Anthropology: All Things Being Equal, or Equality Subjectively Constructed in the Pursuit of Anthropological Objectivity

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In “Autonomy as Natural Equality: Inequality in ‘Egalitarian’ Societies” (Helliwell, 1995:359-375), Christine Helliwell argues that a common assumption in anthropological literature underlying the view of individual societies as ‘egalitarian’ is the conflation of ‘autonomy’ with ‘equality’ (Helliwell, 1995:359), and that this conflation itself stems from a questionable distinction between ‘the social’ and ‘the natural’ (Helliwell, 1995:362). An analysis of Helliwell’s central argument demonstrates that the problem she highlights extends beyond analytical conceptions of equality. The implications Helliwell’s argument raises have a broader implication for the way conceptual paradigms are employed in anthropological analysis. Although Helliwell introduces other complexities (not examined here due to space constraints), the primary focus of her essay is on the relationship between the Western conception of ’the natural’ and ’the social’ as mutually exclusive categories, and the Western tendency to conflate autonomy with ‘true equality‘ (specifically equality of opportunity), and the implications this has for anthropological understandings of both non-Western and Western social orders. To summarise Helliwell’s argument, there exists in anthropology a common practise of elaborating the questionable Western notion of the existence of a mutually exclusive distinction between ‘the natural’ and ‘the social’, into a paradigm in which equality of opportunity (achieved through autonomy) is both a necessary and sufficient characteristic of ‘true equality’ (Helliwell, 1995:361-362). In this paradigm, since people are naturally different, their effectiveness (for instance in achieving social rank or acquiring material wealth) will necessarily vary in the absence of socially imposed constraints that interfere with the social and material expression of natural differences

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