Table Of ContentMorality
Morality
An Anthropological Perspective
Jarrett Zigon
Oxford • New York
First published in 2008 by
Berg
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© Jarrett Zigon 2008
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No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Zigon, Jarrett.
Morality : an anthropological perspective / Jarrett Zigon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-658-1 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-658-4 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-659-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-659-2 (pbk.)
1. Ethics—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Anthropology—Psychology.
3. Anthropological ethics. I. Title.
GN468.7.Z54 2008
170—dc22
2008025876
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 84520 658 1 (Cloth)
ISBN 978 1 84520 659 8 (Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
www.bergpublishers.com
Contents
Introduction 1
Some Early Works in the Anthropology of Moralities 4
Relativism 9
Outline of Book 19
Part I The Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations of the
Anthropological Studies of Morality
1 The Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations of Social
Scientific Studies of Morality – From Plato and Aristotle to
Durkheim, Weber, and Foucault 23
Philosophical Theories of Morality 23
The Roots of a Social Scientific Theory of Morality 32
Some Final Words 45
Part II Religion and Law
2 Religion 49
Witchcraft 49
Moral Consciousness and the Ethics of Self 52
Change, Religion, and Moralities 59
Some Final Words 63
3 Law 65
State and Law 66
Moral Economies, Inequality, and Property 70
Human Rights 75
Some Final Words 79
Case Study 1 Moral Torment in Papua New Guinea 81
Part III Sexuality, Gender, and Health
4 Gender and Sexuality 87
Gender and Moralities 87
Sexuality 95
vi • Contents
Family, Children, and Morality 102
Some Final Words 106
5 Illness, Health, and Medicine 107
The Morality of Biomedicine 107
HIV/AIDS and Morality 111
Narrative and Medical Encounters 117
Bioethics 121
Some Final Words 125
Case Study 2 Morality and Women’s Health in Post-Soviet Russia 127
Part IV Language, Narrative, and Discourse
6 Language, Discourse, and Narrative 133
Discourse, Performativity, and Moral Communication 133
Narrative 146
Some Final Words 152
Case Study 3 Narratives of Moral Experience in Moscow 155
Part V Closing
7 Some Closing Words 161
Morality and Ethics 162
References 167
Index 179
Introduction
Morality is a concept that has been of philosophical interest for over 2,000 years.
Rarely, however, did these philosophical explorations take much notice of the
everyday moral lives of actual, living people (some important exceptions are: Brandt
1954; Ladd 1957; Nordenstam 1968). In other words, moral philosophy tends to
consider the concept of morality at an abstract level. At the beginning of the twentieth
century sociocultural anthropology as we know and practice it today began to shape
itself. In contrast to philosophy, modern anthropology took on the task of describing
and analyzing the everyday life experiences and conceptual worlds of different
peoples around the world. Yet, as several have argued, until recently there have been
very few explicit anthropological studies of local moralities (Wolfram 1982: 274;
Pocock 1986: 7; Faubion 2001a; Laidlaw 2002; Robbins 2007; Zigon 2007).
This, no doubt, is a contested claim. For many anthropologists will say that in
having studied, for example, the various religious, gender and kinship systems
from around the world, they have been studying morality all along (Parkin 1985:
4). This, however, is a question of definition. According to those anthropologists
who would claim that the discipline has, at least to some extent, been studying
morality all along, it would seem as though they would agree with Ruth Benedict’s
claim that morality “is a convenient term for socially approved habits” (1956: 195).
Unfortunately, such a definition does not differentiate morality from any of the
other concepts anthropologists generally use. For if morality is just another term
for socially approved habits, then morality becomes a synonym for, for example,
religious practice, ritual, reciprocity, or kin relations. It is a central contention of this
book that it is this confusion of definition that has stood in the way of a more subtle
and in-depth anthropological study of moralities.1 In exploring various examples
of anthropological approaches to the study of moralities, we will leave behind this
confusion and set out a more focused approach to this study.
