Table Of ContentEthnographies of Moral
Reasoning
Et hnogr a phies of
Mor a l R e asoning
Li v ing Pa r a dox es of
a Gl oba l Age
Edited by
Karen Sykes
ETHNOGRAPHIES OF MORAL REASONING
Copyright © Karen Sykes, 2009.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-60981-5
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-37625-4 ISBN 978-0-230-61795-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230617957
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ethnographies of moral reasoning : living paradoxes of a global age /
edited by Karen Sykes.
p. cm.
1. Ethics—Congresses. 2. Ethnology—Congresses. 3. Practical
reason—Congresses. I. Sykes, Karen Margaret, 1960–
BJ52.E76 2009
170—dc22 2008019906
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: January 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Con t en ts
Acknowledgments vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Part 1 An Introduction to the Ethnography
of Moral Reasoning
1 Residence: Moral Reasoning in a Common
Place—Paradoxes of a Global Age 3
Karen Sykes
Part 2 Valuers and Value: Words on an
Uncommon Ground
2 Privatization: Jokes, Scandal, and Absurdity in
a Time of Rapid Change 43
Catherine Alexander
3 Charity: Conversations about Need and Greed 67
Soumhya Venkatesan
Part 3 Contestations of the Standards of Value
4 Custom: The Limits of Reciprocity in
Village Resettlement 93
Keir Martin
5 Corruption: Insights into Combating Corruption
in Rural Development 117
Alpa Shah
vi C on t e n t s
Part 4 Subaltern Reason, Moral
Ambiguity, and Paradoxes of Value
6 Fakes: Fraud, Value-Anxiety, and
the Politics of Sincerity 139
Susanne Brandtstädter
7 Sacra: Rumors about the Moral Force of
Ritual Objects as Public Art 161
Karen Sykes
Part 5 After Words
8 After Words: From Ethos to Pathos 189
C.A. Gregory
Index 203
Ack now l edgmen ts
Some people must be thanked first. Our colleagues and fellow
authors Edward Simpson and Michael Scott, whose chapters do not
appear here, began this project with us and added a great deal to this
final version. Ed Simpson, especially, gave of his time for this project
and has been a stern editorial eye at different times. Keir Martin kept
a full record of our various workshops, distributed them to the
contributors, and generally kept the conversation a live in between
meetings. Brianna Sykes helped to make the final index.
Generous funding from the British Academy allowed the different
contributors to meet for a final workshop and present their papers in
the company of other more experienced scholars. We thank those
people who atten ded and spent their time commenting on t hese
chapters as full drafts. It is a better book for the plenary panel of
Marilyn Strathern, Bruce Kapferer, Stephan Feuchtwang, and James
Laidlaw, the discussants work completed by Joel Robbins and Nandini
Sundar, as well as the substantial papers prepared for the event by
Almut Schneider, Knut Rio, and Annelyn Erikson. Soumhya
Venkatesan’s efforts to make this event a success were unmatched.
Our event was enhanced with additional financial support from the
Economic and Social Research Council, UK-Centre for the Research
in Cultural Change, at the University of Manchester.
The Department of Social Anthropology at Manchester University
first supported the meetings with a small fund, but the journal
Critique of Anthropology enhanced that budget tremendously and
gave even more in terms of goodwill. This funding made collabora-
tion with Chris Gregory possible. Finally, we give our thanks for his
intellectual generosity.
Con t r ibu tors
Catherine Alexander has carried out research in Almaty, Kazakhstan,
on the effects of privatization and post-Soviet reforms since 2000,
publishing on property rights, planning, and administrative changes.
Her book Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia (2007), co-edited with
Caroline Humphrey and Victor Buchli, has been published by
University College London Press. She is currently completing work
on a book titled Mercurial Cities (Cornell University Press) on urban
transformations in Almaty. Her first research in Turkey on relations
between state and citizens via the part nationalized Sugar Corporation
was published as Personal States (2002) by Oxford University Press.
Susanne Brandtstädter completed research in South China analyzing
the elaboration of traditional and ceremonial life in terms of the poli-
tics of value transformation in post-Mao China, which is opening up
to trade with South East Asia, Australia, and most recently negotiat-
ing trade with Europe and North America. Her current research in
North China opens out new questions about the elaboration of legal
processes at the local level by “barefoot lawyers.” She is coediting a
book, On Chinese Kinship: Some Anthropological Perspectives, which is
to be published by Routledge.
C.A. Gregory is the author of Gifts and Commodities (Academic
Press 1982), Savage Money (Harwood 1997), and other works on
economic anthropology. He has been carrying out fieldwork in
Bastar District, India, since 1982. His most research fieldwork has
been on the po litical economy and culture of rice growing. His
Lachmi Jagar: Gurumai Sukdai’s Story of the Bastar Rice Goddess
(Kaksad Publications 2003), done in collaboration with Harihar
Vaishnav, is a prelude to a multivolume study of this oral epic and its
annual ritual enactment during the harvest season.
Keir Martin has conducted two years of research in East New Britain
Province, Papua New Guinea, working among the Matupi community
in the aftermath of the volcanic eruptions of 1994. He is the author
x C on t r i bu t or s
of a number of published articles covering issues of contested
transactions, social movements, land tenure, tourism, and possessive
individualism. He is currently preparing his ethnographic manuscript
titled Big Shot; Custom, Conflict and Post-Colonial Social
Stratification.
Alpa Shah’s research focuses on addressing the reproduction of
inequality and the resultant implications for and experiences of
marginalized people. Through fieldwork in the state of Jharkhand in
Eastern India, Shah’s interests grew from concerns of international
development to the possibilities offered by social movements in the
form of indigenous activism. The monograph she is currently writing
looks at how well-meaning indigenous rights and development efforts
can maintain a class system that further marginalizes the poorest.
Karen Sykes researched the lives of graduates of secondary education
in Papua New Guinea rethinking the worth of education by giving
her attention to the point of view of unemployed, educated youth
residing in the villages. She is the author of Arguing with Anthropology:
An Introduction to Critical Theories of the Gift (Routledge 2005).
Soumhya Venkatesan is a lecturer in social anthropology at
Manchester University after completing her PhD at Cambridge
University and spending two years as a research fellow there.
Soumhya’s book on her doctoral work with Muslim weavers in South
India entitled Craft Matters is under publication with Orient
Longman Press and will be out in early 2009. She is currently working
on a research project entitled Makers of Gods. This project is funded
by the Wenner–Gren foundation and traces the transformation of
stone and terracotta images into gods in Hindu India.
1
A n In t roduct ion
to t he Et hnogr a ph y
of Mor a l R e asoning
