About

Jarrett Zigon is the William & Linda Porterfield Chair in Bioethics and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia. He is a preeminent contributor to the anthropology of ethics, developing an influential approach grounded in anthropological and phenomenological thought. His work puts anthropology and phenomenological hermeneutics in conversation to develop a new theory of relational ethics, which takes place in the "between," the interaction not just between people but all existents. This theory serves as a framework for addressing pressing contemporary ethical concerns such as living in a post-truth condition, the impact of algorithms and data extraction, competing calls for justice, and the ethical demands of the climate crisis. Zigon's book "How Is It Between Us?" proposes a robust and systematic ethical theory to better address these contemporary ethical problems. He is also the author of several other books, including "A War on People: Drug User Politics and a New Ethics of Community," "Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding," and "HIV Is God’s Blessing: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia."

Research topics

• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Epistemology
• Law
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Religious studies
• History
• Theology
• Environmental ethics
• Psychoanalysis
• Anthropology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Heidegger and freedom in the anti-drug war movement

  2022-06-29

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter considers the import of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy for anthropological analysis. In particular, it takes up Heidegger’s conception of freedom as letting-be, or Gelassenheit, to think through the various ways in which anti-drug war activists articulate freedom in their political activity. In doing so, an important distinction is made between sovereign freedom and disclosive freedom, and the chapter shows that anti-drug war political activity is best understood in terms of a disclosive freedom that lets others be. Importantly, this disclosive freedom is linked to a conception of attuned care, which is perhaps the central ethical mandate of the anti-drug war movement.

  PublisherDOI

• CHAPTER 1 Multiple Moralities: Discourses, Practices, and Breakdowns in Post-Soviet Russia

  Berghahn Books · 2022-10-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A conversation about recovery and political activism

  International Journal of Drug Policy · 2022-03-06 · 1 citations

  editorialOpen access1st author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 10 An Ethics of Dwelling and a Politics of Worldbuilding: Responding to the Demands of the Drug War

  Berghahn Books · 2022-10-29

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to the Special Issue

  Puncta · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the spring and summer of 2020, the world broke down. A worldly breakdown often gives rise to forms of moral breakdown, or those “moments” when some worldly event or occurrence forces a person or persons to critically reflect on their until then unquestioned way of being-in-the-world (Zigon 2007). From the persistence of the global pandemic, to the collapse of the economy, to the murder of George Floyd by police officers on camera, to the worldwide response to that injustice, the world and its human inhabitants experienced a breakdown in those months and it became impossible to ever see, hear, understand, or be in the world in the same way again. This special issue of Puncta brings together anthropologists and philosophers who take up a critical phenomenological or hermeneutic approach for thinking the contemporary condition. From the possibility of inhabiting a world conditioned by a global pandemic, to the impossibility of dwelling in conditions of systemic racism, from the question of how to face a future that presents itself as looming, to a present that denies the very possibility of truth: this collection responds to these and more in the hope of showing not only the contemporary conditions of existence, but that other conditions always remain as an ever-present potentiality

  PublisherDOI

• Truth, Thinking, Ethics

  Puncta · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Today it is said that we live in a condition of post-truth. In this essay, I will query this claim. In doing so, I do not intend to argue the contrary position, and neither will I attempt to offer some hope for a “return” to truth. Rather, my query will begin with an exploration of the assumptions behind the claim of post-truth and then consider an alternative notion of truth offered by Martin Heidegger and put into practice by Vaclav Havel. Next, I consider how this Heideggerian/Havelian notion of truth is perhaps better thought in terms of thinking as articulated by Hannah Arendt, and a conception of ethics that runs close to Arendt’s thinking on thinking. Finally, the essay ends with the consideration that in the increasingly complex worlds of global and informational interconnectedness, perhaps what is most needed is not truth but thinking. That is, thinking that gives way to a sense of the world.

  PublisherDOI

• Multiple Moralities and Religions in Post-Soviet Russia

  Berghahn Books · 2022 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Social Science

  In the post-Soviet period morality became a debatable concept, open to a multitude of expressions and performances. From Russian Orthodoxy to Islam, from shamanism to Protestantism, religions of various kinds provided some of the first possible alternative moral discourses and practices after the end of the Soviet system. This influence remains strong today. Within the Russian context, religion and morality intersect in such social domains as the relief of social suffering, the interpretation of history, the construction and reconstruction of traditions, individual and social health, and business practices. The influence of religion is also apparent in the way in which the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly acts as the moral voice of the government. The wide-ranging topics in this ethnographically based volume show the broad religious influence on both discursive and everyday moralities. The contributors reveal that although religion is a significant aspect of the various assemblages of morality, much like in other parts of the world, religion in postsocialist Russia cannot be separated from the political or economic or transnational institutional aspects of morality.

  DOI

• Chapter 3 LIFE HISTORY AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: THE MORAL CONCEPTIONS OF A MUSCOVITE MAN

  Berghahn Books · 2022-10-11

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Phenomenology

  Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology · 2021 · 20 citations

  • Sociology
  • Epistemology
  • Sociology

  Phenomenology is one of the most influential philosophical traditions of the twentieth century and has significantly shaped contemporary anthropological and social theory. This entry shows the various ways in which phenomenology has contributed to contemporary anthropology. In so doing, it also shows that a better understanding of the phenomenological tradition and what it offers social and historical analysis could further contribute to the development of anthropology as a discipline increasingly concerned with the relational interconnection between humans, nonhumans, and the worlds they variously share. This is done by focusing on phenomenology’s emphasis on ‘conditions of experience’, and how such conditions shape what and how it is to be human in any situated context. In particular, the entry emphasises the conditions of being-in-the-world, embodiment, and radical otherness, and shows how each of these have been utilised by phenomenological anthropologists in their analyses of socio-cultural life. Furthermore, the entry stresses that phenomenology has always been a critical endeavour. Historically, this was so in terms of the rethinking of some of the most fundamental concepts of the so-called 'Western tradition'. More recently, this critical aspect has focused on the ways in which such conditions of experience as race, class, and gender, among others, significantly shape the range of possibilities for any experience whatsoever.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• “It’s a War on People …”

  The American Journal of Bioethics · 2021-04-03

  letter1st authorCorresponding

  What do certain military missions in Afghanistan, domestic spying in the United States, therapeutic interventions in Russia and Denmark, torture and rape in an Indonesian police station, and Stop a...

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Agata Ładykowska

  Charles University

  8 shared

• Detelina Tocheva

  8 shared

• Tünde Komáromi

  Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary

  8 shared

• Tobias Köllner

  8 shared

• Milena Benovska‐Sabkova

  8 shared

• Jason Throop

  2 shared

• C. Jason Throop

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2 shared

• A Guzmán Sánchez

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Fulbright-Hays Fellowship
• The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
• European Research Council (ERC)