The Anthropology of Moralities

Monica Heintz received her PhD in Social Anthropology in Cambridge in 2002, and was appointed Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in 2003. She is currently Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, the author of 'Be European, Recycle Yourself: Changing Work Ethic in Romania (LIT, 2006) and the editor of Weak State, Uncertain Citizenship: Moldova (Peter Lang, 2008).

Anthropologists have been keenly aware of the tension between cultural relativism and absolute norms, and nowhere has this been more acute than with regards to moral values. Can we study the Other's morality without applying our own normative judgments? How do social anthropologists keep both the distance required by science and the empathy required for the analysis of lived experiences? The plurality of moralities has not received an explicit and focused attention until recently, when accelerated globalization often resulted in the collision of different value systems. Observing, describing and assessing values cross-culturally, the authors propose various methodological approaches to the study of moralities, illustrated with rich ethnographic accounts, thus offering a valuable guide for students of anthropology, sociology and cultural studies and for professionals concerned with the empirical and cross-cultural study of values.

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