This volume is an attempt to put ethics on anthropological agendas, partly in order to help scholars think about human action in ways that are not predetermined by reigning scholarly interest in power. In his introductory chapter, Michael Lambek advocates an Aristotelian rather than a Kantian understanding of ethics, for “by returning to Aristotle, we can take ethics to be fundamentally a property or function of action rather than (only) of abstract reason” (14). He characterizes “ordinary” practice, including speech, as inherently ethical, and argues that its very ordinariness means that ethics cannot be isolated as an anthropological subdiscipline.

In a second chapter, Lambek develops this argument by drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Stanley Cavell, and Roy Rappaport. His contribution is combined with chapters from Webb Keane and James Faubion to constitute Part 1 of the book, “Theoretical frameworks.” Keane urges close analysis of the possibilities and constraints entailed by signs' materiality. He argues that an anthropology of ethics must attend to acts of objectification, and specifically to the “surfaces of things”—for example, “the quality of the gift and the timing of the countergift, the tone of the voice and the choice of the words”—which make them both typical and consequential in social interaction (76). Faubion posits a distinction between the ethical domain and its “themitical dimension.” Roughly, the former encompasses dynamism, production, and becoming; the latter, stasis, reproduction, and being. From Weber, Faubion notes that “charismatic leadership can accommodate the other only in one mode: as follower” (88). Within the charismatic encounter, then, ethics is “resolutely indefinite” or does not actually exist (101, 88); rather, it “emerges… at the moment at which the charismatic leader recognizes and accommodates the chrism of the other” (89).

Having set up these theoretical waymarkers—loosely, we might identify them as ethics' pervasive ordinariness (Lambek), material mediations (Keane), and reproductive dimensions (Faubion)—the volume proceeds to Part 2, “The ethics of speaking.” Alan Rumsey notes that the ability to switch perspectives is both a foundation of ethics and inherent to every language. He discusses grammatical person (especially first and second person pronouns) and reported speech, but the category on which he places the most emphasis is imperatives: even before children learn about grammatical person, they recognize that commands convey the will of someone separate from themselves and that they are the ones expected to act. In the next chapter, Jack Sidnell undertakes detailed conversational analysis to show how ethics contours everyday speech, and can therefore be understood only by attending to speech's messy realities—its unfolding in real time, its multiple and overlapping voices, and so forth.

Part 3, “Responsibility and agency,” begins with a chapter by James Laidlaw in which he adapts actor-network theory to consider how attributions of agency are distributed promiscuously through “mediating entities”—for example, body parts (the case of a man found not guilty of murder because his brain tumor was said to have caused his actions), artistic productions (Stanley Kubrick halted showings of “A Clockwork Orange” in the UK because it seemed to inspire copycat crimes), and things one owns but does not control. In a stimulating second half to his chapter, Laidlaw draws parallels between Zande witchcraft and contemporary audit culture, both of which, he writes, “tend toward a proliferation of agency, namely, the detection of new kinds of acts and new injuries and faults” (161). The following contribution, by Steven Caton, addresses the abusive actions at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war. Caton acknowledges that “there was hardly anything ‘ordinary’ about” the events (p. 165), and he draws on Arendt to consider the positions of unremarkable people caught up in extraordinary events shaped by systems that can only be called evil. Seeking to avoid both universalist and relativist simplifications, Caton offers the term “situational evil,” noting (with reference to Foucault's “security apparatus”) that the systems in place at Abu Ghraib required the soldiers to improvise their actions.

Caton's chapter would have fit well into Part 4, “Punishment and personal dignity,” which is distinguished as the only section to feature a response: philosopher Judith Baker comments on the contributions from Charles Stafford and Francesca Merlan. Stafford suggests that it is useful to distinguish the moral (as norms) and the ethical (as individual action), and he applies this distinction to a difficult position he endured during his fieldwork in Taiwan. Acting with the best of intentions by participating in funeral rituals, he gained a reputation for being spiritually polluted. Reflecting on this situation, Stafford writes that “it is possible, and perhaps even common, for us to behave ethically and immorally at the same time” (188). Merlan's chapter observes the “incongruence of systems” for Aboriginal Australians whose kinship ethic, “oriented toward spatiotemporal continuity, restorability, and an open potentiality for further inclusion,” seems at odds with mainstream institutional norms of command, compliance, and lack of reciprocity (223–24). Baker, responding to Stafford, discusses Peter Strawson's work on emotional involvement in acts of judgment and punishment, and in responding to Merlan she applauds the ethnographer's skill “in allowing us to see the expression of due regard” manifest in situations that challenge our own ethical expectations (231).

