No social science is entirely value-neutral. Already at the stage of the problem formulation do values inform research; it does make a difference whether one asks why low-caste people engage in an ultimately futile attempt to raise their symbolic capital, or why it is that caste hierarchies continue to exist in India in spite of a very long struggle to remove them. In my own research on industry and the environment in Australia, I asked how people and the city as a whole were coping with the glaring contradiction of growth and sustainabilituy. I could instead have asked, as a main research question, which notions about progress were most widespread, and the analysis would have been quite different. It is probably a fact that most of us end up emphatising with the local communities we study, frequently seeing them as being overrun and unfairly dominated by the greater forces of state and transnational capitalism. Comparison and ethnographic immersion may be an inoculation against uninformed cultural prejudices. Moreover, the relevance of holism for values is also worth considering. The relational, contextual epistemology which is necessary for ethnographic description to be possible seems to be at odds with the dominant individualism as a foundation of society. These values can be made compatible with a range political persuasions. By discussing the engaged ethnology/anthropology of Eilert Sundt (19th century) and Gutorm Gjessing (mid 20th century), and considering the unique contribution of anthropologists to the challenges of climate change, the author asks if there are some values which are shared, or taken for granted, among anthropologists, but not in other academic disciplines.