An Anthropology of the Enlightenment: Moral Social Relations Then and Today

205 Pages·2018·248.32 MB·English

by  Nigel Rapport

effort to bridge
Age of Reason, >
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ireason.’ >
ee brummond, McGill University Emeritus, 3
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Canada
"1
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This brilliant book illuminates acute issues in
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anthropology on methodology, ontology and
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epistemology by suggesting an anthropologically
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inspired moral voice and vision.’
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Helena Wulff, Stockholm University, Sweden
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‘This wide-ranging collection of essays clearly demonstrates the undiminished value of
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Enlightenment thinking.’ r+
Martin L. Davies, University of Leicester Emeritus, UK 3
CD
The mandate of this exciting collection is a re-engagement with Enlightenment ideas. cp
Its accomplished set of authors challenge us to consider what such ideas mean for i
contemporary anthropological practice and theory.’
CD
Vered Amit, Concordia University, Canada 3-
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How can we rethink the terms of Enlightenment anthropology in a manner and an idiom D
appropriate to the contemporary era? The essays collated here argue for anthropology’s 3
use in acknowledging, exploring and interpreting divergence and ideological conflict over
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human meaning. =3
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The volume is structured around some of the key themes that the Enlightenment fostered,
including human nature, time, Earth and the cosmos, beauty, order, harmony and design,
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morals, and the query of whether wealthy nations make for healthy publics. It focuses in I &
particular on how ‘moral sentiment’ offered a guiding idea in Enlightenment thought. The
idea of ‘moral sentiment’ is central to the essays’ grappling with the ethical anxieties of CL
contemporary anthropology. The essays therefore trace historical connections and fissures, Cr
and focus in particular on Adam Smith’s attempts toward an understanding of what would £
later be called ‘modernity’ - where the realism that allows us to understand individual
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experience appears at odds with the realism which takes on larger scale social processes CD
of enculturation or globalization. -0
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With an afterword from Marilyn Strathern, this volume makes a strong addition to the ASA *D
; conference proceedings. Oa.
l Nigel Rapport is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University
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of St Andrews, UK. e
Huon Wardle is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK. WILS
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BloomsburyAcademic
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ASA Monographs 53
An Anthropology

