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2 books match the query 'Moral Agency'

cover of Erotic Morality: The Role of Touch in Moral Agency

Erotic Morality

The Role of Touch in Moral Agency

Linda Holler

Rutgers University Press, 2002

Erotic Morality examines the role of the senses and the emotions, especially touch, in moral reflection and agency. Moving from organic disorders such as autism to culturally induced feeling disorders found in dualistic philosophy, pornography, and some forms of sadomasochism, Linda Holler argues that reclaiming the sentient awareness necessary to our physical and moral well-being demands healing the places where we have become numb or hypersensitive to touch. By considering ascetic practices designed to produce what Buddhists call mindfulness, Holler presents alternatives to destructive patterns of actions dictated by desensitivity and habitual conditioning.
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cover of Recovery's Edge: An Ethnography of Mental Health Care and Moral Agency

Recovery's Edge

An Ethnography of Mental Health Care and Moral Agency

Neely Laurenzo Myers

Vanderbilt University Press, 2015

In 2003 the Bush Administration's New Freedom Commission asked mental health service providers to begin promoting "recovery" rather than churning out long-term, "chronic" mental health service users. Recovery's Edge sends us to urban America to view the inner workings of a mental health clinic run, in part, by people who are themselves "in recovery" from mental illness.

In this provocative narrative, Neely Myers sweeps us up in her own journey through three years of ethnographic research at this unusual site, providing a nuanced account of different approaches to mental health care. Recovery's Edge critically examines the high bar we set for people in recovery through intimate stories of people struggling to find meaningful work, satisfying relationships, and independent living.

This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.
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