Review

Author(s): Susan Parman

Review by: Susan Parman
Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 99-100
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3317973
Accessed: 09-05-2015 02:59 UTC

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BOOK REVIEWS
valuable precisely because they demand neither full
assent nor rejection. They are the best part of this

99

invigorating study, which requires careful consideration and provokes continuous questioning.

Missing Persons: A Critique of Personhood in the Social Sciences. MARY DOUGLAS and
STEVEN NEY. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1998; 223 pp.

Reviewed by SUSAN PARMAN

California State University,Fullerton
Missing persons is the first in a series of books to
honor the fertile mind of Aaron Wildavsky by examining public policy issues with the aid of the social
sciences. Setting out to address the issue of poverty
and welfare, Douglas (an anthropologist)and Ney (a
political scientist) stumble over the tools of their examining and end up trying to flush out the theory of
the person that is implicit in such discussions. Although the book fails as a critique of personhood in
the social sciences, it succeeds as a wide-ranging,
reflective, philosophical discourse on the person in
the Westernintellectual tradition.
The book fails as a critique of personhood in
the social sciences because it is neither an analysis
nor a synthesis of what the different social science
disciplines have contributedor not contributedto the
theory of the category of "person" or the category
of "self." It does not provide a coherent picture of
how different social science disciplines approach
these concepts; it does not analyze the strengths or
weaknesses of any particular theory. The study of
the self that once belonged to the domain of philosophers or psychologists has now become a central
concern of all the social/behavioralsciences, including anthropology.Anthropological concern with the
self is rooted in the ethnographic enterprise and
emic analysis. Efforts have been made to distinguish
between the concept of the self and the concept of
personhood,efforts recently supersededby the emergence of what has been called "person-centeredethnography" that subsumes the individual and the self
in descriptions of culture from the perspective of
particular individuals. The authors could have focused on recent developments in cultural anthropology and person-centeredethnographyas a reflection
of the shifts in intellectualcurrentsin Westerncivilization that have affected all the social/behavioralsciences. In this way they could have accomplished the
goals implied by the subtitle of their book, "A critique of personhood in the social sciences."
What then does the book do, if not this? The

authors wander far and wide, taking from Kant,

Mauss, Durkheim, Keynes, Maslow, Malthus, Darwin, Marx, and Engels, discussing freedom, constraint, egalitarianism, globalization, and evolution.
The book is constructed as if a series of conversations had taken place between Douglas and Ney in
the context of Wildavsky but only the concluding
thoughts are presented. Their reflections are like the
flashes of distant mirrors across a fascinating landscape - gemlike but scattered. In 185 pages they
pick up ideas, throw them back and forth, and follow diverse intellectualtrails throughthe tangled underbrushof cross-disciplinarycommunication.
They begin with the paradoxesof poverty.They
discover that the common thread of discussion of
different kinds of needs, wants, and capabilities
(whether the hunter-gathererworking fifteen hours a
week or the middle-class child with fewer video
games than his peers) is the typological, isolated,
non-social, self-contained individual - "the idea of
a nonrelational definition of a person" (p. 9). The
social sciences have the potential to contributea relational definition of personhood,a conception of the
person as a locus of transactions. The authors explore implicit conceptions of the person in the Western intellectualtraditionwhich have resulted in a variety of strategies to retain both individual identity
and cultural submersion and determinism, both self
and society, such as separatingthe role-playing self
from the inner self, or the person of action from the
person of thought. They point to philosophical contradictionsand changing premises.
The authors ask why Economic Man - "selfish and unmannered, brutish as Caliban, naive as
Man Friday" (in short, without social attributes)has
"expandedfrom a small, theoreticalniche to become
an all-embracing mythological figure" (p. 23). But
instead of tracing the history of Economic Man,
Douglas and Ney discuss the idea of microcosm and
how certain reigning ideas prevent alternativeideas
from developing. Their scholarship is Kuhnian, not

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100

ANTHROPOLOGICAL
QUARTERLY

archival.
The authors move from Economic Man to
Durkheim'sHomo duplex (the egoistic individual vs.
the socially oriented moral conscience), Maslow's
lower needs and higher needs (animal/spiritual),cultural needs and the development of socially dictated
"tastes." The authors argue that "[i]f the theory of
wants and the theory of society are ever to meet, the
inherent sociality of the person has to be restored"
(p. 58). They argue for a concept of the whole person similar to Dennet's model of the person (p. 90)
and to Strathern'sdiscussion of the Melanesian concept of the person as a "gift" or the sum of transactions achieved (pp. 8-9, 93). They do not discuss
symbolic interactionismor the anthropologicalliterature on social constructionsof the self but focus on
reconciling economic and public-policy models with
a socially contextualized concept of personhood as
represented by a select set of social science
examples.
The authors frequently interweave analogies
from different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. For example, on p. 97:

The authors seek to find a common ground on

which to apply a common lever to a mutually agreed
upon definition of a mutually recognizable problem
- which may explain their choice of analogies and
narratives,and perhaps also their level of generality.
For example:
In this schemeeach city, world,or culturaltype is defined
in oppositionto the others and recruitsits supportersor
loses them competitively.It is no accidentthat any word
you may choose for labelingthese four opposedcultures
evokes bias . . . . For some, complexityis a bad word,
marketis pejorativefor others,sect is dismissive,fatalistis
derisive.So they were originallynamedA, B, C, D, after

on whichthemodelwasconstructed:
thetwo dimensions
structure(in the verticaldimension)and incorporation
(in
the horizontal)(p. 103).

Reaching for common ground, exploring parallels

and gaps, the authors bounce ideas off each other
that range from household managementto religious
fundamentalism to good words and bad words in
"Anglo-Saxon sociology" (structuralism and networks are good, institutions and routinization are
Theexercisewe areaboutto embark
uponhassomething bad - p. 159). They end with a brief summaryand
in commonwith certainparablesin political philosophy
about the organizationof enclave cultures
a
of justice:forexample, - warning
thattryto confront
pluraldoctrines
like asterisks around one of many ongoing and
Bruce Ackerman's(1980) script for a spaceshipwhose
intertwinedconversations.
captainappliedstrictrulesof dialoguefor a liberalsociety
Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African
Frontier.JOHN L. COMAROFF and JEAN COMAROFF. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997; 588 pp.

Reviewed by MEREDITH MCKITTRICK

Georgetown University
This is a thoughtful, and thought-provoking,sequel
to the much-discussed Of revelation and revolution,
Volume one: Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in South Africa. While Volume One dealt
primarily with the initial encounter between British
evangelists and the Southern Tswana of South Africa, Volume Two moves the story along, both
chronologically and thematically, to how, over the
course of a century, the encounterreshapedboth the
SouthernTswana and the British. In the process the
Comaroffsmove beyond the realm of "the long conversation" to examine changes in the material realities and notions of production,value, dress, architecture, medicine, and rights, and the hybrid forms

which resulted. But the overarching theme of Volume One runs through Volume Two as well: that
colonialism is best conceptualized as a cultural process rendered through the everyday and the mundane, and that this process is exemplified in the civilizing project of the missionaries.
As with their first volume, this one is packed
with original, occasionally brilliant,insights. While a
sense of chronology occasionally falls victim to the
authors' determination not to write a "history of
events" - something as "apocalyptic" (p. 210) as
rinderpestis mentioned only sporadically, in Chapters 3 and 4 - the authors deal to a greater extent
than before with the economic and political

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