Anthropological Theory

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Should anthropology be moral? A debate

Didier Fassin and Wiktor Stoczkowski
Anthropological Theory 2008 8: 331
DOI: 10.1177/1463499608096641

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331-332 096641 Introduction (D) 3/11/08 09:00 Page 331

Anthropological Theory

Copyright 2008 SAGE Publications

(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
http://ant.sagepub.com
Vol 8(4): 331332
10.1177/1463499608096641

Introduction
Should anthropology be moral? A debate

Didier Fassin and Wiktor Stoczkowski

cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales

On 12 January 2006, within the so-called Seminar of the Anthropologists at the cole
des hautes tudes en sciences sociales, which has been systematically structured as a
confrontation between two distinct perspectives on a given topic, we debated around
the question: Should anthropology be moral? Although in a different context, as it will
be shown later, the answers to this provocative interrogation might have been yes vs no,
in France, either as a consequence of a sort of a Cartesian doubt more widespread than
it is generally admitted or as the result of the permanence of a Durkheimian foundation
which transcends other oppositions, such a simplistic dichotomy was not conceivable.
Certainly, Didier Fassin claimed a direction of studies in political and moral anthropol-
ogy whereas Wiktor Stoczkowski put stress on some potentially negative consequences
of the moral stances in anthropology, but we shared a common conviction that our
discipline should not be moral in the sense of telling and promoting the good. In fact,
since we had prepared our papers separately, we discovered, as the session progressed,
that our confrontation was to be less the anticipated duel than a discussion made
necessary by recent evolutions in anthropology.
This is precisely what the presentation of this debate is about: getting out of the false
dichotomy of the pros and cons, suggesting a different manner to approach moral issues,
nourishing a dialogue between different anthropological traditions. For Didier Fassin,
morals should become a legitimate object for social anthropology just as politics or
medicine is. Obviously, moral anthropology should no more promote values and do
good than political anthropology should support parties or medical anthropology
propose treatments. It should have the ambition of making explicit and intelligible the
evaluative principles and practices in different societies and contexts, of analysing and
interpreting the way social agents form, justify and apply their judgements on good and
evil. This includes, of course, an effort to unveil or explore the moral prejudices of the
anthropologist himself or herself. For Wiktor Stoczkowski, who shares this final premise,
any anthropological research necessarily mobilizes a system of values of which the
anthropologist is, sometimes unconsciously, a carrier. Within this axiological system,
moral values and epistemological values often coexist and sometimes come into conflict.
The anthropologist must be aware of it instead of renouncing to the latter in order to
better defend the former. Hence the need to analyse the epistemological challenges of
moral judgements at work in everyday scientific practice. Thus, however different our

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ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 8(4)

theoretical background and empirical objects are, both of us consider that moral values
should be objectified on the side of the observed and of the observer. Far from compro-
mising epistemologically the discipline as it has long been thought, the study of morals
therefore becomes a condition of scientific work.
During the debate at the cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales, Wiktor
Stoczkowski had opened fire and Didier Fassin had responded. We decided to reverse
the order for the written version to expose our positions more explicitly. We also chose
to keep the relatively short format of our initial interventions in order, hopefully, to
maintain the clear-cut character of our arguments and the lively tone of our discussion.

332

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