Edited Volumes by Patrick McKearney
Wyse Series in Social Anthropology - Berghahn Press, 2023
Anthropologists have long explained social behaviour as if people always do what they think is be... more Anthropologists have long explained social behaviour as if people always do what they think is best. But what if most of these explanations only work because they are premised upon ignoring what philosophers call ‘akrasia’ – that is, the possibility that people might act against their better judgment? The contributors to this volume turn an ethnographic lens upon situations in which people seem to act out of line with what they judge, desire and intend. The result is a robust examination of how people around the world experience weaknesses of will, which speaks to debates in both the anthropology of ethics and moral philosophy.
Medical Anthropology, 2021
Why do some people’s minds seem conspicuous, disabled, and ill-fitting in some contexts and not o... more Why do some people’s minds seem conspicuous, disabled, and ill-fitting in some contexts and not others? This special issue presents articles about people in Jordan, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States who live with Down Syndrome, autism, intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, or histories of brain injuries. We focus on the disjunctive encounters between these individuals’ minds and the varied relational processes in their surrounding social world in order to understand why different mental characteristics become points of concern and comparison at some points and not others – and thus to raise questions about how ‘fitting in’ works altogether.
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 2018
In this collection, we explore how reckoning with cognitive disability enables more sophisticated... more In this collection, we explore how reckoning with cognitive disability enables more sophisticated portraits of cultural construction, interactive engagement with the world, the production of subjectivity and the nature of social difference itself.
Papers by Patrick McKearney
Hauerwas, S. & H. Reinders (eds.) The Betrayal of Witness: Reflections on the Downfall of Jean Vanier', 2024
What is good about L’Arche? The 2023 Report from the Study Commission mandated by L’Arche Interna... more What is good about L’Arche? The 2023 Report from the Study Commission mandated by L’Arche International shows us that the story we have been telling about L’Arche is wrong in more ways the one. How can we state that there is anything good about L’Arche now that we know that it was founded through deception, secrecy, and manipulation? How can we hold onto an image of L’Arche as embodying an ideal of warm, vulnerable, and egalitarian intimacy when we know that Vanier created and used this image to obscure a darker, more brutal reality? Should we even question, as the report does, whether that ideal, as it was articulated in Vanier’s own theology, has something wrong at the heart of it that led directly to the abuse?
Such skeptical interrogation of our projections is important in this moment, in which people across L’Arche have unanimously condemned Vanier’s actions. But that will not by itself resolve the question “what is good about L’Arche?” And that is because that question requires not just a clearer apprehension of the facts, but also a debate about what the good of L’Arche is. That is, it is about not just what L’Arche, in practice, has turned out to be, but also about what we think it should be. Underneath the unanimity brought about by this particular moment, there are substantial differences between ways of articulating what L’Arche is good for, or the ethical end that it works toward. There exist contrasting, even competing, ethical visions of L’Arche.
In this chapter, I surface the difference between two moral imaginaries of L’Arche: one focused around nondisabled compassion, the other around the people with disabilities. I do so in order to present the latter to audiences not familiar with it and the challenge that it presents to the former narrative. My aim in confronting us with the difference between these competing visions is to press upon us a debate about the character and purpose of L’Arche that this moment affords and demands of us.
Tromans, S., Alexander, R., Gangadharan, S. K., Kapugama, C., & Bhaumik, S. Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability Across Cultures. Oxford University Press., 2024
Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2023
‘Intellectual disability’ is a widely used psychiatric category that conceives of certain minds a... more ‘Intellectual disability’ is a widely used psychiatric category that conceives of certain minds as impaired in their development. By approaching intellectual disability from a cross-cultural perspective, anthropology demonstrates how the condition is culturally variable. It shows, in particular, how intellectual disability is produced by different social expectations of ‘normal’ mental development and different ways of responding to adults who do not meet those expectations. Anthropology thus offers a way to analyse this seemingly biological deviation from a universal path of mental development as a growing lack of fit between culturally specific expectations for maturation and a person’s own life course through society. Anthropology also provides innovative research methods that enable a closer understanding of the experiences, lives, and self-narrations of people categorised as having intellectual disabilities themselves—in particular, demonstrating how they develop and exercise agency in spite of considerable constraints. In this way, anthropology gives us a deeper insight into how people become and remain classified as having an intellectual disability, what it is like to live under such categorisations, as well as what such classifications leave out about them as people.
