ABSTRACT
Sociological ethics are considered a proper concern for sociology either as an object of study, or else as a set of guidelines for methodological practice: a way of ensuring that one's research in no way compromises its own integrity or that of its participants. This chapter proposes some promising alternative models which build their ethics' upon the practical necessity to offer a response to the enduring empirical presence of inhumanity. Overall, it puts forward an argument for transferring the responsibility of producing ethical knowledge in a post-genocide and so-called postmodern' world away from its traditional home within the conventionally abstract, deductive, and legalistic disciplines of philosophy and theology towards empirical and inductive disciplines such as sociology. The chapter presents theoretical strengths and weaknesses of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas the inspiration behind Bauman's model in providing a properly post-genocidal and post-foundational framework for humanistic ethics.
