Kerby Goff
exploring how culture shapes society and our attempts to change it
Sociologist of Social Movements, Culture, and Religion
Associate Director of Research
Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance
Rice University
PhD, Sociology
Penn State University
Articles
“The Resonance of Repression: Moral Intuitions, Skepticism Toward Racial Injustice, and Public Support for Trump’s ‘Law and Order’ Response to the 2020 Racial Justice Protests.”
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 8. 2022.
The limited research on support for state repression of protests points to protest violence, ideological opposition, and racial/ethnic resentment, but few have examined how moral intuitions influence support for repression and racialized opposition to protest claims. The authors use a national survey of 1,030 respondents, fielded in June 2020 at the height of the post-Floyd Black Lives Matter protests, to investigate the moral motivations for supporting Trump’s “law and order” response. Drawing on moral foundations theory, the authors hypothesize that individualizing moral intuitions that prioritize care and protection of the vulnerable (a social justice orientation) influences opposition to Trump, whereas binding moral intuitions that prioritize social stability (a social order orientation) influence support for “law and order.” The authors find strong support for these hypotheses, and skepticism toward racial injustice claims mediates much of these effects. This research thus expands the limited literature on public support for protest repression by illuminating the moral dimension.
“Academic Orientation as a Function of Moral Fit: The Role of Individualizing Morality.”
Sociology of Education 95(2): 153-170. 2022
Researchers have studied academic orientation—students’ valuing of and commitment to education—as in part a function of a cultural fit between students’ cultural capital, competencies, identity, and the institutional culture of the education system. Recent research on students’ aspirations and commitment highlights the moral undertones of such cultural fit. Scholars have identified the perceived moral connotations of becoming “an educated person” and illustrated how students’ academic orientation may be intertwined with the unique moral culture of the education system. Neo-institutional scholars have examined modern education systems’ emphasis on an individualizing type of moral culture, that is, an institutional moral culture emphasizing individual autonomy, rights, and achievement over traditional mores, knowledge, and social hierarchies. Scholars have yet to bridge these streams of research by examining the link between students’ personal moral culture and the institutional moral culture of education systems. In this study, we consider whether students whose moral orientation matches the individualizing moral culture of education systems are more academically oriented. We conceptualize this link as moral fit, and we use moral foundations theory to identify students’ personal moral culture. Analysis of a unique sample of students drawn from all secondary schools in Iceland (N = 10,525) shows (1) individualizing moral intuitions (those that emphasize the individual as the basic moral unit) are associated with a greater academic orientation, net of parental involvement, cultural capital, and other important controls, and (2) this association is only lightly moderated by differences in the school structure.
kerby goff, phd 