An Anthropology of the Enlightenment: Moral Social Relations Then and Today pdf

Nigel Rapport feels he has come to the right place to further his research in cosmopolitanism. Rapport has joined Concordia’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. It’s a change from a small medieval town that he describes as “Cambridge by the sea” to a large city with an urban campus. The British anthropologist has been made the Canada Research Chair, Tier 1, in Globalization, Citizenship and Social Justice. He is also the founding director of the Concordia Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies, launching research programs and workshops that promote an appreciation of the rights, the capacities and the experience of the global individual.

An Anthropology of the Enlightenment: Moral Social Relations Then and Today pdf by Nigel Rapport

How can we rethink the terms of Enlightenment anthropology in a manner and an idiom appropriate to the contemporary era? The essays collated here argue for anthropology's use in acknowledging, exploring and interpreting divergence and ideological conflict over human meaning. The volume is structured around some of the key themes that the Enlightenment fostered, including human nature, time, Earth and the cosmos, beauty, order, harmony and design, morals, and the query of whether wealthy nations make for healthy publics. It focuses in particular on how 'moral sentiment' offered a guiding idea in Enlightenment thought. The idea of 'moral sentiment' is central to the essays' grappling with the ethical anxieties of contemporary anthropology. The essays therefore trace historical connections and fissures, and focus in particular on Adam Smith's attempts toward an understanding of what would later be called 'modernity' - where the realism that allows us to understand individual experience appears at odds with the realism which takes on larger scale social processes of enculturation or globalization. With an afterword from Marilyn Strathern, this volume makes a strong addition to the ASA conference proceedings.