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Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course

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  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Cathrine Degnen

    1. School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

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  • Poses personhood as a question and breaks new ground in anthropological debates on personhood and relatedness

  • Develops a unique and richly comparative analysis of how personhood is a concept ‘put to work’ cross-culturally in a multitude of ways

  • Crafts a novel analysis of how personhood as a notion and a value shifts not only according to cultural context, but also across different moments in the life course

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. The Making of Personhood

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 1-27

  3. Making Babies and Being Pregnant: The Debated Beginnings of Personhood

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 29-55

  4. Personhood, Birth, Babies, and Children

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 57-90

  5. Place and Personhood

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 91-120

  6. Human People and Other-Than-Human People

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 121-150

  7. Older Age and Personhood

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 151-182

  8. Endangered Forms of Personhood

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 183-220

  9. Dismantling the Person?: Death and Personhood

    • Cathrine Degnen
    Pages 221-253

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 255-261
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Keywords

About this book

Exploring notions of the person through a wide range of anthropological literature, Cathrine Degnen analyses how personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained during various life stages and via multiple cultural forms and practices. In discussing the life course, she investigates personhood as a concept at the beginning of life, throughout life as lived, at the edges of being, and ultimately at life’s end. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course moves beyond the human person in isolation to consider how personhood is fashioned with regard to place and how non-humans can also be recognised as persons. Through multiple ethnographic accounts, Degnen shows that personhood emerges as a relational and processual entity, brought into being via reciprocal fields of social relations.

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

    Cathrine Degnen

About the author

Cathrine Degnen is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Newcastle University, UK.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course

  • Authors: Cathrine Degnen

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-56641-6Published: 24 April 2018

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-56642-3Published: 24 April 2018

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIII, 261

  • Topics: Anthropology, Life course, Sociological Theory, Social Theory

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