Moral Authority (moral + authority)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Advocates in the Age of Jazz: Women and the Campaign for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill

PEACE & CHANGE, Issue 3 2003
Mary Jane Brown
More than three thousand people, predominantly African American males, were lynched in the United States between 1892 and 1940. Occurring mostly in the South, lynching was a means that white southerners used to enforce white supremacy and prevent African Americans from achieving political, social, and economic gains after the Civil War ended slavery. White southerners declared that the threat of black men raping white women necessitated lynching. They further argued that inaction by the courts and the black community's shielding of criminals justified mob action, theories that gained wide acceptance in the South and that were commonly accepted in the North as well. In the 1890s, black women, led by anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells-Barnett, began a protest against lynching that swelled into a sizable movement. Under Wells-Barnett's leadership, anti-lynching activists dismantled the theory of white women's protection and formulated a strategy of investigation and exposure that became the template for future anti-lynching drives. When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909, it made anti-lynching a priority and drew black and white women to its anti-lynching battle. By the 1920s, women 's anti-lynching activity had become essential to the NAACP's drive for federal anti-lynching legislation and its campaign for passage of the Dyer bill. NAACP secretary Walter White's reliance on women increased throughout the 1920s, and women, courted both as voters and moral authorities, achieved a new level of importance in social movements and drives for legislation. This marked the beginning of the NAACP's twenty-year struggle for federal anti-lynching legislation, a campaign in which black and white women worked cooperatively and were essential to the campaign for the Dyer bill. [source]


"Living Our Faith:" The Lenten Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of Malawi and the Shift to Multiparty Democracy, 1992,1993

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2002
Maura Mitchell
From 1964 to 1993, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda ruled the nation of Malawi by a singular mixture of terror and ritualized paternalism, relying on religious institutions to bolster his own moral authority. In the changing global and regional political context of the early 1990s, however, it was the Roman Catholic bishops of Malawi who challenged the prevailing culture of silence. In the lenten pastoral letter entitled "Living Our Faith," the seven bishops reproached the Banda regime for its authoritarianism. Relying on New Testament images of Christians as inherently free, the bishops ultimately contributed to the development of representative democracy. Acting not as biased proponents of specific political groups but rather as the champions of government accountability and human dignity, Malawan Catholic clerics and the external rituals and symbols of their faith have attained (at least in the short term) a greater prestige and popular appeal in a religiously heterodox nation. [source]


Family Values: How Children's Lawyers Can Help Their Clients by Advocating for Parents

JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL, Issue 1 2007
CHRIS GOTTLIEB
ABSTRACT Children's lawyers too often view themselves as standing in opposition to parents in dependency proceedings. In this article, the authors argue that child advocates do a disservice to their clients by not using their considerable skills, role advantages, and moral authority to actively help parents. Noting that areas of common ground far exceed those places where the children's bar and the parents' bar might part company, the authors contend that children's lawyers have an obligation to actively fight for parents' rights. In particular, spending time early in a case to ensure that appropriate reunification services are being offered is well worth the investment, as it redounds to the benefit of all parties. Several concrete practice tips are offered regarding how children's lawyers can better serve their clients by regularly advocating for parents. [source]


Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 1.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 1 2006
February 200
Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 1 Front cover 'Strasbourg: 15th night of rioting. A French riot police officer gestures to direct the fire fighters to a torched car after vandalism in the eastern French city of Strasbourg early Wednesday 9 November 2005. Police forces have been deployed in the city as authorities expect a 13th night of disturbances all around France. Schiltigheim, France, 10/11/2005.' This photo illustrates Didier Fassin's editorial on the riots in the French banlieues. Although the immediate cause of the riots must be ascribed, at least in part, to the ill-advised reactions of the French police and government, the Prime Minister proceeded to proclaim a state of emergency, using a 1955 law passed during the war in Algeria. These events call for serious examination not only of what France stands for, especially in terms of racial discrimination, but also of why anthropologists should have felt so uncomfortable about analysing these events, just as they did with the controversy over the veil. The political foundations of the discipline in France posit a knowledge of remote societies rather than of others close to home, and aspire to theoretical universalism combined with an element of colour-blindness which ignores local social realities. Back cover Saving Children. In the back cover photo, a little girl holds a dummy pistol in Bella Camp, near Nazran, Ingushetia, Russia, in November 2002. In this issue Jason Hart considers the ways in which children are commonly represented. Particularly in conditions seen as especially adverse, children's lives have overwhelmingly been viewed through the prism of humanitarianism. Accounts of children living amidst conflict, social upheaval and extreme poverty produced by humanitarian organizations are commonly framed by contrast to Romantic ideals of childhood. The disparity thereby demonstrated has fuelled popular imagination in the developed economies of the world - useful not only in eliciting support for humanitarian action but also, under the current world order, in discrediting certain societies and ultimately in justifying military intervention. Hart argues that anthropology has a valuable role to play in enhancing understanding of the lives of children globally. Key to this is locating children within social, economic and political processes that extend beyond the local to the national and international. Taking the issue of 'child soldiers' as an example, Hart argues for the importance of including a focus upon the ways in which such phenomena as the global arms trade and the foreign and economic policies of Western governments contribute to the circumstances in which children come to engage as combatants. Furthermore, the dangers of such engagement need to be placed in the context of the diverse array of risks encountered by children in impoverished and marginal settings. We urgently need a child-centred ethnography attentive to the interaction between the global and the local in the everyday lives of the young so that we may interrogate more closely the moral authority of those who justify their actions in terms of 'saving children'. [source]


Young people, social change and the negotiation of moral authority

CHILDREN & SOCIETY, Issue 2 2002
Rachel Thomson
This paper presents some of the main findings of the study ,Youth values: identity, diversity and social change', focusing on the ways in which young people aged between 11 and 16 negotiate moral authority. It begins by discussing young people's perceptions of social change, identifying narratives of both progress and decline. The structure of young people's values are then briefly described, including differences relating to gender, location, social class and age. The factors that contribute to the legitimacy of moral authority in young people's eyes are explored through young people's accounts of school discipline, bullying, parenting and media violence. The paper draws on a range of data sources including questionnaires, focus group discussions, individual interviews and research assignments in which young people undertook their own interviews with adults. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The Short cut to international development: representing Africa in ,New Britain'

AREA, Issue 1 2000
Marcus Power
Summary Under New Labour, the British Department for International Development (DFID) promises a radical and alternative new ,development agenda' and, more specifically, an end to ,development handouts'. The short cut to international development envisioned by Secretary of State Clare Short is explored in this paper, as is the ,messy' contextuality of writing about development in ,New Britain'. This paper raises questions about New Labour's discussion of the ,moral authority' for international development in ,post-colonial' Britain, particularly in light of the recent ,arms-to-Africa' affair involving Britain and Sierra Leone. The paper argues that Britannia's neoliberal vision of development is not so ,cool' and that, in ethical terms, the development of foreign policy toward Africa has not been consistent. In conclusion, the paper raises doubts about the likelihood of world poverty being halved by 2015 (as the DFID has confidently predicted). [source]