BAEcon Economics

This course will focus on the anthropology of ethics to ask how people conceptualise the good life and good ways to live. Drawing on a range of traditions that inform anthropological understandings of ethics, we will address ethical questions across a range of fields. Some key areas of concern will include the relationship between the individual and collectivities, the ethical and the moral and the interpenetration of public and private domains.

The course unit aims to: Introduce students to the Anthropology of Ethics.

This course will focus on the anthropology of ethics to ask how people conceptualise the good life and good ways to live. The sub-field of the Anthropology of ethics is seen to have originated as a distinct area of investigation since 2001, although, of course, anthropologists have been concerned with what might be termed ethical questions (i.e. questions about how to live) since the inception of the discipline. The kinds of questions that are of interest include: why do people follow moral rules or codes of conduct? Are there some things that are universally considered good (or bad)? Do the same moral codes or rules apply to all members of a given social group? To what extent is being good the result of obedience to extant rules and to what extent is this, a product of reflection and conscious willed action?

Drawing on a range of traditions and theoretical underpinnings that inform anthropological understandings of ethics, we will address ethical questions across a range of fields - from religion to politics to economics. Some key areas of concern will include the relationship between the individual and collectivises, the ethical and the moral and the interpenetration of public and private domains. We will also spend time on the question of relativism, e.g. other words, is a good always a good or does it depend on social and other contexts?

2 lecture hours and 1 seminar hour per week.

Office hours.

Knowledge and Understanding:

Develop an understanding of the growing sub-field of the Anthropology of Ethics.

Explore what it might mean to be a good person and ask whether this might be context-dependent or context independent.

Explore the relationship between:

Is and ought

Ethics and morality

Public and private spheres

Engage with debates within the Anthropology of Ethics

Intellectual skills:

Critically read and write about a number of key texts in the Anthropology of Ethics and related sub-fields.

Engage critically with the notion of Relativism.

Transferable skills and personal qualities:

Critical engagement with complex questions, and effective written and spoken communication.

• Voicethread presentation (worth 25%);
• 2000 word essay (worth 75%)

Electronic and personalised feedback

Durkheim, Emile. 1993. Ethics and the Sociology of Morals. Translated and with an introduction by Robert T. Hall. New York: Prometheus.

Linton, Ralph. 1952. Universal Ethical Principles: An Anthropological Point of View. In R. N. Anshen (ed.), Moral Principles of Action: Man Ethical Imperative. New York: Harper.

Andrade, Roy. 1995. Moral Models in Anthropology. Current Anthropology 16(3): 399-408.

Fiske, Alan and Kathyn Mason. 1990. Moral Relativism. Special Issue of Ethos. 18(2).

Howell, Signe (ed.), 1997. The Ethnography of Moralities. London: Routledge.

Kleinman, Arthur. 1999. Experience and Its Moral Modes: Culture, Human Conditions, and Disorder. In G.B. Peterson (ed), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 20:357-420. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Mattingly, Cheryl. 1998. In Search of the Good: Narrative Reasoning in Clinical Practice. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 12(3): 273-97.

Parkin, David (ed). 1985. The Anthropology of Evil

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2027 will be £10,050 per annum. Tuition fees for international students will be £33,100 per annum.

For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

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Learn more about fees and finance for international students.

As an international student you may be eligible for our Global Futures Scholarships. This is open to students starting their studies in September 2026.