Cathrine Degnen - Cross-Cultural Perspectives On Personhood and The Life Course-Palgrave Macmillan (2018)

CROSS-CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
PERSONHOOD AND
THE LIFE COURSE
Cathrine Degnen
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood
and the Life Course
Cathrine Degnen
Cross-Cultural
Perspectives on
Personhood and the
Life Course
Cathrine Degnen
School of Geography, Politics & Sociology
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-56641-6 ISBN 978-1-137-56642-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935927
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To Leo, Sebastian and Suzanne—with my loving appreciation for all that I
have learned from you about the making of persons.
Acknowledgements
I have incurred many debts in the course of writing this book. The largest
of all is to my family who have stood by me with love and patience, espe-
cially in the final stages of preparation, and whom I cannot thank enough.
My second largest debt and thanks are to my many fellow anthropologists
whose work I draw on to build my analysis in this volume. It has been an
enormous privilege for me to spend so much time immersed in the extraor-
dinary body of literature they have laboured for more than a century to
create. I only hope that I have done justice here to their work, and to the
lives of the people they themselves were working with, to whom we are all
indebted.
My own biography as an anthropologist is deeply bound up in the story
I tell in this volume. It was a course taken at l’Université Laval in Québec
with Bernard Saladin d’Anglure on the ethnography of Inuit peoples that
first introduced me to studies of the circumpolar north, and which led me
to undertake my postgraduate training at McGill University in medical
anthropology. Those foundations from many years ago still deeply inform
my approach to personhood. I am grateful to Colin Scott and The AGREE
network which introduced me to people such as Naomi Adelson, Liz
Fajber, Harvey Feit, Audra Simpson, and Adrian Tanner, all of whom
helped me better engage with concepts that underpinned my initial foray
into personhood, but none more so than the people I worked with in
Sheshatshiu, Labrador, as a master’s student. I want to thank especially
Clara Penashue, David Penashue, and their family whom I met during that
time, and whom I will never forget.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As I write in Chaps. 1 and 6, it was my doctoral research in Dodworth,

South Yorkshire, where I began to contemplate how it is that personhood
might shift through the life course. Ellen Corin was a wonderful supervi-
sor and intellectual mentor through that process and someone whose
influence I still feel now; so too were the Dodworth people I worked with
as a doctoral student and postdoctoral researcher. I thank especially Lucy
Senior, Phyllis Hirst, Horace Hirst, Joyce Prigmore, Fred Prigmore, and
Jackie Prigmore for their kindness, patience, and friendship. It was as a
postdoc at Manchester University that I built on my medical anthropology
training and became immersed in the anthropology of new kinship stud-
ies. This too was a highly formative time intellectually, and some of the
ideas I first engaged with during that period are also foundational here. I
am also grateful to Jeanette Edwards for all that I learned in working with
her then, and for her unstinting support ever since.
At Newcastle University, I consider myself very fortunate to work in a
collegial and supportive academic unit. My sociology colleagues there
have always been generous in creating a space for my anthropological
thinking and teaching to flourish, and the students I teach there are very
receptive and passionate about discovering anthropology. The Newcastle
University Women’s Writing Group was a welcome discovery in the early
days of writing, and I thank the organisers and fellow writers of that group.
My thanks to the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology for funding
Anu Vaittinen as a research assistant in the summer of 2014 to assist me in
preparing an initial bibliography, and to Anu for doing such a commend-
able job. Also at Newcastle, Sarah Winkler-Reid has been a wonderful
colleague and friend, and I thank her for many things, not least reading
draft chapters, chats about our shared interest in personhood, and for
finding and sharing strategies for writing and working.
But it is Peter Phillimore whose outstanding support I must acknowl-
edge here. His unstinting belief in me as a writer, his perceptive comments
on every single chapter draft, our mutual love of the complexity of human
lives, and of all things socio-cultural, have been enormously important in
bringing this book to fruition. He is indelibly written into the pages that
follow via both the questioning insights he provided when reading my
work but also via his generosity of spirit as mentor and friend. I cannot
thank him enough.
I would also like to thank members of the Palgrave editorial team, par-
ticularly Lloyd Langman who first asked me to consider writing this book,
as well as the thoughtful and collegial anonymous peer reviewers of the
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ix
proposal whose enthusiasm and scholarly insights helped make this a bet-
ter book. Rachel Woodward, Pete Wade, Katharine Tyler, and Tim Ingold,
all provided generous guidance during a sticky phase of the book proposal
process, and Kate Brett during the negotiation process. I am grateful to
them all for their help and support.
In a book that considers how substance is an element of personhood, it
would be remiss of me not to mention Costas on the High Street, Les
Petits Choux, and Quilliam Brothers, where I consumed too many
cappuccinos to count in the writing of this book, and to thank Karolina
and Cal Kilpatrick in particular for their good cheer. Last but not least,
thank you to Jane Jowitt-Pickering for coming to the rescue in October
2017 in more ways than one.
Contents
1 The Making of Personhood 1

