This article explores some tensions in Didier Fassin's work, taking into account arguments that developed from his fieldwork in France, with unemployed and immigrants, and in the context of the post-apartheid South Africa AIDS epidemic. Throughout the analysis, I will show some of the implications of working within the limits of critique and intervention, as well as its effects in rethinking anthropology's role in the contemporary world. Finally, I discuss his last investigation - the proposition of a moral anthropology - and how it articulates different aspects of his work.
Critical anthropology; Intervention; France; South Africa; Didier Fassin