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

“Established in the work of Roy Bhaskar (1975, 1998), it has been developed by a growing community of interdisciplinary scholars (Archer, 2007; Archer et al., 1998; Donati & Archer, 2015; Elder‐Vass, 2010; Porpora, 2015; Sayer, 2011; Smith, 2011).”

“While Nussbaum’s approach is strong for exploring the existence and strength of concrete capabilities and draws conclusions on how certain situations and practices impact on well-being (Sayer, 2011), it has been subject to a wide range of criticism.”

“Such approaches raise questions about interlocutors’, and researchers’ relationships of care and concern to the world (Sayer 2011), as well as what moves and matters (Lutz 2017) to children as they engage with the world beyond themselves.”

“I approach ethics as a modality of social action that is embedded in moral reasoning, but which is also attuned by the varying contexts and competing interests that people often face in ordinary life (Lambek, 2010; Sayer, 2011).”

“77 Iris Murdoch cited in Sayer 2011, 97.”

“Such responses illustrate that we are, as Sayer (2011) asserts, ethical beings, in the sense that we have come to evaluate behavior according to our views of what is good, right, or acceptable.”

“…the absence of a sweeping belief in efficient markets (in the broadest sense, see e.g. Patomäki, 2018a; Soros, 2013), capital or profit-making can hardly be taken as an unequivocal indicator of good understood for instance as aggregate welfare2 or, more generally, human flourishing (Sayer, 2011).”

“Such behaviour symbolizes a dignified conduct that involves not burdening others unnecessarily and taking responsibility for oneself (Sayer, 2011).”

“Underpinned by a critical realist approach, 21–27 which recognises that structural systems and processes at the national and general practice levels are strongly influenced by societal power dynamics 28 and interact with the resources of individuals in the home, 21 we explored the experiences of…”

“I have critiqued the standard, anti-naturalist views of normativity elsewhere and argued for a ‘qualified ethical naturalism’ that allows space for cultural variation and culturallyspecific goods (Sayer 2011, 2017).”

“Norms are about morality not just conformity: sometimes we do things because they are the right thing to do, not merely because we are adhering to our socialized conventions (Sayer, 2011).”

“To reiterate, we are real, needy material beings (emotional, social, dependent and so much more both physically and psychologically; see Sayer 2011).”

“Values are central to an individual’s self-concept (Hitlin and Piliavin 2004; Rohan 2000); they are commitments to living a certain kind of life and being a certain type of person, that become an embodied part of individual identity (Sayer 2011).”

“…people are socialized into their culture’s values largely implicitly or subconsciously, through processes of habituation, by engaging in various cultural practices (e.g., traveling, going to church, signing the children up for the local soccer team, Boy Scouts, etc.) (Bourdieu, 1994; Sayer, 2011).”

“Everyday affect and lay normativity are thus central to the afterlives of global finance and development as simultaneously resources for businesses to capitalize on and sites of political dissent and ethical care (Sayer, 2011; Konings, 2015; Schwittay, 2015).”

“This focus on what people can be and do and ‘an ability to achieve a given function should they choose it’ (Sen, 1999; Sayer, 2011: 234) informed elaboration of the dimensions of vulnerability theorised by Watts and Bohle (1993) and Bohle et al. (1994).”

“…several reasons why academics dissatisfied with both the flimsiness of positivism and the anti-humanism of post-structuralism in understanding oppression, resistance and emancipation welcome critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975, 1979) and its developments in social theory (Archer, 2003; Sayer, 2011).”

“Such identity-sensitive inequalities coexist with unequal treatment (Sayer, 2011) based on prejudicial attitudes toward stigmatized social groups (e.”

“This perception of need is identified in interaction with the professional’s knowledge and leads to an interpretation that is meaningful and sensible (Sayer 2011).”

“Individuals are moral and evaluative beings and act according to values that matter to them, engaging in everyday politics of ‘doing the right thing’ (Sayer 2011, p. 153).”

“Homelessness is bad (see Sayer, 2011: 8); people ought not to (have to) live this way; outreach workers aim to do something about that.”

“Although dispositions can change as a result of social change, they can also be ‘sticky’ and resistant to change (Sayer 2011).”

“As Sayer (2011) argues, we care about feeling subjects who can suffer, not subject positions that cannot.”

“Flourishing in this sense is to be distinguished from happiness, or even wellbeing, as it connotes activity (‘to flourish’) rather than simply a state of mind (Sayer, 2011).”

“…to provision and evaluation are required for practitioners, providers and policymakers to shape future policy together (Heimans and Singh, 2018) so that enabling and equity programs can be understood in ways that value the knowledges and experiences of the participants involved (Sayer, 2011).”

“Scholars have explored the politics of method – how politics shape the questions we ask and how we ask them, the relationships between social science, values and ethics, and what it means to ‘do justice’ to research findings and ‘have impact’ in and with the world (e.g. Bosworth and Hoyle, 2011; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Linco…”

“There is real reason to think, however, that the role emotions might play in ‘why things matter to people’ (Sayer, 2011) should be more deeply understood in adult education, especially, as Dirkx intimates, if emotions are intimately intertwined with processes of human learning.”

“…responsibilities to wider collective groupings are not simply exchanges that individuals engage in order to attain particular benefits or which are forced upon them, but rather constitute an essential part of human well-being itself, beyond individual notions of freedom and autonomy (Sayer 2011).”

“…recent scholarship looking at how lay sentiments of justice and understandings of inequality shape the experience of class (Hughes, 2007; Lam, 2004; Sayer, 2005a, 2005b, 2011), I wish to explore how different conceptions of justice are mobilized in practice in the context of these friendships and…”

“The knowledge of students’ subjective worldviews [1], their environmental conceptions and environmental relationships, are crucial to strengthening children’s connection to nature and expanding their knowledge base [2].”

“When people are denied the recognition they feel they deserve, they generally react with negative moral feelings of shame (Sayer, 2011).”

“Sayer (2011) considers how our values and our healthy concern with dignity and flourishing are at the centre of human life.”

“…of reflexivity’, despite offering a model that is more compatible with mine (see, e.g. Archer, 2000: 83, 195, 231–242; 2007: 25, 133–155; 2012: 22–3; Sayer, 2011), focuses the inquire mainly on the conditions of possibility of different modes of orientation and their possibility of success in…”

“However whilst drawing upon a social understanding of the experiences of individuals and groups, it is also necessary to qualify the danger of an over-socialised concept of individuals, with the possibility of reflecting on one’s social location and how that has been accomplished (Sayer 2011, 116).”

“Rational logic and dialogue are not the only, or even primary, motivations (Sayer, 2011).”

“As Sayer (2011) points out, the value of freedom is only one part of human lives and is often characterised in masculinist and liberal individualist terms.”

“Citizenship can be considered through a plethora of theories; however, according to Sayer (2011, p. 244) it “can be identified as (the terms and conditions of) political membership within a democratic society.””

“What critical realists mean by critical , however, ranges from a reduction of illusion to freedom from unwanted constraints to a stronger standpoint of critiquing injustices and avoidable suffering (Sayer, 2011).”

“Indeed, sociological theory remains largely uncritical if it lacks an implicit or explicit political philosophy (Callinicos 2006, esp. pp. 217-43, see also Gorski 2013, Sayer 2011, Smith 2015).”

“These comments illustrate how participants used embracing to express what they saw as good and acceptable (Sayer 2011), and so, the ethical purpose of SE.”

“In other words, they use social or structural factors as reasons for action (cf. Parfit, 1984; Sawyer, 2011).”

“Accommodating space for the recognition of patients’ needs, pain, experiences, wishes and desires will enable to trust patients.(6,9) Putting trust in patients may encourage their sense of dignity.”

“In that way, values are relational; they connect us to the world (Sayer, 2011).”

“…the place to go into detail regarding debates around the meaning and forms of rent, rent-seeking, and economic rent (see Ball, 1985; Christophers, 2023b; Collins, 2021; Haila, 2015), nor discussions of the equally complex concept of value (see Lake, 2023; McAuliffe and Rogers, 2020; Sayer, 2011).”

“That is, food sovereign pathways may only be identified through the explication of issues and problems that matter to people (Sayer 2011).”

“…this perspective, the girls are not merely articulating perceptions about actions which have discursively been shaped as morally acceptable, but actions which have importance to them because they affect their well-being, irrespectively of the meaning they may be given socially (Sayer, 2011: 203).”

“…and more recently, scholars working from some form of “realist” perspective, have also weighed in, drawing on the philosophical critiques in support of new ways of thinking about the relation of ethics and science and the rationality of values (for example, Gorski 2013; Sayer 2011; Smith 2010).”