institutional theory of moral injury

AN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF MORAL INJURY IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY

James Beneda PhD Candidate, Politics

UC Santa Cruz [email protected]

COMPETING DEFINITIONS OF MORAL INJURY

Moral Injury as Sin

•  One very good reason for discountenancing strikes is the moral injury that is done to the strikers in every case in which the strike is prolonged. It seems to be an invariable rule that after a few days men out of employment lose sight altogether of the notion of bettering themselves…

New York Times (1888)

•  Presley and his voodoo of frustration and deKiance have become symbols in our country, and we are sorry to come upon Ed Sullivan in the role of promoter. Your Catholic viewers, Mr. Sullivan, are angry; and you cannot compensate for moral injury, not even by sticking the Little Gaelic Singers of County Derry on the same bill with Elvis Presley.

Rev. William J. Shannon (1956)


Moral Injury in Law

•  In law, moral injury derives from French civil law dommage moral and prejudice moral which designate damage to property or interests that are not patrimonial, ie, those things which are not heritable or possess some market value. Here, the violation of certain rights can be expected to elicit a state of negative emotional distress causing injury to one’s moral interests. In common law, such harms include ‘mental suffering’, or ‘emotional distress’ resulting from the tortious act.

Saul Litvinoff (1977), “Moral Damages.”

•  From the moral point of view, they are to be regarded as similar to animals. Since they are sentient, it is morally wrong to treat them in certain ways. However, since they have no rights, they cannot be wronged, cannot be done any moral injury.

Jeffrie Murphy (1972), “A Kantian Essay on Psychopathy”


Moral Injury in Philosophy

•  [I]njury can be given either a purely legal or a moral interpretation… [T]o the extent that injurious actions merely violate the law, no moral disapproval is automatically ascribable to them. Only if the law is conceived as embodying a rule that is itself morally justiKiable are such actions to be regarded in a moral sense injurious and hence violent. Morally speaking, however, …violence is to be understood basically as referring to actions which, directly or indirectly, violate human right. Henry Aiken (1972), “Violence and the Two Liberalisms”

•  It is the “disrespect of personal integrity that transforms an action or utterance into a moral injury… [T]he Kirst step in developing a morality of recognition consists in the essential proof that the possibility of moral injuries follows from the intersubjectivity of the human form of life.” Axel Honneth (2007), Disrespect

Moral Injury as Psycho-‐Pathology

Jonathan Shay. Achilles in Vietnam (1994), Odysseus in America (2002)

•  Study: PTSD among Vietnam War veterans •  Condition: The ‘undoing of character’; loss of “the capacity for social trust in the mental and social worlds of the service member or veteran.”

•  Cause: Prolonged exposure to extreme conditions of combat and (1) a betrayal of what’s right (2) by someone who holds legitimate authority (3) in a high-‐stakes situation.


Moral Injury as Psycho-‐Pathology

Brett Litz, et al. “Moral Injury and Moral Repair in War Veterans” (2009)

•  Study: The “moral conKlict-‐colored psychological trauma… not well captured by the current conceptualizations of PTSD” among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

•  Condition: The deleterious effects of the “inability to contextualize or justify personal actions or the actions of others and the unsuccessful accommodation of these potentially morally challenging experiences into pre-‐existing moral schemas.”

•  Cause: “Perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.”


SOCIAL FACTORS OF POST-‐TRAUMATIC STRESS (DSM-‐5)

•  Perceived threat of death, personal injury, or interpersonal violence

•  “Cultural syndromes and idioms of distress inKluence the expression of PTSD and the range of comorbid disorders in different cultures by providing behavioral and cognitive templates that link traumatic exposure to speciKic symptoms.”

•  “Social support prior to event exposure is protective… [and] moderates outcome after trauma.”

