CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOKS IN ANTHROPOLOGY THE CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOK FOR THE Anthropology ro) im at) (os) Edited by James Laidlaw19 Values Julian Sommerschuh and Joel Robbins Introduction In parallel to the emergence of an anthropology of ethics and morality over the past fifteen years, there has also been a smaller but growing interest in the study of values. The concept of values ~ defined as cultural conceptions of the good or desirable ~ once occupied a central place in anthropology and neighbouring social sciences (Kluckhohn 1951; Firth 1953; Albert and Vogt 1966; Barth 1966). But interest waned during the final decades of the twentieth century and was upheld in anthropology only by a small group of scholars centred around Louis Dumont in Paris, and Nancy Munn and Terence Turner in Chicago (Dumont 1980; Munn 1986; Turner 1979), Since the early 2000s, however, the concept has gained renewed attention and there is now emerging a self-conscious anthropology of values (Graeber 2001, 2013; Robbins 1994, 2004, 2012, 2018a, 2018b; Otto and Willerslev 2013a, 2013b; Iteanu and Moya 2015; Hickel and Haynes 2018; see Robbins and Sommerschuh 2016 for an overview). What is the relation between the anthropology of values and the anthro- pology of ethics? One thing that renders their relationship close is that the two fields are commonly understood as parts of a broader intellectual move- ment which takes issue with many other anthropologists’ almost exclusive focus on the ‘harsh sides of social life’ (Ortner 2016). Suggesting that there is more to human experience than struggles over power, domination, and suffering, those interested in values and ethics have been important voices in the development of an ‘anthropology of the good’ (Robbins 2013a). And yet, despite this similarity and other clear affinities and overlaps, the anthro- pologies of ethics and values are not coterminous. On the side of the study of values, many of those interested in this approach have not understood their work as being primarily concerned with ethics. Studies here have examined topics such as politics (Haynes 2018; Iteanu 2013; Robbins 2013c), economics (Graeber 2001; Haynes 2017; Sommerschuh 2022), and social organization486 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS (Smedal 2016), without foregrounding the ethical dimension of these phe- nomena. The anthropology of values, then, even as it has one foot firmly planted in the anthropology of ethics, also has a life that extends beyond the confines of this currently influential field. And on the side of the anthropol- ogy of ethics, even a quick glance at its now large body of literature quickly reveals that the study of values has only been one frame among others ~and a rather minor and undeveloped one when compared to approaches derived from virtue ethics (Mahmood 2005; Faubion 2011; Laidlaw 2014), ordinary language philosophy (Lambek 2010; Das 2012), and Heideggerian thought (Zigon 2007), which dominate the field. Indeed, some have even questioned whether the concept of values is of any use for those studying ethics (e.g. Das 2012: 134). Those who describe their approach as being about ‘everyday’ or ‘ordinary’ ethics, in particular, have argued that ethical life proceeds without reference to overarching conceptions of value or the good, and that, as Hayder AlMohammad (in Venkatesan 2015: 446) puts it, ‘not much hinges on “the GOOD” in terms of helping us get closer to the struggles for life, well- being, and voice, which we would like to consider as being “ethical” in some form or another’. Those interested in virtues and selfformation have been mutch less dismissive of values, taking them as that ‘in the light’ of which people shape themselves (Laidlaw 2017: 179), But while many ethnographies from this camp make reference to values and use the term as part of their ‘descriptive prose’ (Barth 1993: 31), the topic is seldom the focus of sustained theoretical elaboration (though see Laidlaw 2014, and from outside the virtue-ethical tradition, Keane 2016, for partial exceptions to the general neglect of value-ethical approaches). Against this background, those working on the anthropology of values who are also interested in ethics are faced with the choice between clarify- ing how and with what analytical gain the concept of values could be integrated into other existing frames for studying ethics, or instead push- ing forward with the development of a distinctly value-theoretical approach to ethics. In this chapter we would like to contribute to the latter task. We do so because we think that approaching ethics through the frame of value is a promising way to deal with a key problematic in the anthropology of ethics. James Laidlaw has recently articulated this prob- lematic clearly when he noted that an anthropology of ethics, if it is to be of any interest whatsoever, necessarily requires a conception of the ethical that recognizes the historical and cultural variety of forms of ethical life, and recognizes also the variety of ideals and values and conceptions of human flourishing that have animated them. And for this, it is surely neces- sary that we do not assume that we already know what ethics looks like, or that only values we share and forms of life we approve are ‘ethical’ (Laidlaw 2017: 180)Values 487 In other words, what Laidlaw calls for here is a conceptualization of the ethical which can be applied cross-culturally. Laidlaw suggests that some of the extant approaches in the anthropology of ethics are less well suited to this than others. He worries, for example, that what he reads as Jarrett Zigon’s (2014) definition of ethics as being concerned with maintaining or restoring a state of existential comfort is deficient since it is built around a substantive notion of the good life, which is unlikely to be shared by people everywhere (a reading that Zigon contests (2018: 147)). Conversely. Laidlaw argues that ‘a focus on processes of reflection and self-formation’ does not ‘preemptively commit us exclusively to our already-favoured vision of the good life’, since ‘these processes might be deployed in diverse ways and towards ... divergent ends’ (Laidlaw 2017: 180). There can be no doubt that Laidlaw’s conceptualization of the ethical allows for the compelling analysis of ethical life in diverse places ~ as is testified by numerous ethnographies inspired by the kind of approach he advocates. Yet, there have also been voices urging recognition that reflec- tion and self formation may not everywhere be equally important facets of ethical practice. For example, Piliavsky and Sbriccoli (2016), writing about the ‘rule of toughs’ in northern India, have pointed to a relative absence of concern with virtue and selfformation among them. What matters