Description:
- It is a critical view of a new methodological and epistemological fashion in anthropology
- It is a collection of authors with different ethnographic expertise and well-developed theoretical positions
- It is a provocation to open up a debate that is important for anthropology but to the social sciences more generally
- It is an important source for academics and practitioners of humanitarianism as well as political activists, for whom issues of morality are central to their concerns.
Brief description:
Bruce Kapferer is Honorary Professor University College London and Professor Emeritus, University of Bergen, where he is Director of the Egalitarianism Project supported by an ERC Advanced Grant. Has published widely on South Asia, Africa and Australia where he has done extensive anthropological fieldwork.
Review Quotes:
"The thirteen texts cobbled together in this light book (physically, not intellectually) are fairly short but no less penetrating in their analytical insight for that. They hit hard at the discomforts and inner tensions of contemporary anthropological theory and practice, making Moral Anthropology: A Critique mandatory reading for anyone puzzled by the buzzing if problematic area of inquiry that is the anthropology of moralities." - Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society