Narrating the crisis: Moral regulation, overlapping responsibilities and COVID-19 in Canada

This article theorizes some of the ways that the COVID-19 health crisis was publicly narrated and morally regulated in Canada. Beginning with Valverde’s theory of moral capital, public health crisis communication is conceptualized as dialectical claims-making activities aimed at maximizing the individual moral capital of citizens and the aggregate moral capital of nations. Valverde’s historical sociology explains how moral capital operated in relation to economic capital accumulation in the context of 19th-century moral regulation of the urban poor. This article applies aspects of Valverde’s historical framework about mixed economies of regulation to contemporary biopolitical moralization in the midst of a pandemic. It does so by arguing that responsibilizing citizens to flatten the epidemic curve of the disease contributed to the social construction of a normative pandemic subject. In this way, the analysis provides insights into how public health crisis communication explicitly intended to mitigate COVID-19 infection rates both reflected and reinforced the conjunctural norms associated with neoliberal governmentality.

Worlds Apart? – The Challenges of Aligning Brand Value for NGO’s

Brands are increasingly part of how international aid and development Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) operate, but there are challenges in aligning NGO brand value across diverse stakeholders. This research explores how key decision makers within one major NGO – Oxfam—construct the challenges of brand value alignment, using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis methodology. Three master-themes emerge demonstrating key tensions around aligning NGOs brand value: the difficulty of balancing competing stakeholder needs, the internal cultural conflict around branding, and the existential dilemma underlying the societal effectiveness of NGOs. This paper proposes that NGOs can better navigate these intra—brand tensions using Brand-as-Purpose as an organizing principle; framing shared identity, creating a dynamic container for stakeholder interests and cultivating Moral Capital strongly anchored in increasing recipient wellbeing. This paper is one of the first pieces of research which explores how NGOs make sense of aligning brand value in the context of complex stakeholder cultures and recipient sovereignty. Brand-as Purpose is put forward as an organizing principle to help balance three key tensions around brand value alignment. This paper proposes that Moral Capital anchored in recipient wellbeing underpins NGO brand value and societal legitimacy and needs to be paramount in how NGO’s establish and legitimize their brands.

Rebelling against the Ruler: Egyptian Youth and Azhari Scholars’ Authority after the 2011 Uprising

Scholars have investigated statements by Azhari ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) about the legality of protest in Egypt in 2011 and 2013 and their use of fiqh al-wāqiʿ, a jurisprudential method by which jurists consider social and political realities when issuing legal opinions. These studies focus on Islamic legal theory but do not examine the social implications of the legal. Based on textual analysis of televised statements by ʿulamāʾ and interviews with young Muslim Egyptians, I argue that, although some jurists discouraged the laity from joining the 2011 protests, religious youth were not deterred from protesting. Additionally, laypeople who are not well-versed in Islamic law grew suspicious of the shifting opinions of ʿulamāʾ on the legal status of protest, as happened in 2013. In the aftermath of the 2011 and 2013 movements, the moral capital of several Azhari scholars decreased as did the moral-legal purchase of the fatwās they issued.

Does Sharing Economy Have a Moral Capital? Comparing Semantic Networks in Social Media and News Media

Sharing Economy organizations appear to enjoy positive moral capital associated with supporting local entrepreneurs, the economy, and the environment. However, they operate in a regulatory limbo allowing them to engage in business practices that would not be permitted in other sectors. Hence a question remains: Does Sharing Economy (SE) have a moral capital? To explore whether the sharing economy has a moral capital, we explored the discussions around Uber after a number of scandals in 2017 in news media and on Twitter. Our findings show that news media play a critical role in developing and maintaining a positive moral capital of Uber, while the general public on Twitter tend to be more negative and do not afford SE much moral capital.

The Art of Anti-conformism

A democratic society which fails to accept the necessity of heretical personalities cannot long remain democratic. B.R. Ambedkar was well aware of this fact, but he also knew that his moral capital as a leader with an egalitarian vision did not provide him with the sufficient legitimacy to call into question laws of the Hindu religion and those of a temporal Hindu state or society. To his honour, Ambedkar stood all alone in his rejection of unjust laws and regulations in pre- and post-independent India.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Transactions of Moral Capital in Sick Leave Management Within the Corporate University

In this article, we argue that sick leave and its management within the university involves exchanges of moral capital. The circulation of moral capital supports a moral economy, in turn underpinning the political economy of the corporate university. The forms of moral capital are diverse, sometimes easily recognized as such, more often hidden in plain sight. Like other forms of capital, moral capital can be accrued, depleted, and exchanged as it is paid forward. The exchanges between employers and employees within this moral economy represent trading of moral capital over and above contractual exchanges of income and other benefits for labor. Sick leave transactions illustrate the many forms this moral capital can take: values and principles, entitlements and accruals of sick leave, bureaucratic compliance, discretion, vulnerability and deservingness, employment history, and work ethic.

Personality as an ecology of values

The paper examines the concept of individual and collective value identities based an emotionalist understanding of values. The main perspective it discusses is one where emotions are the most important practical instruments for the clarification of individual and collective values. The argument implies that moral emotions are not irrational, but have a logic of their own which can reliably pinpoint the persons’ value system; emotions are thus crucial building blocks of an ethics which is able to enhance personal and moral identity. This particular ecology of moral emotions is pivotal in crisis periods, such as the global pandemics, wars or system crashes, either economic, or political, security, diplomatic or cultural. In the current circumstances, where the already shaken individual and collective values throughout the world have been shaken by the Covid-19 pandemic, understanding identities as fundamentally couched in moral emotions may be critical to saving our cultures and our legacies of social and moral capital.

Personality as an ecology of values

The paper examines the concept of individual and collective value identities based an emotionalist understanding of values. The main perspective it discusses is one where emotions are the most important practical instruments for the clarification of individual and collective values. The argument implies that moral emotions are not irrational, but have a logic of their own which can reliably pinpoint the persons’ value system; emotions are thus crucial building blocks of an ethics which is able to enhance personal and moral identity. This particular ecology of moral emotions is pivotal in crisis periods, such as the global pandemics, wars or system crashes, either economic, or political, security, diplomatic or cultural. In the current circumstances, where the already shaken individual and collective values throughout the world have been shaken by the Covid 19 pandemic, understanding identities as fundamentally couched in moral emotions may be critical to saving our cultures and our legacies of social and moral capital.