McKearney & Evans (eds.), Against Better Judgment, 2023
I demonstrate how the care of people with intellectual disabilities in the UK responds to their d... more I demonstrate how the care of people with intellectual disabilities in the UK responds to their dependence in a way that challenges the models of subjectivity presumed in the akrasia debate. In British care, the unity of judgment and action within an individual is fragmented and distributed between the caregiver and receiver. Attending to this hitherto unexplored 'relational' akrasia opens up new ways of thinking about care, and thus also about the central role of social relationships in subjectivity.
McKearney & Evans (eds.), Against Better Judgment, 2023
Anthropologists have long explained social behaviour as if people always do what they think is be... more Anthropologists have long explained social behaviour as if people always do what they think is best. But what if most of these explanations only work because they are premised upon ignoring what philosophers call ‘akrasia’ – that is, the possibility that people might act against their better judgment? The contributors to this volume turn an ethnographic lens upon situations in which people seem to act out of line with what they judge, desire and intend. The result is a robust examination of how people around the world experience weaknesses of will, which speaks to debates in both the anthropology of ethics and moral philosophy.
The Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Ethics, 2023
A focus on care draws attention to the fact that ethical self-cultivation, even in traditions tha... more A focus on care draws attention to the fact that ethical self-cultivation, even in traditions that foreground moral autonomy, relies upon relationships of dependence. The recognition of relational and ethical dependence is familiar to anthropologists and has long been central for feminist ethics. However, the enormous body of anthropological scholarship that has emerged on care over the last decade raises the question of ethical dependence anew. This chapter problematizes the concept of care. It asks: how might ‘care’ as a topic, and as engaged ethnographically, trouble some of the ways that ethical life more broadly has been conceived in the philosophical and anthropological literature? Conversely, how might attention to the ethical stakes of care trouble some of the rich ethnographic scholarship on care? The chapter draws most substantially on anthropological and philosophical scholarship in virtue ethics and in phenomenology to consider both the relational complexities of care and care’s ineffable and elusive ethical dimensions.
The Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Ethics, 2023
This chapter compares and contrasts the thought of three philosophers – Bernard Williams, Charles... more This chapter compares and contrasts the thought of three philosophers – Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum – who developed influential and idiosyncratic ways of reforming Anglo-American moral philosophy. Their positions substantially overlap inasmuch as they hold that the goods of human life are necessarily multiple and persistently in conflict, which has implications for the structure and content of ethical life everywhere. All three are of interest to anthropology because they hold that history, culture, social relations, and biographical experience make a difference to the goods and values that inform human life, and therefore that moral philosophy needs to be, to at least a very large degree, an empirical, descriptive, and comparative discipline. The different, sometimes even rival, ways in which they pursue that project offer anthropologists of ethics the chance to reflect on how and why they might develop an anthropology that would fulfil these authors’ different visions of moral philosophy.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2022
Those giving care to people with intellectual disabilities in the United Kingdom are obliged to d... more Those giving care to people with intellectual disabilities in the United Kingdom are obliged to drive bad forms of intimacy, such as abuse, out of the caring relationship. They must also enable these individuals to find positive forms of intimacy through reciprocal relationships such as friendships. These two aims are normally separated, but in an organization called L'Arche UK, they are combined in the same relationship when caregivers pursue reciprocal friendships with those they support. What happens to this ethical project when those with intellectual disabilities are violent to their caregivers? Trying to pursue intimate engagement in this context has the unexpected result of creating distrustful and tense relationships, which raises questions not only about why this ethical project goes so wrong, but also about what it would mean for it to go right: that is, what a richer and fully positive reciprocity between limited and complex human beings would actually look like in practice.
Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 2022
Is contemporary masculinity too fragile to handle the weight of care, dependence, and disability?... more Is contemporary masculinity too fragile to handle the weight of care, dependence, and disability? Aaron Jackson’s Worlds of Care explores the ways that men in the United States face the economic, emotional, and relational challenges when their children with developmental disabilities require intensive care. How does this kind of parenting affect these men’s understanding of their responsibilities, their life-course, and their gendered identity? The book demonstrates the social conditions that create the challenges in the first place – such as an arduous form of capitalism and trajectories of masculinity that scar men’s engagement with care. And it shows us also what it is like for men to live in and through these conditions in the pursuit of a good life for themselves and their children. In the context of a literature that focuses on the relationship between care and the social conditions of women, the result is a rare and insightful look into the relationship between masculinity, dependence, and disability.
Social Analysis, 2021
New care workers in Britain typically struggle to understand, on their initial encounters, people... more New care workers in Britain typically struggle to understand, on their initial encounters, people who communicate atypically due to their intellectual disabilities. But they are required to provide care that is attuned to these individuals’ desires and intentions. Why, then, does a care organization called L’Arche UK make it harder for carers to learn what is going on inside these people’s minds? I argue that doing so does not prevent the acquisition of essential knowledge, but rather trains new carers to relate to those with intellectual disabilities as opaque. This creates a more involved relationship that opens up the possibil- ity of forms of status and intimacy otherwise closed to such people— thereby raising questions about the supposedly fundamental role that transparency and knowledge play in knowing others.
Medical Anthropology, 2021
Why do some people’s minds seem conspicuous, disabled, and ill-fitting in some contexts and not o... more Why do some people’s minds seem conspicuous, disabled, and ill-fitting in some contexts and not others? This special issue presents articles about people in Jordan, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States who live with Down syndrome, autism, intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, or histories of brain injuries. We focus on the disjunctive encounters between these individuals’ minds and the varied relational processes in their surrounding social world in order to understand why different mental characteristics become points of concern and comparison at some points and not others – and thus to raise questions about how “fitting in” works altogether.
Anthropology & Humanism, 2020
A dominant trope in the anthropology of care—of revealing a practice to be, despite our moral int... more A dominant trope in the anthropology of care—of revealing a practice to be, despite our moral intuitions to the contrary, really a form of care—limits our understanding of the dynamic processes whereby care’s morality is established in prac- tice. In the British care sector the ideal of care is clear: avoiding coercion and neglect. There are manifold rules designed to hold carers accountable to realizing it. But the rules do not reliably lead to the ideal. Rather, they leave undetermined an enormous amount for carers to fill in. In this setting, whether or not a worker’s action becomes “caring” depends on far more than good intentions or following rules. The action’s moral status rests, instead, on the contingencies of the relationship with the care recipient. We should refrain from entering into the evaluative work of rearranging the borders of good care in order to investigate how our informants themselves do this in the midst of care’s relational vicissitudes. Doing so enables us to attend to how debates about what constitutes good care are part of broader patterns by which moral responsibility is assigned and distributed within caring relationships
Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, 2020
What expectations about the mind do people with intellectual disabilities depart from? A dominant... more What expectations about the mind do people with intellectual disabilities depart from? A dominant argument maintains that their mental dependence troubles liberal relations premised upon a myth of autonomy. By analyzing the centrality of persuasion in a home for adults with intellectual disabilities in the UK, I ask instead about the psychological assumptions made by relationships of care. Persuasion aims to cultivate, not their independence from care but rather, a recognition of their dependence upon it. Persuasive care’s repeated failure suggests an alternative answer to the question: people with intellectual disabilities are too independent-minded for this form of dependence.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Sep 14, 2021
There are many universal assumptions about what care is and how it ought to be embedded in public... more There are many universal assumptions about what care is and how it ought to be embedded in public debates, government policies, and institutional and local forms of support. This entry presents three areas of anthropological work on how care is practised around the world in order to challenge these assumptions and demonstrate how care varies in unexpected ways. First, the entry explores how care is structured and, in particular, how it is organised by contemporary states and global markets. Second, the entry provides an overview of how, in everyday relationships of support, the political, economic, and moral dimensions of care become entangled in one another. This demonstrates how ethnography offers a different way to approach ethical and practical questions about what makes care good or effective in different cultural contexts and in different settings—such as in medical institutions or in the relationships between carers and those for whom they care. Finally, the entry shows how the different ways that care works in families and in communities challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about what care ought to look like and where it should take place. Overall, the entry illustrates that care varies greatly across social contexts. Anthropology distinctively illuminates how deeply these variations change the experience and consequences of care in ways that require our detailed attention.