Introduction: Personhood as a Question 1
Personhood and Anthropology 4
Three Dilemmas: Comparison, the Notion of the “Western”,
and the Ethnographic Present 11
Personhood and Perspectives on Relationality, the Life Course,
and the Body 16
References 23
2 Making Babies and Being Pregnant: The Debated

Beginnings of Personhood 29
Introduction 29
Cultural Variation in Ideas About Conception and Personhood 31
Pregnancy and Personhood 34
“Seeing the Baby”: The Emergence of Ultrasound Technologies
and Foetal Personhood 39
Can Beginnings of Life Be Relationships Instead of Moments?
Foetal Personhood and Abortion in Cross-Cultural Perspective 46
Conclusions 50
References 53
3 Personhood, Birth, Babies, and Children 57

Introduction 57
Birthing and Becoming: Social, Biological, Spiritual 60
Childhood: Are Children People? 71
xi
xii Contents
Disabled Infants, Precarious Personhood, and Developmental

Models of Childhood 77
Reincarnation Versus an Ideology of “Development” 80
Naming, Feeding, Eating: Making One’s Own People 81
Conclusions 85
References 87
4 Place and Personhood 91

Introduction 91
What Is Place? 93
How Might Place Link to Personhood: Toponyms and Story-Telling 98
How Might Place Link to Personhood: Substance
and Compatibility 101
How Might Place Link to Personhood: Embodiment 107
How Might Place Link to Personhood: Kinship 110
Conclusions 114
References 117
5 Human People and Other-Than-Human People 121

Introduction 121
Bears, Stones, and Ontology 123
Reclaiming Animism: Hunting Relations, Love, and Seduction 126
Challenging the Binary Modes of Western Thought and Their
Implications for Personhood 130
The Amazonian Tradition 137
Personhood, Human-Animal Relations, and Multispecies
Ethnographies 141
Conclusions 146
References 148
6 Older Age and Personhood 151

Introduction 151
What Is Older Age? 154
“The Net of Māyā”: Personhood, Ageing, and Connections
in Mangaldihi, India 160
Managing Transitions in Later Life: Personhood, “Decline”,
“Decrepitude”, and “Dependency” 166
Ageing, Masculinity, Sexuality, and Personhood 176
Contents
xiii
Conclusions 178
References 180
7 Endangered Forms of Personhood 183

Introduction 183
Locating the Boundary Between Life and Death? 186
Brain-Dead Bodies and Organ Transplantation: Contrasting
Views from North America and Japan 187
“Uncommon Personhood” and Relational Frameworks:
The Case of Mr Paul Lenczyk 192
The Complex Range of Consciousness: Diagnosis, Misdiagnosis,
Competing Definitions 196
Personhood: Relational, Narrated, and Embodied 199
Dementia and “Loss of Self” 204
Dementia, Personhood, and Politics of Recognition 206
Challenging the Frame of Reference: Embodiment
and Competing Cultural Modes 210
Conclusions 213
References 217
8 Dismantling the Person?: Death and Personhood 221

Introduction 221
Contextualising Death in Anthropology 223
“Enduring” and “Punctual” Views of Life, Death,
and Personhood 226
“Completing” the Centrifugal Person:
Mapuche Funeral Oratory 233
“The Name Doesn’t Die”: Reincarnation and the Name Soul
in Kangersuatsiaq, Northwest Greenland 238
Feeding the Dead: Rice and Sasak Relatedness 243
Conclusions 247
References 251
Index 255
CHAPTER 1
The Making of Personhood
Introduction: Personhood as a Question

