The Many Meanings of Morality and Health: Here and There, Left and Right with Cultural Anthropologist Dr. Richard Shweder

Cultural Anthropologist Dr. Richard Shweder will discuss the morality of health care in a talk titled The Many Meanings of Morality and Health: Here and There, Left and Right.

Dr. Shweder has an extensive resume in the field of cultural anthropology. He has been a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Socio-Psychological Prize for his essay, “Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?”

In addition, he has twice been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He is currently a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

During the 2008-2009 academic year Shweder was a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he completed his work as Editor-in-Chief of a large reference work project on diversity in child and adolescent development titled "The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion" (to be published in September 2009 by the University of Chicago Press). He is currently writing a book provisionally titled "Customs Control: Un-American Activities and the Moral Challenge in Cultural Migration." 

Shweder received his Ph.D. degree in social anthropology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University in 1972, taught a year at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and has been at the University of Chicago ever since. 

For the past forty years Professor Shweder has been conducting research in cultural psychology on moral reasoning, emotional functioning, gender roles, explanations of illness, ideas about the causes suffering, and the moral foundations of family life practices in the Hindu temple town of Bhubaneswar on the East Coast of India. 

His recent research examines the scopes and limits of pluralism and the multicultural challenge in Western liberal democracies.   He examines the norm conflicts that arise when people migrate from Africa, Asia and Latin America to countries in the “North”.   They bring with them culturally endorsed practices (e.g., arranged marriage, animal sacrifice, the circumcision of both girls and boys, ideas about parental, legal and political authority) that mainstream populations in the United States or Western Europe sometimes find aberrant and disturbing.  How much accommodation to cultural diversity occurs and ought to occur under such circumstances?