Selfishness and Selflessness

New Approaches to Understanding Morality
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78920-549-7
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 10, 244 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 510 g

Reihe: WYSE Series in Social Anthropology

We are said to be suffering a narcissism epidemic when the need for collective action seems more pressing than ever. The traits of Selfishness and selflessness address the ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ relationship between one’s self and others. The work they do during periods of social instability and cultural change is probed in this original, interdisciplinary collection. Contributions range from an examination of how these concepts animated the eighteenth-century anti-slavery campaigners to a dissection of the way middle-class mothers’ experiences illustrate gendered struggles over how much and to whom one is morally obliged to give.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Layne, Linda L.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations, Figures and Tables

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Self, Selfish, Selfless

Linda L. Layne

Chapter 1. Taking the Measure of ‘Selfishness’ and ‘Selflessness’ in the Early Twenty-First-Century US and UK

Linda L. Layne

Chapter 2. ‘Sentiment Has Struggled with Selfishness’: Selfishness, Sensibility and Gender in the Late Eighteenth-Century British Antislavery Campaign

G.J. Barker-Benfield

Chapter 3. Selfless Advocacy? Profeminist Men’s Movements in Late Twentieth-Century Britain

Lucy Delap

Chapter 4. ‘Doing the Right Thing for My Child’: Self Work and Selflessness in Accounts of British ‘Full-Term’ Breastfeeding Mothers

Charlotte Faircloth

Chapter 5. Sexism, Separatism and the Rhetoric of Selfishness: Single Mothers by Choice in the US and UK

Susanna Graham and Linda L. Layne

Chapter 6. Selfish Masturbators? The Experience of Danish Sperm Donors and Alternatives to the Selfish/Selfless Divide

Sebastian Mohr

Chapter 7. Inroads into Altruism

Marilyn Strathern

Chapter 8. On Being Selfish – Or Not: Explorations of an Idea from the Mountains of Oaxaca and the Alaskan Tundra

Barbara Bodenhorn

Conclusion: Starting Points: Modest Contributions to the History and Anthropology of Moralities and Ethics

Linda L. Layne

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Layne, Linda L.
Linda L. Layne is the author of Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (1994, Princeton University Press) and Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America (2003, Routledge) and co-producer of a television series on pregnancy loss. She has edited or co-edited numerous volumes on motherhood, parenting and consumer culture. She now studies heterosexual single mothers by choice, lesbian moms and gay dads.