to those they work with, and what forms the basis of their ethical judge- ments, is not how morally ‘good’ an act or a person is or aspires to be but how effective they are in achieving a given end. Similarly, writing about the Tubu of northern Chad, Judith Scheele (2015: 35) notes that Tubu ‘are not given to much soul-searching or personal discipline’, and that in their case moral judgement rather concerns how well people manage to defy cultural norms in clever, original, and humorous ways, ‘The observation that in some places reflection and ethi may be less important to ethical life than in others obviously does not invalidate an approach that focusses on these phenomena. Indeed, pro- ponents of this approach might well claim that some measure of reflection and self-formation must also be involved where people strive for effective- ness or the clever defiance of cultural norms. But voices like those of Scheele or Piliavsky and Sbriccoli at least invite us to keep looking for further possibilities of conceptualizing the ethical in a way that compre- hends as diverse a range of societies as possible. If we think that the concept of values is well suited to this end, it is because we take values to be a universal phenomenon ~ all people have conceptions of what is good, important, and desirable in life - while at the same time these conceptions are subject to tremendous variation in content and structure in relation to one another. Hence, if we find a way of thinking about ethics by way of values, we would likely have an approach that could be very broadly applied across cultures. What might a value-theoretical conceptualization of ethics look like? In this chapter we suggest two possible ways of answering this question. (i self-formation488 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS ‘The first draws on a distinction between moral values, on the one hand, and other types of values, such as aesthetic, intellectual, or economic values, on the other. Offering what could be called a ‘narrow’ conception of ethics, the first approach defines ethics as having to do with (realizing or violating, questioning or affirming) moral values. The second approach offers a broader conceptualization of the ethical as having to do with people's efforts at relating in appropriate ways to the different kinds of values, both moral and non-moral, that they recognize. Valuing things appropriately, we suggest, is always an ethical matter ~ and hence one way of defining the matter of ethics. In what follows, we introduce these two approaches in turn and offer examples of the sorts of ethnographic analyses that each of them makes possible. Some Background on Values ‘The concept of value originated in eighteenth-century economics to refer to the worth of items traded in the market economy. Late-nineteenth- century German philosophers arguing for the importance of a more than simply scientific materialist understanding of the world expanded the term to group together all the forms of relative importance and signifi- cance human beings experience in the world. It was this expanded form of the now pluralized notion of ‘values’ that founding social theorists such as Weber (1946) and Durkheim (1974) engaged, and through their work and that of others it entered the twentieth-century social sciences (Schnidelbach 1984: 161-91; Joas 2000: 20; Robbins 2015a). For anthropol- ogy, Clyde Kluckhohn (1951) provided an important definition of the notion of values which remains influential to this day. According to this definition, values are conceptions of the ‘desirable’. The notion of the desirable refers to the fact that while people have all kinds of desires, they also have the ability to evaluate these desires in a second-order way, and when they do, they find that only some of their desires are ones they think it is good to have and good to act on (Frankfurt 1999). It is these second-order desires ~ the things they want to want ~ that people treat as desirable and that we will, following Kluckhohn, call values. A moment's reflection is enough to recognize the diversity of human values. While in many parts of Africa people value hierarchical relation- ships (Hickel and Haynes 2018), in many Western societies equality is an important value and hierarchy is regarded as an evil (Iteanu 2013). While for some Christians prosperity and worldly success is a high-level value (Maxwell 1998), others regard wealth with suspicion and instead value humility (Cherry 2011). In some places, people see it as desirable that individuals be granted as much autonomy as possible and also be allowed to keep to themselves (Stasch 2009), but elsewhere being on one’s own is a disvalue and positive value is placed on constantly engaging others inValues 489 interaction (Freeman 2015: 161). Of course, the existence of multiple values is not only true cross-culturally. Any given culture or social group also recognizes a variety of values. Along with their multiplicity in any given social formation and across cultures, a second key point about values concerns their hierarchical arrangement. Someone may value friendship and family relations, profes- sional success, being a good colleague, playing the piano, protecting the environment, and giving to charity ~ but this does not mean that all of, these things are equally important to them. They may, for instance, value friendship more highly than professional success, and this may motivate them to decline a job offer which they think would endanger existing friendships. In other words, and as Robbins has laid out in detail else- where, values tend to be ranked ‘into hierarchies of better and worse or more and less desirable’ (2012: 120). And not only are values themselves ranked hierarchically, but so are the practices linked to their realization. For example, in the field of charity, direct handouts to the needy were for some time seen as less good than supposedly more ‘sustainable’ forms of help (Scherz 2017). This was based on the view that the value of improving other people’s lives is better realized by, as the slogan has it, teaching people to catch fish rather than giving them any. This is now changing again, and there is considerable support for the idea of unconditional cash transfers, with a number of governments in Africa and elsewhere having introduced ‘give a man a fish’ systems (Ferguson 2015). Practices linked to realizing a given value, then, are ranked vis--vis one another depending on the extent to which they are thought to contribute to realizing that value. And this ranking may change over time, as the effectiveness of different practices is reassessed (Sommerschuh 2022). Thanks to the work of Louis Dumont (1980, 1986, 1994) and those coming after him, the anthropology of values today features sophisticated methods for discerning and comparing