Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:15:35.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

17 - Exemplars

from Part III - Media and Modes of Ethical Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

By
Nicholas H. A. Evans
Edited by
James Laidlaw
James Laidlaw
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides a broad overview of existing anthropological work on exemplars and proposes a new relational way of understanding exemplarity. Most existing philosophical and anthropological work on exemplarity has taken an explicitly functionalist approach. Academics have often valued exemplars because of their ‘articulatory power’ to connect the world of things with the world of ideas. This chapter advances this conversation by examining exemplarity as a relationship between persons and things rather than an attribute of either. In doing so, the chapter explores the social effort that is required to stabilize exemplars in the world, and it shows how the creation of exemplars always goes hand in hand with scepticism and critique. Finally, the chapter investigates whether the modern world has been overcome by scepticism towards exemplars such that we now face a ‘crisis of exemplarity’ in which only ‘everyday exemplars’ can be recognized.

Keywords

heroescharismaincommensurabilityrecognitionscepticismsuspicionrulescharacterarchetypeseveryday exemplars
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics , pp. 433 - 459
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulag, Uradyn E. 1999. ‘Models and Moralities: The Parable of the Two “Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland”’. The China Journal, 42 (July): 21–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667639.Google Scholar
Burridge, Kenelm. 1969. Tangu Traditions: Study of the Way of Life, Mythology and Developing Experience of a New Guinea People. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Canguilhem, Georges. 1989. The Normal and the Pathological. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. 1901. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History. Works of Thomas Carlyle. Centenary Edition; v. 5. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
Clarke, Morgan. 2012. ‘The Judge as Tragic Hero: Judicial Ethics in Lebanon’s Shari’a Courts’. American Ethnologist, 39(1): 106–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01352.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Morgan 2014. ‘Cough Sweets and Angels: The Ordinary Ethics of the Extraordinary in Sufi Practice in Lebanon’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20(3): 407–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12117.Google Scholar
Coleman, Simon. 2015. ‘Anthropological Tropes and Historical Tricksters: Pilgrimage as an “example” of Persuasion’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(S1): 144–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12171.Google Scholar
Cook, Joanna. 2009. ‘Hagiographic Narrative and Monastic Practice: Buddhist Morality and Mastery Amongst Thai Buddhist Nuns’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15(2): 349–64.Google Scholar
Cooley, Charles. 1902. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Copeman, Jacob. 2013. ‘The Art of Bleeding: Memory, Martyrdom, and Portraits in Blood’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(S1): S149–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copeman, Jacob and Ikegame, Aya. 2012. ‘Guru Logics’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2(1): 289–336. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau2.1.014.Google Scholar
Copeman, Jacob and Ikegame, Aya 2014. The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dumont, Louis. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Translated by Mark Sainsbury. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. 2001. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New ed. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eickelman, Dale F. 1985. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelke, Matthew. 2007. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas H. A. 2016. ‘Witnessing a Potent Truth: Rethinking Responsibility in the Anthropology of Theisms’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22(2): 356–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12380.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas H. A. 2017. ‘Beyond Cultural Intimacy: The Tensions That Make Truth for India’s Ahmadi Muslims’. American Ethnologist, 44(3): 490–502. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12524.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas H. A. 2020. Far from the Caliph’s Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Qadian. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas H. A. forthcoming. ‘The Caliph Cannot Be Wrong: Accountability, Flexible Personhood, and the Alignment of Hierarchy with Individualism’, in Piliavsky, Anastasia, Robbins, Joel, and Peacock, Vita (eds.), Hierarchy, Egalitarianism and Responsibility.Google Scholar
Faubion, James D. 2011. An Anthropology of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faubion, James D. 2013. ‘The Subject That Is Not One: On the Ethics of Mysticism’. Anthropological Theory, 13(4): 287–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499613509991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, Alessandro. 2008. The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment. New Directions in Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 3: The Care of the Self. Reprinted. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel 1992. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure. Translated by Robert Hurley. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Franco, Zeno E., Blau, Kathy, and Zimbardo, Philip G.. 2011. ‘Heroism: A Conceptual Analysis and Differentiation between Heroic Action and Altruism’. Review of General Psychology, 15(2): 99–113. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisk, Kristian. 2019. ‘What Makes a Hero? Theorising the Social Structuring of Heroism’. Sociology, 53(1): 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038518764568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Fontana Press: 87–125.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford 1993. ‘Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Hutchinson: 360–411.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilsenan, Michael. 1973. Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1996. ‘Normal People’, in Olson, David R. and Torrance, Nancy (eds.), Modes of Thought: Explorations in Culture and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 59–71.Google Scholar
Hoesterey, James. 2012. ‘Prophetic Cosmopolitanism: Islam, Pop Psychology, and Civic Virtue in Indonesia’. City & Society, 24(1): 38–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-744X.2012.01067.x.Google Scholar