Without ever intending to, I have become entirely captivated by the ques-
tion of personhood. On the one hand, I find compelling the confidence,
certainty, and regularity with which personhood permeates the everyday.
That is to say, knowing who and what is a person is something seemingly
so obvious that it can feel almost absurd to pose the question in the first
place. In the everydayness of getting on with life, the question of person-
hood thus becomes both omnipresent and invisible. Without a second
thought, we regularly assess the existence or absence of personhood in the
other entities we come across, for whether or not they are persons matters
for how we manage our interactions with them. We are so adept at this—
and so reliant on it for helping making sense of the world—that the ques-
tion of personhood disappears into the background during the usual
course of events. Common sense tells us who (and what) is a person and
who (and what) is not. In this sense, the question of personhood is simple.
It is mundane.
On the other hand, and for very similar reasons, personhood is rivet-
ingly complex. This is because in helping us make sense of the world,
personhood is also fundamentally implicated in creating the worlds in
which we live. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ethnographic
record charting the staggering range of answers human beings have
devised to answer the question of personhood. Who and what counts as a
person? How do we know? When and how is personhood attributed?
© The Author(s) 2018 1

C. Degnen, Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and the Life Course,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_1
2 C. DEGNEN
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? The
diversity of responses to these questions attests to tremendous cultural
resourcefulness in addressing what are profoundly existential matters. The
answers given to the question of personhood are dependent on the cultural
setting, worldview, and context within which they are asked. Indeed, some
of these questions only make sense in certain cultural and historical con-
texts—the extent to which place shapes personhood, for instance, or that
non-human beings can be persons and significant social actors—and the
cultural answers given are historically contingent, contested, and shifting.
Consequently, when we contemplate cross-cultural answers given to
the questions of personhood, the responses we receive can often be onto-
logically destabilising. That this might be the case when considering exam-
ples from cultural contexts other than one’s own will not be surprising for
an anthropological audience. As two illustrations, out of many, consider
this material from Mapuche people in Chile and from Beng people in the
Côte d’Ivoire, examples that I return to in much greater detail later in the
volume. For Mapuche, “to be considered a true person, or che, means you
have to have both proper human physicality as well as proper human soci-
ality. Thus…beings which possess human bodies but fail to demonstrate
proper human sociality, like infants and drunken people, are … not con-
sidered to be che” (Course 2010, 156). On the other hand, Beng infants
in the Côte d’Ivoire are understood to “lead profoundly spiritual lives”,
much more so than Beng adults themselves (Gottlieb 1998, 122). This is
because after death, Beng souls go to a “spirit village”, a world parallel to
the human world known as wrugbe. It is from here that Beng souls are
“reborn as newborn humans”; thus, “in the Beng view, infants have just
recently been living their lives” in wrugbe in a full and adult way amongst
the other ancestor souls present there (1998, 123). Once born, Beng
infants begin a gradual process of withdrawal from wrugbe, a process that
takes place over a period of several years (1998, 123–5). Given this fram-
ing of infants as in some respects more adult than adults, Gottlieb shows
how Beng notions of child development, linguistic ability, and the estab-
lishment of personhood are markedly different than those of Mapuche or
putatively Western models.
But as I hope to show throughout this volume, and as the anthropo-
logical literature on personhood increasingly demonstrates, what “we”
think we know as a Western audience about “our” own cultural truths of
personhood can also result in surprising answers. The clarity of how and
THE MAKING OF PERSONHOOD 3
when personhood is attributed, certainty of what the essential characteris-

tics and markers of personhood are, and the boundaries demarcating the
edges of “the person” are not nearly as neat and tidy as we might assume.
The question of personhood is not always as simple and as mundane as we
might think, and I propose in this volume that these issues come more
sharply into focus when we contemplate personhood via the life course.
That is to say, in my captivation by the question of personhood, I am also
intrigued by how responses to those questions may change over the life
course. Questions of personhood also speak implicitly to the ways in which
personhood is intrinsically connected to—and changes with—the various
phases of the life course.
As I write in Chap. 6, it was whilst conducting research on issues of
later life and older age with people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s in the north
of England that I first began to wonder about how personhood might be
more secure at certain points in the life course and more precarious at oth-
ers (Degnen 2012). For instance, during that time I remember visiting
Betty at home one day, a friend in her 80s. During my visit, Betty spoke to
me about the increasingly erratic behaviour of our mutual acquaintance
and neighbour, also in her 80s, called Eleanor, whom Betty had known for
several decades. As she leant across the table for some milk for her tea,
Betty said to me: “The trouble with Eleanor, Cathrine, is that she is not all
there anymore.” I nodded. This was not an unusual turn of phrase in my
fieldwork experiences. Our conversation moved on. But I wondered about
those words Betty spoke, and what it meant for the shifting qualities of
personhood that Eleanor was entitled to claim, and what was being attrib-
uted to her now compared to her in the past. And what about personhood
at other moments in a lifetime? How is personhood reckoned, what aspects
matter in determining it, and are these differently weighted at different
points in life?
Betty’s clarity about Eleanor’s claim on full personhood and my own
uncertainty in the face of that statement stays with me. Whilst anthropolo-
gists have been extremely adept at focusing on particular aspects of the life
course and personhood in specific societies, there has been little consider-
ation to date of personhood cross-culturally and across the life course. In
this book, I want to use both in order to ask what we might better under-
stand about the question of personhood and how it moves, both in differ-
ent cultural settings but also through the various parts of life. This chapter
lays out the guiding principles of the book that helps me achieve those
goals. It introduces the conceptual and theoretical framings to personhood
4 C. DEGNEN
and the life course explored in the chapters to follow and addresses the
multiple challenges of such an undertaking.
Personhood and Anthropology

