Our other Others: on perpetration, morality, and ethnographic unease

Abstract

This article critically assesses the impact of political and moral positions within contemporary anthropology. Re‐examining ideas of advocacy and the ethical within the discipline, it argues for an alternative political anthropology that focuses on perpetration rather than victimhood, offenders rather than the offended. If anthropology wants to be a discipline that works against social wrongs and suffering, then understanding the positions and perspectives of those causing them is, we contend, a necessary point of departure. Yet how can we approach people ethnographically who transgress bodily, legal, and moral boundaries, and why is this not more commonly done? In answering these questions, we analyse mainstream disciplinary ethics, both current and historical, and highlight some of the reactions that the study of perpetrators evoke in anthropologists. This illuminates an inconsistency within political anthropology. While there is ample theoretical and ethnographic nuance within the subdiscipline, this complexity seems to fade when we focus on perpetration. We suggest that anthropology engages more fully in the study of perpetration and approaches the issue by clarifying how (mis)dynamics are anchored within shared social worlds and historical becomings. This article thus calls upon us to expand our anthropological attention and curiosity beyond what might be morally comfortable.