•  Risk and severity of PTSD differ across cultural groups due to differences in “the type of traumatic exposure, the impact on disorder severity of the meaning attributed to the traumatic event, [and] the ongoing sociocultural context…”

PSYCHOLOGICAL VS. SOCIOLOGICAL RATIONALITY CONFUSING CAUSE AND EFFECT

Inability of the morally injured person to contextualize or justify personal actions or the actions of others into pre-‐existing moral schemas.

Moral Injury

Inability of pre-‐existing moral schemas to contextualize or justify personal actions or the actions of others for the morally injury person

Moral Injury

INSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF MORAL INJURY

•  Study: The necessary social conditions under which a particular experience is understood as emotionally traumatic.

•  Condition: The traumatic state of moral alienation (anomie) which produces a range of individual—and perhaps group—behavioral changes.

•  Cause: The inability of pre-‐existing moral schemas to accommodate (are incomplete or false) the actual moral situation (the condition of necessity to act in relation to a moral expectation) faced under extreme conditions.

Moral Regulation

Social

Integration

Anom

ie Fatalism

Egoism

Altruism

TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE

Emile Durkheim Suicide (1897)

Social Conditions and Suicidal Behavior

Condition of existence characterized by the absence or failure of moral regulation; normlessness or alienation.

ANOMIE

The state of anomie resulting from a moral situation in which pre-‐existing moral schemas fail to accommodate one or more conditions of the situation, damaging the relationship between the traumatized individual and the relevant moral authority.

MORAL INJURY The manifestation of traumatic experience.

INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH TO MORALITY

Morality is a Form of Social Regulation

•  Morality is only observable in its effects—moral actions. i.  Actions that deKine the actor as a certain kind of socially recognized person, both within

and across Kields; ii.  Actions that actors experience—or that they expect others to perceive—as deKining the

actor both inter-‐situationally and to a greater extent than other available deKinitions of self;

iii.  Actions to which actors either have themselves, or expect others to have, a predictable emotional reaction.

•  Questions of ‘moral relativism’ are irrelevant. Morality is always ‘real’ in its relevant social context—where it is recognized as legitimate authority.

Iddo Tavory (2011), “The Question of Moral Action: A Formalist Position”

HYSTERESIS 1

1 -1

-1

Moral Authority

Embodied Belief

Pierre Bourdieu The Logic of Practice (1990)

A phenomenon by which changes in a property (embodied belief in a moral principle) lag behind changes in an agent on which they depend (moral authority), so that the value of the former at any moment depends on the manner of the previous variation of the latter (e.g. whether it was increasing or decreasing in value)

Indoctrination Challenge to Belief or Authority Regaining Belief or Authority

SHIFTING SOURCES OF MORAL AUTHORITY IN RELATION TO TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE

Macro/Cultural Meso/Institutional Micro/Interpersonal

Pre-‐Event Culture of War History, Civics, Popular Culture

Military Indoctrination Family and Community

Religion, Politics, Class, Ethnicity

Concurrent JustiKications for War, Nature of Enemy

Rank, Occupation, Mission

Primary Group Obligations,

Proximity to Enemy

Post-‐Event Historical and Political Representation of War

Relation to Military or Veterans Organizations

Reintegration in Non-‐Military Relationships

MORALITY AND THE US ARMY IN IRAQ

MACRO

•  9/11 and the Bush Response

•  Band of Brothers

•  Liberation of Iraq

•  Neo-‐Liberal Ideology

INSTITUTIONAL

•  Leadership and Ethics Doctrine

•  Warrior Ethos

•  Counter-‐Insurgency

•  Institutional Conservatism

IMPLICATIONS

•  Patterns of moral injury indicate inappropriate cultural/institutional/interpersonal moral schemas.

•  Popularly accepted deKinitions of morality do not fully capture the full range of moral authorities.

•  There is a range of phenomena that current deKinitions of moral injury do not account for—moral injury may be less than ‘pathological’ and may be collective.

•  There is no inherent aversion or inclination to violence.

•  Political/institutional responses to moral injury that are based solely on a psycho-‐pathological paradigm are incapable of adequately addressing underlying causes.

institutional theory of moral injury

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