A Kind of Upside-Downness: Learning Disabilities and Transformational Community (2019) edited by David F. Ford, Deborah Hardy Ford, and Ian Randall. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019
This chapter takes an anthropological approach to relationships in a community project for people... more This chapter takes an anthropological approach to relationships in a community project for people with intellectual disabilities to explore the role of friendship in their lives more generally in the UK.
From the blurb of the book: "One of the great prophetic figures of our time was Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities, where those with and without disabilities share life together. This book tells the story of a new, practical development, inspired by Vanier, and taking further both his thought and the practice of L'Arche. Lyn's House is a small Christian house of hospitality and friendship in Cambridge, set in an open community of volunteers and supporters. Its story told here contains moving accounts of its origins and development, and of the friendships it enables. The contributors, all members of the wider Lyn's House community, also reflect on its meaning, and explore the implications for both church and society of this creative response to Vanier's call. Not only does the book convey the spirit of Lyn's House and its transformative effects on those who participate in it, it also offers inspiration and a practical guide to any who wish to begin something similar."
https://www.jkp.com/uk/a-kind-of-upside-downness.html
Everyday Ethics: Moral Theology and the Practices of Ordinary Life (2019) edited by Michael Lamb and Brian Williams. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019
This chapter introduces scholars and students to conversations within and between theology and th... more This chapter introduces scholars and students to conversations within and between theology and the social sciences about our understanding of ethics, and how it can be deepened and enriched by the use of ethnography and anthropology.
From the blurb: "What might we learn if the study of ethics focused less on hard cases and more on the practices of everyday life? In Everyday Ethics, Michael Lamb and Brian Williams gather some of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of moral theology (including some GUP authors) to explore that question in dialogue with anthropology and the social sciences. Inspired by the work of Michael Banner, these scholars cross disciplinary boundaries to analyze the ethics of ordinary practices--from eating, learning, and loving thy neighbor to borrowing and spending, using technology, and working in a flexible economy. Along the way, they consider the moral and methodological questions that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialogue and assess the implications for the future of moral theology."
Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 2021
What role does judgment play in certain kinds of critical anthropology and theology, and in attem... more What role does judgment play in certain kinds of critical anthropology and theology, and in attempts to bring the two disciplines together? I turn to L’Arche, a network of Christian communities in which people with ‘intellectual disabilities’ share life with the cognitively able that scholars commend as a critical alternative to our obsession with judging ability as the marker of moral worth. I describe how this evaluative stance on L’Arche failed me in trying to make sense of my own fieldwork on a L’Arche community where care-givers emphasised the abilities of those they supported all the time. By relating the surprising role that a work of theology played in helping me understand the relationship between agency and judgment in this context, I argue that critique offers an unhelpful point of intersection between anthropology and theology. I propose, instead, that we explore the role of surprise in analysis and dialogue.
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Edited Volumes by Patrick McKearney
Papers by Patrick McKearney
Such skeptical interrogation of our projections is important in this moment, in which people across L’Arche have unanimously condemned Vanier’s actions. But that will not by itself resolve the question “what is good about L’Arche?” And that is because that question requires not just a clearer apprehension of the facts, but also a debate about what the good of L’Arche is. That is, it is about not just what L’Arche, in practice, has turned out to be, but also about what we think it should be. Underneath the unanimity brought about by this particular moment, there are substantial differences between ways of articulating what L’Arche is good for, or the ethical end that it works toward. There exist contrasting, even competing, ethical visions of L’Arche.
