Moral and ethical assemblages

Recently Anthropological Theory (8(4)) published a debate between Didier Fassin and Wiktor Stoczkowski on the question of whether or not anthropology should be moral. This debate joins the growing number of anthropologists who have recently argued that moralities should be a social phenomenon of much interest for the discipline. Fassin and Stoczkowski conclude their debate by agreeing that only when anthropologists become reflectively aware of their own moral positions and assumptions can what they call a moral anthropology be safely carried out to investigate local moralities. This moral anthropology, they also both agree, necessitates a new theoretical and methodological framework. In this response article I outline an anthropological theory of moralities that satisfies this need.