What Is to Be Done?: Moral Worlds of the Badagas

By Paul Hockings

Moral choice and daily conduct among a community emerge through proverbs, prayers, taboos, and etiquette.

What is to be Done? explores a subject not usually examined in social anthropology namely the moral choices that members of a community make as they go about their daily lives. Rather than seeking this information from what selected key informants among the Badagas have to say about the matter, Dr Hockings analyzes the contents of a vast collection of their proverbs, along with a few prayers. He sees these two sources as traditional advice on what Badagas should do or not do in various personal circumstances. An earlier collection of their proverbs, made in the 1850s by a German, reveals how little this advice has changed in modern times. Dr Hockings shows how moral values can be categorised, some of them being very broad, like anger or industriousness, while others relate to quite specific objects, like ploughs and salt. Personal behaviour is conditioned by directives like taboos, rules of etiquette, time-honoured customs, even blessings and curses. The final chapter of the book looks at the lifestyle of well-to-do professional Badagas working in big cities. This raises questions about urban behaviour in the future, indeed whether the Badaga language will survive into the distant future.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9374517671
• ISBN13: 9789374517673
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Manohar Books
• Length: 126 Pages