Anthropological interest in personhood has its own particular history, and
the literature on personhood in anthropology is substantial. Charting all
of it in detail would be in and of itself a book-length project, and this is
not that book. I have not set out to write the definitive text on person-
hood in anthropology. Instead, I have been selective in my focus, choosing
examples that best help me address the questions I set out above. There
are key elements in the history of personhood and anthropology that I
outline here in order to help orientate the reader for the chapters that
come, but I am cognisant that this can only be an introduction to the
breadth of the field. Much of the depth and texture of the literature will
become more apparent as the chapters of the book unfold, contextualised
by the detailed ethnographic examples in the text. Also of note is the way
in which some of the core areas of anthropological inquiry from the earli-
est eras of the discipline intersect with personhood and substantially pre-
date any explicit analysis of personhood. As I will elaborate on in later
chapters, these have included central topics such as kinship, animism,
death and mortuary rituals, and the body. As such, the history of ideas in
anthropology is itself bound up with questions of the person, even if per-
sonhood as a specific object of inquiry is a comparatively more recent
project. Arguably, it was not until the 1980s when the contemporary
framing of personhood as an anthropological analytical challenge really
began to take a coherent shape. This shift was linked with both the rise of
a feminist anthropology and the many challenges to a structuralist erasure
of the human subject.
Thus, Marcel Mauss’ essay (1985 [1938]) on the person as a category
of the human mind, which is conventionally cited as a landmark publica-
tion in the field, was notably ahead of its time. In it, Mauss argues that the
concept of the individual is a uniquely Western category, traces its histori-
cal development, contrasts its social and moral significance in Western cul-
tural settings, and proposes its absence in non-Western settings (LaFontaine
1985, 123). Not long after, the concept of the “individual” is parsed from
that of the “person” by Radcliffe-Brown, with the former described by
him as a matter of study for physiologists and psychologists, but the latter
as “a complex of social relationships” (1940, 194 in Nuttall 1992, 60; see
also LaFontaine 1985, 125) and thus worthy of anthropological attention