different cultures’ value hierarch- ies, We will not review these methods here (for summaries, see Robbins and Siikala 2014: 123-7; Rio and Smedal 2009), but will only mention one key finding that has turned out to be relevant for discussing the relation between values and ethics, and to which we shall occasionally return in the course of this chapter. This is the finding that values are sometimes related harmoniously and sometimes in a way that leads to irreconcilable conflicts between them. These two configurations may be known as ‘mon- ism’ and ‘pluralism’, respectively (Robbins 2013b; Chang 1997; Stocker 1990). Monism can either be a matter of the ranks between values being clear such that no two values are ever considered of equal importance in the same context, or of values working together, such that realizing one value helps to realize another, usually a higher one, or at least does not conflict with the project of realizing higher values. So you can strive to be healthy and to livea long life, or to become an excellent football player and490 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS to gain fame, or to be charitable and to be saved by God - and in each case there is no necessary conflict or tension between these pursuits. However, if you found it equally desirable to become a famous football player and to lead a healthy, long life, you might face a value conflict, since achieving the former may require sacrificing the latter. Robbins (2007) has argued that whether values are arranged in a pluralist or monist way within a given social formation or domain influences the form that ethical life takes for its members. Where people are unsure which of two conflicting values to prioritize, as in the pluralist case, ethical life is marked by constant reflection and deliberation and a sense of having to make hard choices. Contrarily, where a social domain is pervasively structured by a single value, as in the monist case, ethical life takes a more habitual, routinized form. This is not to say that there will be no reflection at all in monist contexts: people may still reflect on the best ways of realizing the value at stake, or may reflectively evaluate their own conduct in relation to it. Overall, however, there will be less of an absolute ethical requirement for reflection and deliberation, as people are clear about which value they wish to realize, and as doing so does not come at the expense of realizing other values they care about. Affording the opportunity to attend to how different types of value relations entail different modes of ethical life is one example of the kind of contribution value theory can make to the study of ethics. It may well be that there are other types of value relations, beyond the monismpluralism distinction, which could usefully be studied in terms of their ethics-related consequences (e.g., an ethical reading of Dumont'’s (1980) notion of encom- passment would be an interesting project for another occasion). Here, however, we take a different tack. Observing that axiology, or the philo- sophical study of value, has long distinguished not only different types of value relations but also different types of values, the next section asks what this might mean for talking about the relation between values and ethics. Values, Moral and Non-Moral Philosophers interested in values have commonly suggested that not all values are moral ones. Susan Wolf offers one influential articulation of this point. In her well-known 1982 article ‘Moral Saints’ (collected in her 2015 book The Variety of Values), Wolf proposes a distinction between ‘moral’ and ‘non-moral' values. Acknowledging that just how to draw the dividing line between these two kinds of values is difficult to determine (2015: 2), Wolf, offers the following tentative definition of moral values: Itake morality to be centrally concerned with a commitment to treat- ing all people (or, on alternative views, all sentient or all rationalValues 491 beings) as deserving of concern and respect. Justice and benevolence are paradigm moral values; honesty, generosity, and kindness are paradigm moral virtues. In contrast, I take aesthetic and intellectual values, as well as the value to an individual of a particular relationship or person to whom she bears a personal kind of love, to be nonmoral values. (2015: 2) In Wolf's terms, then, some of the values that we mentioned in passing in the previous section would count as moral values (e.g. charitableness or respecting other people’s right to be alone), while others would count as non-moral (e.g. musical excellence or economic success). Now, definitions of the term ‘moral’ are a notoriously difficult subject, in philosophy no less than in anthropology (cf. Wong 2014; Laidlaw 2014: 110-14; Keane 2016: 17f). But if one wants to distinguish moral from. non-moral values, as we are arguing it is useful to do from the point of view of anthropological theory and ethnographic analysis, one needs to. work with some definition of moral values. We have found Wolf's defin- ion helpful for laying out our argument for the usefulness of this distinction in what follows. But our purpose here is not to promote this definition over others. Our goal is to indicate the usefulness of distin- guishing between moral and non-moral values along whatever lines it might make sense to do so. This is our way of saying we hope readers will not get too stuck on the validity of this definition of moral values and will instead keep reading through the argument about value ethics we are using it to construct. Before mobilizing Wolf's distinction between moral and non-moral values for ethnographic analysis, two further aspects of it are worth pointing out. First, the distinction between moral and non-moral values is descriptive, not normative; that is, philosophically or anthropologically speaking, no value judgement is attached to saying that charitableness is a moral value and economic success is not (though as we will see, they can be ranked differently vis-d-vis one another in various cultural formations). Second, from an anthropological point of view it is clear that there is cross- cultural variation in what counts as treating others ‘as deserving of con- cern and respect’. To take up the above example, while in some places granting others as much space to themselves as possible is understood as respectful, elsewhere this counts as neglect and respecting others takes the form of constantly engaging them in interaction. Nothing in Wolf's account suggests that she would disagree with this point. Indeed, one could go a step further and suggest that ‘with concern and respect’ is just. one culturally specific, substantive answer to the general question of how people ought to treat each other. The formal core of Wolfs definition would then be that moral