Jarrett Zigon
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Jarrett Zigon is a social theorist,
philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
and
anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...
at the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
, where he is the William & Linda Porterfield Chair in Bioethics and Professor of Anthropology. From 2018 to 2020, he was the founding director of the Center for Data Ethics and Justice at the
University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...
. Previously, he had been at the
University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...
and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.


Biography

Zigon received an M.A. in liberal arts from St. John's College (1998) and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the ...
(2006). He subsequently was a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
, a visiting scholar at
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, and a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. His research has been funded through a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of ...
(NWO), and the 
European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...
 (ERC), among others.


Research

Zigon is best known for his writing on
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
, bioethics, and
political theory Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, l ...
– most particularly for his conceptions of moral breakdown, moral assemblages, attunement, dwelling, and relational ethics. These writings have primarily addressed the topics of social and political change, the war on drugs, addiction, mental health, and artificial intelligence/data science. Zigon's work has had a major influence on the anthropology of ethics, critical bioethics, and phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches to ethics and politics. Zigon is committed to an ongoing conversation between anthropology and philosophy. He is particularly recognized for articulating an anthropology strongly influenced by post-Heideggerian continental philosophy and critical theory, the theoretical articulation of which he describes as critical hermeneutics. He has contributed several articles to openDemocracy on addiction, the war on drugs, and political activism.


Bibliography


Books

*How is it between us? Relational Ethics and Care for the World. Chicago: HAU Books. 2024. *A War on People: Drug User Politics and a New Ethics of Community. Oakland: University of California Press. 2019. *Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding. New York: Fordham University Press. 2018. *HIV is God's Blessing Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. *Making the New Post-Soviet Person: Moral Experience in Contemporary Moscow. Leiden: Brill. 2010. *Morality: An Anthropological Perspective. Oxford: Berg Publishers. 2008.


Articles

*"Can Machines Be Ethical?: On the Necessity of Relational Ethics and Empathic Attunement for Data-Centric Technologies," in Social Research: An International Quarterly, volume 86, number 4. 2019. *"What is a situation?: an assemblic ethnography of the drug war," in Cultural Anthropology, volume 30, number 3. 2015. *"An Ethics of Dwelling and a Politics of World-Building: A Critical Response to Ordinary Ethics," in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20, pages 746–64. 2014. *"Maintaining the 'Truth:' performativity, human rights, and the limitations on politics," in Theory and Event, volume 17, number 3. 2014. *"Temporalization and Ethical Action," in Journal of Religious Ethics, volume 42, number 3. 2014. *"Attunement and Fidelity: Two Ontological Conditions for Morally Being-in-the-World," in Ethos, volume 42, number 1. 2014. *"Moral breakdown and the ethical demand: A theoretical framework for an anthropology of moralities," in Anthropological Theory, volume 7, number 2. 2007


References


External links


Faculty Page
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia.
AcademiaopenDemocracy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zigon, Jarrett Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American philosophers 21st-century American anthropologists CUNY Graduate Center alumni University of Virginia faculty