(Nuttall 1992, 60). Whilst Mauss’ essay is now recognised as a key piece
in the field, it initially had a mixed reception, making little impression, for
instance, on British social anthropology (LaFontaine 1985, 123). Evident
however in both Mauss and Radcliffe-Brown’s thoughts above are clear
indications of travel that would eventually be picked up as the next genera-
tion of anthropologists focused on personhood. That is to say, in what
ways and to what extent is personhood a question of “the individual”,
how does personhood matter socially, and how is personhood “done” dif-
ferently in “Western” and “non-Western” cultural settings.
Louis Dumont, taught by Mauss, borrowed from him the notion of the
individual as a Western concern and “makes this contrast the basis of oppo-
sition set out in Homo Hierarchicus, between hierarchy, the fundamental
principle of Indian society, and equality, which is a Western idea, rooted in
individualism” (LaFontaine 1985, 123; see Dumont 1980). Whilst both
Mauss and Dumont’s work has been foundational in deconstructing the
notion of the Western individual, both have also had their critics. Mauss’
initial proposition is now widely challenged, with Meyers Fortes (1973)
being one of the first to argue against it, positing instead that all societies
have a concept of the person (LaFontaine 1985, 123) and identifying the
ways in which the category of the person is “both necessary and universal”
for human society and not just in the West (Lukes 1985, 289). Dumont
has also been criticised for promoting an overly dichotomised vision of
“the modern west and ‘the rest’ where the two become opposites to each
other. An example of this kind of binary thinking is found in the contrast
between holistic and individualistic societies where the search for disconti-
nuities leads to ignoring similarities and uncertainties” (Bloch 1988, 16).
The individual and individualism are valued and recognised by more than
just Westerners—what differs is what the individual is understood to be
composed of and what those component parts can do or be when not held
together in one particular individual (Bloch 1988, 18).1 I will return a lit-
tle later on to the cautions Bloch and others have raised about contrasting
Western thought to non-Western in terms of individualism/egocentric
models of person on the one hand and dividualism/sociocentric models
on the other, and the “us” and “them” that creates.
Firstly, however, one of the challenges of the existing literature is appar-
ent in the paragraph above: what is an individual, a person, a self? Are they
distinct concepts? How do they relate to each other? The trouble, as
Steven Lukes neatly summarises, is that “every attempt to state what is
6 C. DEGNEN
being discussed embodies a distinctive view about it, and language only
compounds the problem, since every way of making such a statement uses
terms which standardly suggest one such view rather than another” (1985,
282). Such complexity is exacerbated in the literature, with some authors
being very precise in their use of self, person, and individual, and others a
little less concerned with regularly distinguishing between them.
LaFontaine notes too that an elision of person and individual besets earlier
writing on the topic and that indeed this is reflected in Western cultures
more broadly for whom “the distinction between the individual and per-
son is hard to make” (1985, 125). There is also a subtle and yet important
difference in the inflection of these debates in North American and
European anthropology, with each grounded in different ways of concep-
tualising culture and consequently focusing on different questions about
personhood (Corin 1998, 82). Conventionally, North American anthro-
pologists studying the person have tended “to describe ‘lived worlds’ and
the experiential, subjective dimension of human life” whilst their European
counterparts have tended to focus “upon the cultural coordinates of the
notion of the person and upon what the person’s position towards culture
and the society is founded on” (1998, 83). Both have made significant
contributions to how contemporary anthropology engages with the ques-
tion of the person.
Grace Harris (1989) has sought to clarify the three concepts of indi-
vidual, person, and self in a useful way that provides handrails for navigat-
ing what can be a difficult terrain. She proposes that an individual can be
defined as “a single member of the human kind” but also notes that “not
all individuals acquire the standing of full persons” (1989, 600). The self
in contrast can be conceptualised as “a locus of experience, including
experience of that human’s own someoneness” (1989, 601). Having said
this, she cautions that the notions of self from Western psychology are not
universal and that “self” is conceptualised in culturally contingent ways,
but that this psychologised framing of the self is so deeply ingrained for
Western audiences that they can find it difficult to evade (1989, 601–2).
Lastly, the person Harris defines as “an agent, the author of action purpo-
sively directed toward a goal” (1989, 602). This agent is also enmeshed in
“systems of social relationships whose participants, performing actions
and responding to each other’s actions, live in a moral order” and are also
able to exert some form of choice in those actions taken (1989, 603).
Whilst Harris notes that “to be a person means to be a ‘somebody’ who
authors conduct construed as action”, she also reminds us that the ethno-
graphic literature demonstrates how “not all persons are living humans or,
indeed, human at all, nor are all human beings persons” (1989, 602).
These are points I take up again in much greater detail in Chaps. 5 and 8
of this book. But for our purposes here, Harris helps articulate a number
of key aspects of personhood that are useful to begin with. Personhood is
not the personalised sense an individual being might have of her or him-
self, nor others of her or him. Personhood is not identity. Personhood is
not always equivalent to being a human. But personhood does entail a
capacity for action in the world of social relations, and it also arguably
extends a moral value to persons that non-persons are excluded from. One
of the concerns of this book is to explore in turn how it is that these attri-
butions of might personhood shift and move cross-culturally and through
the life course.
The labour of fashioning these general definitions of “person” (and
how it differs from “self” and “individual”) is essential in order to permit
analytical distance from what we normally take for granted about person-
hood in Western thought. Many anthropologists have described these
normative parameters of personhood in the West, and I borrow from a few
of those here to help illustrate this. A first example comes from Beth
Conklin and Lynn Morgan who state that such models “prize egocen-
trism, self-containment, self-reliance, and social autonomy. This individu-
alistic emphasis is evident in key values such as privacy, personal freedom,
independence, and economic self-interest” (Conklin and Morgan 1996,
664). Jenny Littlewood for her part, and drawing from philosopher Mary
Ann Warren (1977), proposes that personhood in Western thought relies
on “consciousness and the capacity to feel pain; reasoning (the capacity to
solve problems); self-motivated activity; the capacity to communicate; the
recognition of self-concept, and self-awareness (though these categories
exclude the very young and the damaged, and the animal world)”
(Littlewood 1999, 218). Lastly, Clifford Geertz, in an oft-cited passage,
both captures some of these emblematic aspects of personhood in the
West as well as declaring its relative unusualness:
The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less

integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of aware-
ness, emotion, judgment and action organized into a distinctive whole and
set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and
natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather
peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures. (1984, 126)
8 C. DEGNEN
Evident in these accounts then is the extent to which Western notions

of the person rely on the concepts of self-awareness, of consciousness, of
communication, of action, and of autonomy but also on the notion of the
individual. The individual is understood as the “essential core” of the per-
son and “to change, remove or otherwise alter any part of that whole
would fundamentally alter the ‘self’; she/he would then be, effectively, a
different person” (Smith 2012, 53). The individual is a bounded entity
that is broadly construed as fundamentally indivisible (Lambek 2015,
398). Significantly in the literature on personhood in anthropology, this
figure of the individual has been conventionally contrasted to that of the
“dividual”, a concept that has a considerable place in the history of ideas
in anthropology.
The concept of the dividual emerged in the late 1970s as researchers
began to systematically engage cross-culturally with the question of the
person, and were confronted by models of personhood that are based on
different notions of how parts and wholes are bound together. First pro-
posed by McKim Marriott (1976) and Marriott and Ronald Inden (1977)
in their work in India, the concept was taken up and developed by Marilyn
Strathern in her landmark publication in Melanesian ethnography, The
Gender of the Gift (1988). Unlike the normative Western person, based on
an autonomous, sovereign individual who exists in advance of social rela-
tions, these authors show how personhood can be premised on a model
whereby the person is made through social relations. In marked contrast to
the individual, the dividual person is composite and divisible; the dividual
is made of “a complex of separable – interrelated but essentially indepen-
dent – dimensions or aspects” (Smith 2012, 53). In contrast with the
indivisible individual, Strathern, for instance, demonstrates how
“Melanesian bodies…are not bounded biological units out of which indi-
vidual beings may be ‘socialized’ but, rather, processually formed ‘dividu-
als’ who may transact gendered aspects of themselves in the constitution
of sociality” (McCallum 1999, 444). That is to say, a dividual person is
understood as being the “unstable produc[t] of the relationships
(exchanges, encompassments) and the material influences they embody,
including bodily substances variously transmitted between them” and
“dividually emphasizes the relational quality of personhood salient where
kinship and sociality are key” (Boddy 1998, 255–6). In such a model,
personhood cannot pre-exist these social relations but is instead consti-
tuted by them.
The notions of substance and of relations here are crucial. For an illus-
trative example, the Melanesian person “though obviously identifiable on
one level as male or female, nevertheless represents a mosaic of male and
female substance, internally dividing up the body into differently gen-
dered parts” (Busby 1997, 270; emphasis in original). Consequently,
whilst “sexual ascription on the basis of anatomy is unproblematic” in
Strathern’s account, “it is also, however, relatively uninformative in itself,
since both men or women can at times be apprehended as either male or
female”, or neither; and “gender is not self-evident but an attribute which
must be made known. It is not an intrinsic property of objects or persons,
but a capacity which must be drawn out, or revealed, in interaction with
others” (1997, 271; emphasis in original). This is a system of gender and
person that Busby describes as performative rather than fixed or essen-
tialised and one grounded in relations (1997, 273).
Whilst I have focused here on a Melanesian model of the dividual in an
attempt to explain what is meant by it, India is another ethnographic
region where the person has also been described emblematically in the
literature as dividual, though significant differences between the forms of
dividual taken in these two broad ethnographic areas are also worthy
of note (Busby 1997). Overall however it is difficult to overstate how sig-
nificant these figures of the individual and the dividual have been in
debates over personhood in anthropology. As will be apparent from the
above, analysis of the dividual poses substantially different existential ques-
tions for how personhood is brought into being and maintained; how
relatedness between persons is reckoned; and what the ends of person-
hood might entail, too, as death poses particular dilemmas for undoing
constitutive social bonds.
And yet, as productive as these debates have been, what also began to
emerge was an over-commitment to a sharp binary between dividuals and
individuals. This binary came to reify a problematic notion in the literature
of non-Western sociocentric and relational concepts of person on the one
hand, when contrasted to a highly individualistic, autonomous, bounded
persons in the West on the other. This polarised contrast has been roundly
critiqued on a number of fronts (see for instance Comaroff and Comaroff
2001; LiPuma 1998; Murray 1993; Spiro 1993; Ouroussoff 1993), not
least for how it lumps into an undifferentiated mass “the West” and “the
Rest” but also for how it masks internal cultural variations in concepts of
self and person.
10 C. DEGNEN
Smith (2012) argues that a commitment to this distinction in the

