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The Making of Personhood

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Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course

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Abstract

Who and what counts as a person? How do we know? When is personhood attributed? To what extent does place shape personhood? Can personhood be “lost”? Is personhood only for the living or is it a question for the dead too? These are key questions of this monograph, introduced here and set in the broader context of the study of personhood in anthropology. This chapter argues that whilst answers to these questions of personhood vary cross-culturally, they also demand ethnographic attention across the life course, examining how personhood is intrinsically connected to—and can change with—various phases of life. As well as addressing the multiple challenges of such an undertaking, the chapter also outlines the relational, processual approach taken in this book.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note too that the distinction between “individual” and “person”, which I return to a little further down on this page, is further complicated by the terms “individualism ” and “individualist”, both which “refer to the Western variety of the concept of person ” (LaFontaine 1985, 126). See also Lambek (2015, 398) where he draws on Simon Coleman and Bryan Turner to further explore the complexity at work in English in differentiating between “individualism ”, “individuality”, and “individuation”.

  2. 2.

    My thanks to Peter Phillimore for flagging this point up to me and our discussions of it.

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

    Cathrine Degnen

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Degnen, C. (2018). The Making of Personhood. In: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_1

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