Life

Didier Fassin is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His works include Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing and Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition

• ContentsAcknowledgementsPreamble: Minima TheoriaChapter I. Forms of LifeChapter II. Ethics of LifeChapter III. Politics of LifeConclusion: Unequal LivesNotesReferences

“It needs the sharp eye of an anthropologist, the empirical scrutiny of a sociologist, and the imagination of a moral philosopher to decipher the hidden grammar by which the physical life of human beings is measured in our globalized world. Didier Fassin, impressively combining all these talents in one mind, is to my knowledge the first scholar to have accomplished this enormous task – a must read for everyone interested in the dark side of globalization.”Axel Honneth, Goethe University and Columbia University“At a time of growing social inequality, Didier Fassin boldly addresses the persistently unequal valuation of human lives. With sharp philosophical insight, grounded in vivid ethnographic detail, the book uncovers the moral and political processes involved in our treatment of human life. Compassionate and inspiring, Life contributes to scholarly debates and will at the same time appeal to a wide audience.”Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University"[A]n ambitious synthesis of moral philosophy and anthropological fieldwork, based on the question of how we can understand existence as both matter and experience, and as both biology and biography." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute