Concepts of Individual, Self, and Person in Description and Analysis

Grace Gredys Harris,

Grace Gredys Harris

Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627.

Search for more papers by this author

Grace Gredys Harris,

Grace Gredys Harris

Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627.

Search for more papers by this author

First published: September 1989

https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1989.91.3.02a00040

Citations: 114

About

PDF

Tools

Share a link

Email
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Reddit
Wechat

Abstract

This article asserts the need to distinguish among “individual,” “self,” and “person” as biologistic, psychologistic, and sociologistic modes of conceptualizing human beings. The concepts differentiate individual as member of the human kind, self as locus of experience, and person as agent-in-society. The author follows out various descriptive and analytical implications. Ethnographic examples are used to illustrate and clarify points relevant to single-case studies and comparativist work. Within a particular local scheme, concepts of individual, self, and person are interrelated, sometimes hierarchically so. The article briefly takes up issues following from the double nature of these concepts as “native” categories and outsiders' analytical constructs. It is held that adopting as analytically central any one mode of conceptualizing human beings has consequences for the analyst's view of culture and/or social structure.

References Cited

Allen, N.J. 1985 Category of the Person in Mauss. In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. M. Carrithers, S. Collins and S. Lukes, eds. Pp. 26–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Austin, John 1962 How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Google Scholar
Babb, Lawrence A. 1975 The Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in Central India. New York: Columbia University Press.

Google Scholar
Barron, Charles H. 1983 The Concept of Person in the Law. In Defining Human Life: Medical, Legal, and Ethical Implications. M. Shaw and A. E. Doudera, eds. Pp. 121–148. Ann Arbor: AUPHA Press.

Google Scholar
Edward Bruner, ed. 1983 Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society. 1983 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society. Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society.

Google Scholar
M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, eds. 1985 The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Carter, Anthony T. 1982 Hierarchy and the Concept of the Person in Western India. In Concepts of the Person. A. L. Östör, L. Fruzzetti, and S. Barnett, eds. Pp. 118–142. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Web of Science®Google Scholar
Cooley, Charles Horton 1912 Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner's.

Google Scholar
Engelhardt, H. Tristram, Jr. 1975 Some Persons are Humans, Some Humans are Persons and the World is What We Persons Make of It. In Philosophical Medical Ethics: Its Nature and Significance. S. Spicker and H. T. Engelhardt, eds. Pp. 183–193. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Web of Science®Google Scholar
Feld, Maury 1962 Performative Utterances and Systematic Controls. Paper presented at the Faculty Seminar, Department of Anthropology, University of Rochester.

Google Scholar
Firth, Raymond 1967 [1940] An Analysis of Mana: An Empirical Approach. In Tikopia Ritual and Belief. Pp. 174–194. Boston: Beacon Press.

Google Scholar
Fogelson, Raymond 1982 Person, Self and Identity: Some Anthropological Retrospects, Circumspects, and Prospects. In Psychosocial Theories of the Self. B. Lee, ed. Pp. 67–110. New York: Plenum Press.
10.1007/978-1-4684-4337-0_5
Google Scholar
Fortes, Meyer 1969 Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan. Chicago: Aldine.

Google Scholar
Fortes, Meyer 1987 [1973] On the Concept of the Person Among the Tallensi. In Religion, Morality and the Person. J. Goody, ed. Pp. 247–286. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Fry, Peter 1976 Spirits of Protest: Spirit-mediums and the Articulation of Consensus among the Zezuru of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.1017/CBO9780511659805
Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford 1973 Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali. In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz. Pp. 360–411. New York: Basic Books.

Google Scholar
Gewirtz, Deborah 1984 The Tchambuli View of Person: A Critique of Individualism in the Works of Mead and Chodorow. American Anthropologist 86: 615–629.
10.1525/aa.1984.86.3.02a00050
Web of Science®Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving 1961 Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Google Scholar
Golinkoff, R. M. 1983 Infant Social Cognition: Self, People, and Objects. In Piaget and the Foundations of Knowledge. L. Liben, ed. Pp. 179–200. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Google Scholar
Hallowell, A. Irving 1963 Ojibwa World View and Disease. In Man's Image in Medicine and Anthropology. I. Galdston, ed. Pp. 258–315. New York: International Universities Press.

Google Scholar
Hallowell, A. Irving 1976 [1960] Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and World View. In Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. S. Diamond, ed. Pp. 19–52. New York: Columbia University Press.

Google Scholar
Harré, Rom 1979 Social Being: A Theory for Social Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Google Scholar
Harré, Rom 1983 Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell.

Google Scholar
Harris, Grace Gredys 1978 Casting Out Anger: Religion among the Taita of Kenya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Harris, Grace Gredys 1980 Universal Elements in Concepts of the Person. Paper presented at the 79th annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association.

Google Scholar
P. Heelas, and A. Lock, eds. 1981 Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self. New York: Academic Press.

Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, John 1983 The Marquesan Notion of the Person. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.

