Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life

“…we must recognize that normative evaluation is an inherent (if often neglected) part of normal processes of social interaction and practice (see Sayer 2011 on ‘lay normativity’), and that part of normative evaluation is identifying aspects of life and of the actions, beliefs, arguments etc.…”

“…the Critical Realist tradition (hence, CR: Bhaskar 1975, 1979, 1986, 1989, 1994; Archer, Bhaskar, Collier, Lawson, and Norrie 1998; Hartwig 2007; Sayer 2011).31 Bhaskar’s philosophical position is far too complex to sum up in any detail, but it sets out from the same observation as Viveiros de…”

“…Plotnitsky, 2002; Thompson, 2007; Kuhn, 2000; Von Foerster, 2003), human activities are necessarily context-dependent and underlain by values (Sayer, 2011; MacIntyre, 1985); stability and change, routine and novelty are interwoven (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Dionysiou and Tsoukas, 2013;…”

“Drawing on Sayer (2011), Banks critiques the tendency to relativise value and “reify” creative economy (p. 1), which in Sayer’s term would translate into a form of relativism and not pluralism.”

“In as much as instrumental-rationality is indispensible in policy-making, therefore, we recognize its limitations (Sayer, 2011).”

“However, while not uncontested (Macklin, 2003; Spiegelberg, 1971), there is wide support for the inherent, universal and unconditional dignity of humans simply by virtue of being human (Lucas, 2017; Misztal, 2013; Sayer, 2011).”

“These inequalities can influence respectful treatment, autonomy, and other key indicators of dignity (Sayer, 2007, 2011), as well as limit individuals’ agency in defending themselves in the face of dignity threats (Newman, 1999).”

“In the flow and ebb of intellectual opinion, these Enlightenment positions have come under heavy criticism for their uncritical bifurcation of facts and values (Anscombe, 1958; Fowers, 2005; Sayer, 2011).”

“What people value and why has been overlooked in the social sciences (Sayer 2011).”

“A critical realist conceptualisation of ‘need’ (Assiter & Noonan, 2007; Bhaskar, 2009; Ramsay, 1992, 2004; Sayer, 2004, 2011) suggested an approach to qualitative data collection where data would be gathered from people about their experiences of lack or social ills as a means of getting at their…”

“On the one hand this approach emphasizes that people are reflective beings who can react in moral or unmoral ways in given contexts and thus have responsibility for their responses (Benhabib, 1992; Sayer, 2011).”

“The word “value” carries a variety of meanings across an array of disciplines such as sociology (Rokeach, 1973), philosophy (Rescher, 1969), psychology (Schwartz, 1992), economics (Freeman III, Herriges, & Kling, 2014), and ethics (Sayer, 2011).”

“…of competition and distinction, international and national measures of teaching and research ‘quality’ loom ever larger, and teaching and learning are becoming increasingly commoditized along input-output lines akin to industrialised processes (Barnes and Jenkins 2014; Ranson 2003; Sayer 2011).”

“Best leave the philosophy of social science to those who do it best, like Andrew Sayer (e.g., Sayer 2011).”

“If there are differences in these accounts, they should reflect actual differences in behaviour; they should not merely be artefacts of social scientists’ reluctance to acknowledge people’s reflexivity, agency and concern’’ (Sayer, 2011, p. 33).”

“There is, for example, an assumption in social scientific analysis that social actors are interest-led, power-led but not evaluatively led (Sayer 2006, 2011).”

“Things matter to people outside of power and money (Sayer, 2011) but people’s relational concerns, their care consciousness (Crean, 2018) need to be named and analysed sociologically if they are to be de-privatized and have political import.”

“Sayer (2011) explains the unique problems of identity-sensitive inequality: A crucial element in all these ills is treatment of members of the relevant groups in ways which are undignified: they may be mistrusted, their ability and probity may be doubted, they may not be taken seriously; worst of…”

“…of care is a feminist-based ethical theory, focusing on responsibility, social interconnectedness and collaboration, that has emerged as a field of theoretical and applied interest in many disciplines (Barnes et al. 2015; Gilligan 1982; Noddings 2013; Sayer 2011; Tronto 1993, 2013; Walker 2007).”

“This political conception of person transcends the dichotomy between disabled and non-disabled, and replaces it with a concept that recognizes embodiment and vulnerability as universal categories on an ontological level (Nussbaum 2004; Nussbaum 2006; Sayer 2011).”

“Feminism has been rightly critical of traditional social scientific and philosophic models of well-being in which autonomy and freedom are emphasized without appreciation of their relation to social being (Sayer, 2011: 127).”

“Notwithstanding there are significant differences between Sayer’s sentient, caring beings (Sayer, 2011), and Archer’s more cynical autonomous reflexives, both Sayer and Archer provide theories of agency and describe the concrete kinds of actors who populate their respective theoretical accounts.”

“…to an inordinately narrow economic metric, a metric that tends to conflate what is instrumentally significant (such as innovation) with what is intrinsically significant (such as well-being), a conflation of means and ends (SEN, 1999; MORGAN, 2004b; PIKE et al., 2006; BRISTOW, 2009; SAYER, 2011).”

“As Sayer put it in the title of his book, “ things matter to people ” e objects, actions, experiences and relationships have personal and moral signi fi cance as well as economic or instrumental worth (Sayer, 2011).”

“It also challenges us to think more broadly in normative terms (Sayer, 2011) and be, perhaps, less introspective and more challenging in our research questions in terms of what matters in higher education.”

