Morals Research Website Launched

 

With funding from the European Research Council, a new multidisciplinary research program, Towards a Critical Moral Anthropology, is being developed at the Institute for Advanced Study and the Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science, is coordinating the initiative with a team of twelve social scientists, including anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Morals is the designation of a multidisciplinary research program entitled "Towards a Critical Moral Anthropology" for which Didier Fassin was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. It is being developed on both sides of the Atlantic, at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

The program has both a theoretical and an empirical dimension. On the one hand, it proposes an inquiry into the anthropology of morals, a new field that it intends to promote from a critical perspective, relating moral issues to their historical formation and political background. The government of the poor, the administration of asylum, and the deployment of humanitarianism are examples of objects crucial to this field. On the other hand, it implies a study of the way immigrants and minorities are treated by institutions such as the police, justice, prison, social work and mental health system in France, articulating the moral economy of these issues at the national level and the moral work of the social agents in their respective institutions. The investigation is based on the ethnographic method.

The research team is comprised of twelve social scientists: anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists. It is part of a larger scientific network in Western Europe and North America, with researchers from various disciplines interested in local moralities and ethical subjectivities as well as immigration policies and minorities issues.

http://morals.ias.edu/