Conclusion Moral Ambiguity

2017 ◽  
pp. 327-344
Author(s):  
Reiner Grundmann
Keyword(s):  
Moral Ambiguity

“I Saw a Kingfisher”: Grace and Ruin in Golding's The Spire

Horizons ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
D. M. Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Apple Tree ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
William Golding ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
Will Of God

AbstractWilliam Golding, in The Spire, invites us to ask how we may know the will of God, and suggests that what we take to be the will of God is often simply the projection onto history of the disguised image of our private and self-absorbed desires. Though contemporary critics tend to interpret the novel as a sympathetic exploration of moral ambiguity rather than as a compelling condemnation of Jocelin's mortifying and death-dealing sin, the novel turns on the contrast between the drive toward dominion and the capacity for assent. The final salvific discovery, given form in Jocelin's mind by the experience of the apple tree and the kingfisher, is the overthrow of the will, its panicked drowning, in terrified apprehension of implacable glory and squandered gifts.

Death or Declaw: Dealing with Moral Ambiguity in a Veterinary Hospital

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Atwood-Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Organizational Support ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Best Interest ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Veterinary Hospital

AbstractThe medical practice of declawing has received much political debate over the past few years. Yet, empirical and theoretical research on how this practice is maintained and the ethical positions of those who actually participate in this work is lacking. Drawing from 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a feline-specific veterinary hospital and open-ended interviews with veterinarians and staff, this study examines veterinary staff members' attitudes toward, and strategies for, dealing with the medical practice of declawing. Specifically, findings show that a number of staff felt uncomfortable with their participation in onychectomy (declawing) and relied heavily on organizational support structures to cope both with these feelings and the moral ambiguity about the practice. Relying on these structures, the veterinarians and their staff are able simultaneously to define felines as subjects worthy of respect for their quality of life, protect their own self-identity as people who work toward the best interest of animals, and paradoxically support action toward felines that they find morally objectionable.

In a “Half-dark, Half-light Zone”: Mobility, Precarity, and Moral Ambiguity in Vietnam's Urban Waste Economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh T.N. Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Network ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Urban Waste ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
State Agents

AbstractThis article discusses the everyday practices of a mobile network of migrant waste traders originating from northern Vietnam, locating them in an expanding urban waste economy spanning across major urban centres. Based on ethnographic research, I explore how the expansion of the network is foregrounded by the traders’ dealing with the precarious nature of waste trading, which is rooted in the social ambiguity of waste and migrants working with waste in the urban order. Characterised by waste traders as a “half-dark, half-light zone”, the waste economy is unevenly regulated, made up of highly personalised ties, and relatively hidden from the public. It is therefore rife with opportunities for accumulating wealth, but also full of dangers for the waste traders, whose occupation of marginal urban spaces makes them easy targets of both rent-seeking state agents and rogue actors. While demonstrating resilience, their practices suggest tactics of engaging with power that involve a great deal of moral ambiguity, which I argue is central to the increasing precaritisation of labour and the economy in Vietnam today.

Co-Creator or Creative Predator?

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Ecological Sustainability ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Ecological Ethics ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Ecological Ethic

While the Catholic Church’s official teaching on the environment presents a hopeful and comprehensive ecological ethic rooted in the goodness of creation and humanity’s privileged role as co-creator, it does not sufficiently account for the violence of predation and humanity’s necessary participation in it. James Nash’s understanding of humans as altruistic, creative predators can further Catholic ecological ethics because it strikes a better balance between humanity’s call to love creation and the moral ambiguity of the evolutionary process. Humans as creative predators suggests three new understandings of what ecological sacrifice could entail: 1) to see the death of every creature, even if a morally justifiable death, as a kind of sacrifice; 2) to recognize that ecological sustainability may demand dramatic and subversive shifts in behavior; and 3) to sacrifice our tendency to view nonhumans instrumentally by advocating a Biotic Bill of Rights.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Oldham
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Production Sector ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
John Le Carre

This conclusion surveys the history and evolution of the spy and conspiracy dramas over the preceding decades, summing up the arguments from the main chapters of the book. This is framed by discussion of some of the most recent programmes in these traditions, most notably the BBC’s return to John Le Carre with their adaptation of The Night Manager (BBC 1, 2016). It explores how these are increasingly made through complex co-production arrangements, with both the independent production sector and transatlantic co-production partners playing more dominant roles. This is linked to shift in trends back towards a ‘novelistic’ serial form, and new moral ambiguity whereby it seems increasingly difficult to distinguish the spy and conspiracy genres. It argues that this this responds to the critical agenda set American ‘quality’ television, with discourses of ‘quality’ emanating from pay-per-view threatening to supplant those associated with public service broadcasting.

Introduction

2015 ◽  
pp. 9-10
Author(s):  
Emily Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Gender Characteristics ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Micro Analysis

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002). The film offers much, both in terms of thematic analysis and micro analysis of the sound, performance, cinematography, editing, and mise-en-scène. Almodóvar can be considered to be a director who is a specialist in gender and the issue of gender identity is explored in Talk to Her, particularly the notion that gender characteristics are fluid and not fixed. Almodóvar's characters simultaneously embody and reject gender stereotypes and share both feminine and masculine attributes. Most of all, what makes Talk to Her such an interesting film to dissect, is the uneasy position that Almodóvar places the spectator in and how its messages and values create moral ambiguity. The film delivers morally complex, hazy messages about rape, voyeurism, and obsession and consequently, the spectator finds humour where they should find revulsion and sympathy where they should find anger. As a result, the film has sparked a great deal of critical, theoretical, and philosophical analysis, particularly around the issue of rape.

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