of the Enlightenment

Moral Social Relations Then and Today

Edited by Nigel Rapport & Huon Wardle

BLOOMSBURY
An Anthropology of the

Enlightenment
ASA Monographs ISSN 0066-9679
The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, ed. M. Banton
Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, ed. M. Banton
Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. M. Banton
The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, ed. M. Banton
The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, ed. E. R. Leach
Themes in Economic Anthropology, ed. R. Firth
History and Social Anthropology, ed. I. M. Lewis
Socialization: The Approach from Social Anthropology, ed. P. Mayer
Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ed. M. Douglas
Social Anthropology and Language, ed. E. Ardener
Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, ed. R. Needham
Urban Ethnicity, ed. A. Cohen
Social Anthropology and Medicine, ed. J. B. Loudon
Social Anthropology and Law, ed. I. Hamnett
The Anthropology of the Body, ed. J. Blacking
Regional Cults, ed. R. P. Werbner
Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation, ed. J. La Fontaine
Social and Ecological Systems, eds P. C. Burnham and R. F. Ellen
Social Anthropology of Work, ed. S. Wallman
The Structure of Folk Models, eds L. Holy and L. Stuchlik
Religious Organization and Religious Experience, ed. J. Davis
Semantic Anthropology, ed. D. Parkin
Social Anthropology and Development Policy, eds R. Grillo and A. Rew
Reason and Morality, ed. J. Overing
Anthropology at Home, ed. A. Jackson
Migrants, Workers, and the Social Order, ed. J. S. Eades
History and Ethnicity, eds E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman
Anthropology and the Riddle of the Sphinx: Paradox and Change in the Life Course, ed.
P. Spencer
Anthropology and Autobiography, eds J. Okely and H. Callaway
Contemporary Futures: Perspectives from Social Anthropology, ed. S. Wallman
Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, ed. C. M. Hann
Environmentalism: The View from Anthropology, ed. K. Milton
Questions of Consciousness, eds A. P. Cohen and N. Rapport
After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology, eds A.
James, A. Dawson and J. Hockey
Ritual, Performance, Media, ed. F. Hughes-Freeland
The Anthropology of Power, ed. A. Cheater
An Anthropology of Indirect Communication, eds J. Hendry and C. W. Watson
Elite Cultures, eds C. Shore and S. Nugent
Participating in Development, eds P. Sillitoe, A. Bicker and J. Pottier
' Human Rights in Global Perspective, eds R. A. Wilson and J. P. Mitchell
The Qualities of Time, eds W. James and D. Mills
:
Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, eds S. Coleman and P.
Collins
Anthropology and Science: Epistemologies in Practice, eds J. Edwards, P. Harvey and P.
Wade
Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, eds E. Hallam and T. Ingold
Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular
Perspectives, ed. P. Werbner
Thinking Through Tourism, eds J. Scott and T. Selwyn
Ownership and Appropriation, eds V. Strang and M. Busse
Archaeology and Anthropology, eds D. Shankland
The Interview: An Ethnographic Approach, eds J. Skinner
Living Beings: Perspectives on Interspecies Engagements, ed. P. Dransart
Art and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World, eds R. Kaur and P. Dave-Mukherji
World Anthropologies in Practice, ed. J. Gledhill
ASA Series Editor
Andrew Irving (Manchester University, UK)
All chapters accepted for inclusion in ASA volumes are sent out for peer review to two
or more reviewers in addition to the volume editor. The ASA draws on the expertise of
its Editorial Board - appointed from the ASA membership - in^electing appropriate
peer reviewers.
Editorial Board
Aleksandar Boskovic (University of Belgrade, Serbia); Glenn Bowman (University of
Kent, UK); Pat Caplan (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK); Emma Crewe (SOAS,
University of London, UK); Geert De Neve (University of Sussex, UK); Wenzel Geissler
(University of Oslo, Norway, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
UK); John Gledhill (University of Manchester, UK); Andr^e Grau (University of
Roehampton, UK); Jakob Klein (SOAS, University of London, UK); Chris Knight
(Radical Anthropology Group); Roland Littlewood (UCL, UK); Nayanika Mookherjee
(Durham University, UK); Julie Scott (London Metropolitan University, UK); Mitch
Sedgewick (Oxford Brookes University, UK); Jonathan Skinner (Queen’s University,
Belfast, Northern Ireland); Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge, UK); Christina
Toren (University of St Andrews, UK); Maya Unnithan (University of Sussex, UK);
Pnina Werbner (University of Manchester, UK); Gisa Weszkalnys (LSE, UK).
An Anthropology of the

Enlightenment
Moral Social Relations Then and Today

Edited by
Nigel Rapport and Huon Wardle
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC

