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This article focuses on the concrete conditions and the social processes involved in the maintenance or change of the moral order in immigrant communities. This question is addressed based on archival research of the events that resulted in the restoration of the authority of Greek catholic priests in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) communities that settled in Paraná in the late nineteenth century. The analysis of the practices of the priests and of the settlers in the first years of their establishment in Brazil permits a reconstruction of the dynamics of the centralization of social life around the church, and the religious precepts of the Greek Catholic religion. The presentation of three cases in different communities with varying degrees of acceptance or rejection of the authority of the Uniate priests shows that the question of the maintenance of religious values in situations of diaspora can only be solved empirically.

MacAndrew and Edgerton's seminalDrunken Comportmentrevealed that normative expectations to drunken behaviour differ greatly across cultures. Such variation also exists within cultures, where different drinking contexts may be associated with great normative variation. However, why social regulation of drunken comportment varies has largely been left unexplored. To examine the basis of such differences, two Norwegian drinking contexts are compared: (i) the high school graduation celebration and (ii) the two introduction weeks at university. Data comprise 71 qualitative interviews and field notes from participant observation. The two practices take place within a time span of only four months and involve many of the same participants. Alcohol plays a key role in both contexts. However, while the first context allows for heavy intoxication, sexual explorations and violating norms that ordinarily regulate behaviour in public, the second context is associated with much more control. We argue that the basis of this difference may be found in the differing value priorities of these practices, with participants' behaviour being guided primarily by hedonism and social integration, respectively. When applied to drinking practices in general this conceptual apparatus might elucidate the basis of context-specific norms and intra-cultural variation in drunken comportment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the meanings children involved in fishing and farming practices in two communities in Cape Coast, Ghana, give to their participation in work and school. Everyday work tasks are considered purposeful by the children, as they describe their own efforts as a reproduction of a traditional intergenerational order with strong moral connotations. More than anything, the moral dimension of participation is highlighted when children talk about how they earn their identity, respect, and competences through work. For their future, however, many children dream about other kinds of jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the relationship between gender and management as intertwined discursive practices. Following a constructive controversial approach, we proposed to the students to complete a short story in which they have to give a feedback either to a fictitious female or to a male boss. The article has a dual aim since it offers a reflection on a teaching methodology suited to foster critical thinking in the classroom and analyzes the narratives so produced in search of what constitutes the students’ idea of “good management.” In positioning men/women CEO within a narrative, students enact a moral order that evaluates management in society. Their narratives reveal how the economic crisis has undermined the positive image of the male manager, while femaleness is emphasized for its anti-managerial imaginary. Moreover, the idea of what constitutes “good management” is constructed around an idea of care for both male and female CEOs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We draw on ethnographic studies to understand the collaborative nature of network policies or rules in domestic settings. We outline the technical nature of network policy in enterprise domains and how this contrasts with the social or collaborative nature of rules in everyday life. We then consider the deployment of network control and policy system interfaces in domestic settings, highlighting the ways in which household members collaboratively exploited these to support network governance. Our results suggest that an important feature of network policy in domestic contexts is that rules about network activity are shaped by and answerable to the moral reasoning that governs domestic life. This reframes our understanding of how rules are oriented to and used in the home and has significant implications for the design of home network policy systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a second-language classroom, it is beneficial for learning to encourage student participation. However, the teacher has to consider issues of equal participation and moral order. Drawing on a corpus of Finnish as a second language lessons for teenage students and adopting a conversation analytic approach, this article examines situations in which the students produce uninvited, teasing answers on behalf of other students. We focus especially on teacher responses: the teachers either ignore, ratify or sanction the uninvited answers. In our analysis, we show how the participants negotiate the right to answer, and how the teachers take into account the turn-taking rules of classroom interaction and the ongoing pedagogical activity, as well as moral considerations. In the article, ignoring the uninvited answer is treated as a default teacher response, since it corresponds to norms of prototypical classroom interaction. However, the teacher can ratify an uninvited answer if it is useful for pedagogical purposes, or s/he can sanction an uninvited answer if it is unacceptable for classroom talk or if the target of the teasing turn displays embarrassment. While participating in pedagogical activities, the students pursue their own social goals at the same time. This social dimension can promote learning but needs to be handled with care by the teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is dedicated to the problem of separation legal and moral order from the perspective of Kelsen`s Pure Theory of Law. In discussing the need for such a separation, the author shows its relevant consequences. According to the most controversial of them, the “amoral law” seems to be a very sovereign normative concept. But still another question arises – wouldlegal subjects be able to cooperate with the law when its effectiveness is only based on the coercive power and sanctions?

