Introduction

Olsen, William; Csordas, Thomas J.

doi:10.2307/j.ctv287sj81.5

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our work extends recent conversations in "light" and "dark" anthropology to further the case for attention to the negative as a constituent part of moral life (building on Csordas 2013; Yan 2014;Fassin 2015;Olsen and Csordas 2019). We break from perspectives that pigeonhole the negative as a structural ill, excess of human depravity, or violation of the social.…”

mentioning

confidence: 65%

“…As Yunxiang Yan shrewdly observed, "immorality is rarely examined by anthropologists, let alone explored in ethnographic depth" (2011: n.p. ; see also Csordas 2013;Fassin 2015: 201-202;Olsen and Csordas 2019). According to Yan, this situation is not unique to anthropology, but also true of moral philosophy, which frequently focuses on questions of moral success to the exclusion of immorality and individual moral failure (Hampton 1989; see also Rorty 2001).…”

Section: A Question Of Emphasis? Positive-ism In the Anthropology Of ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Negative Ethics: Taking the Bad with the Good. An Introduction

Howland¹,

Davies²

2022

lhomme

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This special issue re-envisages the anthropology of ethics from the point of view of "the negative". The negative is a gloss for actions, practices and social formations that our interlocutors view as bad, troubling, threatening, immoral or unethical, and the varied local categories and discourses through which they are evaluated. Anthropology has often overlooked immorality in its study of ethics (Yan 2011(Yan , 2014Csordas 2013; Fassin 2015; Olsen and Csordas 2019), privileging "the good" and people's practices of self-cultivation (e.g. Robbins 2013; Laidlaw 2014). 1 This elision reflects an underlying tendency within some strands of Anglophone anthropological thinking towards 1. We use the terms "ethics" and "morality" interchangeably throughout the Introduction. Some authors use "ethics" to signal a departure from Durkheimian conceptions of morality which emphasise unconscious, collective moral codes (e.g.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 65%