ETHICAL SELF-MAKING,MORAL EXPERIMENTATION,AND HUMANITARIAN ENCOUNTER: Interdisciplinary Engagement with the Anthropology of Ethics

The interdisciplinary group of authors featured in this focus issue contribute to conversations at the intersection of anthropology and ethics by exploring ethical self-making and moral experimentation among faith-based actors in a range of humanitarian settings. Kari Henquinet describes the genealogies of American evangelical humanitarianism by focusing on the ethical self-formation of early World Vision leaders. Rachel Schneider and Sara Williams each explore practices by which relatively privileged individuals seek to cultivate virtue by engaging with those on the margins, in poor, urban neighborhoods in South Africa, and through packaged tours in Israel/Palestine, respectively. Sarah Tobin describes projects of Islamic self-making among displaced refugee women in Jordan. Although they examine a wide range of subjects and settings, they explore a common set of themes, two of which I discuss here: moral experimentation, and engagements with suffering, poverty, and inequality.