Hoesterey, James 2016. Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru. Studies of the Shorenstein, Walter H. Asia-Pacific Research Center. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Højer, Lars and Bandak, Andreas. 2015. ‘Introduction: The Power of Example’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(S1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12173.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Caroline. 1997. ‘Exemplars and Rules: Aspects of the Discourse of Moralities in Mongolia’, in Howell, Signe (ed.), The Ethnography of Moralities. London: Routledge: 25–47.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. The Anthropology of Christianity 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Khan, Adil Hussain. 2015. From Sufism to Ahmadiyya: A Muslim Minority Movement in South Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 1995. Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laidlaw, James 2000. ‘A Free Gift Makes No Friends’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6(4): 617–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00036.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James 2002. ‘For an Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom’. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8(2): 311–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laidlaw, James 2014. The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lambek, Michael. 2000. ‘The Anthropology of Religion and the Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy’. Current Anthropology, 41(3): 309–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lambek, Michael 2010. Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action. Edited by Lambek, Michael. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Lear, Jonathan. 1988. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lynteris, Christos. 2016. ‘The Epidemiologist as Culture Hero: Visualizing Humanity in the Age of “the Next Pandemic”’. Visual Anthropology, 29(1): 36–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2016.1108823.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Mahmood, Saba. 2013. ‘Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?’, in Asad, Talal, Brown, Wendy, Butler, Judith, and Mahmood, Saba (eds.), Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech. New York: Fordham University Press: 58–94.Google Scholar
Mar, Maksymilian Del. 2016. ‘Book Review of Exemplarity and Singularity: Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature and Law, Edited by Michèle Lowrie and Susanne Lüdemann’. Legal Studies, 36(3): 535–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/lest.12136.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2014. ‘The Moral Perils of a Superstrong Black Mother’. Ethos, 42(1): 119–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12042.Google Scholar
McKearney, Patrick. 2018. ‘Receiving the Gift of Cognitive Disability: Recognizing Agency in the Limits of the Rational Subject’. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 36(1): 40–60. https://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2018.360104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mittermaier, Amira. 2012. ‘Dreams from Elsewhere: Muslim Subjectivities beyond the Trope of Self-Cultivation’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 18(2): 247–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01742.x.Google Scholar
Mittermaier, Amira 2015. ‘How to Do Things with Examples: Sufis, Dreams, and Anthropology’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(S1): 129–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12170.Google Scholar
Naumescu, Vlad. 2016. ‘The End Times and the Near Future: The Ethical Engagements of Russian Old Believers in Romania’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22(2): 314–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Needham, Rodney. 1985. Exemplars. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oliner, Samuel P. 2002. Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People: Faces of Heroism and Altruism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pandian, Anand. 2009. Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pandian, Anand 2010. ‘Interior Horizons: An Ethical Space of Selfhood in South India’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16(1): 64–83.Google Scholar
Parry, Jonathan P. 1994. Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pinney, Christopher. 2004. Photos of the Gods: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Adam and Bialecki, Jon. 2018. ‘Introduction to Special Section 1: Anthropology and Character’. Social Anthropology, 26(2): 159–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12479.Google Scholar
Reed, Gay Garland. 1995. ‘Moral/Political Education in the People’s Republic of China: Learning through Role Models’. Journal of Moral Education, 24(2): 99–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724950240201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2015. ‘Ritual, Value, and Example: On the Perfection of Cultural Representations’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(S1): 18–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12163.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel 2018. ‘Where in the World Are Values? Exemplarity, Morality, and Social Process’, in Laidlaw, James, Bodenhorn, Barbara, and Holbraad, Martin (eds.), Recovering the Human Subject: Freedom, Creativity and Decision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 174–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108605007.009.Google Scholar
Rose, Todd. 2016. The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness. New York: HarperOne.Google Scholar
Rugeley, Cindy and Montgomery, Van Wart. 2006. ‘Everyday Moral Exemplars: The Case of Judge Sam Medina’. Public Integrity, 8(4): 381–94. https://doi.org/10.2753/PIN1099-9922080405.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall and Graeber, David. 2017. On Kings. Chicago, IL: HAU.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Barry. 2008. Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Seale, Clive. 1995. ‘Heroic Death’. Sociology, 29(4): 597–613. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038595029004003.Google Scholar
Seale, Clive 2002. ‘Cancer Heroics: A Study of News Reports with Particular Reference to Gender’. Sociology, 36(1): 107–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038502036001006.Google Scholar
Segal, Lotte Buch. 2015. ‘The Burden of Being Exemplary: National Sentiments, Awkward Witnessing, and Womanhood in Occupied Palestine’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(S1): 30–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12164.Google Scholar
Sheridan, Mary. 1968. ‘The Emulation of Heroes’. The China Quarterly, 33 (March): 47–72. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000003763.Google Scholar
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. 1984. The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millennial Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taneja, Anand Vivek. 2017. Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. South Asia in Motion. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1992. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Reprint edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Edited by Roth, G. and Wittich, C.. Translated by E. Fischoff. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Werbner, Pnina. 1995. ‘Powerful Knowledge in a Global Sufi Cult: Reflections on the Poetics of Travelling Theories’, in James (ed.), Wendy, The Pursuit of Certainty: Religious and Cultural Formulations. The Uses of Knowledge. London: Routledge: 134–60.Google Scholar
Werbner, Pnina 2003. Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.Google Scholar
Werbner, Pnina 2016. ‘Between Ethnography and Hagiography: Allegorical Truths and Representational Dilemmas in Narratives of South Asian Muslim Saints’. History and Anthropology, 27(2): 135–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1055329.Google Scholar
Zigon, Jarrett. 2007. ‘Moral Breakdown and the Ethical Demand: A Theoretical Framework for an Anthropology of Moralities’. Anthropological Theory, 7(2): 131–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499607077295.Google Scholar
Zigon, Jarrett 2008. Morality: An Anthropological Perspective. Oxford: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Exemplars
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.017
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Exemplars
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.017
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Exemplars
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.017
Available formats
×