be understood as a modern colonial formation. In what can be read as an elaboration of—and addition to—their nuanced and rich analyses, we use postcolonial theory to examine how authoritarian moralism and urban security practices in the favelas
Emergent Police States
Racialized Pacification and Police Moralism from Rio's Favelas to Bolsonaro
Tomas Salem and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
Sonia Sikka
This paper criticises the concept of culture as deployed within debates on moral relativism, arguing for a greater appreciation of the role of power in the production of a society's purportedly 'moral' norms. The argument is developed in three stages: (1) analysis of the relation between ideology and morality, noting that the concept of morality excludes self-serving moral claims and justifications; (2) analysis of the concept of culture, drawing attention to an ambiguity in its usage and to the hierarchical social structures within which the actual bodies of cultures are produced and reproduced; and (3) contention that (1) and (2) provide the basis for a radical and socially effective species of immanent critique: the exposure of existing norms and institutions purported to be morally justified as masks for the self-interest of elite groups.
The Many Layers of Moral Outrage
Kurdish Activists and Diaspora Politics
Nerina Weiss
, moral outrage might appear as a reasonable (and legitimate) emotion when it comes to the past and current situation of Kurds in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. The killing and enslavement of the Yezidis by the Islamic State (IS) ( McGee 2018 ), the civil
Olusegun Steven Samuel and Ademola Kazeem Fayemi
This article is a critical inquiry into Thaddeus Metz's African ethical theory of modal relationalism (MR). Central to the theory of MR is the claim that something (X) has moral status by virtue of its capacity for communal relationship, where X
Moral Thresholds of Outrage
The March for Hrant Dink and New Ways of Mobilization in Turkey
Lorenzo D’Orsi
’s assassination within the perspective of cultural trauma, temporalities of mourning, and recognition of the Armenian Genocide ( Rosati 2015 ; Türkmen-Dervişoğlu 2013 ; von Bieberstein 2017a ). I argue that, by looking at Dink’s murder through the lens of moral
Voluntarism
Promises of Proximity as Articulated by Changing Moral Elites
Anders Sevelsted
meaning of voluntarism in relation to social provision as articulated by what I propose to call a “moral elite,” namely the groups that at various points in time have had the ability to shape the content of the concept through their access to specialized
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 80–104
Navigating the Politics of Anxiety
Moral Outrage, Responsiveness, and State Accountability in Denmark
Mette-Louise Johansen
, Aarhus. These employees are responsible for the local CVE program in Aarhus and work primarily with risk assessment, bureaucratic casework, and the management of interventions in individual cases. Using the central concept of moral outrage, I explore the
Multiscalar moral economy
Global agribusiness, rural Zambian residents, and the distributed crowd
Tijo Salverda
This article addresses the relevance of the moral economy concept in light of unequal socioeconomic relations between a European agribusiness and rural residents in Zambia. It argues that the moral economy concept offers a helpful heuristic device for analyzing how relationships are constituted, negotiated, and contested among interdependent actors with “opposing” socioeconomic interests. To explain the dynamics of their relationships, however, the moral economy concept has to extend beyond its usual, spatially restricted (i.e., local) focus. Instead, “external,” distant, non-local actors, such as foreign critics concerned about “land grabbing,” also influence the local character of moral-economic exchanges between the agribusiness and rural residents. Hence, the article proposes a multiscalar perspective to account for the influence of a wider array of actors.
Rolf Lidskog
This paper analyzes public understanding and moral reasoning with regard to regulating nature, specifically, societal efforts to control an insect population. It presents a study of a Swedish case in which a biological insecticide has been used to fight mosquitoes to reduce the nuisance to the local population. This case involves conflicting values regarding environmental protection. People's right to outdoor life is placed in opposition to long-term risks to biodiversity. Through interviews with local residents, their deliberations on the spraying are analyzed, particularly concerning to what extent and how they describe the situation in moral terms, but also how they acknowledge and use scientific findings in their argumentation.
‘Takin’ It One Day at a Time’
(Not) Anticipating as Moral Project
Devin Flaherty
In this article, I explore anticipation as a site of moral experience and moral willing when death may be nearby. Through an examination of the narratives of the wife of a hospice patient in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, I show that her commitment to not anticipate the course of her husband’s illness is a moral project pitted against biomedical modes of prognostication. In a context in which hospice care is the only option available for many older adults in poor health, I discuss the incommensurability between this position and the anticipatory horizon on which hospice care is predicated: the patient’s imminent death. I argue for an approach to this woman’s experience that takes into account the tendency for temporal orientations to be thrown into flux when death might be nearby, without reducing her commitment to not anticipate to mere avoidance or ‘denial’.
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 61–76