Morality as a Cultural System?

In the past decade the anthropological study of morality has begun to coalesce in a more or less programmatic form. I outline this development and raise several issues that must be addressed if it is to be intellectually successful. Foremost among these is the necessity to take into account the problem of evil as constitutive of an anthropological approach to morality, since if it were not for evil morality would be moot. In order best to take advantage of preexisting resources in the field, I examine anthropological literature on witchcraft as the area most likely to yield insights on evil. Based on this discussion I conclude with a proposal for how we might construe evil as an analytic category within the anthropological study of morality and a reflection on whether it is useful to consider morality as a cultural system.