“The notion of kindness, however, has not tended to feature in these discussions, perhaps because it hints at a prescriptive morality that social science has been keen to distance itself from (Sayer, 2011).”

“The notion of self-command rests on a relational understanding of agency, emphasizing people’s capacity for reflexive deliberations of how oneself and others are faring, taking seriously their interdependency and embeddedness in webs of social relationships (Archer, 2003; Karlsson, 2019; Sayer, 2011; Wrzesniewski et a…”

“While emphasizing the power of discourse, I also claim that there is an ontological dimension to a coercive sexual act which exceeds its discursive structuring (Alcoff, 2014) and contributes to its meaning in the non-linguistic sense of the term (Sayer, 2011).”

“Consequently, a life without impairments and experiences of disability is objectively valued more than a life with impairments and disability (Sayer 2011; Shakespeare 2006; Vehmas and Watson 2013).”

“…as an economist, his ideas also connect with many others working in so-called developed or affluent societies and whose concern is to re-integrate political and moral economies, to restore values and ethics to economic and political life and to re-embed economic life into life itself (Sayer 2011).”

“Scholars working in this intellectual tradition typically insinuate how things, as they currently stand, are wrong whilst providing very little practical ethical guidance as to how things ought to be (Sayer 2011, 44 and 229; Vehmas and Watson 2014).”

“According to Sayer (2011), identity-sensitive inequalities embody unequal treatment based on beliefs about social groups (e.g., casteism, sexism, and homophobia).”

“For instance, as Sayer (2011) notes, we are ‘beings for whom things matter’.”

“They have pointed out that as beings whose relation to the world is one of concern (Sayer, 2011), hu‐ mans constantly use empirical knowledge to inform their concerns about present or future flourishing or suffering.”

“Given that the most important issues that people face are normative ones; that they are ‘beings whose relation to the world is one of concern’ (Sayer, 2011: 2), it is a poor social science that cannot acknowledge those value-laden concerns.”

“Our internal conversations “are not simply ventriloquized by dominant discourses” (Sayer, 2011, p. 136).”

“Vulnerability relates to our agency to ‘emphasize the capacity to do things, but our vulnerability is as important as our capacities; indeed the two sides are closely related, for vulnerability can prompt us to act or fail to act, and both can be risky’ (Sayer, 2011, p. 5).”

“People are reflective and capable of working out of ultimate concerns that include their obligations to others; they can and do have an external moral referent that directs social actions beyond self-interest (Archer, 2000; Honneth, 1996; Sayer, 2011).”

“Consequently, they are often poor at thinking about human development and well-being (Sayer, 2011).”

“Such fragility is contagious and leads to a cycle of thinning relationships that disrupt people’s sense of self and place and impacts on the capacity (and willingness) to build supportive networks and communities in and out of the workplace (Sayer 2011).”

“It derives from a confusion of quite different meanings of ‘objectivity’ – ontological, epistemological, and as value-free (Sayer 2011, chapter 2).”

“But given the instrumental and unequal nature of work, individuals’ dignity is vulnerable, precarious, and almost always at risk (Lucas, 2015; Sayer, 2007, 2011).”

“…– which, as Postone (1993) emphasizes, is absolutely not homogeneous in its composition (p. 153), but rather totalizing in its effects – is a moral question absent entirely from ANT: the question of what consequences do social orders have for human beings and the things they value (Sayer, 2011).”

“This inherent view of dignity emphasises a human quality immune to social interactions, which means that it is available to all regardless of their relationship with others (Sayer 2011).”

“Sayer’s reassertion of the importance to social science of considering ‘why things matter to people’ (Sayer, 2011) is premised on a form of ethical naturalism that takes it as given that evaluating actions is a basic aspect of social practice.”

“The role of values and emotions for the purposes of mobilisation and underpinning change has been rescued and discussed in philosophical, sociological and political science literatures (Sayer, 2011; Nussbaum, 2003; Pedwell, 2014; Clarke, Hoggett and Thompson, 2006).”

“This definition notwithstanding, Polanyi, Thompson (1971, 1993) and Sayer (2000, 2006, 2007, 2011) are seen to bring different contributions to debates on moral economy.”

“On the other hand, it is open to experienced-based interpretation, something that Andrew Sayer (2011) says is important for understanding ‘why things matter to people’.”

“…opportunities, moral agency can be developed through ‘‘the ordinary sentiments, reflexivity, behavior and interactions of people, constrained and enabled by their physical and psychological capacities and susceptibilities, and by social structures and cultural discourses’’ (Sayer, 2011, p. 186).”

“In developing this argument, I draw on ideas from cultural sociology and the resurgence of interest in the sociology of morality (Frye 2012; Hitlin and Vaisey 2013; Lamont 2002; Miles 2015; Nielsen 2015; Sayer 2005, 2011).”

“…organizations seek to systematically weaken, undermine and suppress the ‘moral economy of work’ and the communal, reciprocal and ‘other-regarding’ values on which it relies, and which underpin the norms and structures through which collective interdependence is sustained (Sayer, 2011, 2015).”

“Such focus on everyday life is in line with recent virtue ethical research which shows a turn to the ‘moral phenomenology of ordinary life’ (Chappell 2013), recent sociological investigation which turns to everyday concerns in order to do justice to the ‘things that really matter to people’ (Sayer 2011) and theologica…”