Nigel Rapport

This article argues that the individual, as an actor with an identity over and above his or her membership in social groupings and cultural traditions, exists universally as an ontological reality. The recognition of this figure in anthropology is both an empirical and a moral necessity. The article suggests the moniker, Everyone, for the transcendent individual figure. The course of the article, after the introduction of Everyone, is to admit the critiques that have appeared in social commentary of such a figure, critiques of cultural, institutional, real-politische and phenomenological kinds. The article suggests ripostes to these critiques, ripostes which would invest Everyone with an ontological and a moral existence that is anthropologically persuasive and accord with the ethnographic record. Everyone is the individual within the role-player, the actor who has the capacity to ‘pass’ as member of any social grouping, any cultural tradition. The article concludes with a discussio...

Acknowledgements Prologue: The Book's Structure Nigel Rapport and Vered Amit PART I COMMUNITY AND DISJUNCTION: THE CREATIVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF EVERYDAY ENGAGEMENT Vered Amit 1. Community as 'Good to Think With': The Productiveness of Strategic Ambiguities. 2. Consociation and Communitas: The Ambiguous Charms of the Quotidian 3. Disjuncture as 'Good to Think With' 4. Mobility and Cosmopolitanism: Frustrated Aspirations towards disjuncture. Notes References PART II COSMOPOLITANISM: ACTORS, RELATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS BEYOND THE COMMUNITARIAN Nigel Rapport Preamble 5. Introduction: The Space of Cosmopolitanism, and the Cosmopolitan Subject 6. Cosmopolitan Living: People of the Air and Global Guests 7. Cosmopolitan Learning: Diffusion, Openness and Irony 8. Cosmopolitan Planning: Anyone, Society and Community 9. Epilogue: Cosmopolitanism and Culture Notes References PART III: DIALOGUE 10. Amit Responds to Rapport: When cosmopolitan rights are not enough 11. Rapport Responds to Amit: On the analytical need to deconstruct "community" Index

Nel suo incisivo ed equilibrato commento su “cosa c’e di europeo nell’antropologia europea”, Thomas Hylland Eriksen sostiene che cio sia il suo cosmopolitismo. Una antropologia cosmopolita, prosegue Eriksen, potrebbe andare oltre le gerarchie di lingua, paese e istituzione; potrebbe offrire un orizzonte alla frizione tra diverse tradizioni che produca uno scambio intellettuale globale; e potrebbe elaborare approfondimenti globali da confrontare, comparativamente, sulle questioni locali dell’economia politica. In questo modo Eriksen crea interessanti connessioni tra l’“antropologia europea” come idea o concetto e l’“antropologia europea” come insieme di studi etnografici. Leggo qui l’idea che, in virtu dei fatti empirici che la ricerca antropologica in contesti europei ha portato alla luce, possiamo oggi immaginare un modo di praticare l’antropologia che e “cosmopolita” nel senso precedentemente spiegato. Vorrei impegnarmi, ugualmente, in una antropologia cosmopolita e vorrei esplora...

In his analysis of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against Soviet control, Georges Devereux argued that social movements exist not because members exhibit attitudinal uniformity but because in the “same” collective act individuals serendipitously find a socially acceptable expression for their worldviews. Any number of individual meanings and motivations come to be “accidentally” actualised alike. Devereux’s insights are pertinent regarding the elective decision in Britain to leave the EU, and more broadly for a social-anthropological approach to stereotypes of “Britishness.” There are certain customary discourses by which social life in Britain is “ego-syntonically” conducted, whose competency represents both a sign of belonging and means to navigate everyday interactions. Six discourses of Britishness of this kind might be identified: class; ethnicity; nationality; islandness; privacy; and football. But one is careful to distinguish between such discourses of Britishness — how it is stereotypically, formulaically, to be “British”; how it is publicly, customarily, to express and take part in “Britishness” — and the diversity of individual identities that inhabit and animate those discourses. Equally, one is careful to distinguish between the kinds of violence or violation that the expression of individual worldviews by way of stereotypic collective discourses might embody: “democratic violence” as against “nihilistic violence.”

I am grateful (once more) for the attention Don Gardner has paid to my work, in particular to arguments pertaining to individuality and its relation to the aspirations of the social sciences. Let me begin with overlaps he sees between us: (a) prevailing images of what anthropology needed to be, historically (in order to be an adequate science) have led to too great an emphasis on developing taxonomies of cultural variation, along with the generalising and essentialising descriptions this entailed; (b) some of social science’s taken-for-granted vocabulary (such as ‘role’ or ‘status’) hampers our understanding of the nature of human agents and the springs of that agency; (c) questions of will and freedom, choice and moral responsibility are subtle and important; engaging with these is a necessary step for strengthening the social sciences, which cannot escape their philosophical roots. Notwithstanding, Gardner would take me to task for my understanding of causation, for not adopting a...

In an earlier work (Anyone: The Cosmopolitan Subject of Anthropology, 2012), I considered a solution to the ‘problem’ of society as identified by Georg Simmel. The fact that we only come to know the interactional ‘Other’ by way of distortion, by virtue of the imposition of alien and alienating labels, categories and taxonomies, Simmel (1971) described as ‘tragic’ (cf. Rapport 2017). We distort the Other’s identity when we ‘know’ them in the conventional and collectivising terms of a symbolic classification of cultural reality. In response, I argued for a linguistic and behavioural style of public address and exchange, and an ethos of good manners, that I termed ‘cosmopolitan politesse’. This was an interactional code by which we presumed the common humanity and the distinct individuality of whomsoever we engaged with, but classified the Other in no more substantive fashion than this. We accepted that in our social interactions we were engaging with an individual human other – ‘Anyon...

