Moral Matters: Conversations with Sociologists on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity

In this edition of Speaking of Solidarity, we interview Ruth Braunstein about her new book My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying.In this book, Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein’s innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane.Ruth Braunstein is SNF Agora Institute Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and host of When The Wolves Came: Evangelicals Resisting Extremism, a new documentary podcast spotlighting evangelical leaders who are resisting political extremism in their church and the country. A cultural sociologist interested in the role of religion and morality in American political life, Ruth’s award-winning research has been published in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Contexts, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Political Power and Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, Theory and Society, and Qualitative Sociology, among other outlets. She is also the author of Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide and co-editor of Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics.

In this episode of Moral Matters, Nicole and Jiwon interview Matthew Andersson on his recent book with Steven Hitlin, The Science of Dignity: Measuring Personhood and WellBeing in the United States.In this book, they integrate classic and contemporary treatments of dignity and use them to position dignity as a public health concern affected by resources and stressors, drawing on multiple years of recent data collected by Gallup that offer innovative measurement of subjective dignity and its relationship to well-being. Andersson is an associate professor of sociology at Baylor University. He studies health inequalities across the life course through a social-psychological lens. His work has appeared in numerous social science and population health journals, including American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Social Science Research.

Listen in for an amazingly generative conversation with Dr. Hajar Yazdiha, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. We talked about her new book, The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement (Princeton University Press 2023), and the importance of the study of morality and social solidarity for the broader discipline of sociology.

Check out this conversation with Dr. Galen Watts (KU Leuven) on his recent book, The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity, published in 2022 by Oxford University Press. 

Check out the conversation between ex-chair Professor David Melamed (The Ohio State University) and this year's current chair Professor Penny Edgell (University of Minnesota) discussing the importance of public sociology and a recent publication by Professor Edgell. 

In this podcast conversation,  Professor Bin Xu (Emory University), president-elect of the AMSS section, discusses his recent book "Chairman Mao's Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China" published in 2021 with Cambridge University Press.