values concern proper ways of relating to other people, whereas non-moral values concern our relation to other492 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS good, true, or beautiful things in the world. Itis with this formal reading of Wolf's definition that we would like to work in the following. These points in place, if we think of moral values as those conceptions of the desirable that are concerned with the ways people ought to treat each other, then we have a definition that can be applied cross-culturally because, thus defined, moral values exist everywhere. This follows from our constitution as social beings which means that we can never entirely do without other people, so that other-orientated values will exist in every society, even though they may be subordinate to individualist or other values in some place or contexts (cf. Dumont 1994: 8-15; Robbins 2015b: 173f). Putting this distinction between moral and non-moral values to use in our project of conceptualizing ethics through the lens of values, we can begin by suggesting that from this point of view, one is dealing with ethics ina narrow sense wherever people are relating positively or negatively to moral values ~ be that through reflection, on the basis of cultivated dis positions, or in some other way. This does not mean that this is all there is to ethics. Claiming this would go against the grain of much work in the anthropology of ethics, which has precisely sought to broaden our under- standing of the ethical (cf. Laidlaw 2014: 114). Next we will therefore offer a broader conceptualization of the ethical to complement the narrower one we are using here. But we wish to stay with the narrower one for a moment because, in the context of our discussion of moral values as only one among a number of kinds of values, it opens up a line of anthropo- logical inquiry concerning the place that moral values ~ and the ethical concern relating to them ~ occupy in the value hierarchies of different societies.! The Position of Moral Values Wolfs aim in distinguishing moral and non-moral values was to argue against the view (advocated on her reading by deontological and conse- quentialist schools of moral philosophy) that moral values should always be given precedence over non-moral ones (for a related view, see Williams 2011 [1985)). There is more to life than morality, Wolf argues, and there is no compelling reason why taking an interest in fine cuisine or practising the cello should be less worthy pursuits than giving to charity or partici- pating in a protest march (2015). Looked at ethnographically, Wolf can be seen as pointing to a question all societies face: what place should moral "fs. farther reason why it ight be useful to retain a narrower conception of ethics or morality, one may’ ote that ‘among ahicsophers interested engaging with the anthropology of ethics thete has lately been concem over too broad defritons of morality Thus, Michael Klenk notes thatthe tical tums approach to defining mara i Very broad anche suggest thatantroaclogiss’deintons may erronthe ide ofbeing tooindusie astheydo nately allo a ditncton between mara considerations and oer normative cansderatiens such a prudential, epistemic or aesthetic ones’ (Klenk 2013: 12; see also Wong 2014: 348),Values 493 values be accorded in their value hierarchies? It turns out that answers to this question differ significantly between societies and over time. An interesting place to start is Judith Scheele’ (2015) discussion of the Tubu of northern Chad, already mentioned earlier. This isa case in which non-moral values are at the top of a people’s value hierarchy. The Tubu have long been described in terms of disorder, total ruthlessness, extreme individualism, and a general disrespect for social norms. Such descriptions were advanced by early travellers and the French colonial authorities, But they have also been endorsed in academic literatur indeed, Tubu themselves proudly identify as immoral (33-5). And far from being a mere discourse, Scheele makes clear that life in the Tubu town of Faya, where she carried out her research, in fact has a very anarchic and disordered feel ~ this is a place where, to offer but a few examples, kin steal from each other, divorce is common, 99 per cent of, taxes go unpaid, and children ‘dig holes in the street at night, so that unwary drivers crash into them in the morning ~ and all this “under their parents’ complicit eye” (39). While both colonial authorities and earlier anthropologists attributed Tubu ‘anarchy’ to the absence of strong polit- ical structures, Scheele makes clear that at least today this can hardly be the main explanation, since the Chadian government is now very present in the town of Faya. Against this background, she suggests that Tubu anarchy is better understood as being a realization of high-anked Tubu values; that is, as something Tubu find good and desirable, rather than it being simply an effect of particular material or political conditions. According to Scheele, the two central Tubu values are disorder and autonomy (or anarchy) (35). Crucially for the purpose of our discussion, Scheele’s account reveals that, next to these non-moral values Tubu also recognize moral values, such as showing hospitality to guests, not stealing by stealth, or, for women, modesty and subservience to husbands. The existence of such moral values is revealed, among other ways, by the fact that when discuss- ing local events Tubu often make judgements based on these values. So, of aman who breaks through the roof of his sister’s house to steal from her it is said that ‘this is not the way a brother ought to behave’ (38). With regard to a woman given to drink and frequently changing ‘boyfriends’, people say thata woman drinking publicly is ‘very bad’ (40). Similarly, concerning a wife whose refusal to cook means that her husband needs to eat at a restaurant every day, people agree that her conduct is not right and not to be emulated (39). Yet even as people make such moral evaluations, they are not what really matters locally. This is evidenced by the fact that when commenting on a particular case, people often begin in moral terms but then quickly move on to highlighting the hilarious or creative sides of, a certain offence, or how daringly or cleverly someone acted. This reveals an underlying value hierarchy in which moral values are subordinated to non-moral values, and where actions are primarily evaluated in terms of,494 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS how successfully they realize the value of disorder or how strongly they manage to express a person’s capacity to defy cultural norms. At the opposite extreme of the scale we find cases where moral values are paramount, pushing for the subordination of all other values. Here, we may think of the piety