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The Social Science Journal

ISSN: 0362-3319 (Print) 1873-5355 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ussj20

Sociology: Moral dialogues and normative change

Hilary Silver

To cite this article: Hilary Silver (2018) Sociology: Moral dialogues and normative change, TheSocial Science Journal, 55:1, 19-22, DOI: 10.1016/j.soscij.2018.02.005

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2018.02.005

Published online: 09 Dec 2019.

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The Social Science Journal 55 (2018) 19–22

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Sociology: Moral dialogues and normative change

Hilary Silver1

Professor of Sociology, International Affairs, and Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 7 March 2018

Keywords:Moral dialogueNormsSocial changeSexual harassment

a b s t r a c t

Moral dialogues are one mechanism of cultural change, allowing communities to resolveconflicts and revise the fundamental norms and values governing their members’ rela-tionships. This essay illustrates the moral dialogue process with the debates over sexualharassment in the Trump era. Victimized women launched a transnational “megalogue”that pervaded politics, business, entertainment, academia, and other spheres. It trans-formed norms, institutions, and enforcement of acceptable behavior in employment and inpublic, resulting in a new shared moral understanding. However, the fact that the Presidentis not punished for immorality demonstrates that normative change ultimately requires therule of law.

© 2018 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Justifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202. Moral dialogue over sexual harassment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Amitai Etzioni’s essay on “Moral Dialogues” – the socialprocesses through which people form new shared moralunderstandings – emphasizes the necessary norms andvalues that underlie social interaction and communitycohesion. Social relationships are the purview of the disci-pline of sociology, especially its Durkheimian tradition. Thecultural and moral motivations for engagement with otherscontrast with the self-interest foregrounded in economicsand with the coerced conformity stressed in political sci-ence and the law. Sociologists maintain that people complyvoluntarily and even at their own expense if they believethat norms are legitimate and just.

While justifications of behaviour may be both practicaland moral, they also have emotional valence. Much psy-chology, cognitive science, and neuroscience report that

1 Address: Professor Emerita of Sociology and Urban Studies, BrownUniversity, 801 22nd Street NW, Suite 409, Washington, DC 20052, USA.

social emotions like compassion, gratitude, and pride aremore powerful motives than material rewards. We helpothers because it feels “right,” not because we expect reci-procity. And we often regulate our behaviour more inresponse to informal social sanctions such as ostracism,shaming, and ridicule than to legal or economic penaltiesfor noncompliance.

Yet socialization into a culture and internalization ofshared values are never complete. Values may be rejected,and rules challenged. Diverse subcultures and behaviouralpatterns persist. Conflicts erupt, disturbing consensus. Cul-tures are neither monolithic nor static. Assuming they areso has led many a communitarian into trouble.

Etzioni’s essay does seem to assert that societies restupon an identifiable if unnamed set of core moral values,while admitting a modicum of pluralism or multicultural-ism. Even if such core values could indeed be enumerated,they are not forever fixed. Etzioni points to one reasonwhy: culture changes through a process that he calls“moral dialogue.”

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2018.02.0050362-3319/© 2018 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

20 H. Silver / The Social Science Journal 55 (2018) 19–22

Moral dialogue proceeds through stages. After estab-lishing the “baseline” moral understanding, sociologicaldialogue starters initiate intensive, interlinked multiplegroup discussions or “megalogues” necessary for moraldialogues to take place on a large, even transnationalscale. Moral dialogue draws on both emotional expressionsand reason. Dramatizations, demonstrations, or parablesengage the emotions and invoke overarching “core” val-ues for justification. Moral dialogues reach closure with thetransformation of attitudes, values, behaviour, and even thelaw, and with the establishment of a new “shared moralunderstanding” different from the baseline.

In laying out such a sequential process, Etzioni’sapproach to moral dialogue resonates with sociologistStanley Cohen’s (1972) stage theory of “moral panics.” Amoral panic is a concern or fear, spread among a large num-ber of people by moral entrepreneurs or the media, thatsome evil condition, episode, person or group threatenssocietal values and interests. Depicting the threat throughsimple, recognizable symbols arouses the public emotion-ally. While concern about menacing “folk devils” is usuallywidespread, it quickly dissipates. The authorities respond,sometimes disproportionately, restoring social order andproducing social change. Moral panics reinforce culturalbinaries of good and evil, purity and dirt, security anddanger, but, the theory posits, there is no guarantee thatcondemnation of societal threat or deviance will unite thesociety in a new moral consensus. Unlike a moral dialogue,a moral panic may just reinforce tradition.

