Recent Work in Moral Anthropology

This special focus issue brings to the Journal of Religious Ethics fresh considerations of moral anthropology as practiced by four emergent voices within the field. Each of these essays, in varying ways, seeks not only to advance an understanding of ethics in a particular time, place, and context, but to draw our attention to shared aspects of the human condition: its discontinuities and fractures, its practices of perception and attention, its interplays of emotion, intuition, and reason, and its thoroughly intersubjective nature. To learn something of Thai Buddhist life‐worlds, contemporary Russian modes of being, or the experience of immorality in today's China, each essay argues in turn, is to gain new insight into ourselves.     

论知识管理中的道德风险及其规避

由知识经济而带来的知识管理同样面临种种风险 ,道德风险就是其中之一。道德风险是一种本质性风险而非过程性风险 ,不但缘于道德自身的不确定性 ,也缘于知识价值本身的不确定性。要消解知识管理中的道德风险 ,必须对知识进行道德规制 ,使知识内容、知识主体、知识传播都符合德性要求     

论社会工作理论在医务社会工作实务中的应用

作为一个全新领域的医务社会工作实务,亟需相应的理论进行指导,实现理论与实务相结合,更好地为有需要的医护人员和患者服务,但目前已有的文献基本上都是在一般通则的意义上探讨社会工作的基本理论,在医务社会工作中缺少实践意义。通过对社会工作文献中相关理论的梳理,挖掘适合在医务社会工作实务的运用的需要理论、生命周期理论、社会支持理论、认知行为理论、危机干预理论及增能等相关理论,并对在实践中哪些情境应该使用上述理论,如何运用上述理论,提出具体的指导方法,以帮助医务社会工作者在实务实践中的应用。     

商业银行信贷中的道德风险及控制

商业银行信贷道德风险是由于信贷利益各方道德不确定性使信贷内部或外部利益遭受损失的可能,具有关系复杂性、形式多样性、后果严重性等特点。由于信贷人员的道德缺失、信贷社会责任的忽视、信贷主体目标的冲突、信贷机构制度的漏洞等原因导致了商业银行信贷道德风险的产生,必须从信贷制度、信贷主体的道德素质等方面入手加强对商业银行信贷中的道德风险控制。     

Solution-focused Ideas in Social Work

A group of social workers from Helsinki City Social Service Department working in an ordinary community-based social welfare office were trained to use basic solution-focused ideas in their work with people seeking living allowances and with families in child welfare. These social workers' relationships with their clients were compared to their previous similar relationships and to a control group. There were no significant changes in goal achievement but in line with solution-focused orientation there were increases in positive statements, goal focus, and shared views between social workers and their clients.     

The Relative Moral Risks of Untargeted and Targeted Surveillance

Is surveillance that is targeted towards specific individuals easier to justify than surveillance that targets broad categories of people? Untargeted surveillance is routinely accused of treating innocent people as suspects in ways that are unfair and of failing to pursue security effectively. I argue that in a wide range of cases untargeted surveillance treats people less like suspects than more targeted alternatives. I also argue that it often deters unwanted behaviour more effectively than targeted alternatives, including profiling. In practice, untargeted surveillance is likely to be least costly morally and most efficient when used as a means of enforcing the rules of a specific activity or institution. Targeted alternatives are likely to be more appropriate means of law enforcement.     

Solidarity and Social Moral Rules

The value of solidarity, which is exemplified in noble groups like the Civil Rights Movement along with more mundane teams, families and marriages, is distinctive in part because people are in solidarity over, for or with regard to something, such as common sympathies, interests, values, etc. I use this special feature of solidarity to resolve a longstanding puzzle about enacted social moral rules, which is, aren’t these things just heuristics, rules of thumb or means of coordination that we ‘fetishize’ or ‘worship’ if we stubbornly insist on sticking to them when we can do more good by breaking them? I argue that when we are in a certain kind of solidarity with others, united by social moral rules that we have established among ourselves, the rules we have developed and maintain are a constitutive part of our solidary relationships with one another; and it is part of being in this sort of solidarity with our comrades that we are presumptively required to follow the social moral rules that join us together. Those in the Polish Revolution, for example, were bound by informally enforced rules about publicity, free speech and the use of violence, so following their own rules became a way of standing in a valuable sort of solidarity with one another. I explain why we can have non-instrumental reasons to follow the social moral rules that exist in our own society, improve our rules and even sometimes to break the otherwise good rules that help to unite us.     

