[3] Among other topics, his fieldwork in India has looked at cross-cultural concepts of the person, self, emotions, and moral reasoning.
His work in moral psychology included proposing the Community / Autonomy / Divinity triad of moral concerns,[4] a line of research continued by Shweder's former student Lene Arnett Jensen,[5] and which also served as one of the inspirations for Moral Foundations Theory, proposed by two of Shweder's former students Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph.
[6] He has also published extensively on matters relevant to the "culture wars" debates in cultural studies in the United States, and has advocated forms of cultural pluralism while being mindful of the practical and ethical difficulties certain kinds of pluralism entail.
He chaired a joint Russell Sage Foundation / Social Science Research Council Working Group on "Ethnic Customs, Assimilation, and American Law" (renamed as, "Law and Culture"), concerned with the issue of the "Free exercise of culture: How Free Is It?
He also has commented upon military uses of anthropology for counterinsurgency and other purposes outside of the United States.