movements that have been described so vividly in recent contributions to the anthropology of ethics. Thus, the women studied by Saba Mahmood (2005) strive to become, in Wolt’s (2015) terms, ‘moral saints’, trying as frequently as possible to embody moral virtues of modesty, humility, chastity, charity, and so forth, In these movements, all other possible values, such as worldly enjoyments, are denigrated and there is a veritable mortification of the flesh. We may also think of Omri Flisha’s (2011) work on moral ambition among US Evangelicals. He describes how some people he worked with felt that their churches should engage in greater social outreach, which they saw as an antidote to consumerism and an exclusive focus on the values of work and family. These people were making reference to Christian moral values of unconditional benevolence, helping the poor, and so on. In these cases moral values subordinate other values. The position of moral vis-a-vis other values is not fixed but can change over time. Shifting relations between moral and aesthetic values offer a good example. Writing on this topic, Max Weber (1946: 341-3) sketched a shift from earlier times when art was intimately connected with and subservient to religious morality, to the ‘modern’ situation where moral and aesthetic values oppose each other. The increasing rationalization of life, Weber suggests, made of art ‘a cosmos of more and more consciously grasped independent values which exist in their own right’ (1946: 342). In this situation, artists and those who appreciate art perceive ‘the ethical norm as such ...as a coercion of their genuine creativeness and innermost selves’ (1946: 342) — a perception which, of course, has been given rich expression in the lives and works of many artists. Indeed, aesthetic values can not only become independent of and draw level with moral ones. Weber also points to the possibility that they can push for the subordin- ation of moral values: the refusal of modern men to assume responsibility for moral judg- ments tends to transform judgments of moral intent into judgments of taste (‘in poor taste’ instead of ‘reprehensible’). The inaccessibility of appeal from esthetic judgments excludes discussion. This shift from the moral to the esthetic evaluation of conduct is a common charac- teristic of intellectualist epochs; it results partly from subjectivist needs and partly from the fear of appearing narrow-minded in a traditionalist and Philistine way. (1946: 342) If Weber here suggests the rise of aesthetic values over moral ones, recent years have been marked by a move in the opposite direction.Values 495 We are all familiar with current debates concerning the extent to which an artist’s moral character andjor the moral content of their art ought to be taken into account when assessing and relating to their work. Although the debate is multivocal, there seems to be a strong current moving away from earlier generations’ assumptions about the moral impunity of art and the legitimacy of being a bad person if one is a great artist — or, indeed, the moral obligation for bad people to become great artists in order to com- pensate humanity for the evil they would do, as Hemingway's third wif Martha Gellhorn, suggested (cf. Dederer 2017 and Williams 1981: ch. 2, on Gauguin). If Wolf wrote several years ago that what matters in the assess- ment of.a novel is not the moral message it might contain but its aesthetic quality (2015: 2), there now appears to be a rising sense that the more important question is whether the artist, the means of production, the subject, the message, or the possible consequences on the audience of, a work of art are morally reproachable or not (see also Stecker 2005: 139-44), ‘Whaat could be described as an increasing moralization of the aesthetic sphere can also be observed in other domains of life, for instance in that of consumption. Similarly, as Julian Bourg (2007) suggests for the case of France (and as also seems to apply for other Western societies), the past few decades have been marked by a rise of ‘ethics’ and a decline of ‘polit- ics’, meaning that collective issues that would have formerly been addressed on a structural level are now framed as matters of - and matters to be dealt with through ~ individual morality. In this section we have argued that not all values are moral values, and we have noted that the place that moral values occupy in the value hierarchies of different societies varies. In some places moral values occupy a high position and shape people's activities extensively and in various domains of life (see also Laidlaw 2002: 319), Elsewhere, moral considerations play a more minor role and are easily supplanted by other considerations and pursuits. This finding opens up space for further ethno- graphic inquiry into the position moral values occupy in different value hierarchies and how and for what reasons their relative positions change over time. A Broader View: The Ethics of Valuing Things Appropriately In this section we argue that even as not all values are moral values, valuing any kind of thing or state of affairs appropriately, such that one does not promote a lower-valued thing or state of affairs above a more highly valued one in contexts where both are relevant, is always an ethical matter — irrespective of the type of values involved. This claim opens on to a broader conceptualization of the ethical than we deployed earlier. It suggests that we are dealing with ethical matters not only when people496 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS are relating to moral values but also whenever they are relating to any sort of value. In this section we will first lay out what motivates this conceptu- alization of the ethical and what exactly is meant by it, and then we will offer examples of some of the kinds of ethnographic analyses that can be carried out on its basis. Philosophical Foundations From its inception, the anthropology of ethics has been in close dialogue with moral philosophy. While some strands of moral philosophy, notably deontological and consequentialist approaches, have been found less con- genial to the anthropological project, others, such as virtue ethics, have offered rich inspiration for ethnographic research and theoretical analysis (cf. Laidlaw 2014: 48). One branch of moral philosophy that has hardly been considered so far, however, is that of ‘value ethics’. If we wish to devise a value-centred approach to ethics, this is a rich theoretical seam to mine. In the twentieth century, the most prominent exponent of a value-ethical approach was the phenomenologist Max Scheler. Scheler conceived his theory primarily as a rejection of Kantianism and of deontological approaches more generally, while sharing with Kant the rejection of utilitar- ianism (Joas 2000: 