In Moral Laboratories: Family Peril and the Struggle for a Good Life, Cheryl Mattingly employs years’ worth of ethnographic research with African American families facing illness and poverty to offer a moral anthropology that takes seriously the moral “experimentation” and even transformation that is a part of the everyday lives of the families she observed.
In this book, Mattingly focuses on the lives and decisions of a few key families with children who have disabilities or life-threatening illnesses. She observes how these family members actively discern and seek the best version of a “good life” amid the challenges of illness, poverty, racism, death, and other tragedies (5).
In the vein of Lambek and Das, Mattingly contends that ethics are not merely worked out in practices of “moral apprenticeship” but also in the daily moral discernment that addresses the specific circumstances humans confront, such as caring for one another in the midst of suffering (55).
While Mattingly maintains the importance of the cultural resources, traditions, and communities that form our morality, she observes that these forces do not predetermine moral choices (166). Instead, people draw from cultural resources to experiment in the “moral laboratories” of everyday life (63). One example of this is how Darlene and Andrew utilize both their trust in God and medical science and yet use these resources to make decisions for their child’s life that medical staff find confounding (166).
Mattingly sees anthropology as ideal for taking seriously the nitty-gritty and unique circumstances people must contend with in their daily lives. She notes that it is the “ethnographic messiness” that provides resistance to abstractions and a continued insistence on attending to local cultural discourses” (118).
Mattingly uses her ethnographic work to offer thick descriptions of specific realities. However, Mattingly moves beyond mere description to make a broader argument about the transformational potential of the everyday practices and routines employed in responses to hardship (10-11). For example, Mattingly sees the transformational potential in how Delores’s family uses household chores as a way of experimenting with roles and responsibilities in a changing multi-generational family (66-67).
Mattingly draws heavily from neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, seeing the importance of the everyday practices that cultivate our moral selves. Hers, however, is a “first-person virtue ethics” grounded in the unique and specific experiences of individuals and their communities (9-10). It is important to note, that while Mattingly calls our attention to the unique moral discernment of individuals, she attends to how these individuals are situated in and rely upon communities. In Mattingly’s understanding, the first-person “I” is part of a “we” that communally discerns and supports (47).
Some Key Takeaways from Mattingly in the Ongoing Conversation about Moral Lifeworlds and Everyday Ethics
Mattingly offers us the image of a “moral laboratory” where people work out and “experiment” with the moral options and cultural resources they’ve been given to address hardship. In this image, while many things are out of individual control, people use what is available to experiment and try out moral frameworks that seek the best possible life even amid the worst possible circumstances. While these experiments may be informed by traditions and cultural resources, human actions are not necessarily determined by them. The laboratory image gets at how humans can “try things out” with the potential for opening up new possibilities or transforming their lives (even minimally) to work toward something good.
Mattingly shows us that cultural resources can sometimes provide the materials for new possibilities and experimentations (207-208). Humans draw from multiple resources and can use them creatively (166). In moral discernment, there is not just reproduction of moral frameworks, but sometimes experimentation (207).
Mattingly’s first-person virtue ethics honors the complications of seeking a good life when there is no one path forward and multiple “non-ideal” options. Instead of a “journey,” the “laboratory” gets at the often non-linear, experimental nature of getting through the ups and downs of daily life. Still, Mattingly maintains that the everyday routines that try to work toward some semblance of a better life can have bigger transformational potential, nonetheless (77-79).
While Mattingly values the narrative aspect of how humans understand their lives, she notes how these narratives are not always cohesive. Sometimes there are multiple potential futures in play or multiple ethical frameworks in tension. Here an experimental narrative self can serve as a means of ethical discernment that seeks a form of a good life even amid tragedy (73, 123, 148)
Mattingly’s examples show us that everyday moral experimentation is not always an act of political resistance, though the political implications are often in sight (186).
Like Beste, Mattingly gives us another example of drawing from humans’ lived experiences to inform our ethics. Mattingly’s research spans years, during which she spends significant amounts of time with individuals and accompanies them in a multitude of social situations.
Questions for Discussion:
While Mattingly proposes that her moral anthropology looks at the “every day,” her work focuses on families struggling with extraordinarily difficult circumstances and choices. It is easier for people to engage in “moral experimentation” when things are going poorly (87)? Even if they unfold in everyday responses, are changes, transformation, and experimentation mostly catalyzed by the extraordinary we confront in life?
How does Mattingly’s understanding of “everyday ethics” resonate with previous conversations we have had about this concept? Mattingly employs several authors we’ve engaged in this (and other) classes (Das, Lambek, Foucault, MacIntyre, Anscombe, Biehl, Williams, etc.). What does Mattingly contribute to or challenge about our understandings of everyday ethics thus far?
Mattingly’s “moral anthropology” aims to do more than mere thick description. She aims to not only show us examples of people doing ethical work in the everyday circumstances of life but to also make a case for the transformative potential embedded in the ordinary. What are the strengths and limitations of Mattingly’s specific first-person foci? Do they effectively carry her normative claims?
Mattingly spent time with the families that informed her work for years and is transparent about the strong bond of friendship she developed with Andrena in particular. In considering our own future projects, I am curious about what we make of the complicated nature of the relationships formed through ethnographic work. Mattingly expresses moral outrage at Andrena’s poverty as well as the systemic injustices stacked against her. She also confesses to being Andrena’s friend (213-216). What are our responsibilities to our “subjects” when they become lifelong friends? What is our ethical responsibility to those who contribute to our research? Can we practically experiment in the moral laboratories of ethnography? What might that look like?
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