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Moral Laboratoriesis an engaging ethnography and a groundbreaking foray into the anthropology of morality. It takes us on a journey into the lives of African American families caring for children with serious chronic medical conditions, and it foregrounds the uncertainty that affects their struggles for a good life. Challenging depictions of moral transformation as possible only in moments of breakdown or in radical breaches from the ordinary, it offers a compelling portrait of the transformative powers embedded in day-to-day existence. From soccer fields to dinner tables, the everyday emerges as a moral laboratory for reshaping moral life. Cheryl Mattingly offers vivid and heart-wrenching stories to elaborate a first-person ethical framework, forcefully showing the limits of third-person renderings of morality.

Public goods have been neglected, if not outright rejected, by the anti-capitalist literature, which favors “commons.” This article argues that equal attention should be given to commons and to public goods—both are essential to social reproduction. Their difference is not one of nature, but of status; it results from the way they are managed and distributed. I offer some conceptual clarifications in the literature on commons, public goods, club goods and private goods, and argue for an approach that looks at the status of goods. This opens up room for examining two ways struggles for social goods are and may be waged: commoning and publicizing. While commoning practices require organization at the community level, publicizing practices make claims on the state as a provider of public goods.

In the most recent issue of Dialectical Anthropology, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Lesley Gill raised critical historical questions about how the events of 1917 profoundly shaped the contemporary world. Gill’s introduction dug underneath the current fascination with \"neoliberalism\" and underscored a decidedly darker side of the so-called Keynesian compromise. An imperial US State, in its Cold War hysteria, sought to stymy the reach of Bolshevism through what Gill describes as the \"meddling and the threat of intervention\" that made it \"nearly impossible for left-leaning governments to succeed\" (Gill 2017:202). Many of the essays, however, moved too quickly from the conceptual issue of revolution to an ill-defined and emotionally saturated idea of neoliberal capitalism. In academic journals and left-leaning newspapers like The Guardian, neoliberalism represents a morality play: an evil form of capital committed to deregulation and privatization that has torn the be knighted Keynesian compromise between labor and capital asunder. In its place, a rather heartless form of capitalism rapaciously searches for easy profits at the expense of society. Saygun Gökarıksel’s contribution follows this familiar pattern by depicting the way the dissolution of socialist Poland gave way to neoliberal capitalism. His essay \"The ends of revolution: capitalist de-democratization and nationalist populism in the east of Europe,\" begins with a fascinating story about the ways class conflict raged in Communist Poland. The story centers on two disaffected Marxists—Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski—who penned the legendary \"Open Letter to the Polish United Workers’ Party\" in 1964. This radical critique of Eastern bloc communist states focused on the increasing class inequities and austerity. Indeed, Wladyslaw Gomulka’s authoritarian regime reacted with hostility. As the government punished such activism, new political and economic fissures would continue to open up and dog the system for two more decades. This vivid picture of the complicated twists and turns of capital, struggles against the monopoly capitalism of Western Europe, and the rise of the Solidarity Movement leads predictably to a \"crisis of liberal democracy\" and the \"dedemocratization\" of neoliberalism.

The idea of a ‘good death’ is one which has been central to the palliative care movement but which in fact predates it. A number of recent articles have grappled with the concept. It is a subject which is difficult to quantify scientifically and this article explores the territory using a number of philosophical, theological, historical and literary sources. The changing meaning of the concept is traced through the premodern, modern and postmodern periods. In particular the influence on Western ideals about death of the two paradigmatic stories of the deaths of Socrates and Jesus are examined. It is argued that the dualistic thinking of Plato, which often underlies our thinking about death, is no longer adequate and the author offers the thinking of the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno as an alternative way of approaching our attitudes to death. Although the article does not seek to give a definitive answer to the question it raises, it suggests that thinking about good death should be broadened to accept the struggle with which many people face their death.

One of the Arab world's greatest poets uses the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the shelling of Beirut as the setting for this sequence of prose poems. Mahmoud Darwish vividly recreates the sights and sounds of a city under terrible siege. As fighter jets scream overhead, he explores the war-ravaged streets of Beirut on August 6th (Hiroshima Day). Memory for Forgetfulness is an extended reflection on the invasion and its political and historical dimensions. It is also a journey into personal and collective memory. What is the meaning of exile? What is the role of the writer in time of war? What is the relationship of writing (memory) to history (forgetfulness)? In raising these questions, Darwish implicitly connects writing, homeland, meaning, and resistance in an ironic, condensed work that combines wit with rage. Ibrahim Muhawi's translation beautifully renders Darwish's testament to the heroism of a people under siege, and to Palestinian creativity and continuity. Sinan Antoon’s foreword, written expressly for this edition, sets Darwish’s work in the context of changes in the Middle East in the past thirty years.

Since the Nuremberg Trials of 1945, lawful nations have struggled to impose justice around the world, especially when confronted by tyrannical and genocidal regimes. But in Cambodia, the USSR, China, Bosnia, Rwanda, and beyond, justice has been served haltingly if at all in the face of colossal inhumanity. International Courts are not recognized worldwide. There is not a global consensus on how to punish transgressors. The war against Al Qaeda is a war like no other. Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda's founder, was killed in Pakistan by Navy Seals. Few people in America felt anything other than that justice had been served. But what about the man who conceived and executed the 9/11 attacks on the US, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? What kind of justice does he deserve? The U.S. has tried to find the high ground by offering KSM a trial albeit in the form of military tribunal. But is this hypocritical? Indecisive? Half-hearted? Or merely the best application of justice possible for a man who is implacably opposed to the civilization that the justice system supports and is derived from? In this book, William Shawcross explores the visceral debate that these questions have provoked over the proper application of democratic values in a time of war, and the enduring dilemma posed to all victors in war: how to treat the worst of your enemies.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem in General The Problem in Particular An Alternative The State of Political Sociology The State of Marxist Theory The Withering Away of the State Deciphering Legitimacy Towards a Recovery of History Notes and References