Binding moral constraints depend on social integration, not abstract principle

Evidence

In addition, women in domestic service are very often uprooted; it is estimated that 80 percent of Parisian prostitutes come from the provinces or the countryside. Proximity to one’s family and concern for one’s reputation are thought to prevent a woman from turning to a generally discredited profession; but if she is lost in a big city, no longer integrated into society, the abstract idea of “morality” does not provide any obstacle. While the bourgeoisie invests the sexual act—and above all virginity—with daunting taboos, the working class and peasantry treat it with indifference. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1648

Categorization

• XREF: This is Durkheimian social-fact reasoning — morality as social integration — prefiguring Bourdieu’s habitus; class-differentiated sexual mores will recur against the reader’s immodesty-panics material. — connects to: Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 499; Moral systems are interlocking mechanisms that regulate self-interest to enable cooperation — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 466; Moral trust requires temporally stable social contexts to operate (+7 more)
• QUESTION: Beauvoir claims working-class indifference to virginity as established fact — worth checking what the underlying studies actually measured before relying on it.

Broader Connections

• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions #qualifies (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 499
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure #contradicts (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 514
• Moral trust requires temporally stable social contexts to operate #exemplifies (0.82)
• Moral systems are interlocking mechanisms that regulate self-interest to enable cooperation #expands (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 466
• Moral conflict restrains discrimination mainly in face-to-face contexts #exemplifies (0.80)
• Sociology reduces morality to derivative products of non-moral social institutions #contradicts (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 481
• Social organization neutralizes morality by making action adiaphoric, neither good nor evil #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 613