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Outputs (20)

Of Souls and Spider Monkeys (2024)
Journal Article
Heywood, P. (in press). Of Souls and Spider Monkeys. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory,

Ethnographies of interest: between enthusiasm and the instrumental (2024)
Journal Article
Candea, M., Heywood, P., Reed, A., & Yarrow, T. (in press). Ethnographies of interest: between enthusiasm and the instrumental. Current Anthropology,

Anthropologists and social theorists have written extensively about the ways in which economic and political interests lead people to act in social life. Less scholarly attention has been paid, however, to what people find ‘interesting’, in the sense... Read More about Ethnographies of interest: between enthusiasm and the instrumental.

A Thought Experiment in the Wild (2023)
Journal Article
Heywood, P. (2023). A Thought Experiment in the Wild. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 67(3), 118-124. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2023.670311

This paper aims to complicate the opposition between ‘thick description’ and ‘thin’ thought experiments by constructing a thought experiment of its own. It compares the use of examples – thick and thin – in the work of Malinowski and Ludwig Wittgenst... Read More about A Thought Experiment in the Wild.

Off the Rails: Thin Moral Thinking and Stylized Ethical Dilemmas (2023)
Journal Article
Heywood, P., & Reed, A. (2023). Off the Rails: Thin Moral Thinking and Stylized Ethical Dilemmas. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 67(3), 45-57. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2023.670303

This introduction situates the trolley problem and other such dilemmas in anthropological debates about contextualisation and abstraction both within and beyond the realm of the moral. We highlight some of the criticisms anthropologists have made of... Read More about Off the Rails: Thin Moral Thinking and Stylized Ethical Dilemmas.

Out of the ordinary: Everyday life and the “carnival of Mussolini” (2023)
Journal Article
Heywood, P. (2023). Out of the ordinary: Everyday life and the “carnival of Mussolini”. American Anthropologist, https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13850

Ordinary life is in many ways the quintessential object of anthropological analysis. Yet little attention has been paid to contexts in which it is important to people themselves that they and their actions are seen to be ordinary and to the work that... Read More about Out of the ordinary: Everyday life and the “carnival of Mussolini”.

Ordinary exemplars: cultivating the everyday in the birthplace of fascism (2021)
Journal Article
Heywood, P. (2022). Ordinary exemplars: cultivating the everyday in the birthplace of fascism. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 64(1), 91-121. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0010417521000402

This paper examines the ways in which ‘ordinariness’ can come to be exemplified as a virtue. It does so by comparing the status of ordinariness in historical and present-day Predappio, the village in which Mussolini was born and is buried. It describ... Read More about Ordinary exemplars: cultivating the everyday in the birthplace of fascism.

One more turn and you're there (2013)
Journal Article
Heywood, P., & Laidlaw, J. (2013). One more turn and you're there. Anthropology of this century,