Against Better Judgment

Patrick McKearney is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam conducting research in the UK, India, and Italy. His recent articles on disability, care, ethics, and religion include publications in Social Analysis, Ethnos, and JRAI. He has also edited two special issues on cognitive disability in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology and Medical Anthropology.

“These anthropological perspectives in akrasia do well to illustrate both the ubiquity of the phenomenon and the need to continue to collect cases of akratic human behaviour. Most normative approaches toward akrasia include aspiring toward its elimination, but collections like this give credence to the idea that akrasia is a mental phenomenon that greases the wheels of daily life.” • LSE Review of Books“This volume opens up the important subject of akrasia, one that any approach to the relationship between judgment and action needs to address. It is a very welcome addition to the literature.” • Michael Lambek, University of Toronto

• IntroductionPatrick McKearney and Nicholas H.A. EvansChapter 1. Trigger Warnings: Danger, Desire, and Declensions of the Will in Eating Disorders TreatmentRebecca J. LesterChapter 2. Three Problems with the Addiction as Akrasia Thesis that Ethnography Can SolveDarin WeinbergChapter 3. To Live Like ‘People’: Drinking and Weakness of Will Among the Runa of the Ecuadorian AmazonFrancesca MezzenzanaChapter 4. Prayer, Demons, and Akratic SublationJon BialeckiChapter 5. Troubleshooting Humans: Modelling the Pathways to Inertia, Backsliding, and Moral Transgression on Indonesia’s Hypnotherapy CircuitNicholas J. LongChapter 6. The ‘Replication’ of Caste as a Form of Collective AkrasiaIvan DeschenauxChapter 7. Is Grit Irrational for Akratic Agents?Lubomira RadoilskaChapter 8. Relational Akrasia: Care and the Distribution of ActionPatrick McKearneyAfterwordRichard HoltonIndex