The introductory chapter argues why there is a need for a book on movements and morality and how this volume meets this need. It introduces the twofold purpose of the book: insights into the moral foundations of current civic struggles and political conflicts and developing theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches to studying morality in movements. Then a review of the development of the field of social movement research reveals how morality is treated fragmentarily, which leads to a discussion of the terminological tempest of morality and an introduction of the three moral dimensions that structure the book: selves in interaction, rationalization and justification, and culture and tradition. The contributions to the volume are introduced according to these three dimensions, and a final section points to the methodological creativity and diversity that characterizes the volume, attesting to the fruitfulness of a research agenda centered on movements and morality.

Through a case study of the emergence of rights-infringing “illiberal” policies and practices in the field of Danish alcohol treatment from 1900 to 1943, this article shows how new scientific ideas on “degeneration” as the cause of alcoholism and the use of force in treatment were adapted and promoted by Protestant revivalist groups and Social Democrats alike. The article analyzes how new scientific ideas resonated with the cultural ideals of Danish Social Democracy and the evangelical temperance organization the Blue Cross. The article challenges the established view in the literature that eugenic and similar illiberal practices were the result of a “high modernist” state ethos and “communitarian-organic” thinking on the left. Building on secondary literature and archival sources, it is shown that illiberal policies and practices as well as theories of heredity in the case of Danish alcohol treatment were adopted as the result of common liberal-conservative ideals regarding the value of family shared by Social Democrats and Protestant activists across the civil society and state spheres.

No abstract

This article shows how voluntary social work in late 19th/early 20th century Copenhagen emerged as the result of several creative re-interpretations of the cultural schemas of revivalist Protestantism as urban revivalists faced the social question. Informed by pragmatist cultural sociology, the concept of “collective soteriology” is introduced as a way of analyzing the Protestant reinterpretations in terms of doctrine, ideals of community, and recipes for action. It is shown how Lutheran revivalist ideas at the same time encouraged, constrained, and shaped the voluntary social action undertaken. The paper aims to uncover a sociologically neglected European tradition of civic action, to contribute to the sociology of Protestantism’s influence on civil society, and to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing the role of ideas in non-contentious collective action.