MORAL ENTREPRENEURS

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2009

Moral entrepreneurs are those who construct deviance – in other words, they claim that a social phenomenon is a problem or that what is generally recognized as a problem is serious enough to warrant immediate attention and/or decisive action. 

Moral entrepreneurship is the business of persuading the society to make policy from particular moral viewpoints. In symbolic interactionism (or labeling theory) social policy is not seen as the implementation of a shared consensus about what is best. Rather the society is viewed as consisting of a plurality of understandings of what is best.

The moral entrepreneurs try to create or enforce a norm for humanistic reasons. A moral entrepreneur is a person who seeks to influence a group to adopt or maintain a norm.

In order for social policy to arise, some individual or group has to initiate a social movement whose task is to articulate a definition of a social problem such that a desired social policy is consistent with this definition of the problem.

These individual or groups are referred to as moral entrepreneurs. MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), the pro-life movement, the gun lobby, anti-pornography groups, Emily Murphy, and the anti-tobacco lobby would all be examples of moral entrepreneurs.

"Moral Entrepreneurs: The Creation and Enforcement of Deviant Categories" by Howard Becker exemplifies how deviance leads to social control. He also shows how rule breakers evoke different responses from rule makers and rule enforcers. Rule makers want to stop rule breaking, often for the rule makers' own good. Rule enforcers, on the other hand, will make compromises with rule breakers in order to make enforcing rules easier. A good example of this divergence between rule makers and rule enforcers is the issue of televisions and weight rooms in prisons. The U.S. Congress wants to remove them, while guards and wardens want to keep them. The legislators want to publicly punish prisoners from afar, whereas guards and wardens have to work with those prisoners. The prison staff uses television and weight rooms as rewards for cooperative inmates. 

According to Becker, successful moral crusades are generally dominated by those in the upper social strata of society. Becker suggests that there is political competition in which these moral crusaders originate, crusades aimed at generating reform, based on what they think is moral, therefore defining deviance. Moral crusaders must have power, public support, generate public awareness of the issue, and be able to propose a clear and acceptable solution to the problem.

Moral Entrepreneurship and International Crime
A critical step in the designation of any problem as serious enough to warrant criminal sanctions is the emergence of "moral entrepreneurs" to crusade in behalf of such a response. With international crime, the issue is more complicated in that the moral entrepreneurship may be coming from outside the society targeted. As Blumer states, "Intelligent observers, using the standards of one society, may perceive abiding harmful conditions in another society that just do not appear as problems to the membership of the latter society." As outsiders, those making claims about transnational evils may be rejected. This often is the case with offenses such as money laundering, arms trafficking, or illegal immigration as one society may be benefiting from such activities.

Multinational Enterprises as "Moral Entrepreneurs" in a Global Prohibition Regime Against Corruption
Stephen Wrage, Alexandra Wrage - International Studies Association.
ABSTRACT: This article explores the incentives and means multinational enterprises (MNEs) may have to create a corruption-free business environment. It draws on Ethan Nadelmann's (1990) article in International Organization, "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society" and discerns the emergence of such a regime centered on bribe paying and bribe soliciting.

Merchants of Law as Moral Entrepreneurs: Constructing International Justice from the Competition for Transnational Business Disputes - Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth
Over the past 20 years, international commercial arbitration has been transformed and institutionalized as the leading contractual method for the resolution of transnational commercial disputes. It has become an important institution of the growing international market. Although the process is far from unidirectional, this work of social construction can be described as a rationalization in the Weberian sense and also as an "Americanization" that has permitted U.S. litigators to shape the rules to favor their adversarial skills and approaches. An informal justice system has come increasingly to resemble "off-shore litigation."

Drawing on Bourdieu's analytical tool of the legal "field" and, in particular, using the notion of an "international legal field," this case study reveals how the continuing competition for business and for legitimacy--between civil law and common law, "grand old men" and "technocrats," academics and practitioners--constructs and transforms the system of (international private) justice. As is true generally with respect to law, the details of the competition serve to build the careers of practitioners, to develop the area of practice, and to produce and legitimate the relevant "law."

The New Moral Entrepreneurs: Corporate Crime Crusaders
Susan P. Shapiro - American Sociological Association

Moral entrepreneurs and political economy: Historical and ethnographic notes on the construction of the cocaine menace. - Journal: Crime, Law and Social Change.

Moral Entrepreneurs and the Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Frank Faulkner, Editor: Rodopi - Data di Pubblicazione: April 2007
This work advances the proposition that traditional 'top down' politics is being challenged by grass-roots, civil society based 'bottom up' politics in that most sensitive areas, the national security/arms control dichotomy. The book uses the example of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), that has succeeded in reversing or altering the national policies on landmines in over 130 countries globally. The book cites the efforts of what the author calls 'moral entrepreneurs', that is people who have adopted the risk-taking characteristics of business and social leaders to bring this state of affairs about. As a new polity that challenges old assumptions about the state's preserve in matters of national security and moral force, the ICBL has set the benchmark for a fresh, twenty-first century paradigm in arms control.

The Importance of Moral Entrepreneurs in Emerging Global Prohibition Regimes: The Case of the United States
Miner, Jonathan - Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association.
Abstract: This paper is an analysis of the post-9/11 response of American civil society. A content analysis of the national debate over five international terror attacks investigates the effectiveness of moral entrepreneurs in an emerging anti-terror regime.

Three "moral entrepreneurs" and the creation of a "criminal class" in England - Philips, David. c.1790s-1840s'. Crime, Histoire et Sociétés, 7:1 (2003), 79-107. ISSN 14220857.