Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy

by Michele M. Moody-Adams

The persistence of deep moral disagreements--across cultures as well as within them--has created widespread skepticism about the objectivity of morality. Moral relativism, moral pessimism, and the denigration of ethics in comparison with science are the results. Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take moral disagreement seriously and yet retain our aspirations for moral objectivity.

Michele Moody-Adams critically scrutinizes the anthropological evidence commonly used to support moral relativism. Drawing on extensive knowledge of the relevant anthropological literature, she dismantles the mystical conceptions of "culture" that underwrite relativism. She demonstrates that cultures are not hermetically sealed from each other, but are rather the product of eclectic mixtures and borrowings rich with contradictions and possibilities for change. The internal complexity of cultures is not only crucial for cultural survival, but will always thwart relativist efforts to confine moral judgments to a single culture. Fieldwork in Familiar Places will forever change the way we think about relativism: anthropologists, psychologists, historians, and philosophers alike will be forced to reconsider many of their theoretical presuppositions.

Moody-Adams also challenges the notion that ethics is methodologically deficient because it does not meet standards set by natural science. She contends that ethics is an interpretive enterprise, not a failed naturalistic one: genuine ethical inquiry, including philosophical ethics, is a species of interpretive ethnography. We have reason for moral optimism, Moody-Adams argues. Even the most serious moral disagreements take place against a background of moral agreement, and thus genuine ethical inquiry will be fieldwork in familiar places. Philosophers can contribute to this enterprise, she believes, if they return to a Socratic conception of themselves as members of a rich and complex community of moral inquirers.

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 1997

About the author

Michele Moody-Adams is Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University and a former Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education. She is the author of numerous articles and Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy (1997).

Reviews

[Robert Heckner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting and decent book in moral philosophy. I am very interested by Moody-Adams’ ideas of “fieldwork in familiar places,” and “critical pluralism.” I also am a fan of and am very interested in her conception of methodology for philosophy. However, this book falls down for me because it feels inverted. Her interesting claims are buried under thick layers of analysis of a debate about which I know little. Perhaps, if I were well-informed on the debate in anthropology and philosophy about relativism, I would rate this book more highly. Ultimately, I plan to read more of this author’s work and responses to it, but wish this book were not so heavily an work of interpretation and analysis.

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very badly written book, with some interesting ideas that are poorly developed. It has some very very modest arguments that were probably worth saying, but I don't think they needed as much space as she gave them. It's not clear that she's always fair to her targets.

[Ozten K]

read just a few chapters

[Quin Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incredibly frustrating. This book does what it claims, but just barely and in the least interesting way possible.

Moody-Adams is much too attached to liberalism and much too ensconced in mainstream analytic philosophy to offer a substantive challenge to the kind of relativism to which I came to this book seeking a response. That is the postmodern relativism and anti-moralism that has come to unquestioningly dominate the so-called “critical” humanities, and which is best characterized by the traditions indebted to Foucault, Derrida, and queer theory. That is the real enemy of the critically engaged, progressive/radical scholar who is committed to social justice, Moody-Adams book does little to help challenge that form of relativism and nihilism.

To be sure, her critique of cultural relativism as that concept is deployed in mainstream philosophy is compelling in that context, but there is better feminist work that addresses similar issues (eg Khader, Narayan). As for a better response to relativism, I have consistently found Margaret Urban Walker’s “Moral Understandings” to be by far the best account of what morality really is that is also attentive to power and social injustice. Save yourself the trouble, and read Walker instead.