The Self and the Person in Contemporary Anthropology

1) The self is a unity but unitary

“physical organism, possessing psychological functioning and social attributes” (Ewing,

1990); self is implicitly and explicitly existing in the mind comprised of psychological,
biological and cultural processes

Explicit - what you are consciously aware of

Implicit - not immediately available to the consciousness

“the self is not static; it is added to and subtracted from by genetic maturation, learning,
forgetting, stress, aging, and disease” (LeDoux, 2002)

2) The Self as a representation

“People construct a series of self-representations that are based on selected cultural

concepts of a person and selected ‘chains’ of personal memories. Each self-concept is
experienced as a whole and continuous, with its own history and memories that emerge in
a specific context to be replaced by other self-representation when the context
changes” (Ewing, 1989)

The shifts in self-representation is dependent on the situation and the person will not be
aware of this shifts and will still experience “wholeness” despite these shifts

The self embedded in culture

- Cultural anthropologists believe that the self is culturally shaped and infinitely variable;
“cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express and transform the human psyche,
resulting in less psychic unity for humankind” (Shweder, 1991)

- Developmental psychologist Cathering Raeff (2010), believed that culture can influence how
one views the following:

1. Relationships

2. Personality traits

3. Achievement

4. Expressing emotions

THINK ABOUT: How does this short write up relate to the videos that you recorded about
objects or representations that are not necessarily very nice but are so deeply seated
that it still has a way of getting into your behaviors and thinking?