Part 5, “Ethics and formality,” pairs two chapters that go together especially well. Examining nineteenth century etiquette manuals, Shirley Yeung notes the categorical difference between acting by a strict code and acting sincerely, both of which the manuals urged people to do. She argues that guidebooks mediate these principles by claiming that acting properly will cultivate an ethical disposition; that is, one should act virtuously in order to become virtuous. Justin Richland observes how disputants in Hopi Tribal Court use apparently contrasting frames to evaluate others' actions. On one side stands an appreciation of the aesthetic value of expertly conducted ritual; on the other, a claim that individual intentions do matter, and that beautiful words can hide bad hearts—and these different frames, Richland demonstrates, can be invoked by the same side at different moments in a dispute.

The book concludes with two sections of four chapters each: Part 6 is “Ethical subjects: Character and practice” and Part 7 is “Ethical life: Encounters with history, religion, and the political.” In Part 6, Carlos Londoño Sulkin describes Muinane speakers in the Colombian Amazon who consider particular crops, especially tobacco, to shape people's ethical dispositions, and Nireka Weeratunge discusses Sri Lankan entrepreneurs' thoughts on how to be an ethical businessperson. The contributions from Sophie Day and Paul Antze deserve special mention for their ethnographic vibrancy. Day charts British prostitutes' typical development in understanding their ethical selves: they tend to enter sex work affirming the mainstream distinctions between love and sex, and love and money, and believing they can avoid stigma; when, inevitably, their jobs become known to their families or the public, they develop political awareness of the mechanics of stigmatization. Finally, many give up plans for a future outside of prostitution and choose “a more unitary life, oriented to their present circumstances rather than to a remote future” (302). Antze, examining the diverse experiences and perspectives of autistic adults and autism advocates, notes that many autistics find in the internet “a form of communication uniquely suited to the autistic's social and perceptual disabilities” (317); but, he notes, their elegant fluency online threatens to undermine their claims to being “alien,” claims that demand a particular kind of ethical response from the nonautistic population.

Part 7 is notable because its chapters are so different from one another. Donna Young's contribution on Christian pilgrims in Israel/Palestine is an ethnographic revelation. It is the most entertaining chapter in the volume thanks to Young's brilliant storytelling, which is paradoxically both subtle and screamingly vivid. Naisargi Dave's meditation on queer activism in India is a thoughtful engagement with Foucauldian ethics but, at only seven pages long (by far the briefest chapter in the book), it reads like the beginning of an introductory chapter to a longer work—a good beginning, but underdeveloped. The next chapter is Veena Das' account of changing familial and religious dynamics for one couple in Delhi—Kuldip (originally a Hindu) and Saba (originally a Muslim). Considering the public hostility to Hindu-Muslim marriages, Das suggests that “something as simple as a Hindu boy having fallen in love with a Muslim girl… carries within it the potential to unleash great violence—but also an opportunity for intimate aspirations to be realized by all who have to re-create their relations around the couple” (378). Finally, Heonik Kwon concludes the volume with a mesmerizing analysis of ritual and memory in Vietnam. Kwon describes how the national government initially forbade memorials to enemy war dead, and also destroyed ancestral temples in the name of combating “feudal and backward customs” (405). At present, people ritually attend to both ancestors and ghosts in parallel projects of “family repair and social renovation” for the former and “ritual interactions with the displaced, unknown, and diverse ghosts of war” for the latter (413).

Ordinary ethics is a book overstuffed with ideas. This makes it exhilarating for readers who want to think rigorously, comparatively, and imaginatively about the ethical and how attention to it can reshape anthropology.