Moral Laboratories
Author | : Cheryl Mattingly |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 280 |
Release | : 2014-10-03 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780520959538 |
ISBN-13 | : 0520959531 |
Rating | : 4/5 (38 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: 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.