Our study of action, morality and thought has addressed the interaction between different resources without superimposing on the ethnography any separation of the living domain of actors' universes (this world) from the dead one (the other world) or of the material from the non-material. The notion of good-heartedness has proved to be central to the representations of human activities that refer to the supramundane as a locus of identity. Because of its direct relationship to the concepts of deserving good and being at peace with one's own conscience and with God, goodheartedness is intimately involved in the pursuit of fulfilment. At a higher level of complexity, it is through consistency with their standards of good reputation, self-esteem, family security and (relative) financial well-being that actors' management of existence encompasses both the linking of the domains of life and death and the construction of a psychologically, morally and practically manageable human condition.

We now focus on the relation of transgression, control and exchange to order by looking at beings – living (prostitutes, moneylenders, homosexuals and assistiti) and dead (especially spirits) – who are regarded as out-of-the-ordinary, ambiguous, often liminal. They complicate the task of management but also make it more comprehensively conceivable. The key ethnographic imperative is that certain individuals' ambiguity in relation to the categories of work, sex, age, normality and abnormality, sacred and non-sacred – ultimately, of good and evil, right and wrong – gives them a taxonomic status with profound implications for local life.