anthropological literature reached its apex in the late 1980s, and that by
the millennium, “it had become ‘current anthropological wisdom’ that ‘all
persons are both dividuals and individuals’” (Smith 2012, 51, citing
Englund and Leach 2000, 229). That is to say, a marked shift is now evi-
dent in the literature whereby instead of seeking to determine which side
of the binary cultural models adhere to, anthropologists tend now to rec-
ognise that people everywhere “operate both dividually (as repositories of
relationships) and individually (as loci of agency, judgement, and intent)”
(Boddy 1998, 256; cf Hollan 1992; Kusserow 1999). As Michael Lambek
puts it, anthropology might do better to understand the individual as “the
subject of a model of atomic persons interacting with each other in exter-
nal relationships and trying to build connections and unities” and the
dividual “as the subject of a model of persons acting within, or trying to
emerge as singularities from, dense nodes, knots, or structures of relations,
connections that are ontologically or ontogenetically prior” (2015, 402).
Furthermore, he argues that an anthropology of the person can recognise
both individual and dividual as “mutual dimensions…of experience and of
social relations” that are elaborated in distinct ways and in differing
amounts in various social and cultural settings (2015, 402).
This strikes me as sound advice. That is because these various ways of
describing personhood, problematic as they may be and requiring caution
in their use, also do important heuristic and explanatory work. They per-
mit us a language that on the one hand recognises significant differences
in worldview in terms of how personhood is understood, but on the other
signal the deep pertinence of personhood to being, experience, and social-
ity cross-culturally. Indeed, these are questions that continue to invigorate
anthropological debate, with a new era of anthropological inquiry pushing
further into the dilemmas and possibilities presented by the question of
the person, such as in a growing body of work in regard to morality and
ethics (see, for instance, Bialecki and Daswani 2015; Laidlaw 2014;
Lambek 2013; Winkler-Reid 2015). Throughout this volume, the wide
range of cultural meanings, processes, and practices that bring person-
hood into being need to be contextualised with this spectrum of the indi-
vidual and the dividual in mind, not as polarising opposites, but rather as
“mutual dimensions” of the very human response to the question of per-
sonhood itself.
Three Dilemmas: Comparison, the Notion

of the “Western”, and the Ethnographic Present
By drawing extensively from the anthropological literature, this book tells

many stories of personhood. I am indebted to the ethnographic record for
this, and to the many anthropologists who have found questions of per-
sonhood as compelling as me. Using their work to build the overall argu-
ment of this book, however, poses several dilemmas which need addressing
head on.
The first of these is how I manage the issue of cross-cultural compari-
son. One of my most pressing concerns in this volume has been how to
balance making use of the astounding range of relevant ethnographic
material without inadvertently turning the book into a curio-cabinet with
uncomfortable echoes of the armchair anthropologist. There is no perfect
solution to this dilemma, and no doubt I have succeeded in some regards
better than in others. My response however has been to always contextu-
alise culturally, historically, and ethnographically the work of others that I
have borrowed when using their materials. I have also sought to use wher-
ever possible longer, extended ethnographic examples from my colleagues
as case studies so that I can provide sufficient depth to the materials I
engage with. Whilst my accounts of these (often book-length) publica-
tions are still only able to draw out key highlights, this has been a way of
permitting more of the detail and nuance of the larger ethnographies to
emerge. My hope is that readers of this volume will take my account as a
spring board into the full-length ethnographies, and that they will engage
directly with those original works themselves, too. Additionally, my use of
longer ethnographic examples is also counter-balanced with shorter
extracts from other authors as well as more general explanations of the
topic (such as place, or animism, or death) so as to also provide a sense of
the extent of the literatures and their theoretical premises. I am thus seek-
ing to make comparisons without making generalisations.
In so doing, I embrace an aspect of the anthropological endeavour
which Andrew Strathern and Michael Lambek avow is an inherent feature
of the discipline: anthropology “is always comparative. An anthropology
without comparison would be the sound of one hand clapping (Lambek
1991) since every ethnographic description minimally implies a comparison
with the ethnographer’s own society” (1998, 20; emphasis in original). A
commitment to the comparative has a long-standing history in anthropol-
ogy, with echoes here of Evans-Pritchard’s earlier remark as recalled by
12 C. DEGNEN
Rodney Needham that “There is only one method in social anthropology,

