Paper long abstract:

Wilkinson and Pickett, in The Spirit Level (2009), shedding any complex notions of class, make a compelling class-based argument that shows a strong correlation between a pathological habitus and high levels of social inequality. This level of meta-analysis succeeds in a way that has evaded an anthropology tied to an ethnographic notion of holism. In this paper I look at the way the fetishization of 'the ethnographic' has restricted the long-standing ambition to transpose methods designed for one kind of social formation onto others, particularly those in which class is identified as a significant feature. The appeal to class analysis, of which this session is indicative, often carries with it the explicit or implicit demand for 'relevance', a familiar claim from many quarters of anthropology. In focusing The Spirit Level it will be argued that 'relevance' often represents the confusion of two aims in anthropology: the conservation of professional terrain and the extension of explanatory ambition regardless of disciplinary protocol.