Anthropology as Ethics: Nondualism and the Conduct of Sacrifice (0) - Hardcover

Cutting directly across social science and the humanities, "Anthropology as Ethics" presents an intensive project in philosophical anthropology, which rethinks anthropology by rethinking ontology. It develops the ontological implications of the defining thesis of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology: that all social order necessarily betrays conflicting underlying principles. Drawing especially on Continental philosophy, such as the work of Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Bourdieu, Habermas, and Foucault, and pre-modern thought, such as that of the Nuer, the Dinka, the Azande, and the Hebrew bible, the book mounts a radical study of the ontology of self and other in relation to dualism, on the one hand, and non-dualism, on the other. At heart the book is a plea for a new kind of reason, one that bears on value.

T. M. S. Evens, a senior social anthropologist, who received his training at Manchester University, is Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1971. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Chicago, the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, the University of Calcutta, and Asmara University, Eritrea. He has done extensive field research in an Israeli kibbutz, and is author of Two Kinds of Rationality: Kibbutz Democracy and Generational Conflict, and co-editor of the collection, Transcendence in Society: Case Studies. His essays have appeared in a variety of journals and edited collections. Drawn especially to theory and phenomenology, he has sought from the beginnings of his professional career to isolate, identify, and critically explore the philosophical underpinnings of empirical anthropology.