Psychoanalysis and Social Work

Abstract

This paper traces the close relationship between psychoanalysis and social work after Freudian theory's dramatic impact on social work practice in the 1920s. It shows how revisions and expansion of psychoanalytic theory beyond its traditional base influenced clinical work during later decades until the 1960s, when society turned its attention to macrosystems intervention and other theoretical frameworks and practice models. The paper considers the impact of this change in emphasis on clinicians, direct practice, and schools of social work. Although it describes the resurgence of direct practice that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, it discusses the reasons for the greatly diminished role of psychoanalytic theories in social work curricula. It concludes that there is little reason for optimism about psychoanalysis regaining a prominent position within the profession at the present time and comments on some implications of this state of affairs for those committed to advanced clinical training.     

Social Psychology,Moral Character,and Moral Fallibility*

In recent years, there has been considerable debate in the literature concerning the existence of moral character. One lesson we should take away from these debates is that the concept of character, and the role it plays in guiding our actions, is far more complex than most of us initially took it to be. Just as Gilbert Harman, for example, makes a serious mistake in insisting, plain and simply, that there is no such thing as character, defenders of character also make a mistake to the extent that they imply there is no problem raised by the psychological literature for either the concept of character or the nature of character‐based ethics. My hope for this paper is to avoid both of these mistakes by first, exploring exactly what is the concept of character that is so firmly rooted in our philosophical and everyday thinking; and second, exploring the implications of the psychological literature for this appropriately understood concept of character. In so doing, I will come to a resolution that vindicates the existence of character, while at the same time calls attention to the real and serious problem suggested by the psychological evidence. This, we will see, is a problem of moral motivation.     

Combat Trauma and the Moral Risks of Memory Manipulating Drugs

To date, 1.7 million US military service personnel have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, one in five are suffering from diagnosable combat‐stress related psychological injuries including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). All indications are that the mental health toll of the current conflicts on US troops and the medical systems that care for them will only increase. Against this backdrop, research suggesting that the common class of drugs known as beta‐blockers might prevent the onset of PTSD is drawing much interest. I urge caution against accepting too quickly the use of beta‐blockers for dealing with the psychological injuries that combat experiences can wreak. Beta‐blockers are thought to work by disrupting the formation of emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and that in some people manifest as PTSD. Focusing on a single dimension of soldiers' experience in combat, namely, their perpetration of other‐directed violence, I argue that some of the emotional memories blunted by beta‐blockers play important roles in the recovery of moral aspects of soldiers' selves damaged by experiences of combat violence — specifically, in the achievement of a state of grace— and, therefore, that the use of beta‐blockers may come with distinct moral costs.     

道德精神的社会资源支持

道德精神是对道德的敬畏、向往和坚守的心理意识和精神态度,培育道德精神离不开社会资源的支持。其中,制度作为最基本的道德是道德的基本保障;文化资源可以为道德的坚守培土;风俗或风气作为社会道德的评判机制有助于道德权威的确立;民族事件是道德精神的集中体现,可以塑造对道德精神的崇高感。     

社会转型时期道德作用的变迁

社会转型改变了人们的生存方式和样态 ,由此也极大地影响了道德发挥作用的社会背景和机制 ;本质上 ,道德是一种软性制约 ,而社会转型所带来的一系列变革 ,更为彰显和加剧了道德权威的弱化     

Assessment of Stress Risks and Learning Opportunities in the Work Organization

Abstract

Organizational innovation and recent European legislation on work organization require instruments, to be used by practitioners, for the assessment of jobs and the redesign of the structure of the division of labour. In The Netherlands the so-called WEBA-instrument (conditions for well-being at work) has been developed to assess stress risks and learning opportunities. The foundation of the instrument refers to the Dutch modern sociotechnical systems theory, the Karasek demand-control theory and the German action regulation theory. Its application is becoming widespread because, among other reasons, this instrument is supported by the Labour Inspectorate of The Netherlands. Besides a presentation of the instrument and its foundation, some examples will be given and some theoretical and practical problems discussed.