92), Contra such ‘formal’ and ‘imperativistic’ ethics ~ that is, ethics concerned with rationally deriving obligations from abstract prin- ciples Scheler posited a ‘material value-ethics’ (Scheler1973; see also Spader 2002; Joas 2000: ch. 6), in which our emotional responses to what we perceive as good and bad play a central role. At the heart of Scheler’s approach are two assumptions. One concerns ‘human perception and suggests that to perceive things is to perceive them as having a specific value (Scheler (1973: 197) speaks of ‘value-ception’). To perceive a tree or a painting, for instance, is not simply to see something green or of such and such composition — but is to see something beautiful or ugly. ‘We “see” the beauty of a painting just as we “see” its colors. The grasping of value is our most original and primordial relation to the world’ (Davis and Steinbock 2019). And not only do we grasp value; we also grasp rankings between values, such that some things appear to us as more beautiful or noble or good than others. Scheler’s second assumption is that values and the rank ordering among them are objective phenomena. For instance, he suggests that values associated with the holy objectively rank above values associated with utility or pleasure (Davis and Steinbock 2019), Taken together, these two assumptions yield an approach to ethics in which the perception of values and the ranking between them is the source of ethical obligation: ‘Claiming that there is an objective order of values... necessarily entails that the higher values “ought” to be preferred to the lower. We ought to act in sucha manner that promotes the higher orValues 497 positive values’ (Davis and Steinbock 2019). Conversely, it would be ethic- ally wrong to perceive a rank ordering between two values and to none- theless give precedence to the lower-ranking one —to eat ice cream rather than to care for one’s health is to wrongly promote values of pleasure over those of what Scheler calls ‘vitality’; to destroy an historical building to build a shopping mail is to wrongly promote utility or pecuniary values over cultural ones. In Scheler, then, we find a conception of the ethical as being a matter of valuing things appropriately (Blosser 1987}. To be sure, there are aspects of Scheler’s approach which anthropologists will find hard to digest, notably his conception of an objective ordering of value. (Although it should be noted that Scheler openly acknowledges cultural diversity, conceiving of differences in the value systems of different societies as based on the different vantage points from which they view the really existing set of ranked objective values (Scheler 1973; Joas 2000: 95),) What matters for our concerns in this chapter, however, is the perspective on ethical life that Scheler’s ideas open up and the ways they can be transformed into an ethnographic research programme. With Scheler, one would study ethics by looking at people’s evaluative experiences and the acts that follow from these: one would ask which values people recognize and how they rank these; one would study their attempts to give due weight to different values depending on their rank; and one would consider how people judge themselves and others in terms of their success or failure at valuing things appropriately. Importantly, such a view does not assume that people already know what the correct value hierarchy looks like and what valuing things appropriately would mean in any given case. While in some places or in some domains of social life this may well be the case — with valuing things appropriately taking the form of routine action based on ‘common sense’ - there are also situations in which people are engaged in attempts to figure out, personally or collectively, what the correct value hierarchy is or what it would mean to value a given thing appropriately (cf. Robbins 2007). Before offering examples of how to analyse ethnography from a value- ethics perspective, it is helpful to consider an additional point made by a second philosopher who works in this tradition: Elizabeth Anderson.’ Valuing things appropriately, Anderson suggests, is not only a matter of giving proper weight to differently ranked values ~ that is, it is not only about low much one values something ~ but also about how one values it > Asweread Scheer (1975) on this pont his claim i that regardless of what part the valve hierarchy a given culture ‘eads peaple to attend to, morality wil alaays est o valuing the things one sled to understand as vauablein appropriate ways which ito sayin accord wth their enkrelaiveto other valued things. this Sense, theraskof ethical life similar everywhere, though Scheler does leave rom to suggest that some citureslead people to perceive higher reaches ofthe abjecive value hierarchy than are allowed by others, a projet to which we do net subsorbe, ® Although rota phenomenclogis, Anderson (1993:5) he Scheler and his teacher Huser is influenced by the ‘ineteent-century German philosopher Franz Brentano (whose most important bookea vekiesisSrenano (1963),498 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS (1993: xiii); itis about the right ‘mode of valuation’ (1993: 6). Taking issue with economistic theories that asstime that pleasure or desire is the only (relevant) form in which people respond to things they value, Anderson points out that there are actually multiple ways of valuing something - such as love, admiration, respect, awe, affection, or use. Based on this observation, she advances the normative claim that different things ought to be valued differently. Specifically, she is concerned with the question of the ethical limits of market valuation, arguing that the envir- onment or women’s reproductive powers are not properly valued accord- ing to a market logic, but demand to be valued differently (xiii). There is no need here to examine in detail how Anderson justifies her Claim that different things need to be valued differently and that doing so is morally significant. The important thing to note is that she understands her theory not as a deductive one but as being grounded in how real people actually value things. She opposes philosophers who think that to ‘reach sound ethical judgments, we ... require an entirely new mode of ethical justification, independent of the historical and social contingencies in which common-sense evaluative reasoning is mired’ (13). Instead, she seeks to ‘vindicate [the] pluralism of ordinary evaluative thought and to develop some ofits practical and theoretical implications’ (1).’This interest in diversity makes Anderson an apt dialogue partner for anthropologists. Turned into a programme for ethnographic research, her theory would invite us to study the different modes of valuation that matter for a given group of people, and their ideas about the