Google Scholar
Krader, Lawrence 1968 Person, Ego, Human Spirit in Marcel Mauss: Comments. The Psychoanalytic Review 55(3): 482–490.

Web of Science®Google Scholar
LaFontaine, Jean S. 1985 Person and Individual: Some Anthropological Reflections. In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and L. Lukes, eds. Pp. 123–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Lan, David 1985 Guns and Rain: Guerillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Google Scholar
Lee, Benjamin 1982 Psychosocial Theories of the Self. New York: Plenum Press.
10.1007/978-1-4684-4337-0
Google Scholar
Leenhardt, Maurice 1979 Do Kamo: Person and Myth in the Melanesian World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Google Scholar
Lewis, M. 1983 Newton, Einstein, Piaget and the Concept of Self: The Role of the Self in the Process of Knowing. In Piaget and the Foundations of Knowledge. L. Liben, ed. Pp. 141–177. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Google Scholar
Lewis, M., and J. Brooks-Gunn 1979 Social Cognition and the Acquisition of Self. New York: Plenum.
10.1007/978-1-4684-3566-5
Google Scholar
Laura S. Liben, ed. 1983 Piaget and the Foundations of Knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Google Scholar
Lienhardt, Godfrey 1961 Divinity and Experience. London: Oxford University Press.

Web of Science®Google Scholar
Lienhardt, Godfrey 1985 Some African Representations of Self. In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, eds. Pp. 141–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Marriott, McKim 1976 Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism. In Transactions and Meanings: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior. B. Kapferer, ed. Pp. 109–142. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Values.

Google Scholar
Anthony J. Marsella, George DeVos, and Francis L. K. Hsu, eds. 1985 Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives. New York: Tavistock.

Google Scholar
Mauss, Marcel 1950 [1938] Une categorie de l'esprit humaine, celle de (moi). In Sociologie et anthropologie. Pp. 333–364. Paris: Presse Universitaires de France.

Google Scholar
Mead, George Herbert 1934 Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Google Scholar
Middleton, John 1973 The Concept of the Person among the Lugbara of Uganda. In La Notion de Personne en Afrique Noire. G. Dieterlen, ed. Pp. 491–506. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Google Scholar
Morris, Herbert 1976 Persons and Punishment. In On Guilt and Innocence: Essays in Legal Philosophy and Moral Psychology. Pp. 31–88. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Web of Science®Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas 1979 Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness. In Mortal Questions. Pp. 147–164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
A. L. Östör, L. Fruzzetti, and S. Barnett, eds. 1982 Concepts of the Person. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Google Scholar
Pilpel, Harriet E. 1983 Person, Abortion, and the Right of Privacy. In Defining Human Life: Medical, Legal, and Ethical Implications. M. Shaw and A. E. Doudera, eds. Pp. 149–160. Ann Arbor: AUPHA Press.

Google Scholar
Poole, Fitz John Porter 1981 Transforming “Natural” Woman: Female Ritual Leaders and Gender Ideology among Bimin-Kuskusmin. In Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality. S. Ortner and H. Whitehead, eds. Pp. 116–165. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Poole, Fitz John Porter 1982 The Ritual Forging of Identity: Aspects of Person and Self in Bimin-Kuskusmin Male Initiation. In Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua, New Guinea. Gilbert H. Herdt, ed. Pp. 99–154. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Google Scholar
Read, Kenneth E. 1955 Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama. Oceania 25(4): 233–282.
10.1002/j.1834-4461.1955.tb00651.x
Web of Science®Google Scholar
Shweder, Richard, and Bourne, Edmund 1984 Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally? In Culture Theory. R. Shweder and R. LeVine, eds. Pp. 158–199. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Google Scholar
Singer, P. 1979 Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Google Scholar
Smith, Robert J. 1974 Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Google Scholar
Sperry, Roger 1983 Science and Moral Priority: Merging Mind, Brain and Human Values. New York: Columbia University Press.

Google Scholar
Strathern, M. 1979 The Self in Self-decoration. Oceania 49: 241–257.
10.1002/j.1834-4461.1979.tb01915.x
Web of Science®Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles 1985 The Concept of a Person. In Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers I. Pp. 97–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.1017/CBO9781139173483.005
Google Scholar
Ware, Timothy (Bishop Kallistos) 1964 The Orthodox Church. Baltimore: Penguin.

Google Scholar
Geoffrey M. White, and John Kirkpatrick, eds. 1985 Person, Self, and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Google Scholar

Citing Literature

Volume91, Issue3

September 1989

Pages 599-612

Concepts of Individual, Self, and Person in Description and Analysis

Abstract

References Cited

Citing Literature

References

Information

RESOURCES

PUBLICATION INFO

About Wiley Online Library

Help & Support

Opportunities

Connect with Wiley

Concepts of Individual, Self, and Person in Description and Analysis

Abstract

References Cited

Citing Literature

References

Related

Information

RESOURCES

PUBLICATION INFO