Early Case Studies
Moral orders are never just things in themselves but are always reflected in and reproduced by the discourses that the parties use in discussing actual issues such as abortion, women’s rights, pornography, and prayer in the schools.
Our case studies, then, looked at the discourse used by groups to speak to their own constituents and the logics and categories used to “make the case.” We also looked at how groups characterize and address opponents (W. B. Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997, p. 12). Two large case studies—(1) the religious right and (2) conflict mediation, in combination with our readings and unpublished studies on gay and lesbian rights, abortion, and the Persian Gulf War (Freeman et al., 1992)—formed the corpus of our initial studies of moral conflict.The Religious Right. Our first major study concentrated on the conflict between the New Christian Right and its critics. In the early 1980s, certain fundamentalist Christians became active in politics and, indeed, quite powerful in those years. Under the leadership of Jerry Falwell and others, organizations such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Roundtable came into being. This effort became a movement known as the New Christian Right, or, more generically, the Religious Right. Liberal critics of this movement immediately emerged. Less organized than their conservative counterparts, many liberals spoke out against the movement. Perhaps the most visible oppositional organization was People for the American Way, led by Norman Lear. The struggle between these two opposing voices continued in different forms well into the 1990s (Yoachum & Tuller, 1993). Our studies concentrated on the pattern of interaction in public discourse between these two broad groups (W. B. Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997).
In our early studies of the Religious Right (W. B. Pearce, Littlejohn, & Alexander, 1987, 1989), we began to hypothesize that groups in moral conflict would be unable to understand one another’s ideas within a common moral order.
We observed a pattern therein by which the discourse within each tradition would inflame the other party and lead to frustration and reciprocated diatribe. We noticed an important difference between the discourse used within groups, which seemed intelligible and eloquent, to that between groups, which appeared strident and ineloquent. Intermural discourse, as opposed to intramural discourse, departed from civil attempts to make the case and moved toward attempts to obstruct or disempower the other group.Mediation. The second set of cases on moral conflict involved a series of eight case studies of mediation conducted at the University of Massachusetts in the mid-1980s (Littlejohn, Shailor, & Pearce, 1994; W. B. Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997). Videotaped with permission from behind a one-way mirror, these mediations included a family dispute, a consumer case, two roommate conflicts, an assault case, a deteriorating romantic relationship, a property division case, and a divorce case. Our observations and interviews with the mediators reveal an interesting set of patterns. First, the meaning of essential moral terms such as fairness tended to shift from one party to another. Second, the structure and process of mediation itself reflected a certain moral order that may or may not have matched that of the disputants, and mediators sometimes became unwittingly aligned with the party that most shared the mediation process ideal. In other words, moral similarity and difference did play an important part in these cases.
Not all of the cases we observed were moral conflicts, but where significant philosophical and moral principles were at stake, we found that patterns of communication were similar in many ways to that of more public moral conflicts such as the New Christian Right. One case involving a divorce in particular reinforced this view (Littlejohn et al., 1994). This case involved a dispute between a divorced couple regarding custody and property issues.
To help understand this case, we constructed an interpretive model consisting of three dimensions: (1) moral reality, (2) conflict reality, and (3) justice reality. The moral reality included deeply held ideas about proper conduct. Using the work of Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1985), we identified four moral ideals: (1) the authoritarian, based on scriptural or divine authority; (2) the republican, based on civic duty; (3) the utilitarian, based on individual interests; and (4) the expressivist, which is based on individual freedom. These “realities” are not necessarily incommensurate, though elements of them may be. In the divorce mediation, for example, we found that the husband was very much driven by a traditional, authoritarian moral vision, while the wife based her actions on a highly expressivist one. This difference led to very different styles that frustrated both parties. For example, the husband kept referring to how much effort he had put into the house and into keeping the family together, while the wife continued to come back to expressing her own individual desires.The second dimension, conflict reality, involves assumptions about the meaning of conflict and how it should be managed. Using Zartman (1978) and Kilmann and Thomas (1975), we identified three approaches: (1) reliance on outside parties, (2) conflict “management,” and (3) avoidance and prevention. The first of these—reliance on outside parties—defers to adjudication and cultural authorities to settle conflicts. The second—conflict management—involves negotiation, fighting, competition, and coalition building. The third—avoidance and prevention—tends to be libertarian, or “live and let live.” In our divorce case, the husband had a strong avoidance, or libertarian, set of assumptions, which led him to want to be left alone. The wife, on the other hand, held a conflict management model that drove her motivation to “be creative” and to negotiate solutions.
The third dimension, justice reality, consists of principles for decision making in conflict situations—criteria for what constitutes a just and right solution.
We posited three types of justice. The first, retributive justice, involves punishing wrongdoers. The second, competitive justice, involves moving to maximize gains and minimize losses. The third, distributive justice, involves distributing resources fairly according to a defined principle such as entitlement, equality, equity, or social welfare. In the divorce case, both the husband and wife relied on distributive justice but of very different forms. He operated out of a strong sense of social welfare, in which he argued for a settlement in the best interests of the children. The wife, in contrast, worked out of a sense of justice based on equality, or equal division.It was clear to us that the husband and wife in this case were experiencing a moral conflict. Their apparent moral realities did clash, this frustrated them, and their interaction conformed a typical moral conflict pattern.
We saw also in this case that the mediators’ moral view conformed largely to that of the wife, and they became unconscious collaborators with her, further alienating the husband. Needless to say, this mediation was not successful. Because of this and our other case studies, we became intensely curious about the patterns of interaction commonly found in conflict situations and began to codify our observations in this regard (W. B. Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997).