Ethnographies of Moral Reasoning Et hnogr a phies of Mor a l R e asoning Li v ing Pa r a dox es of a Gl oba l Age Edited by Karen Sykes ETHNOGRAPHIES OF MORAL REASONING Copyright © Karen Sykes, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-60981-5 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above c ompanies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-37625-4 ISBN 978-0-230-61795-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230617957 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ethnographies of moral reasoning : living paradoxes of a global age / edited by Karen Sykes. p. cm. 1. Ethics—Congresses. 2. Ethnology—Congresses. 3. Practical reason—Congresses. I. Sykes, Karen Margaret, 1960– BJ52.E76 2009 170—dc22 2008019906 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Con t en ts Acknowledgments vii Notes on Contributors ix Part 1 An Introduction to the Ethnography of Moral Reasoning 1 Residence: Moral Reasoning in a Common Place—Paradoxes of a Global Age 3 Karen Sykes Part 2 Valuers and Value: Words on an Uncommon Ground 2 Privatization: Jokes, Scandal, and Absurdity in a Time of Rapid Change 43 Catherine Alexander 3 Charity: Conversations about Need and Greed 67 Soumhya Venkatesan Part 3 Contestations of the Standards of Value 4 Custom: The Limits of Reciprocity in Village Resettlement 93 Keir Martin 5 Corruption: Insights into Combating Corruption in Rural Development 117 Alpa Shah vi C on t e n t s Part 4 Subaltern Reason, Moral Ambiguity, and Paradoxes of Value 6 Fakes: Fraud, Value-Anxiety, and the Politics of Sincerity 139 Susanne Brandtstädter 7 Sacra: Rumors about the Moral Force of Ritual Objects as Public Art 161 Karen Sykes Part 5 After Words 8 After Words: From Ethos to Pathos 189 C.A. Gregory Index 203 Ack now l edgmen ts Some people must be thanked first. Our colleagues and fellow authors Edward Simpson and Michael Scott, whose chapters do not appear here, began this project with us and added a great deal to this final version. Ed Simpson, especially, gave of his time for this project and has been a stern editorial eye at different times. Keir Martin kept a full record of our various workshops, distributed them to the contributors, and generally kept the conversation a live in between meetings. Brianna Sykes helped to make the final index. Generous funding from the British Academy allowed the different contributors to meet for a final workshop and present their papers in the company of other more experienced scholars. We thank those people who atten ded and spent their time commenting on t hese chapters as full drafts. It is a better book for the plenary panel of Marilyn Strathern, Bruce Kapferer, Stephan Feuchtwang, and James Laidlaw, the discussants work completed by Joel Robbins and Nandini Sundar, as well as the substantial papers prepared for the event by Almut Schneider, Knut Rio, and Annelyn Erikson. Soumhya Venkatesan’s efforts to make this event a success were unmatched. Our event was enhanced with additional financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council, UK-Centre for the Research in Cultural Change, at the University of Manchester. The Department of Social Anthropology at Manchester University first supported the meetings with a small fund, but the journal Critique of Anthropology enhanced that budget tremendously and gave even more in terms of goodwill. This funding made collabora- tion with Chris Gregory possible. Finally, we give our thanks for his intellectual generosity. Con t r ibu tors Catherine Alexander has carried out research in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on the effects of privatization and post-Soviet reforms since 2000, publishing on property rights, planning, and administrative changes. Her book Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia (2007), co-edited with Caroline Humphrey and Victor Buchli, has been published by University College London Press. She is currently completing work on a book titled Mercurial Cities (Cornell University Press) on urban transformations in Almaty. Her first research in Turkey on relations between state and citizens via the part nationalized Sugar Corporation was published as Personal States (2002) by Oxford University Press. Susanne Brandtstädter completed research in South China analyzing the elaboration of traditional and ceremonial life in terms of the poli- tics of value transformation in post-Mao China, which is opening up to trade with South East Asia, Australia, and most recently negotiat- ing trade with Europe and North America. Her current research in North China opens out new questions about the elaboration of legal processes at the local level by “barefoot lawyers.” She is coediting a book, On Chinese Kinship: Some Anthropological Perspectives, which is to be published by Routledge. C.A. Gregory is the author of Gifts and Commodities (Academic Press 1982), Savage Money (Harwood 1997), and other works on economic anthropology. He has been carrying out fieldwork in Bastar District, India, since 1982. His most research fieldwork has been on the po litical economy and culture of rice growing. His Lachmi Jagar: Gurumai Sukdai’s Story of the Bastar Rice Goddess (Kaksad Publications 2003), done in collaboration with Harihar Vaishnav, is a prelude to a multivolume study of this oral epic and its annual ritual enactment during the harvest season. Keir Martin has conducted two years of research in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, working among the Matupi community in the aftermath of the volcanic eruptions of 1994. He is the author x C on t r i bu t or s of a number of published articles covering issues of contested transactions, social movements, land tenure, tourism, and possessive individualism. He is currently preparing his ethnographic manuscript titled Big Shot; Custom, Conflict and Post-Colonial Social Stratification. Alpa Shah’s research focuses on addressing the reproduction of inequality and the resultant implications for and experiences of marginalized people. Through fieldwork in the state of Jharkhand in Eastern India, Shah’s interests grew from concerns of international development to the possibilities offered by social movements in the form of indigenous activism. The monograph she is currently writing looks at how well-meaning indigenous rights and development efforts can maintain a class system that further marginalizes the poorest. Karen Sykes researched the lives of graduates of secondary education in Papua New Guinea rethinking the worth of education by giving her attention to the point of view of unemployed, educated youth residing in the villages. She is the author of Arguing with Anthropology: An Introduction to Critical Theories of the Gift (Routledge 2005). Soumhya Venkatesan is a lecturer in social anthropology at Manchester University after completing her PhD at Cambridge University and spending two years as a research fellow there. Soumhya’s book on her doctoral work with Muslim weavers in South India entitled Craft Matters is under publication with Orient Longman Press and will be out in early 2009. She is currently working on a research project entitled Makers of Gods. This project is funded by the Wenner–Gren foundation and traces the transformation of stone and terracotta images into gods in Hindu India. 1 A n In t roduct ion to t he Et hnogr a ph y of Mor a l R e asoning