field of applied behavior analysis provides a wealth of information to frame the debate. Animal behaviorists have contributed to an emerging science of animal welfare, which may provide a foundation for empirical zoo management, standards, and practices.     

Toward a science of welfare for animals in the zoo

Although the accredited institutions of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums have all committed to enhancing the welfare of nonhuman animals, acceptable standards and best practices are still under debate. Currently, experts from zoos and the field hold widely divergent opinions about exhibition and management standards for elephants. Standards and practices for managing nonhuman primates provide a model for other nonhuman creatures exhibited in zoos and aquariums. Examining the key issues for primates demonstrates the value of applying scientific data before promulgating standards. The field of applied behavior analysis provides a wealth of information to frame the debate. Animal behaviorists have contributed to an emerging science of animal welfare, which may provide a foundation for empirical zoo management, standards, and practices.     

The positive value of moral distress

Moral distress in healthcare has been an increasingly prevalent topic of discussion. Most authors characterize it as a negative phenomenon, while few have considered its potentially positive value. In this essay, I argue that moral distress can reveal and affirm some of our most important concerns as moral agents. Indeed, the experience of it under some circumstances appears to be partly constitutive of an honorable character and can allow for crucial moral maturation. The potentially positive value, then, is twofold; moral distress carries both aretaic and instrumental value. Granted, this position is not without its caveats, but by making these clear, I provide a novel framework for policy recommendations regarding when, if ever, we should work to reduce moral distress.     

On the phylogeny of human morality (ten years later)

Sociobiological explanation of altruism, through theories as such «kin selection», cannot reach the wealth of human morality; it is necessary to add some specific traits in order to explain the human way to ultrasociability. Some of them appear within the classical school of «moral sense», distinguishing between two different levels («motive to act» and «moral criterion») of moral phenomenon. Due to the complexity of criterion level, here we deal with a broad model of human moral phenomenon, proposing three different dominions («motive to act», «personal criterion», «collective values»), and trying to find possible phylogenetic roots of them through a cognitive approach.     

THE IMAGINED 'CONSUMER DEMOCRACY' AND ELITE (RE)PRODUCTION IN YEMEN

In the republican state which emerged in North Yemen after the 1962 revolution the new ruling elite, which forms the core of the nouveaux riches , buttresses its claim to high status by wealth display and conspicuous consumption. Depending on regional variation, the old elite's acquiescence in or rejection of new consumption practices expresses respectively either the maintenance of an elevated social position or a protest against what is considered a corrupt social order. Whereas consumption has led to a degree of homogeneity among the affluent old and the new elite of San'a, the old elite as a whole has become more fragmented. In light of Bourdieu's Distinction , this article argues that 'taste', generated by class-related incorporated dispositions, may manifest itself in practices ranging from lavish consumption to renunciation. Consumer choice must be explored in relation both to moral schemes and to the pursuit of social pre-eminence.     

Embryos,The Principle of Proportionality,and the Shaky Ground of Moral Respect

The debate concerning the moral permissibility of using human embryos in human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research has long centred on the question of the embryo's supposed right to life. However, in focussing only on this question, many opponents to hESC research have escaped rigorous scrutiny by making vague and unfounded appeals to the concept of moral respect in order to justify their opposition to certain hESC practices. In this paper, I offer a critical analysis of the concept of moral respect, and its use to support the intuitively appealing principle of proportionality in hESC research. I argue that if proponents of this principle are to justify its adoption by appealing to the concept of moral respect, they must explain two things concerning the nature of the moral respect owed to embryos. First, they must explain which particular aspect of the embryo is morally relevant, and why. Second, they must explain why some uses of embryos in research fail to acknowledge what is morally relevant about the embryo, and thereby involve a violation of the moral respect that they are due. I shall show that providing such explanations may be more difficult than it first appears.     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Morally-Relevant Similarities and Differences Between Assisted Dying Practices in Paradigm and Non-Paradigm Circumstances: Could They Inform Regulatory Decisions?</Emphasis>

There has been contentious debate over the years about whether there are morally relevant similarities and differences between the three practices of continuous deep sedation until death, physician-assisted suicide, and voluntary euthanasia. Surprisingly little academic attention has been paid to a comparison of the uses of these practices in the two types of circumstances in which they are typically performed. A comparative domains of ethics analysis methodological approach is used in the paper to compare 1) the use of the three practices in paradigm circumstances, and 2) the use of the practices in paradigm circumstances to their use in non-paradigm circumstances. The analytical outcomes suggest that a bright moral line cannot be demonstrated between any two of the practices in paradigm circumstances, and that there are significant, morally-relevant distinctions between their use in paradigm and non-paradigm circumstances. A thought experiment is employed to illustrate how these outcomes could possibly inform the decisions of hypothetical deliberators who are engaged in the collaborative development of assisted dying regulatory frameworks.     