This book, then, is an exploration of the anthropology of moralities. Its main
task is to forge a new path for this important line of research. This will require new
and more precise definitions of what is to be studied. For I think it is fair to say
that the history of our discipline has shown that it is only with this kind of focused
1. Wolfram points out that this confusion of definition stems from anthropology’s theoretical
foundations in Durkheimian sociology and Durkheim’s confusion and poor philosophizing on morality
(1982). This point is also made in Laidlaw 2002 and Robbins 2005.
1
2 • Morality
study that our methods are appropriate. But new paths always depend on what was
already there. Because of this, it is important that we carefully consider the various
anthropological studies that claim, to varying degrees, to be studies of morality.
Therefore, a significant amount of what follows in this book will be an overview
of these studies, including three case studies that explore the work of three anthro-
pologists in more detail. While I focus on the most recent works in the discipline,
it will be important to mention those few earlier anthropological studies of local
moralities that serve as the foundation for this new disciplinary focus.
What will become clear almost immediately as we begin this exploration of the
literature is that very few of these studies were originally conceived as anthropo-
logical studies of local moralities. In itself this is not a problem, for it is quite
common and even expected that the fieldwork experience will bring about new
and unexpected discoveries and analyses. Nevertheless, because morality is an
undertheorized and confused concept within the discipline, it often leads to, in my
view, one of several misuses. One misuse is that which I have already mentioned,
namely, that morality is conflated with, in the words of Benedict, “socially approved
habits.” As we will see, this has its roots in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century social theories of Emile Durkheim, whose ideas still hold much influence in
the social sciences.
A second common misuse of the analytic concept of morality is to impose
some Western philosophical view of morality onto the everyday moralities of the
people we study. Because anthropology has not yet provided a view of morality
that goes much beyond Benedict’s definition, we often rely on some version of a
Western philosophical view. Thus, for example, it is not uncommon to come across
Habermasian rational communicators, Taylorian agents, or Aristotelian social virtu-
osos in the anthropological literature. While there is no doubt that anthropologists
of moralities have much to gain with engagement with moral philosophy, imposing
these philosophies more or less in whole onto anthropological data and the lives of
our informants does little to move the discipline forward or, more importantly, to
adequately describe the moral lives of the people we study.
A third misuse of the concept of morality is the imposition of the anthropologist’s
personal moral views onto the lives of the people they study. This is particularly
true for some Marxian and feminist anthropologists who, although I agree with
their views to a great extent, unfortunately too often seem to analyze their data
through preconceived theoretical lenses. Throughout this book we will have ample
opportunity to see each of these misuses of the analytic concept of morality in the
works we consider. As I have already said, I suggest one reason why these misuses
are so common is because so few anthropological studies begin as explicit studies
of local moralities. Therefore, one way of avoiding these mistakes is to engage
in anthropological studies of local moralities from the start. For in doing so, the
anthropologist is forced to consider more thoroughly just what it is she means by
morality. It is my hope that this book will help in this consideration, and in the final
Introduction • 3
chapter I will offer a guideline for conceiving of morality and the moral lives of our
interlocutors in a more subtle manner so as to help bring about this kind of more
focused research and analysis.
To summarize, then, this book will be an exploration of the anthropology of
moralities. It is my contention that despite claims to the contrary, this is a very recent
explicit and more sophisticated research agenda for anthropologists. Therefore,
this book will focus on more recent anthropological (as well as a few other social
scientific) works that take morality as either their explicit and intended focus of
research, or use morality as an after the fact analytic concept. Because the latter
works still remain more common, we will have an excellent opportunity to see the
differences and respected merits of both approaches.
Let me also add that this book is not a work on the ethics of anthropology as a
discipline or its research methods. There are already numerous works that address
this important issue (for example, see: Cassell 1980; Fine 1993; Robben and Sluka
2007). Rather, this book is, to the best of my knowledge, the first to provide an
overview of the work that has already been done and suggests ways to move ahead in
the increasingly important anthropological study of local moralities. The question of
the book, then, is not how we as anthropological researchers should morally engage
with the peoples we study, for that is the realm of the ethics of anthropological
fieldwork, but instead how the peoples we study conceive of, negotiate, and practice
morality in their everyday lives.