things to which each of these different modes is properly applied. Similarly, Anderson makes clear that valuing things appropriately is never merely a matter of perception but always a matter of action, of giving expression to and thus communicating one’s regard for the object's importance (1993: 11). This means that study- ing what are locally deemed appropriate ways of expressing diferent modes of valuation is another avenue for ethnographic research. Finally, echoing a point already made in our discussion of Scheler, it is important to note that Anderson does not assume that it is always clear to people what it would mean to value something appropriately. Rather, ‘{t)he respects in which anything is properly valued, and the ways and circum- stances in which it makes sense to value it, remain problems’ (15); and one can therefore study how ‘people interpret and justify their valuations by exchanging reasons for them with the aim of reaching a common point of view from which others can achieve and reflectively endorse one another's valuations’ (3).* “Ths pespecive asa prnides a goad way for studying ethical change So, for example, among Aa people in southem Ethiopia, ene important medeof valuation has tadtionally been that of fea? (bash), with a fearful attitude beng shown towards partcular places, things, and hierrchcally superior people, nthe course of conversion 1 Christin, the impertance of fear ae a vay of alin things has been much resticted, being now lag ited to God. CCorwersely, "ove! (salma) has become a mare important made of vakaon (Sorsmerschuh 2019: 71-81),Values 499 Drawing on Scheler and Anderson, we have done two things: we have argued that it is possible to define the ethical in terms of people's efforts to value things appropriately; and we have pointed to ways in which this perspective might be operationalized (namely, by looking both at people’s attempts to figure out value hierarchies and their attempts to figure out the right modes of valuation for different things). In the following section we go on to offer examples of the sorts of ethnographic analysis that could be carried out on this basis. Ethnographic Examples Paul Bohannan’s (1955, 1959) classic work on spheres of exchange among the Tiv of central Nigeria provides an excellent example of how valuing things appropriately is, in people’s own perception, an ethical matter. Bohannan’s discussion picks up from the observation that Tiv ideology distinguishes three categories of items of exchange (1955: 60-2). The first category includes locally produced foodstuffs, household wares, and small-stock; the second one includes cattle, brass rods, white cotton cloth, and slaves; the third consists of rights over people (other than slaves), especially wives and children. Each of these categories of exchangeable items is associated with particular values, which Bohannan glosses as ‘subsistence’, ‘prestige’, and ‘kinship’. And these values and their associated goods, in turn, are ranked hierarchically, such that prestige ranks above subsistence and kinship ranks above prestige. Bohannan’s key observation is that while Tiv both exchange goods for other goods in the same category and exchange goods from one category for goods from another category, these two types of exchanges (Bohannan, speaks of ‘conveyance’ and ‘conversion’) have different ‘moral’ (or, as we would say, ‘ethical’) qualities. While exchanges within a category are ‘morally neutral’ and ‘excite no moral judgment’, exchanges between categories ‘do excite a moral reaction’ (1959: 496). Bohannan offers a number of examples. A man who has accumulated a lot of wealth in the first category (say, grain) but fails to convert this into prestige goods (say, cattle) is met with reprobation and considered to have a deficient character (1959: 498). Conversely, someone who consistently manages to achieve upward conversions, transforming subsistence wealth into pres- tige goods, and then using prestige goods to obtain dependents is praised and highly respected. Third, someone being required to accept a downward conversion (for instance, giving away a brass rod to obtain food) will justify this act by making reference to higher-level values, like helping kinsmen (1959: 496), so as to avoid ethical critique. Bohannan’s case resonates with Scheler’s value ethics: Tiv perceive their world as a hierarchically structured universe, in which kinship is ranked500 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS higher than prestige and prestige is ranked higher than subsistence; and this rank ordering, in turn, is perceived to come with an ethical command to give precedence toa higher-ranking value whenever possible (1955: 64). In light of the definition provided in the previous discussion of the diver- sity of values, the values at stake here are non-moral values. But giving them their due weight is experienced as ethically significant, such that, for instance, transforming agricultural produce into cattle or brass rods is not simply an ‘economic’ act but an ethical one (see Munn 1986 for similar ideas in Gawa about the desirable nature of upward conversions of food- stuff into items that bring fame) If the Tiv case vindicates Scheler’s notion that the perception of value hierarchies entails an ethical ‘ought’, a second piece of West African ethnography helps support Anderson’s point that ethical concern attaches not only to giving different values their due weight but also to adopting the right ‘mode of valuation’ towards a given value. This is Girish Daswani's (2016) recent work on how Pentecostal prophets and pastors in Accra, Ghana relate to the value of prosperity (see also Lauterbach 2017). Prosperity (yeadea) is a key value for Pentecostals in Accra. To be prosperous means both to accumulate financial riches and to ‘live well’, which includes having good health and a marriage and children. Prosperity in our terms, then, is a non-moral value. However, as Daswani notes, the way in which prophets relate to the value of prosperity is subject to intense ethical evali- ation. One place where this becomes evident is in a distinction lay Pentecostals in Accra draw between the ‘rich’ (sikani) and the ‘wealthy’ (ahayeni), One of Daswani's interlocutors, a man called Prince, spells out the difference: Prince said that the sikani problematically derive personal satisfaction and enjoyment from public recognition and fame ... Ahoyeni, on the other hand, are usually kind and charitable people who do not seek the public spotlight .... Truly wealthy people do not see themselves as the ‘owners’ of wealth, but rather as its ‘custodians’ (2016: 109) Daswani leaves no doubt that what is at issue here is not the value of wealth per se. Contrary to other Christians who do not recognize wealth as an end in itself but see it as being without intrinsic