Workshop: Understanding Morality: Developing Interdisciplinary Perspectives

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

SES-0907496 Steven Hitlin University of Iowa The workshop will focus on increasing sociology's participation in the social scientific study of a core human concern "morality" and fostering and interdisciplinary research on the topic. Debates over right and wrong, justice, values, propriety, and deviance are at the core of organized social life. The scientific study of morality has recently received a number of prominent treatments within popular discourse. These stories tend to focus on evolutionary and psychological aspects of moral judgment. What is left out of the coverage is a sociological understanding of morality. The workshop will stimulate sociologists' participation in interdisciplinary efforts to understand morality that currently do not reflect sociology's potential contribution. Specifically, the workshop wil 1) assess both what is known and what gaps exist in sociological knowledge on morality; 2) facilitate interaction and collaboration among those studying morality, including across subfields; 3) inform sociologists about relevant work from other disciplines; 4) stimulate sociological research on morality; and 5) bring a sociological voice to public discourse on morality. Broader Impacts Potential broader impacts include developing a research agenda that expands sociologists? participation in the study of morality; and fermenting interdisciplinary collaborations to study the different aspects of morality that will integrate research from psychology, neuroscience, religion, law, political science, and economics. The workshop will produce a published report that will lay out the state of current sociological and an agenda of future interdisciplinary research and research on morality. A website will be created that will house workshop and related papers and host an exchange of information on the study of morality that will maintained after the workshop is over.