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We are all immersed in a sea of social norms, but they are sometimes tricky to observe with any clarity. They are often invisible to us and emerge only when they are not observed. Social norms are important to understand because they are both limiting of our freedom, such as gendered and racialized norms, and at the same time the very conditions of our agency.
Social Goodness presents an original theory of the normativity or normative "oomph" of social role norms by developing an artisanal model for human social normativity. The artisanal model for social role normativity has resources to explain both the "stickiness" or persistence of social norms, and our ability to criticize existing norms and to engage in normative self-creation--to create new normative selves.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1. Social Role Normativity: Internalism and Externalism
- 2. The Artisanal Model
- 3. Social Norms and Social Reality
- 4. Habituation, Imitation, and the Critical Self
- 5. Self-Creation and Transformation
- 6. The Artisanal Model and Social Hierarchy
- Epilogue: Social Roles and Oppression
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Charlotte Witt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire. Her most recent books include The Metaphysics of Gender (Oxford University Press, 2018), Feminist Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Sex, Gender, and the Self (Springer Publishing, 2010) , and (coedited with Sally Haslanger) Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays (Cornell University Press, 2005).
Summary
We are all immersed in a sea of social norms, but they are sometimes tricky to observe with any clarity. They are often invisible to us and emerge only when they are not observed. Social norms are important to understand because they are both limiting of our freedom, such as gendered and racialized norms, and at the same time the very conditions of our agency.
Social Goodness presents an original, externalist answer to the question of the source or origin of social role normativity. Rather than grounding social normativity in the attitudes of persons, the book argues for an externalism that roots social role normativity in the social world itself: in its positions, institutions, and larger architecture. The core insight of externalism is that the function or structural feature of an enterprise or activity can bring with it normative demands quite independently of the attitudes of those who engage with it. According to the artisanal model, just as a carpenter, ceramicist, or chef is responsive to and evaluable under a set of artisanal norms or techniques, so too is a mother and or an academic or a President. The source of normativity is this technique or expertise, independent of the preferences, endorsements, or recognitive attitudes of individuals.
The artisanal model for social role normativity has resources to explain both the “stickiness” or persistence of social norms and our ability to criticize existing norms and to engage in normative self-creation--to create new normative selves. The artisanal model also has resources to capture and express the social situatedness, locality, and materiality of social roles. The relational ontology of social roles, implicit in the artisanal model, provides a useful frame to consider both hierarchical and oppressive social relations.
Additional text
Charlotte Witt's Social Goodness not only makes an original contribution to the literature, but it also does so in a way that points toward important, underexplored regions of conceptual space...The resulting view is comprehensive, compelling, and original....Social ontologists and anyone interested in social norms are well advised to take notice of this book. It offers a new research project. It opens up a whole new set of exciting and important research questions to answer. It is agenda-setting philosophy at its best.
