ETHNOGRAPHY, ANTHROPOLOGY, AND COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS ETHICS: Or Ethnography and the Comparative Religious Ethics Local

Abstract

Recent ethnographic studies of lived ethics, such as those of Leela Prasad and Saba Mahmood, present valuable opportunities for comparative religious ethics. This essay argues that developments in philosophical and religious ethics over the last three decades have supported a strong interest in thick descriptions of what it means to be human. This anthropological turn has thereby laid important groundwork for the encounter between these scholars and new ethnographic studies. Nonetheless, an encounter it is. Each side brings novel questions to the other. The second part of the essay focuses on one of these questions: How, exactly, are these ethnographic studies to inform normative reflection on ethical questions? KEY WORDS: comparison, ethnography, Mahmood, normativity, philosophical anthropology, Prasad, Schofer IN ITS FOCUS on what Bernard Williams identifies as the Socratic question, "How should one live?" a great deal of ethical reflection has paid little attention to how most people actually do live. 1 Recently, 1 See Williams 1985, 1-21.Of course, such a generalization requires many qualifications. A great deal of the Aristotelian ethical tradition, for instance, claims to reflect on how we do live, though even here the focus is ultimately not on how people in general live but on how the best people live. Within the relatively recent history of comparative religious ethics, David Little and Sumner B. Twiss 1978 make extensive use of anthropological studies. Yet they use this material to very different ends than the works I have in mind in this piece: as they note precisely in discussing the need for further work, there is the need to compare the normative practical teaching of groups like the Christians, Theravadins, and Navajo [on which they have focused, even when drawing upon anthropological studies] with the lived teaching in those traditions. It is a truism in the study of the history of religions that there is likely to be a discrepancy between the ideal beliefs of a tradition and the day-by-day operational beliefs of practitioners. We have made no contribution to studying that discrepancy, since we have explicitly restricted ourselves to the normative tradition [1978, 252]. JRE 38.3:395-403.

Ethnography and Jewish Ethics

“…Although it is not my intention to rid Jewish ethics of textual analysis, legal discourse, or philosophical thought, I maintain that these methods are simply insufficient without ethnographic grounding in the form and content of an ethical response. Furthermore, ethnography makes a significant contribution to comparative religious ethics “by bringing out the diversity and complexity of normative commitments even within a single site” (Lewis , 401). A large‐scale comparison of Jewish and Christian ethics, for instance, on reproductive technologies is simply “untenable,” because it “cannot do justice to a single context, much less to an entire tradition” (Lewis , 401).…”

“…Furthermore, ethnography makes a significant contribution to comparative religious ethics “by bringing out the diversity and complexity of normative commitments even within a single site” (Lewis , 401). A large‐scale comparison of Jewish and Christian ethics, for instance, on reproductive technologies is simply “untenable,” because it “cannot do justice to a single context, much less to an entire tradition” (Lewis , 401). As we participate in a global discussion of ethics, it is important to first return to local, lived ethics.…”

“…Notably, Saba Mahmood's () work on agency as the capacity for action in coherence with (not resisting) cultural norms, and Leela Prasad's () ethnography of narrative in the personal application of religious norms, demonstrate how individuals construct ethics that often conflict with codified religious ethics. Although some question ethnography's contribution to normative religious ethics (Lewis ), ethnography adds critical perspectives to the discourse of religious ethics…”

On Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study

“…It is telling that the aspiration to provide fuller accounts of “the rich complexity of humanity's ethical life” comes not from Yearley or Stalnaker, but from Lewis (, 397–98). This intellectual goal strikes both of us as valuable, and we invite Lee and others to pursue it vigorously.…”

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS: An Update

“…13 13 Included in this are Swearer 2010, Lewis 2010, Stalnaker 2010, Bucar 2010, Yearley 2010, Clooney and Francis 2010, Lucht 2010, Ilesanmi 2010, and Kelsay 2010. …”