value or even as negatively valued, these Pentecostals do see prosperity as an unmitigated good. What is at issue for them is not the question whether prosperity is desirable. Instead, the issue here is that of valuing wealth appropriately; that is, of relating to this value in the right way. Now, to some extent, this is a matter of how much weight to give to this value in relation to other values. As becomes clear from Daswani’s analysis, parts of the critique that lay Pentecostals level against ‘rich’ pastors is that they fail to redistribute wealth among their followers in order thereby to realize the further value of care or patronage. But also subject to evaluation is the attitudeValues 501 with which pastors relate to the fact of being wealthy, and how they give expression to this attitude. As Prince puts it, one should not derive enjoy- ment from one’s wealth and the prestige that it affords. Or, in Anderson’s terms, the right mode of valuation here is not ‘pleasure’, Rather, to count as ethically good, the prosperous person needs to relate to their wealth with humility and a sense of detachment. Thus, even though the value at stake is not a moral value, one’s relation to it is ethically charged. Asimilar point can be made by returning to Scheele’s (2015) account of the Tubu. After noting how conformity to moral values was not the key concern of Tubu, and how other values like disorder and autonomy were more important, and how easily and frequently Tubu transgress social norms, Scheele moves on to suggest that this does not mean that there are no moral [or in our terms ‘ethical’] judgments. People mostly agree on what it means to be a good person ... one ought to be strong, assertive, independent, fearless, versatile, have many social connections, be rich, generous, clever One ought to be different and memorable, and one way of doing this is precisely to break rather than follow any social ‘rule’ that one might abstract from the general gossip. (2015: 40) Crucially, however, there is also a wrong way of breaking rules; and this is met with laughter and leads to shame. Scheele offers as an example the case of a young, relatively inconspicuous man, who picked a fight with an ex- soldier whom he used to hang out with. The young man was wounded and had to be taken to hospital. While there initially was a sense that he had acted in a brave and praise-worthy manner, local commentators (including his kin) soon rather emphasized his stupidity in hanging out with the wrong people and laughed about him. As Scheele comments, ‘Where laughter is the strongest social sanction, this means that people tread a thin line: outrageous actions might spark admiration, but they might also be simply defined as ludicrous... itis not given to everybody to offend social etiquette in just the right way, fitting in with the local sense of aesthetics’ (2015: 40). Asa consequence, ‘[much effort goes into being “anarchic”, in just the right way’ (2015: 34). In other words, what is ethically at stake here is relating to the values of disorder and autonomy in the right way. There is ethical judgement, but it concerns not whether people realize or violate moral values but whether they give proper expression to non-moral ones. Conclusion Our aim in this chapter has been to sketch some aspects of what a value- theoretical approach to the study of ethics might look like. Such an approach could potentially stand side by side with other approaches,502 JULIAN SOMMERSCHUH AND JOEL ROBBINS such as the one derived from conversations with virtue ethics, the work of the late Foucault, ordinary language philosophy. or Heidegger. In sketch- ing a values approach to the study of ethics, we have worked with an understanding of values as cultural conceptions of the good. We have explained how such values structure cultures and provide people with a sense of what is worth striving towards. Within such a framework, the ethical can be located in a two-fold way. In what we have called the ‘narrow’ conception, ethics is to do with moral values. For the purposes of this chapter, we have defined those values as ‘moral’ which concern proper ways of relating to other people. Such values include, for example, respect, compassion, justice, kindness, and care. Which particular moral values are recognized and emphasized differs across cultures and can thus be studied comparatively; their common denominator is that they all concern the right ways of relating to others. At the same time, moral values in general can be ranked as more or less important in relation to non- moral values, and variation in such ranking and its effect on social life is another important topic of cross-cultural investigation, Secondly, offering a broader conception of the ethical, we have suggested that there is an ethical dimension to any kind of values-orientated action. We have explained that valuing things appropriately — both in taking the right evaluative stance towards specific goods and giving the right weight to different values by recognizing the correct hierarchy between them ~ is a matter of ethical evaluation. Employed on their own or in combination, the narrow and the broad conception of ethics afford a genuine value- theoretical approach to studying human efforts at living in light of the good. We hope that the value-theoretical approach to the anthropology of ethics that we have begun to lay out here might be appealing on its own terms on the basis of the kinds of ethnographic analyses it affords. At the same time, we would like to close by noting that the two-fold way in which we have considered the relations of values and ethics provides for a novel approach to one of the trickier issues in the contemporary anthropology of ethics. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the ethical is an aspect of all social action (e.g. Lambek 2010). On the other, there are those who in various ways think that some situations and actions are ethically or morally marked in ways that set them off from others, such thatat the very least there is more than one kind of experience that falls within the ambit of the anthropology of ethics (e.g. in different ways, Robbins 2007; Zigon 2007). The presently unsettled state of the anthropology of ethics around this matter suggests that perhaps both capture some element of reality. Our conceptualization of a value-centred anthropology of ethics supports this kind of claim. It does so by suggesting both that there are specifically moral values, the engagement of which leads to a kind of ethical experi- ence that is different from that which attends the engagement with non- moral values, and that engagements with any kinds of values raiseValues 503 omnipresent ethical issues about valuing them appropriately and in the right way. 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