Rebekah Peeples Massengill

Moral Discourse in Economic Contexts

The connection between morals and markets, once a central concern of the discipline of sociology, now finds itself the focus of renewed popular and academic interest. We consider these relationships between moral codes and various aspects of market society through the lens of language, specifically the different forms of moral discourse that perpetually surround economic activity. Our review focuses on discourse produced by both individuals and institutions in three different areas of the literature: identity construction relative to the labor market, decision-making and boundary-maintenance in market environments, and the shared discourses that legitimate key aspects of market structures and economic systems. A theme across these literatures concerns the ways in which individuals use moral discourse to both legitimate their own economic activities and decisions even as these same discourses are shaped in key ways by the institutions of market society, such as the workplace. Accordingly, we argue that language represents a key link between the institutions that structure economic order (the workplace, corporations, governments, and families) and the larger moral codes that sustain them. We conclude that analyzing moral discourse can help to identify deeper dimensions of existing economic inequalities as well as imaging some of their solutions.

Nonaffiliation and Socioeconomic Status

As recently as only 15 years ago, sociologists of religion were declaring that secularization theory – the perspective that had dominated a previous era of scholarship in predicting the inevitable demise of religious belief in the face of growing pluralism and individualism – was outdated and empirically unable to explain the continued religious vitality witnessed among diverse religious communities throughout the world, particularly in the United States (Warner 1993). Some went so far as to proclaim, “After nearly three centuries of utterly failed prophesies and misrepresentations of both present and past, it seems time to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories, and there to whisper ‘ requiescat in pace ’” (Stark 1999: 270). The rise of a new tide of religious “nones,” however, began to attract empirical notice by the end of the 1990s (Hout and Fischer 2002), although scholars disagree about the significance of this shift (for a useful review, see Lim, MacGregor, and Putnam 2010). Ultimately dismissing secularization as an explanation, Hout and Fischer (2002) conclude that the growth of religious nonaffiliation, particularly among younger cohorts of Americans, represents a movement away from the organized religious bodies that Americans associated with conservative politics throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, the new religious nonaffiliation is particularly noteworthy for its almost exclusively institutional dimensions. For example, Hout and Fischer (2002) find that most individuals who have no religious preference still have relatively stable levels of belief in God and are only slightly less likely to say that they pray than those who are religiously affiliated. The main difference between these nonaffiliated Americans and their religiously attached counterparts, therefore, is that the latter are actually members of a particular religious institution, claiming a relationship with an identifiable religious tradition.

Did the Religious Group Socioeconomic Ranking Change Leading into the Great Recession

Purpose – In this chapter, we advance research on the socioeconomic ranking of religious groups by using both income and wealth to document the rankings of the six major religious groups in the United States – Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, black Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated – during 2001–2007, a period marked by both catastrophic economic losses and widespread economic gain. Design/Methodology/Approach – Drawing from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID), we provide descriptive statistics to explore the socioeconomic differences among the six major religious groups. In addition, we note their ownership rates and changes in wealth and income during 2001–2007. Findings – Overall, these findings point to enduring stratification in the U.S. religious landscape. Based on median net worth, leading into the Great Recession, the six major religious groups ranked in the following order: Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Protestants, the unaffiliated, and black Protestants. At the same time, these findings point to the upward mobility of white Catholics, who increased their income and made the greatest increase in net worth between 2001 and 2007. These data also suggest a decline in the socioeconomic status of the religiously unaffiliated as compared to previous studies. Research implications – These findings illustrate the degree to which certain religious groups have access to wealth and other resources, and have implications for how the years leading into the Great Recession may have influenced households’ vulnerability to financial shocks. Originality/Value – We use both income and wealth to examine whether different religious groups experienced any changes in income and wealth leading into the 2008 economic downturn.

Small Towns and Big Business: Challenging Wal-Mart Superstores By Stephen Halebsky Lexington Books. 2008. 248 pages.

“good” citizens capable of caring for their own. The affective state of ambivalence – pride and shame-based desire – was amplified by this care work. It was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Georgia’s anti-sodomy statutes against homosexual sex (but not heterosexual sex) in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) that the emotional habitus of queer communities began to shift. Gay and lesbian ambivalence was destabilized by the moral shock and indignation provoked by the ruling. Section two elaborates on the role of emotions and affect in sustaining ACT UP from 1987 to 1990. The humor, outlet for venting intense anger and grief, and even the erotic potential of ACT UP meetings and activities are described as key reasons that many people in the gay and lesbian community stayed with ACT UP over the years. The final section describes the decline of ACT UP as a movement. Although conflicts over tactics, strategies and key issues were present for the duration of ACT UP, they did not threaten movement sustainability until the gay and lesbian emotional habitus shifted once again. There were concerns that the movement was being misdirected toward other social justice issues and that activists who had gained privileged access to the scientific community were not doing enough for women and people of color with AIDS. This internal clash of interests led to moralizing and shaming between actors within the movement. In the context of accumulated despair that activists felt in the face of mounting AIDS deaths and greater tolerance of gays and lesbians by hetero-normative society, the movement crumbled. Moving Politics is a substantial empirical and theoretical work that is sure to be thought provoking for seasoned scholars and students of social movements alike. This book is a compelling example of how to integrate an analysis of emotions into group processes, but it also opens up avenues for further inquiry. For example, how are emotional habitus related to the production or contestation of particular ideologies? Are there particular kinds of emotional habitus that are more or less effective in mobilizing groups to political action? Can a general statement be made about the relative impact of conscious strategic deployments of emotion vs. organically generated and felt emotional habitus? For activists, how might reflexivity about the affective structures of their activism invigorate or hinder their projects? All in all, Moving Politics makes important contributions to social understandings of emotion and the specific role of emotions in political activism, all the while moving readers emotionally, politically and intellectually.

80 cloth,

Purpose – This paper considers the role of relationality as an interpretive strategy in the workplace, asking how one group of low-wage workers interpret their jobs in the service economy. Methodology – Qualitative interviews with 25 female retail workers. Findings – I argue that these retail workers use a relational ethic to interpret various aspects of their work. Relationality colors workers’ understanding of their job responsibilities, their own accounts of self-development in the workplace, and their strategies for resolving conflict on the shop floor. Practical implications – These findings are particularly relevant for current labor union activities, and thus I conclude by discussing the implications of this relational ethic for attempts to organize workers in the retail sector. Workers who prioritize relationships ahead of material gains in the workplace may be particularly uncomfortable with more confrontational styles of labor organization. Originality/Value of paper – Economic sociologists increasingly stress relational aspects of the economy, such as the role of networks in enabling market transactions; the significance of social ties in shaping economic exchange, and the importance of economic activity in constituting relationships themselves. This paper builds on that framework by arguing that workers also use a relational ethic to interpret their activity within the workforce itself.