There is widespread consensus that current healthcare costs are unsustainable, and that efficiencies could be achieved by reorganising care and making greater use of information technology, in particular nationally available electronic health records. Such approaches have, however, been difficult to implement, partly because incentives for uptake are weak. In this article we argue that the difficulties go deeper than calculations of costs and benefits, and include disruptions to the complex moral orders that surround the production and exchange of health information. Using the introduction of national electronic health records in England and Australia as examples, we show how attempts to reshape and transfer distributions of rights and responsibilities developed in the age of paper into the digital world go awry. We suggest that a fundamental rethinking of the role of ‘records’ in healthcare may be an integral component of the moral re-ordering required to transform health care through such means. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Abstract: The digitalisation of patient health data to provide national electronic health record systems (NEHRS) is a major objective of many governments. Proponents claim that NEHRS will streamline care, reduce mistakes and cut costs. However, building these systems has proved highly problematic. Using recent developments in Australia as an example, we argue that a hitherto unexamined source of difficulty concerns the way NEHRS disrupt the moral orders governing the production, ownership, use of and responsibility for health records. Policies that pursue digitalisation as a self-evident ‘solution’ to problems in healthcare without due regard to these disruptions risk alienating key stakeholders. We propose a more emergent approach to the development and implementation of NEHRS that supports moral re-ordering around rights and responsibilities appropriate to the intentions of those involved in healthcare relationships. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] Sustainability research seeks to understand how culture shapes ecosystem services in human dominated landscapes. [•] The agropastoral system provides ecosystem services to the clan-based economies of southern Madagascar. [•] This livelihood system is regularly reinstated after crashing in cyclical drought events. [•] The local clan culture and morals provide incentives for re-instating the agropastoral system and its associated ecosystem services following droughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Trabajo Social is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlights: [•] Proposes a theorisation of im/politeness as social practice. [•] Argues need to examine im/politeness evaluations within a broader participation framework. [•] Claims im/politeness evaluations are distributed, variable and cumulative in interaction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Chinese Studies / Hanxue Yanjiu is the property of Center for Chinese Studies/National Central Library and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Sociologica (0186-6028) is the property of Instituto de Investigaciones Filosoficas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Speaker meaning is generally defined in pragmatics in terms of the speaker''s intentions. The received view is that a speaker means something by intending that the hearer recognise what is meant as intended by the speaker, thereby grounding speaker meaning in a presumed cognitive reality. In this paper it is proposed that speaker meaning can also be conceptualised from a social, deontological perspective where the speaker is held accountable to the moral order for what he or she is taken to mean in interaction. Speaker meaning in this sense encompasses moral or ethical concerns such as rights, obligations, responsibilities, permissibility, and thus is a real-world, consequential concept for participants in interaction. One result of this real-world consequentiality is that the degree of accountability for speaker meanings can be observed to be disputed by participants in both institutional and everyday talk. A second consequence is that the degree of accountability for speaker meanings can be modulated through various meaning-actions that either increase or decrease a speaker''s level of accountability for particular meanings. The practice of not-saying is argued to be one relatively neglected meaning-action through which speakers may decrease their level of accountability in interaction. It is concluded that work remains to investigate whether a deontic conceptualisation of speaker meaning can be reconciled with the received view. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Summary: This article analyses the ‘Big Society’ agenda of the UK coalition government as a response to New Labour’s regulation of society through incentives, contracts, targets and micro-management.• Findings: It argues that two sides of the programme are relevant for social work. Initially, most attention has understandably focused on the public spending cuts – rolling back the state and transferring responsibilities to voluntary organizations. But in the longer term, of equal significance will be its emphasis on increased citizen participation, empowered communities and collective action.• Applications: This agenda poses challenges and opportunities for a practice which is less individualistic, formal and desk-bound; but it also raises issues about the wider solidarities upon which equality and social justice depend. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper describes how irony is used to negatively evaluate student behaviour in sequences where students disrupt or resist the official business of the lesson and thus challenge the teacher''s authority. Irony-implicative utterances, i.e. utterances hearable as ironic in their context, are examined from two complementary perspectives: (i) the intricate interactional work utterances involve; how utterances are hearable as ironic and how participants negotiate their implications within the sequences of action in which the utterances are occasioned and used, and (ii) the use of irony in the local management of moral orders in the classroom. Findings show that irony-implicative utterances are used to deal with designedly cheeky utterances by students and invoke the boundaries of acceptable conduct especially at transitional phases during lessons. Irony can also be embedded in instructional questioning sequences, where it serves to convey disapproval or criticism for inappropriate student action. Finally, irony or sarcasm is used in conflictual exchanges to build opposition and manage resistance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In theorizing on family life, children’s agency is a feature of a modern type of family, marked by free choice and inter-generational negotiations rather than parental authority. A video ethnography of Swedish everyday family life documents directive sequences and inter-generational negotiations, including what is here called activity contracts: agreements that form a type of inter-generational account work around target activities (e.g. cleaning one’s room). Within local family politics, contracts and revised contracts emerge as parts of such account work. The analyses focus on how contracts emerge within successive downgradings and upgradings of parental directives. Activity contracts regulate mutual rights and obligations, invoking family rule statements and local moral order, drawing on an array of verbal and nonverbal resources, ranging from parents’ mitigated requests and children’s time bargaining to nonverbal escape strategies and gentle shepherding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Given that the conception of the person as an autonomous agent is a cultural construction, inquiry is directed to its potentials and shortcomings for cultural life. While such a conception contributes to sustaining the moral order, it also supports an individualist ideology and social divisiveness. As an alternative to the conception of moral autonomy, I explore the potentials of relational being, an orientation that views relational process (as opposed to individual agents) as the wellspring of all meaning. Such an orientation sees all moral concepts and action as issuing from coordinated action. However, at the same time that relational process generates moral orders, so does it establish the grounds for 'immorality' and social conflict, which undermines the relational process of creating moral order. Thus, a concept of 'second-order morality' is advanced, which seeks to reestablish a more inclusive first-order morality. Responsibility for productive processes of relationship is invited. Recent innovations in dialogic practices lend themselves to relational responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]