[Xmca-l] Re: Appeal for help

[Carol Macdonald]

Elinami and Andy

Perhaps, as a fellow African, I can tell Andy that this is definitely
stronger in African than in Western societies.  But I am going to go a step
further.  In totally Islamic societies (not for example UK or USA) there is
even a higher, or perhaps I should say more virulent sense of honour, so
families might commit honour killings, if they perceive the honour of the
family to be sullied. As a woman I feel very strongly against the killing
or burning or acid attacks on young women who want to choose their life
partner.

I know we all feel a little sensitive about islamic issues right now, so
perhaps we can move on to blood feuds in traditional societies (for example
in Polynesia).

Any what is the status of the family as a project? It certainly takes its
character from the larger culture of which it is part, but may be either
fluid or completely rigid. Is it constructed anew with every wedding or
partnership.

Carol

PS I think the Aus elections might be a case of two many "virtues" chasing
the same electorate. I expect we will know the outcome today.

On 5 July 2016 at 08:14, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> I think this is true of *all* cultures, Elinami.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> On 5/07/2016 4:08 PM, Elinami Swai wrote:
>
>> Dear Andy. Coming from gender studies, the concepts of 'family honor,'
>> and/or 'culture of honor' come to mind where a person's identity
>> depends largely on family and culture.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 05/07/2016, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Comrade and friends, I need some help.
>>>
>>> I am setting about developing a new approach to virtue
>>> ethics. Virtues are everywhere taken to be deep-seated
>>> attributes of a person's character; my aim is to make the
>>> starting point instead from virtues defined as deep-seated
>>> attributes of a project, which you can take to mean "social
>>> context" or "system of activity" if you wish. I don't need
>>> advice about issues and problems of ethics, but it is in in
>>> the nature of virtue ethics that it always has strong
>>> implications for psychology as well as social theory, to the
>>> extent that I think I can make a great deal of progress by
>>> calling on psychological data.
>>>
>>> Can people point me to research(ers) about how a person's
>>> character changes with social context (e.g. home/work), any
>>> evidence of the well-known phenomenon in which a person
>>> promoted above the ability suffers a moral degeneration; any
>>> suitable and reliable data about the differing character
>>> (not just preferences or cognition, but virtues) of people
>>> from one culture or another? or similar information about
>>> changes in a person's character following their emigration
>>> to another country?
>>>
>>> URLs appreciated, or whole books, I don't have access to a
>>> university library or JSTOR.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://home.mira.net/~andy
>>> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>


-- 
Carol A Macdonald Ph.D (Edin)
Developmental psycholinguist
Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
alternative email address: tmacdoca@unisa.ac.za