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Justice, Morality, and the State in Amazonia

Objective

The project will investigate the social, cultural and cognitive bases of justice, or the morally correct assignment of goods and evils, with a focus on the indigenous peoples of Western Amazonia. It will develop an analysis of issues ranging from emotions, fairness, entitlement and equality in contexts of resource distribution, to punishment, vengeance, and attributions of responsibility. This will enlarge our understanding of how and why patterns of moral judgement vary across cultures, with particular attention paid to the role played by cultural constructions of personhood. The current situation of rapid social change in Amazonia, driven largely by the increased presence of the state in everyday life, provides a unique opportunity for assessing how morality and ethics are shaped by social conditions such as the size of networks of cooperation, processes for generating consensus, and the management of conflicts and disputes. This will be used to address longstanding questions concerning the evolution of morality, including how fairness is linked to cooperation within ever larger groups. The innovative methodology, combining ethnography with experiments and games adapted from psychology, economics, and experimental philosophy, will allow for a vastly more comprehensive set of data on justice in action than has previously been achieved. This will permit the elaboration of a sophisticated and distinctively Amazonian theory of justice, grounded in emotional responsiveness to others and respect for personal autonomy, that is capable of entering into critical dialogue with mainstream Western theories and understandings, while also challenging a number of dominant stereotypes of small-scale, non-state societies. The results will further be used to formulate a general framework for development projects and policy interventions with indigenous peoples, which could drastically improve their success rate and potentially be adapted for use in a range of global contexts.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2016-STG

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Host institution

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 483 992,00
Address
Houghton Street 1
WC2A 2AE London
United Kingdom

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Region
London Inner London — West Westminster
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 483 992,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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