What Is to Be Done?

Paul Hockings is a British anthropologist and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Illinois. He has studied anthropology, archaeology and linguistics at the universities of Sydney, Toronto, Chicago, Stanford and California (Berkeley). Among his two dozen books are fourteen on the Nilgiri area in south India, most of them dealing with the Badaga community.

• Chapter One — The Study of Moral Values 5 Ethics in Another Realm 5Teasing out the Values of a Culture 11 A Productive Approach to Studying Values 14Chapter Two — Language and Culture 18 The Function of Proverbs and Prayers 18 The Rhetoric of Morality 26 The Interface of Language and Culture 29Chapter Three — Broad Forms of Moral Value 35 Value Premises and Orientations 35 Focal Values 39Chapter Four — Guidance on People and Things 50 Positive and Negative Directives 50 Personality Characteristics 53 Valued and Disvalued Entities 59Chapter Five — Folk Wisdom, Female Workers,and Farming Advice 61 Folk Psychology 61 The Status of Women 68 Farmers' Maxims 75Chapter Six — The Quality and Guidelines of Life 81 A Waning Quality of Life 81 Folk Documentation of the Human Condition 89Appendix I — The Absolution of Sins 97 Appendix II — Index of 336 proverbs and other sayings cited in this book 100Acknowledgements 112 References 113 Index 118