Full Description
For over half a century, Stanley Milgram's classic and controversial obedience experiments have been a touchstone in the social and behavioral sciences, introducing generations of students to the concept of destructive obedience to authority and the Holocaust. In the last decade, the interdisciplinary Milgram renaissance has led to widespread interest in rethinking and challenging the context and nature of his Obedience Experiment.
In Morality in the Making of Sense and Self, Matthew M. Hollander and Jason Turowetz offer a new explanation of obedience and defiance in Milgram's lab. Examining one of the largest collections of Milgram's original audiotapes, they scrutinize participant behavior in not only the experiments themselves, but also recordings of the subsequent debriefing interviews in which participants were asked to reflect on their actions. Introducing an original theoretical framework in the sociology of morality, they show that, contrary to traditional understandings of Milgram's experiments that highlight obedience, virtually all subjects, both compliant and defiant, mobilized practices to resist the authority's commands, such that all were obedient and disobedient to varying degrees. As Hollander and Turowetz show, the precise ways subjects worked out a definition of the situation shaped the choices open to them, how they responded to the authority's demands, and ultimately whether they would be classified as "obedient" or "defiant."
By illuminating the relationship between concrete moral dilemmas and social interaction, Hollander and Turowetz tell a new, empirically-grounded story about Milgram: one about morality--and immorality--in the making of sense and self.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Morality and Milgram
Part I. The Moral Order of Interaction
Chapter 1. Moral Science and the Milgram Paradigm
Chapter 2. Morality in the Making of Sense and Self
Part II. Morality in Milgram's Lab: Interaction During the Experiment
Chapter 3. Situated Moral Practice: Resistance in Milgram's Lab
Chapter 4. Forms of Milgramesque Resistance
Chapter 5. Self- and Other-Attentive Resistance
Part III. Current Debates: Interaction in the Post-Experiment Interview
Chapter 6. Explaining Milgramesque Behaviors
Chapter 7. Milgram, Science, and Morality
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Appendix 1: Data and Methodology
Appendix 2: Transcription Conventions
References
Index