1. Volume introduction. 2000 Years: looking backwards and forwards Editors 2. Progress and Abyss: remembering the future in the modern world J. Moltmann, University of Tubingen 3. Liberalism and value-pluralism: a post-Enlightenment view J. Gray, LSE 4. History and the Representation of the Past P. Ricoeur, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris 5. The Future of Human Nature R. Schacht, University of Illinois 6. Sacrifice in archaic culture, in Judaism and in Christianity Rene Girard, Stanford, California 7. 'Second Comings:Neo-Protestant Ethics and Millennial Capitalism in Africa and elsewhere' J and J Comaroff, Chicago 8. Theology and the postmodern mind A.Thiselton, University of Nottingham 9. Conclusion: Beyond 2000 Years _ _

Introduction: « Quiconque »« Quiconque » etait le titre d'une moralite chretienne ecrite en anglais aux alentours de 1500 (et fortement apparentee a une piece flamande, Elckerlijk). Dans une dramatisation allegorique de ce qui etait compris comme une lutte morale globale, la piece depeint la Mort rendant visite a un personnage du nom de Quiconque et l'informant de sa fin imminente. Les spectateurs assistent au parcours emotionnel du protagoniste, qui passe du desespoir et de la peur a la resignation qui est le prelude a la redemption chretienne. On assiste aussi a un parcours social, alors que Quiconque est abandonne par ses faux amis: Parent, Cousin, Camarade et Biens Materiels; il se rabat sur ses propres ressources: Connaissance, Force, Intelligence, Beaute et Bonnes Actions. Connaissance prononce ces vers celebres: « Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, / In thy most need to go by thy side ». Ensemble, Quiconque et ses ressources entreprennent de dresser un Livre des Comptes pour sa rencontre avec Dieu et le jugement decidant de son sort eternel. In extremis, cependant, lorsque Quiconque doit rejoindre son tombeau, ses ressources aussi manquent de l'abandonner. On assiste enfin a un parcours intellectuel, qui amene Quiconque a realiser que seule Bonnes Actions demeure un compagnon fidele pour son âme. Sous le message chretien de la piece, la verite universelle est que l'individu risque d'acceder de la vie terrestre a la comptabilite divine sans etre muni de rien qu'il ait pris ou recu du monde, mais seulement de ce qu'il y a donne.Apres 500 ans d'indefectible accompagnement par Connaissance, la science anthropologique se trouve peutetre en position d'etre plus eclairee quant a la condition humaine : de faire la part des choses entre les veritables universaux humains et les relativites chretiennes. Cependant, le projet de moralite globale reste d'actualite et est toujours aussi pressant. Nous nous attelons, encore et toujours, a chercher comment donner la latitude qu'il merite au parcours emotionnel et intellectuel de l'acteur individuel dans les milieux sociaux : a son existence corporelle mortelle. Il existe, comme l'ecrit Ernest Gellner (1995:8) « a moral crisis », qui est « also the fruit of our liberation from want and tyranny. Our [anthropological] predicament is to work out the social options of our affluent and disenchanted condition. We have no choice about this ».Mon intention dans cet article est de proposer un concept de moralite pour un ego global dont les capacites et les responsabilites sont interpretees non pas dans le cadre d'un message chretien mais existentialiste. Comment, comme anthropologue, pourrait-on inscrire la connaissance d'apres le Siecle des lumieres dans une autorite quotidienne de la loi avec le but de securiser globalement les devoirs et les droits, les normes et les espaces empreints d'humanite, de la vie individuelle accomplie? Mon essai pourrait avoir pour titre « Le drame de Quiconque ». Earticle s'organise en trois grandes parties. Dans la premiere, j'expose brievement ce qui peut etre compris comme etant les capacites de l'individu mortel, de Quiconque. Dans la deuxieme, j'entreprends de proposer une interpretation de la bonte telle qu'elle pourrait etre pratiquee dans un espace d'humanite ou l'on s'abstiendrait de projeter ses propres desirs sur les autres afin que Quiconque puisse realiser les siens. Dans une troisieme, j'explore la possibilite d'une mathematique de moralite s'appuyant sur la premiere : sur la valeur absolue de la vie individuelle de Quiconque.Avant de commencer, un mot au sujet du style. Le debat sur l'ecriture culturelle des annees quatre-vingt a entraine la reconnaissance d'une rencontre necessaire de l'analytique, du personnel et du politique. Eanthropologie produit des textes de conviction personnelle. Comme l'ecrit Edmund Leach : « There are no "laws" of historical process, there are no "laws of sociological probability" » (1961:51-52); ce que les anthropologues revendiquaient autrefois comme verites historiques, sociales ou culturelles, provenait d'eux-memes, de la connaissance d'eux-memes, le seul « ego » connu « at first hand » (1989: 137). …

Kierkegaard argued that the scientific method was inappropriate for gaining an understanding of human experience; the natural science of the physical world and the social philosophy of the human condition must, he felt, be clearly differentiated if one hoped to take account of the richness, the inwardness and the individuality of human experience. This article takes Kierkegaard's stance against a