Cultivating ambivalence: Methodological considerations for anthropology

TY - JOUR

T1 - Cultivating ambivalence

T2 - Methodological considerations for anthropology

AU - Kierans, Ciara

AU - Bell, Kirsten

PY - 2017/10/1

Y1 - 2017/10/1

N2 - Anthropologists’ longstanding ambivalence toward political advocacy has, in recent years, come under sustained fire—a shift that is often framed in terms of the discipline’s “moral turn.” In this essay, we make a case for the value of ambivalence, asking what lessons it yields as a methodological heuristic. Tracing the history of the concept, we argue that anthropology was founded on an epistemological ambivalence regarding its orientation to social problems. Thus, the moral turn implies a fundamental transformation in the ways that ethnography is conceived. Although the possibility of conflating moral evaluation with anthropological interpretation is a recognized danger of this shift, we don’t believe that the problem can be resolved by being reflexive, or that all ethnographers confront it. Instead, we suggest that cultivating an analytic of ambivalence is our best strategy for understanding what is going on around us, and teaches us more about the character of social relations than prefigured moral stances can.Ciara Kierans is Reader of Anthropology at the University of Liverpool. Her researchfocuses on studies of medical knowledge and practice with emphases on thebiopolitical arrangements of organ transplantation and kidney disease—the subjectof her forthcoming book The transplant complex: Sickness, poverty and medicine inMexico. She is currently working on the topic of “unexplained” kidney disease inMexico.Kirsten Bell is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Roehampton.She has published widely in the anthropology of public health and is the author ofHealth and other unassailable values: Reconfigurations of health, evidence and ethics(Routledge, 2017).

AB - Anthropologists’ longstanding ambivalence toward political advocacy has, in recent years, come under sustained fire—a shift that is often framed in terms of the discipline’s “moral turn.” In this essay, we make a case for the value of ambivalence, asking what lessons it yields as a methodological heuristic. Tracing the history of the concept, we argue that anthropology was founded on an epistemological ambivalence regarding its orientation to social problems. Thus, the moral turn implies a fundamental transformation in the ways that ethnography is conceived. Although the possibility of conflating moral evaluation with anthropological interpretation is a recognized danger of this shift, we don’t believe that the problem can be resolved by being reflexive, or that all ethnographers confront it. Instead, we suggest that cultivating an analytic of ambivalence is our best strategy for understanding what is going on around us, and teaches us more about the character of social relations than prefigured moral stances can.Ciara Kierans is Reader of Anthropology at the University of Liverpool. Her researchfocuses on studies of medical knowledge and practice with emphases on thebiopolitical arrangements of organ transplantation and kidney disease—the subjectof her forthcoming book The transplant complex: Sickness, poverty and medicine inMexico. She is currently working on the topic of “unexplained” kidney disease inMexico.Kirsten Bell is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Roehampton.She has published widely in the anthropology of public health and is the author ofHealth and other unassailable values: Reconfigurations of health, evidence and ethics(Routledge, 2017).

KW - Morality

KW - Ethics

KW - Moral Anthropology

KW - Ambivalence

KW - Methodology

U2 - 10.14318/hau7.2.006

DO - 10.14318/hau7.2.006

M3 - Article

VL - 7

SP - 23

JO - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

JF - HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

SN - 2575-1433

IS - 2

ER -