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Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Preface: The ‘Star’ Consortium and the ASA Decennial Conference xi
Introduction: Moral Social Relations as Methodology and as Everyday
Practice Nigel Rapport and Huon Wardle 1
1 After Sympathy, a Question Anne Line Dalsgdrd 23
2 His Father Came to Him in His Sleep: An Essay on Enlightenment,
Mortalities and Immortalities in Iceland ArnarAmason 37
3 On ‘Bad Mind’: Orienting Sentiment in Jamaican Street Life Huon Wardle 51
4 Westermarck, Moral Relativity and Ethical Behaviour David Shankland 69
5 Saving Sympathy: Adam Smith, Morality, Law and
Commerce Diane Austin-Broos 81
6 ‘Can We Have Our Nature/Culture Dichotomy Back, Please?’ Nigel
Clark, Rupert Stasch and Jon Bialecki 99
7 Who Are We to Judge? Two Metalogues on Morality Ronald Stade 119
8 ‘We Are All Human’: Cosmopolitanism as a Radically Political,
Moral Project Elisabeth Kirtsoglou 133
9 Transference and Cosmopolitan Politesse: Coming to Terms with
the Distorted, ‘Tragic’ Quality of Social Relations between Individual
Human Beings Nigel Rapport 151
10 Afterword: Becoming Enlightened about Relations Marilyn Strathem 171
Index 189
Contributors
Arnar Arnason is a senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of
Aberdeen. His research focuses on death, trauma, emotion and subjectivity. He has
done research in north east England, Japan, rural Scotland and Iceland.
Diane Austin-Broos is Professor Emerita of anthropology at the University of Sydney
where she retired as Professor and Chair in 2008. She is an elected fellow of the
Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
She has pursued extended field research in both Jamaica and central Australia. Her
research is focused on religion, economy and the politics of moral order in society,
especially as the latter affects subaltern women. Her recent publication is a co-edited
collection (with Francesca Merlan), People and Change in Indigenous Australia. Her
current research is biographical and concerns the life and times of a mid-twentieth-
century Jamaican politician.
Jon Bialecki is a fellow in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of
Edinburgh. His academic interests include the anthropology of religion, anthropology
of the subject, ontology and temporality, religious language ideology, and religious
transhumanist movements. His first monograph, A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and
Variation in an American Charismatic Movement, was awarded the 2017 Sharon
Stephans book prize by the American Ethnological Society. He is currently working
on his second manuscript, A Machine for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism,
and Speculative Thought.
Nigel Clark is Professor of social sustainability and human geography at Lancaster
University, UK. He is the author of Inhuman Nature: Sociable Life on a Dynamic Planet
(2011) and co-editor of Material Geographies (2008) and Extending Hospitality (2009),
and recently co-edited (with Kathryn Yusoff) a Theory, Culture & Society special
issue on ‘Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene (2017). His current research
interests include pyrotechnology, the politics of ancient climate change, speculative
geology, and the intersection of social and geological rifting. He is working on a book
(with Bronislaw Szerszynski) entitled The Anthropocene and Society and a monograph
called something like Bare Life on Molten Rock: Magma, Fires, Futures.
Anne Line Dalsgird is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology,
Aarhus University. She is the author of the book Matters of Life and Longing (2004),
which was translated and published in Brazil in 2006. Dalsg&rd has twenty years of
research commitments in Brazil, where she has studied reproductive health, poverty,
1 youth and futurities in the northeast region. Throughout her career as an anthropologist
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Contributors ix
she has had a keen interest in experimental writing and text as a medium for reflection.
Presently, she is engaged in research on the experience and use of literature in reading
groups in Denmark.
Elisabeth Kirtsoglou is an associate professor in anthropology at Durham University.
She has researched and published extensively on gender and politics in Greece. She is
the author of For the Love of Women: Gender, Identity and Same-Sex Relationships in a
Greek Provincial Town (2003) and co-editor of United in Discontent: Local Responses to
Cosmopolitanism and Globalisation (2009). She is also the deputy director of Durham
Global Security Institute, an interdisciplinary research institute for the study of
securitization, conflict, international diplomacy and peace processes.
Nigel Rapport is Professor of anthropological and philosophical studies at the
University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is also Founding Director of the St
Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies; he has held the Canada research chair
in Globalization, Citizenship and Justice at Concordia University of Montreal. His
research interests include social theory; phenomenology; identity and individuality;
community; conversation analysis; and links between anthropology and literature and
philosophy. His most recent books are Distortion and Love: An Anthropological Reading
of the Life and Art of Stanley Spencer (2016); and, as editor, Distortion: Social Processes
beyond the Structured and Systemic (2018). His current focus is on love as a civic virtue.
David Shankland is Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Honorary
Professor of anthropology at University College London. A social anthropologist by
training, he has conducted fieldwork mainly in Turkey and has made a special study
of the Alevis, a heterodox religious minority. From early on in his career, he has been
interested in when, and how, anthropology split into a number of sub-disciplines and
is currently conducting long-term research into the period before Malinowski. His
. work on Westermarck is part of this project, which also includes examining other
significant figures from this period such as F. W. Hasluck, J. L. Myres and R. Marett.
Ronald Stade is Professor of peace and conflict studies with specialization in
anthropology at Malmo University, Sweden. Driven by curiosity and serendipity, he
: has conducted research on world culture and local politics in Guam, the social life
of political keywords like ‘global governance’, ‘political culture’, cosmopolitanism’
and ‘political correctness’, the politics of waste in Accra, Ghana and, most recently,
the situation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. He is the founding editor of
Conflict & Society, which serves as a platform for ethnographically informed research
on violent conflicts. A project he keeps postponing is to write a plausible biography of
Diogenes of Sinope.
Rupert Stasch is a lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University
of Cambridge, and he previously taught for sixteen years at Reed College and the
University of California-San Diego. He is the author of Society of Others: Kinship and
Mourning in a West Papuan Place (2009), and is preparing a book about interactions