{"product_id":"fieldwork-in-familiar-places-9780674007949","title":"Fieldwork in Familiar Places","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMoral relativism and pessimism, and the denigration of ethics in comparison with science are the results of widespread skepticism about the objectivity of morality. The author examines anthropological evidence for moral relativism, and finds that the complexity of cultures will always thwart efforts to confine moral judgments to a single culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[A] rigorous and intelligent account of the state of moral inquiry in an era of moral relativism… \u003ci\u003eFieldwork in Familiar Places\u003c\/i\u003e provides a good many tools to continue the ongoing work of scrutinising implicit assumptions. At the same time—and this too is a compliment to its author—it makes clear that there is no necessity to converge on a unique solution. -- Wing-sam Chow * Anthropos *\u003cbr\u003eMoody-Adams offers us not only one of the best recent critiques of moral relativism but also the first one to examine systematically the anthropological literature on which relativists usually base their philosophical claims. -- Thomas Wren * Ethics *\u003cbr\u003eIt is refreshing to read such a spirited, original, and well-informed account and defense of such a position in moral philosophy, and how sensitivity to cultural differences can be reconciled with objectivism. Moody-Adams is to be commended for showing, what is often lacking in more purely theoretical accounts of either relativism or objectivism, that it really \u003ci\u003ematters\u003c\/i\u003e whether one is an objectivist or not. \u003ci\u003eFieldwork in Familiar Places\u003c\/i\u003e is a superior and important work in moral philosophy. -- Lawrence Blum * Mind *\u003cbr\u003eMichele Moody-Adams’s book is a major contribution to moral philosophy. Its first important contribution is a brilliant examination of relativism. What she shows is that relativists do not merely arrive at conclusions that are untenable, but that even the supposed ‘anthropological facts’ of hopeless divergence on ethical principles between different cultures depend upon questionable methodology and tendentious interpretation. And this is important because if one takes the relativists’ ‘facts’ at face value, one’s understanding of the relations between culture and morality is bound to end up distorted, even if one does not accept the more extreme versions of cultural relativism. A second contribution of the book, one that interlocks with the first, is an original and powerful reconception of the tasks of moral philosophy—one that frees moral inquiry from the obligation to come up with a final theory or a set of principles that are to solve all moral problems, and that connects rationality with problem-solving rather than with finality and absoluteness. There are few books that belong in the library of everyone who thinks seriously about fact and value; this is one of them! -- Hilary Putnam\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments       Introduction      Taking Disagreement Seriously    Mapping the Relativist Domain    Relativism, Ethnocentrism, and the Decline of Moral Confidence    The Empirical Underdetermination of Descriptive Cultural  Relativism    Cultural Authority, Cultural Complexity, and the Doctrine of  Cultural Integration    The Perspicuous \"Other\": Relativism \"Grown Tame and Sleek\"      The Use and Abuse of History    History, Ethnography, and the Blurring of Cultural Boundaries   Relativism as a \"Kind of Historiography\"?   Moral Debate, Conceptual Space, and the Relativism of Distance    Plus ca change...:The Myths of Moral Invention and Discovery       Morality and Its Discontents    On the Supposed Inevitability of Rationally Irresolvable Moral  Conflict    Pluralism, Conflict, and Choice    On the Alleged Methodological Infirmity of Moral Inquiry    Does Pessimism about Moral Conflict Rest on a Mistake?       Moral Inquiry and the Moral Life    Moral Inquiry as an Interpretive Enterprise    The Interpretive Turn and the Challenge of \"AntiTheory\"    A Pyrrhic Victory?    Objectivity and the Aspirations of Moral Inquiry      Morality and Culture through Thick and Thin    The Need for Thick Descriptions of Moral Inquiry    Moral Conflict, Moral Confidence, and Moral Openness toward the  Future    Critical Pluralism, Cultural Difference, and the Boundaries of  Cross-Cultural Respect    The Strange Career of \"Culture\"       Epilogue    Notes    Works Cited    Index","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53733863358807,"sku":"9780674007949","price":27.86,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/fieldwork-in-familiar-places-9780674007949","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}