Webb Keane

Webb Keane is an American anthropologist who currently serves as a professor at the University of Michigan. He is a prominent faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, where he has taught for many years.

Keane is widely recognized for his scholarly contributions to the study of semiotics, religion, ethics, and materiality. His research often focuses on how language and material objects shape moral and ethical perspectives within different cultures.

Keane conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork on the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia. His research there focused on the local population's encounter with Dutch Calvinist missionaries, examining how this exchange altered their traditional spiritual practices and understanding of material objects.

In works like his book "Ethical Life," Keane argues that ethics is not just an abstract philosophical concept, but an everyday practice embedded in social interactions. He emphasizes that people's moral impulses and self-understandings are historically situated and shaped by the semiotic and material environments they inhabit.