Rules and ethics: Perspectives from anthropology and history PDF
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Rules and ethics Rules and ethics Perspectives from anthropology and history Edited by Morgan Clarke and Emily Corran manchester university press Copyright © Manchester University Press 2021 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 4890 2 hardback First published 2021 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover credit: Unknown artist, Moses and the Ten Commandments, c. 1600 (Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht) Cover design: Abbey Akanbi, Manchester University Press Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Contents List of figures page vii List of contributors viii Preface ix Introduction: Rules and ethics – Morgan Clarke and Emily Corran 1 Part I: Rules enabling moral life 1 Conscience is tradition: Classical Hindu law and the ethics of conservatism – Donald R. Davis, Jr. 37 2 Manners and morals: Codes of civility in early modern England – Martin Ingram 59 3 Control of the self and the casuistry of vows: Christian personal conscience and clerical intervention in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – Emily Corran 80 Part II: Rules and virtue 4 Rules and the unruly: Roman exemplary ethics – Rebecca Langlands 103 5 ‘For the love of God’? The First Commandment and sacramental confession in early modern Catholic Europe – Nicole Reinhardt 124 6 Counting good and bad deeds under military rule: Islam and divine bookkeeping in Nablus (Palestine) – Emanuel Schaeublin 145 Part III: Rules about rules 7 Tactics of transformation: Self-formation and the multiplicity of authority in Polish conversions to Judaism – Jan Lorenz 169 8 Conscience and action in the Islamic madhhab-law tradition – Talal Al-Azem 190 vi Contents 9 Comparing casuistries: Rules, rigour and relaxation in Islam and Christianity – Morgan Clarke 211 Afterword – James Laidlaw 234 Index 243 Figures 2.1 Francis Hawkins, translator of Youth’s Behaviour, or Decencie in Conversation amongst Men, 7th impression. London: W. Lee, 1661. By permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Shelfmark Douce YY 5 (1), frontispiece page 67 6.1 Fieldwork in the Palestinian city of Nablus, 2013–14 (photo: Jonas Opperskalski) 146 6.2 Poster listing deeds for gaining divine reward (photo: Emanuel Schaeublin) 148 6.3 Virtuous actions visualised as treasure chests (photo: Emanuel Schaeublin) 149 6.4 Judgement Day sticker (photo: Emanuel Schaeublin) 156 Contributors Talal Al-Azem, Mohammed Noah Fellow, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies; Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford Morgan Clarke, Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of Keble College, University of Oxford Emily Corran, Lecturer in Medieval History, University College London Donald R. Davis, Jr., Professor and Chair of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin Martin Ingram, Emeritus Fellow in History, Brasenose College, University of Oxford James Laidlaw, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of Kings College, University of Cambridge Rebecca Langlands, Professor of Classics, University of Exeter Jan Lorenz, Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University Nicole Reinhardt, Professor of Early Modern European History, Durham University Emanuel Schaeublin, Senior Researcher, Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) Preface The genesis of this book lies in two seasons of the ‘Legalism’ seminar series, which took place in 2016–17 at Keble College, Oxford. These seminars were shaped by the legacy of the series’ previous, distinguished incarna- tions, as originally conceived by Paul Dresch and others. Our meetings had a number of loyal and engaged attendees, not least Paul Hyams, Martin Ingram and Fernanda Pirie, who contributed to our early ideas relating to rules and ethics. These two years of seminars culminated in the conference ‘Legalism: Ethics and Conscience’, held at Keble College, January 2018, with the support of grants from Keble College and the John Fell Fund, for which we are very grateful. We thank all the contributors, who also included David d’Avray, Philippa Byrne and Vlad Naumescu, as well as Terence Irwin, Fernanda Pirie and John Sabapathy, who acted as discus- sants, and William Twining, who provided most helpful comments and advice. As we then turned those papers into this book, Morgan Clarke benefited from the support of a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship (‘A New Anthropology of Rules’, 2018–19); Emily Corran would like to thank St John’s College, Oxford, for a Junior Research Fellowship, which allowed her the research time and resources to pursue these interdisciplinary conver- sations. We are very grateful to James Laidlaw for then taking the interest and time to contribute the afterword, amid his many other commitments. We thank also Meredith Carroll and Manchester University Press, and three anonymous reviewers – especially the last, who provided detailed comments on the entire manuscript as well as Agata Zielinska for her help preparing the index. Finally, we must thank all our contributors for their patience and commitment despite the very difficult circumstances caused by the COVID- 19 pandemic during the final editing stages. We could hardly have suspected when we began that rules would become such a prominent feature of all our lives.
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