Paper short abstract:

Based on the writing of a monograph on the families of Palestinian political prisoners I ponder the responsibility that comes with positing an ethnography that is entrenched in an ethics of justice instead within an ethics of care? Might political anthropology be written in different genres?

Paper long abstract:

This paper starts from the premise that writing an anthropological monograph, a book, allows the anthropologist to both say and to show our interlocutors that ‘I heard you’. Meanwhile, because the genre of anthropology hones in on a particular way of crafting an anthropological text, the reading of the lives and words of our interlocutors is staked dually, at least: Will it be read as a contribution to a scholarly conversation, and, will that contribution be one in which our interlocutors can glean the lives they shared with us? What if they don’t? Or, what if they do but our peers say they don’t? Based on the writing of a monograph on the families of Palestinian political prisoners I ponder the responsibility that comes with positing an ethnography that is necessarily entrenched in an ethics of justice instead within an ethics of care? What are the limits of what we think of as political anthropology? Drawing on the work of moral philosopher Sandra Laugier I wish to suggest that the anthropological monograph, amongst and often deeply entwined with other forms of impact, is a way of making the lives of our interlocutors matter. Because we noticed what others might have missed. Overall, the paper offers some anthropological thoughts on the embedded morality of our concepts and what we allow ourselves to attend to in the lives of the people at the centre of our work.