Invites you to a talk
Probing Whiteness — Insights from the
Anthropology of Ethics
Rachel Schneider Vlachos
PhD candidate, Rice University, Texas
Associate of Wits Centre for Diversity Studies
This seminar will focus on how the emerging field of the anthropology of ethics, which takes
up ethics as an object of empirical inquiry, has informed my dissertation research design and
fieldwork, conducted October 2013 - July 2014, while a visiting researcher at Wits Centre for
Diversity Studies. In particular, I will reflect on how the anthropology of ethics provided a
rich analytic framework for researching white South Africans who view themselves as
working to redress social inequality, and whose efforts are often anchored in religious and
spiritual practices aimed at critiquing, rather than supporting, white social withdrawal. I will
further describe some of the unique challenges that my informants faced as they sought to
reflect on, intervene in, and transform their “whiteness,” and the role of religion and
spirituality in shaping their ethics of social change. Finally, I will draw on critical race theory
and Black Consciousness thought to probe and critique the ways in which gender, race and
class shaped my informants’ constructions of ethics. At a time when few qualitative studies
emphasize the role of ethics or religion and spirituality in social transformation, I contend
that utilizing the anthropology of ethics may offer critical new insights into public debates
about religion and social justice in South Africa and other contemporary postcolonial
contexts.
Date: Wednesday,August 6, 2014
Time: 14.00-16.00
Venue: CISA Committee Room