WHAT IS IT TO BE A DAUGHTER? IDENTITIES UNDER PRESSURE IN DEMENTIA CARE

This article concentrates on the care for people who suffer from progressive dementia. Dementia has a great impact on a person’s well‐being as well as on his or her social environment. Dealing with dementia raises moral issues and challenges for participants, especially for family members. One of the moral issues in the care for people with dementia is centred on responsibilities; how do people conceive and determine their responsibilities towards one another? To investigate this issue we use the theoretical perspective of Margaret Walker. She states that ideas about identity play a crucial role in patterns of normative expectations with regard to the distribution of responsibilities in daily practices of care. The results of this study show how the identity of a family‐member is put under pressure and changes during her loved one’s illness that leads to difficulties and misunderstandings concerning the issue of responsibility. These results offer an insight into the complexities of actual practices of responsibility and highlight the importance for those caring for people with dementia of attending carefully to how they see themselves and how they see other people involved (Who am I? Who do I want to be for the other?). Answers to such questions show what people expect from themselves and from one another, and how they, at any rate, are distributing responsibilities in a given situation. Professional caregivers should take into account that family members might have different ideas about who they are and consequently about what their responsibilities are.     

Visions of Blood,Sex and Money: Fantasy Spaces in Popular Ghanaian Cinema

This article focuses on Ghanaian popular cinema,' which emerged in the late 1980s and has become a major form of entertainment for urban audiences. It shows that the filmmakers, who produce films in the video format which are very close to everyday life experiences and dreams, offer visions which they and their audiences regard as being similar to those provided by religious prophets and preachers. Watching these films allows for complex negotiations between the desires for transgression of the moral order, the longing to feel morally superior, and the striving for knowledge to understand one's world. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the film Women in Love, which conjures up a fantasy space located at the bottom of the sea where money and commodities are generated in exchange for sex and blood, this article argues that popular cinema is part and parcel of a new culture of vision, one characterized by the visualization of otherwise invisible fantasy spaces as well as by its easy accessibility through such modern mass media as video and TV. The article argues that these fantasy spaces should not be regarded as misguided distortions, but as sources for gaining insight into what Marx called “the religion of everyday life,” and thus as revelations of the fantasy dimension of global capitalism.     

Latina Mothers and Small-Town Racisms:Creating Narratives of Dignity and Moral Education in North Carolina

Within the context of relatively new immigration and settlement in North Carolina, this ethnographic study highlights Latina mothers' narratives and conversations about a moral family education. Their narratives involved the claiming of el hogar (the home space) in the midst of the English-speaking community's attempts to define their families and childrearing practices as "problem." With a race-based feminist perspective, this article examines the role of the mothers' counternarratives in contesting their deficit framing, producing "educated" identities, and creating community in the rural South.     

Managing Managed Care: Habitus, Hysteresis and the End(s) of Psychotherapy

In this paper we examine how clinicians at acommunity mental health center are respondingto the beginnings of changes in the health caredelivery system, changes that are designatedunder the rubric of ``managed care.' Wedescribe how clinicians' attitudes about goodmental health care are embodied in whatsociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls theirhabitus, i.e., their professional habits andsense of good practice. Viewed in this light,their moral outrage and sense of threat, aswell as their strategic attempts to resist orsubvert the dictates of managed care agencies,become a function of what Bourdieu terms thehysteresis effect. The paper is based onethnographic fieldwork conducted by a team ofresearchers at the mental health and substanceabuse service of a hospital-affiliated,storefront clinic which serves residents ofseveral neighborhoods in a large northeasterncity. Data consist primarily of observationsof meetings and interviews with staff members. We describe four aspects of the clinicians'professional habitus: a focus on cases asnarratives of character and relationship, animperative of authenticity, a distinctiveorientation towards time, and an ethic ofambiguity. We then chronicle practices thathave emerged in response to the limits on careimposed by managed care protocols, which areexperienced by clinicians as violating theintegrity of their work. These are discussedin relation to the concept of hysteresis.     

Hunting and Morality as Elements of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Contemporary subsistence hunting practices of North American Indians have been questioned because of hunters’ use of modern technologies and integration of wage-based and subsistence livelihoods. Tribal traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has been questioned on similar grounds and used as justification for ignoring tribal perspectives on critical natural resource conservation and development issues. This paper examines hunting on the Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation in North Central Wisconsin, USA. The study used semi-structured interviews with hunters from the reservation to document their contemporary hunting practices and the traditional moral code that informs their hunting-related behaviors and judgments. Subsistence hunting is framed in the context of TEK and attention focused on the interplay between TEK’s practical and moral dimensions. Results indicate the importance of traditional moral codes in guiding a community’s contemporary hunting practices and the inseparability and interdependence of epistemological, practical, and ethical dimensions of TEK.     

The Cultural Topography of Wealth: Commodity Paths and the Structure of Property in Rural Lesotho

Discussions of poverty and wealth often assume that wealth is a measurable substance, the possession of which can be indexed on a linear scale, from high to low. This article contests this implicit assumption, arguing that wealth-holding is always complicated by the fact that exchange is culturally regulated, and guided along approved paths. An analysis of domains of wealth in a rural Lesotho village illustrates the point. Wealth-holding here is clearly unequal, but cultural, legal, and moral paths governing economic exchanges between different categories of property mean that the holdings of different households are in important ways incomparable, and that their wealth is different in kind, and not only in amount. The attempt to locate households economically in such a setting thus requires mapping a politicocultural "topography" of channels facilitating the flow of commodity exchange, dams obstructing, slowing, or filtering it, and furrows temporarily diverting the flow from one channel or dam into another. A meaningful ranking of wealth-holding must include a cultural analysis of commodity paths and the structure of property.