For a Better Living-Together: Ongoing Meaningful Conversations at Play

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter provides two contributions. On the one hand, it argues that morality is a mine field for sociologist as they lack the analytical tools to judge what is moral and what is not. Yet, historical sociology has shown that morality is bound to culture, and accordingly culture and cultural practices should gain the center stage of the sociological work on morality. Further on, we claim that social movements scholars can show that specific contentions directly relate to major political cleavages where major debates about moral issues are staged.Our second contribution offers an empirical example of such a research agenda. Using original survey and interview data on pro-migrant’s rights activists and environmentalists, we show that activists from these two groups form a common community—the moral voicing community. They share an understanding of the social problems they are committed for. Activists from both groups judge as immoral when specific social or cultural groups lack basic rights or suffer from environmental devastations and interpret these assessments through a prism of injustice. Finally, we show that these shared meanings on our living-together are continuously constructed through a specific relational mechanism. Indeed, ongoing and direct conversations are necessary to maintain those shared views and to ultimately sustain their activism.