Comparing Roy D Andrade's And Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Although Roy D'Andrade's and Nancy Scheper-Hughes' arguments oppose one another they have fundamental similarities. As stated by Laura Nader, both D’Andrade and Scheper-Hughes are commenting on the overall adequacy of anthropology. D’Andrade argues that moral (defined as evaluative; good and bad, reward and punishment, and completely subjective) and objective (defined as telling about object being described, not about the describer) models should be kept separate, while Scheper-Hughes argues that anthropologists are obligated to participate in political-moral action. D’Andrade says that one must first obtain empirical knowledge in order to make moral decisions and Scheper-Hughes simply highlights that anthropologists owe their livelihoods to their
What good is anthropology if it lets those it is obligated to protect suffer the devastations of oppression? In The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology, Scheper-Hughes makes a call-to-action for the anthropological community to adopt an ethnographic militant (politically engaged) anthropology. She claims that anthropology should become more “womanly-hearted,” a seemingly blind metaphor for a more humanitarian anthropology, an anthropology that is more sensitive to the conditions and struggles of people around the world, and eventually take political action. Specifically, she says that a “womanly-hearted” anthropology should be more concerned with how people interact and behave toward each other, and not only how humans think (pg. 409). I find her use of the words “womanly-hearted” inappropriately culturally loaded, implying sexist attitudes (men being intellectual and women being social), and brash due to its implication that current ethnographic methodology is defined by