1. Justifications

Etzioni’s moral dialogues, in contrast, differ from the“hot” passionate irrationality of moral panics and culturewars. Moral dialogues also differ from rational delibera-tions based on “cold” logic and facts. Rather than evidence,people offer justifications, appealing to an overarchingvalue that the parties to the dialogue share. In Boltanski &Thévenot’s (2006) conception of justification, appeals to ahigher general principle help opponents reach agreementsand coordinate action. People answer in moral terms fortheir behaviour to those with whom they interact. UnlikeWeber’s post hoc, even deceptive forms of “legitimation,”these justifications are genuine and sincere, overcomingobstacles to cooperation.

However, these French sociologists are skeptical aboutthe communitarian assumption that a culture has a hier-archy of “core values” taking precedence over secondaryvalues that are more diverse. Boltanski and Thévenot iden-tify different logics of justification within the same culture:civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), andfame (Hobbes). Given multiple core values, agreement withall of them is insufficient to determine which shall prevailin any given circumstance. As people compete to legiti-mate their definition of the situation, their justificationsmay appeal to any of these conflicting logics. Indeed, evenrational argument is moral, but belongs in a different orderof justification than that of other value approaches. Sincedifferent moral justifications dominate in markets, politics,families, religion, and other social spheres, moral dialogues

can never be confined to the “third sector.” They are every-where in social life.

Therefore, the communitarian assumption that sociallife rests upon “Shared Moral Understandings” cannotevade the inevitable social conflicts over which values,in this instance or another, should prevail. Communitar-ianism is often depicted as a “Third Way” of compromisebetween Marxist and liberal conceptions of social order.Yet, a community’s resolution of differences may, unhap-pily, require more than dialogue, however copious anddemocratic the participation in it. To be sure, voluntarycompliance with legitimate social norms reduces the costsof social interaction. But sometimes it becomes necessaryfor the authorities to impose a higher common principle– perhaps derived deductively through philosophicalreasoning or an absolute ethical theory – in order to getanything done.

Etzioni optimistically posits that moral dialogues endin “closure” through legal and behavioural changes andrestoration of shared understandings. The dialogues notonly shore up, but also negotiate and revise core values.They are thus a methodology for peacefully producingcultural change, as illustrated in Etzioni’s case study ofthe acceptance of same-sex marriage. In what follows, Iapply the moral dialogue approach to the case of sexualharassment in the Trump era, concluding that the processunfolded much as Etzioni suggested it would, but not reach-ing closure without endorsement of the State.

2. Moral dialogue over sexual harassment

Sexual harassment has long been illegal, but the pro-hibition was rarely enforced. Norms began to change in2016, with the outrage over Donald Trump’s “locker roomtalk,” captured on the Access Hollywood tape. The day afterhis Inauguration, masses of American women in pink knit“pussy hats” held protest marches. The defeated femalecandidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, tweeted, “Thanks forstanding, speaking and marching for our values,” laterblaming her defeat partly on misogyny. The disgust swelledagain with the Alabama primary victory of Roy Moore,a judge removed from office for breaking man’s law,and accused by multiple women of dating and sexuallyassaulting them as minors. The dam broke when reputableactresses revealed their experiences of sexual harassmentand assault by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.Through social media, more women found their voices andwere heard. One by one, they credibly accused men at thepinnacle of entertainment, business, academia, and polit-ical power of sexual misconduct. Celebrities on the leftand right were fired. Politicians and moguls resigned. Thefrenzied media could barely keep up confirming the allega-tions. TIME Magazine named “The Silence Breakers,” thosewomen who spoke out against sexual assault, the 2017 Per-son of the Year. For many, this wave of feminism constitutesa cultural revolution.

Has this process unfolded as a moral dialogue? After all,moral strictures and laws prohibiting sexual assault are notnew. But at “baseline,” the norm of women’s submissionto male domination acted to discredit victims’ complaintsand preclude punishment of harassers. Filing a discrimi-nation complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity

H. Silver / The Social Science Journal 55 (2018) 19–22 21

Commission is a long, expensive, and risky process that,even with victory, may not ultimately end the violation. The1991 Anita Hill episode may have been a “historical starter”of this dialogue, but was an insufficient “moral shock” tohold powerful men accountable. The moral dialogue alsomoved abroad, setting off a transnational conversation in2011. For example, l’affaire DSK, the scandal that shatteredthe exculpatory myth of “séduction à la franç aise,” endedwith the resignation of an IMF chief and with justice for anexploited American chambermaid (Fassin, 2017).

