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SUMMARY:Researching youth moralities: New sociological direction or moribu
 nd dead-end? - Dr Sharlene Swartz\, senior research specialist in the Chil
 d\, Youth\, Family and Social Development programme at the Human Sciences 
 Research Council in South Africa
DTSTART:20100426T160000Z
DTEND:20100426T173000Z
UID:TALK23880@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Susannah Lacon
DESCRIPTION:Research and pedagogy in the field of morality and moral educa
 tion has been dominated by philosophical and psychological disciplines. Al
 though sociological studies and theorising in the field has not been absen
 t\, it has been limited. Drawing on a study that investigated the lived mo
 rality of a group of young South African’s living in the aftermath of Ap
 artheid and in the shacklands of Cape Town\, this seminar surveys the hist
 orical contribution made by sociologists to the study of morality and intr
 oduces two sociological notions of importance to those researching in the 
 area of youth moralities. These two notions are that of a ‘moral ecology
 ’ and ‘moral capital’. Employing Bronfenbrenner’s ecological syste
 ms theory and social ecological theory it describes the moral life as an e
 cology of interconnecting systems\, complex antinomies\, diverse codes\, m
 ultiple positionings\, discordant processes and competing influences\, ove
 r time and on multiple levels. The second important notion\, that of moral
  capital\, draws on Bourdieu’s work on capital\, and is described in two
  ways. The first is the way in which young people living in poverty consid
 er how being good may be considered a form of ‘capital’\, and is trans
 lated into economic capital\, and which in turn allows them to do the ‘g
 ood’ things necessary for being regarded a ‘good’ person. It then as
 ks what are the necessary elements of moral capital\, that will help young
  people ‘be good’ and so access the economic future to which they aspi
 re. The paper concludes by noting how employing the notion of a moral ecol
 ogy helps to more precisely understand the relationship between poverty an
 d morality\, including the social reproduction of morality\; and how the n
 otion of moral capital may be useful for both researching and teaching mor
 al education\, especially among those living in resource-poor communities.
LOCATION:Faculty of Education\, 184 Hills Road\, Cambridge\, CB2 8PQ in Ro
 om GS1
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