Professor Michael Carrithers (Durham University)
Irony as Method

In a comment to a Current Anthropology piece (2005, p. 450), Alcida Rita Ramos took up a still unfinished discussion about irony.  She wrote, 'What potency is there in the notion of irony that is absent in the concept of
cultural relativism...?'  Here I continue that discussion, run it through some thorny situations, and see where, or whether, the detached ironist might find purchase.