This does, however, raise the important question of the distinction between
morality and ethics. Ethics has its origins in the ancient Greek word ethos, meaning
way of life or custom and habit, and morality comes from mos, which is simply the
Latin translation of ethos. Here, of course, it is easy to see why Benedict’s definition
might be appealing. But it is important to note that there has been over 2,000 years
of philosophical discourse on the concept that has taken it well beyond this simple
view. This discourse cannot be simply dismissed out of hand.
More to the point, as this word origin suggests, with few exceptions, there has been
very little distinction either philosophically or anthropologically between morality
and ethics. It should be pointed out, however, that increasingly ethics has come to be
associated with the proper and expected way of doing a certain profession, such as,
the ethics of anthropological research or medical ethics or business ethics. Despite
this distinction of professional ethics, there is generally little other distinction made
(for an example of a social theorist who does make a distinction, see Bauman 1993).
Because of this, throughout this book while discussing others’ work, I too will
make no distinction between morality and ethics and will do my best to keep to the
term used by the author about whom I am writing. Nevertheless, because I believe
a real distinction between these two terms is in fact helpful for the future of an
anthropology of moralities, in the concluding chapter I will offer what I see as a
helpful distinction between morality and ethics.
4 • Morality
Some Early Works in the Anthropology of Moralities
Discounting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century evolutionary anthropology,
which produced a good deal of text on the evolution and development of morality
cross-culturally – one example of this is Marett’s “Rudimentary Ethics,” in which
he argued that there are two stages of society, the first stage is that of non-moral
custom and habit and the second of rational decision-making where morality ap-
pears in society for the first time – it is difficult to find ethnographic works that
explore the moral worlds of local peoples explicitly and in depth. This, as I have
already mentioned, is a contested statement; it is, however, one that I believe is true
if we consider morality to be more than “socially approved habits.” K. E. Read, an
anthropologist who did one of the first focused anthropological studies of morality,
agrees. Read argues that the failure of anthropologists through most of the twentieth
century to explicitly study local moralities is twofold (1955: 235–47). First, he
suggests, there was a general reaction against the evolutionary theories that often
made a priority of showing the superiority of Western morality and civilization, and
therefore, it was a theme and concept that became, if you will, taboo. Second, Read
argues that the fact that modern anthropology was modeled on the natural sciences
led to the eschewing of the study of those things considered to be non-objective,
such as morality. If Read is correct in his twofold explanation, which I believe he is,
it is interesting to note that it has only been after the so-called interpretive and hum-
anistic turn in anthropology in the last twenty years or so that anthropologists have
begun to explore with more subtlety the moral worlds of their informants.
Despite this lack of ethnographic focus on morality, there are still some important
works we can look to as having made an attempt to consider the moral worlds of
local peoples. One of the earliest examples is that of E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s work on
witchcraft among the Azande (1968[1937]). I will discuss this text in more detail in
Chapter 2, but for now it is important to note that Evans-Pritchard saw witchcraft as
central to the moral value system of the Azande, and as he put it, “‘It is witchcraft’
may often be translated simply as ‘It is bad’” (1968[1937]: 107). Although Evans-
Pritchard does not go into much detail about the moral world and its concepts of the
Azande, by showing that witchcraft can be interpreted as a moral concept he laid the
groundwork for decades of anthropological research on witchcraft.
An even earlier work that is often cited as an anthropological exploration of a
local moral world is Malinowski’s book on crime and custom among the Trobriand
Islanders (1926). In response to the general perception of his day that so-called
savages lived in a lawless and anarchic state of being, Malinowski argued that
the Trobriand Islanders lived in a well-ordered society without the need for
institutionalized law akin to that of Euro-American societies. This could be shown,
so he argued, by discovering and analyzing “all the rules conceived and acted upon as
binding obligations, to find out the nature of the binding forces,” and to classify “the
norms and rules of a primitive community” (Malinowski 1926: 15). While this may
