Ordinary Ethics Anthropology, Language, and Action

Bringing together ethnographic exposition with philosophical concepts and arguments and effectively transcending subdisciplinary boundaries between cultural and linguistic anthropology, the essays collected in this volume explore the ethical entailments of speech and action and demonstrate the centrality of ethical practice, judgment, reasoning, responsibility, cultivation, commitment, and questioning in social life. Rather than focus on codes of conduct or hot-button issues, they make the cumulative argument that ethics is profoundly "ordinary," pervasiveùand possibly even intrinsic to speech and action. In addition to deepening our understanding of ethics, the volume makes an incisive and necessary intervention in anthropological theory, recasting discussion in ways that force us to rethink such concepts as power, agency, and relativism. Michael Lambek is the Canada Research Chair in the Anthropology of Ethical Life in the Department of Social Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, as well as Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto