The Culture of Morality (2002) by Elliot Turiel

When

I read this in my doctoral program for my dissertation.

Why

Turiel builds on his first book, with an explicit focus on the implications of Social Cognitive Domain Theory (SCDT) for understanding cultural dynamics (with “culture” broadly defined) and the relationship between cultural and moral understandings of various social phenomena.

How

Like the first book, in grounds much of my scholarship, but particularly scholarship that analyzes superhero and dystopian media using the various beliefs characters hold about the nature of (meta)physical, social, and psychological reality. Recent publications exploring these beliefs include Social Superheroes (2024), Superhero Justice (2025), and the in-progress paper on the X-Men.