In this chapter, I surface the difference between two moral imaginaries of L’Arche: one focused around nondisabled compassion, the other around the people with disabilities. I do so in order to present the latter to audiences not familiar with it and the challenge that it presents to the former narrative. My aim in confronting us with the difference between these competing visions is to press upon us a debate about the character and purpose of L’Arche that this moment affords and demands of us.
From the blurb of the book: "One of the great prophetic figures of our time was Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities, where those with and without disabilities share life together. This book tells the story of a new, practical development, inspired by Vanier, and taking further both his thought and the practice of L'Arche. Lyn's House is a small Christian house of hospitality and friendship in Cambridge, set in an open community of volunteers and supporters. Its story told here contains moving accounts of its origins and development, and of the friendships it enables. The contributors, all members of the wider Lyn's House community, also reflect on its meaning, and explore the implications for both church and society of this creative response to Vanier's call. Not only does the book convey the spirit of Lyn's House and its transformative effects on those who participate in it, it also offers inspiration and a practical guide to any who wish to begin something similar."
https://www.jkp.com/uk/a-kind-of-upside-downness.html
From the blurb: "What might we learn if the study of ethics focused less on hard cases and more on the practices of everyday life? In Everyday Ethics, Michael Lamb and Brian Williams gather some of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of moral theology (including some GUP authors) to explore that question in dialogue with anthropology and the social sciences. Inspired by the work of Michael Banner, these scholars cross disciplinary boundaries to analyze the ethics of ordinary practices--from eating, learning, and loving thy neighbor to borrowing and spending, using technology, and working in a flexible economy. Along the way, they consider the moral and methodological questions that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialogue and assess the implications for the future of moral theology."
Such skeptical interrogation of our projections is important in this moment, in which people across L’Arche have unanimously condemned Vanier’s actions. But that will not by itself resolve the question “what is good about L’Arche?” And that is because that question requires not just a clearer apprehension of the facts, but also a debate about what the good of L’Arche is. That is, it is about not just what L’Arche, in practice, has turned out to be, but also about what we think it should be. Underneath the unanimity brought about by this particular moment, there are substantial differences between ways of articulating what L’Arche is good for, or the ethical end that it works toward. There exist contrasting, even competing, ethical visions of L’Arche.
In this chapter, I surface the difference between two moral imaginaries of L’Arche: one focused around nondisabled compassion, the other around the people with disabilities. I do so in order to present the latter to audiences not familiar with it and the challenge that it presents to the former narrative. My aim in confronting us with the difference between these competing visions is to press upon us a debate about the character and purpose of L’Arche that this moment affords and demands of us.
From the blurb of the book: "One of the great prophetic figures of our time was Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities, where those with and without disabilities share life together. This book tells the story of a new, practical development, inspired by Vanier, and taking further both his thought and the practice of L'Arche. Lyn's House is a small Christian house of hospitality and friendship in Cambridge, set in an open community of volunteers and supporters. Its story told here contains moving accounts of its origins and development, and of the friendships it enables. The contributors, all members of the wider Lyn's House community, also reflect on its meaning, and explore the implications for both church and society of this creative response to Vanier's call. Not only does the book convey the spirit of Lyn's House and its transformative effects on those who participate in it, it also offers inspiration and a practical guide to any who wish to begin something similar."
https://www.jkp.com/uk/a-kind-of-upside-downness.html
From the blurb: "What might we learn if the study of ethics focused less on hard cases and more on the practices of everyday life? In Everyday Ethics, Michael Lamb and Brian Williams gather some of the world's leading scholars and practitioners of moral theology (including some GUP authors) to explore that question in dialogue with anthropology and the social sciences. Inspired by the work of Michael Banner, these scholars cross disciplinary boundaries to analyze the ethics of ordinary practices--from eating, learning, and loving thy neighbor to borrowing and spending, using technology, and working in a flexible economy. Along the way, they consider the moral and methodological questions that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialogue and assess the implications for the future of moral theology."