ABSTRACT

This chapter is concerned with some central issues for anthropology: the potential – or lack of it – for the universal application of professional codes of ethics, and the relationship between discourses about ethics and current debates about the extent to which theoretical models may also be applied cross-culturally. It takes the position that the potential for universality in ethics hinges upon the feasibility of generalising, cross-cultural comparisons. This leads us straight into a long-running argument as to whether anthropology should be treated as a science – capable of some degree of objectivity – or as a culturally relativist, interpretative endeavour. Implicitly, a model of anthropology as scientific endeavour tends to assume some degree of universality in human thought and behaviour, while postmodern models have tended to promulgate the opposite.