Convenor
Yuko Kambara
University of Kitakyushu
Co-convenor
Kato Atsufumi
University of Tokyo
Abstract
The anthropology of morality and ethics has become a notable topic over the last decades. This phenomenon implies the instability of both religious beliefs and value systems in secular societies. In fact, some aspects of morality and ethics, for example human rights and freedoms, are regarded as universal ideas in a globalized world, and are widespread beyond the critique of cultural relativists. However, they are also considered as belonging to particular religions. Yet morality and ethics are also embedded in a broader cultural context, because the anthropology of morality and ethics developed from largely anthropological topics in classical ethnographic studies. Some examples that are defined by cultural morality or ethics include rituals, customs of gift giving, cooperation in a community, and communications within a kinship system. These moralities and ethics were embedded in traditional cultural life, and thus ordinary people were hardly conscious of their unique existence.
As the regulation of traditional cultural power decreased in society, the process of modernization replaced the function of religion with modern systems of law and education. This tendency seems to be common among non-Western modern societies, especially when countries adopt secularism and the separation of religion from politics. However these secular societies differ in their independence from religion, and Talal Asad argues that secularism is built upon a particular conception of the world and of the problems it generates. However, some states might refer to themselves as a “secular state” by just transitioning from religious values to universal morality. We can locate the emergence of transformed morality and ethics among these varieties of modern secular societies.
The aim of this panel is to discuss these transformed moralities and ethics in secular societies. For example, an educational program of ethics and restorative justice might be based on the foundations of religious insight, even though the former is part of the secular modern system. On the other hand, existing religious institutions could be included within social systems, for example welfare for the poor, or social movements engaged in society. Based on the experiences of scholars who try to adjust Western systems to indigenous culture, especially in development studies, it has been determined that some systems are rooted in modern Western society, and cannot be transported worldwide. However a self-styled modern and secular society still maintains this condition, even though local people may not be aware of it.