The 'fourth aim' of anthropology

Abstract

Any anthropological research mobilizes an axiological system, composed at once of moral values and epistemological values. Starting from the example of my first fieldwork among officers of the secret political police in Poland under marshal law in 1982—3, and subsequently examining several types of moral agendas in anthropology (as a science of moral reform in E.B. Tylor; as a salutary revelation of social mechanics in E. Durkheim; as a lesson of ethics in C. Lévi-Strauss; as an expedient for raising the moral standard of colonial action in M. Delafosse; 'applied anthropology' as a science useful in the struggle against totalitarian regimes during the Second World War and the Cold War; as cultural criticism in 1970—1980; 'moral anthropology' as a way of defending the rights of the oppressed in the 1990s), I stress some potentially negative consequences of moral stances in anthropology, insofar as values of ethical commitment may come into conflict with epistemological values. In conclusion, I plead for an anthropology able to objectify its own moral agenda and to grasp its epistemological impact on scholarly representations we aspire to produce.

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