Selfishness and Selflessness

Linda L. Layne is the author of Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (1994, Princeton University Press) and Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America (2003, Routledge) and co-producer of a television series on pregnancy loss. She has edited or co-edited numerous volumes on motherhood, parenting and consumer culture. She now studies heterosexual single mothers by choice, lesbian moms and gay dads.

“This is a fascinating and timely collection that throws a much-needed light on the idea and practice of selfishness and selflessness. In so doing, it follows the moral turn in the humanities and the social sciences to its logical conclusion: the writing of a social history and an ethnography of moralities.” • Mark Roodhouse, University of York

• List of Illustrations, Figures and TablesAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Self, Selfish, SelflessLinda L. LayneChapter 1. Taking the Measure of ‘Selfishness’ and ‘Selflessness’ in the Early Twenty-First-Century US and UKLinda L. LayneChapter 2. ‘Sentiment Has Struggled with Selfishness’: Selfishness, Sensibility and Gender in the Late Eighteenth-Century British Antislavery CampaignG.J. Barker-BenfieldChapter 3. Selfless Advocacy? Profeminist Men’s Movements in Late Twentieth-Century BritainLucy DelapChapter 4. ‘Doing the Right Thing for My Child’: Self Work and Selflessness in Accounts of British ‘Full-Term’ Breastfeeding MothersCharlotte FairclothChapter 5. Sexism, Separatism and the Rhetoric of Selfishness: Single Mothers by Choice in the US and UKSusanna Graham and Linda L. LayneChapter 6. Selfish Masturbators? The Experience of Danish Sperm Donors and Alternatives to the Selfish/Selfless DivideSebastian MohrChapter 7. Inroads into AltruismMarilyn StrathernChapter 8. On Being Selfish – Or Not: Explorations of an Idea from the Mountains of Oaxaca and the Alaskan TundraBarbara BodenhornConclusion: Starting Points: Modest Contributions to the History and Anthropology of Moralities and EthicsLinda L. LayneIndex