Jarrett Zigon Livres

This provocative study examines the role of today's Russian Orthodox Church in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Russia has one of the fastest-growing rates of HIV infection in the world--80 percent from intravenous drug use--and the Church remains its only resource for fighting these diseases. Jarrett Zigon takes the reader into a Church-run treatment center where, along with self-transformational and religious approaches, he explores broader anthropological questions--of morality, ethics, what constitutes a "normal" life, and who defines it as such. Zigon argues that this rare Russian partnership between sacred and political power carries unintended consequences: even as the Church condemns the influence of globalization as the root of the problem it seeks to combat, its programs are cultivating citizen-subjects ready for self-governance and responsibility, and better attuned to a world the Church ultimately opposes.

Exploring the concept of morality through an anthropological lens, this book examines its manifestation across various cultures and its connections to social institutions like religion, law, and gender. It addresses contemporary moral debates while blending theoretical insights with practical case studies, making it accessible for students. By integrating anthropological and philosophical perspectives, it serves as a valuable resource for both undergraduate learners and researchers interested in the complexities of morality in society.

If we see that our contemporary condition is one of war and widely diffused complexity, how do we understand our most basic ethical motivations? What might be the aims of our political activity? A War on People takes up these questions and offers a glimpse of a possible alternative future in this ethnographically and theoretically rich examination of the activity of some unlikely political actors: users of heroin and crack cocaine, both active and former. The result is a groundbreaking book on how anti–drug war political activity offers transformative processes that are termed worldbuilding and enacts nonnormative, open, and relationally inclusive alternatives to such key concepts as community, freedom, and care.

Disappointment responds to recent calls to imaginatively and creatively theorize an otherwise by showing how collaboration between an anthropologist and a political movement of marginalized peoples - the anti-drug war movement - can disclose new possibilities for being and acting politically.

A new theory of relational ethics that tackles contemporary issues. In How Is It Between Us?, Jarrett Zigon puts anthropology and phenomenological hermeneutics in conversation to develop a new theory of relational ethics. This relational ethics takes place in the between, the interaction not just between people, but all existents. Importantly, this theory is utilized as a framework for considering some of today’s most pressing ethical concerns—for example, living in a condition of post-truth and worlds increasingly driven by algorithms and data extraction, various and competing calls for justice, and the ethical demands of the climate crisis. Written by one of the preeminent contributors to the anthropology of ethics, this is a ground-breaking book within that literature, developing a robust and systematic ethical theory to think through contemporary ethical problems.