You mentioned “morality,” and I wanted to hear more. Are you pointing to anthropology’s analytical categories as imbued with moral imperatives?

It is (one of) my basic premise(s) on culture that morality and knowledge production are tied.
(Actually the only culture I can say something substantial about is my own–in a wide perspective the western one–so to be precise on my premise I should specify my term ´culture` by attribute ´western`.)
Another premise of mine–tying topic of anthropology and morality with premise above–sets equal ´western culture` (´westliche Kultur`) with ´culture of scientific objectivity` (´Kultur der wissenschaftlichen [sic!] Objektivität`).
The second premise origins in historical anthropology, especially in historical approaches to science studies. (Doris Kaufmann, Lorraine Daston, Michel Serres, Londa Schiebinger, Gadi Algazi, Richard Darnton, Lutz Rafael, Steven Shapin, Timothy Lenoir–these I have read.) The first one tracks back to mainly in sociology and in social science rooted science studies.
Philosophy-like definitions of inherent moralities don`t work sufficiently as “academic proof” of it`s existance within academia or within science or within anthropology.

Are you pointing to anthropology’s analytical categories as imbued with moral imperatives? That’s an interesting thought. Uma Adang’s list surely troubles these categories, and perhaps even the reasons for doing ethnographic research.

No, it`s just that “alternative taxonomies” of things and especially of knoweledge make me understand the taxonomy I have been tought within my culture is humanmade and contextually grown and that there are several.
Itz banal, I know.
It is the western order of things, and especially the categories of “things we can know” and “things we cannot know” which I assume to be already a representation of (historically contextbound) morality.
When I said ´western order of things` I draw back to 17th century european encyclopaedists.

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Great point about Borges’s ancient Chinese encyclopedia in Foucault’s Order of Things. You mentioned “morality,” and I wanted to hear more. Are you pointing to anthropology’s analytical categories as imbued with moral imperatives? That’s an interesting thought. Uma Adang’s list surely troubles these categories, and perhaps even the reasons for doing ethnographic research.

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I haven`t yet have read many ethnographies and my first association to the special style you made explicit is Juan Matus (yes, I am aware of Castaneda`s inner- and outeracademic reception). The similarity in style in regards of an outstanding protagonist leading through the book and the use of their crossculture dialog as central means is interesting in regards of the question, where Castaneda got his inspiration from. The content has been declared as fictional, but it is still a textual source (ok, he was a Alfred Schütz scholar, but which ethnographies had he read, as a student i.e.?) Uma Adang anyway is younger than Juan Matus.

Another aspect I got stuck at is Uma Adang`s order of things. (Who would not be pointed at Foucault`s famous historical quote of a chinese encyclopaedia`s taxonomy of animals.) The association here points back to the question of western anthropology`s inherent morality–´morality` considered as a system, perhaps rather as a network of things put in order, which is represented / which results in premisses, values and action.

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