The “sociological dialogue starter” in 2016 was therevelation of incontrovertible evidence of a presidentialcandidate bragging on tape about his own sexual assaults.Victims found one another through #MeToo, an on-linenetwork initated by African-American women. The newlyempowered discarded non-disclosure agreements, andchallenged the unspoken rule that powerful men could getaway with breaking the law. Famous, respectable, mostlywhite victims defied the stigma that women “asked for it.”With social support and growing numbers, public confi-dence grew in the veracity of their claims. About four in 10women admitted in the 2017 Gallup poll that they’ve beena victim of sexual harassment. A Washington Post/ABCNewsreported that more than half of American womenhad experienced “unwanted sexual advances,” and a Cen-ters for Disease Control and Prevention study found one intwo women and one in five men have experienced sexualviolence other than rape during their lifetime. Raliance, agroup of organizations trying to end sexual violence, spon-sored a 2018 on-line survey revealing widespread experi-ences of verbal harassment, sexual touching, cyber sexualharassment, being followed on the street, and genital flash-ing (Chira, 2018). The accusations of immorality cascadedinto a social movement, as documented in this GoogleTrend graph of interest in sexual harassment over time.

“Megalogues” erupted, as Etzioni predicts. “Inten-sive, interlinked multiple group discussions” delegitimizedabuses of masculine power across spheres of social life.Everyone was talking about harassment. Ordinary work-ing women saw themselves in the confessions of famousactresses. Among men and women alike, the graphic detailsof predatory behaviour – men exposing themselves, entic-ing, pleading, touching, groping, threatening – producedwidespread disgust, an emotion producing outrage anddemands for change.

To use Huntington’s (1981) term, an IvI gap opened,a discrepancy between American ideals of moral perfec-tion and the inevitable imperfections of institutions, givingrise to disharmony between the normative and existen-tial dimensions of American politics. Throughout history,when Americans perceive this tension and believe stronglyin the ideals, their moral outrage and “creedal passion”increases popular participation, in turn producing insti-tutional reform. Today, the overarching value of equaltreatment has overwhelmed the realities of partisanship,careerism, and traditional gender roles. Much of the publicis demanding that men’s behaviour conform to the law, andthat the law is enforced. This seems to be the new moralunderstanding.

Institutions are changing. Employers are again insistingon harassment and diversity training. Business schoolsaround the country are hastily reshaping their curricu-lums with case studies on workplace ethics and values.Since the Harvey Weinstein scandal, there has been afourfold increase of traffic on the EEOC website on sexualharassment. The moral dialogue around sexual harass-ment is clearly having an effect on American attitudes.In the October 2017 Gallup poll, 69% of Americans saidsexual harassment today is a major problem, up from50% in 1998. The increase was as notable among men(from 45% in 1998 to 66% in 2017) as among women(from 55% to 73%). In November 2017, for the first timesince Gallup began measuring Americans’ preferencesabout the gender of their boss, a majority now say theirboss’ gender makes no difference to them. Those whodo have a preference are now evenly divided betweenmale and female bosses, also a first in Gallup’s trend.(http://news.gallup.com/poll/221216/concerns-sexual-harassment-higher-1998.asp)

So it would appear that American society has indeedengaged in a moral dialogue and reached a new, shared,moral understanding. Until, that is, one remembers the U.S.President describing in a taped conversation that he hadcommitted sexual assaults, made all the more credible bypaying hush money to a porn star and a Playboy bunny withwhom he had affairs. A dozen women continue to accusehim of inappropriate behavior before his election. Closurefor the nation may never be reached until the unrepentantleader confesses and apologizes, resigns, or loses a lawsuit.If the President gets away with sexual harassment, somepowerful men will not change their misogynist attitudesand locker room behaviour. Flouting the rules will “unravelvoluntary compliance over time because,” as Etzioni writes,“those who adhere to the norms will feel that they are beingtaken advantage of or treated unfairly and feel like ‘suck-

22 H. Silver / The Social Science Journal 55 (2018) 19–22

ers.”’ More than a slap on the wrist is required to ensurecompliance.

This is where the State comes in. Moral indignation mustultimately be backed up with the rule of law. Senator KristinGillibrand and other women in Congress have called forinvestigations into the accusations against Trump, saying,“It’s the right thing to do and these allegations should beinvestigated.” Until they are, moral consensus may not beenough for immoral behaviour to change.

References

Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (2006). On justification. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Chira, S. (February 21, 2018). Numbers Hint at Why #MeToo TookOff: The Sheer Number Who Can Say Me Too, New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/upshot/pervasive-sexual-wharassment-hy-me-too-took-off-poll.html.

Cohen, S. (1972). Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the mods androckers. London: MacGibbon and Key Ltd.

Fassin, E. (2017). Harcèlement sexuel: L’affaire DSK a fait voler en éclatsla rhétorique sur la “séduction à la franç aise. Le Monde, November 24http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/11/24/harcelement-sexuel-l-affaire-dsk-a-fait-voler-en-eclat-la-rhetorique-sur-la-seduction-a-la-francaise 5220062 3224.html#cThQrYRSdR850teS.99

Huntington, S. (1981). American politics: The promise of disharmony. Cam-bridge: Harvard University Press.