the comparative method – and this is impossible!” (Peacock 2002, 44).
Thus, the promise and the challenge of comparison have always been close
to hand. One motivation propelling cross-cultural comparison is that it
can serve as an exercise in exchange, “not a matter of standing back and
coolly observing but of wading in and putting the concepts derived in one
study to work in another” in order to promote new conversations and
understandings (Strathern and Lambek 1998, 24). It can also be under-
stood as an “instrument…of ‘decentration’ (leaving one’s perspective
behind) and cultural criticism to gauge the contingency and relativity of
our construction of reality and ourselves” (Corin 1998, 81). But this com-
parative endeavour is not without risks. An awareness of this is something
I and a number of my interlocutors in this book who also engage in cross-
cultural comparison on personhood share with Evans- Pritchard. This
includes Lynn Morgan who points out the need to avoid both exaggerat-
ing differences between cultural groups and overstating similarities within
them (1997, 348) and Tsipy Ivry who writes so thoughtfully on how com-
parison involves shifting between viewpoints as well as how it can generate
powerful forms of analysis (2010). Whilst bearing these cautions firmly in
mind, I too find cross-cultural comparison a powerful tool. In the spirit of
decentration, I use it as a lever to loosen some of that everyday certainty
in regard to personhood that I opened this Introduction with, to spark
wider conversations about who “counts” as a person, and to ask how per-
sonhood might shift across the life course.
A second dilemma wound throughout this monograph is how to man-
age the categories of “Western” and “non-Western”. As will become
apparent in the chapters that follow, I often frame “non-Western” ethno-
graphic examples in a contrastive way to “Western” paradigms and world-
views. But each time I do so, it is with any number of hesitations and
caveats in mind. This dilemma is beautifully encapsulated by Tim Ingold
when he writes about the terms “the Western tradition of thought” and
“the modern”:
These concepts have been the source of no end of trouble for anthropolo-
gists, and I am no exception. Every time I find myself using them I bite my
lip with frustration, and wish that I could avoid it. The objections to the
concepts are well known: that in most anthropological accounts they serve
as a largely implicit foil against which to contrast ‘a native point of view’;
that much of the philosophical ammunition for the critique of so-called
Western or modern thought comes straight out of the Western tradition
itself (thus we find such figures as the young Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty enlisted in the enterprise of showing how the
understandings of North American Indians, New Guinea Highlanders or
Australian Aborigines differ from those of ‘Euro-Americans’); that once we
get to know people well – even the inhabitants of nominally Western coun-
tries – not one of them turns out to be a full-blooded Westerner, or even to
be particularly modern in their approach to life; and that the Western tradi-
tion of thought, closely examined, is as richly various, multivocal, histori-
cally changeable and contest-riven as any other. (2000, 6)
“Western” and “non-Western” are indeed highly problematic terms,

and ones that cause me to bite my lip in frustration, too. As Ingold flags
up, they are overly homogenising. They inadvertently connote some sort
of generalised “West” (and “us”) and then posit them in opposition to an
imagined “them” and “Other”. The internal textures, complexities, and
variations within local cultural sites of meaning become washed out and
eroded. And yet, despite these genuinely problematic dilemmas, the term
“Western” cannot be so easily dispensed with:
For those of us who call ourselves academics and intellectuals, however,

there is a good reason why we cannot escape ‘the West’, or avoid the anxiet-
ies of modernity. It is that our very activity, in thinking and writing, is under-
pinned by a belief in the absolute worth of disciplined, rational inquiry. In
this book, it is to this belief that the terms ‘Western’ and ‘modern’ refer.
And however much we may object to the dichotomies to which it gives rise,
between humanity and nature, intelligence and instinct, the mental and the
material, and so on, the art of critical disputation on these matters is pre-
cisely what ‘the West’ is all about. For when all is said and done, there can
be nothing more ‘Western’ or more ‘modern’ than to write an academic
book such as this. Nor can I be anything less than profoundly grateful for
the freedom, education and institutional facilities that have allowed me to
do so. (Ingold 2000, 6–7)
I am entirely aligned in this regard with Ingold. I am discomforted by

these terms for the very reasons he outlines, but I too am learning to live
with them. In this volume, I refer often to broad categories of Western
and non-Western, but I do so always with the cautions here in mind. In
many places I have written “normative Western” models in order to
remind both myself and the reader of these problems. Also, as highlighted
here by Ingold (and above by Morgan), in all descriptions of cultural sys-
tems, it is too easy to slide inadvertently into a form of representation that
14 C. DEGNEN
strips away internal differentiation and presents instead a narrative that is

overly homogenising. I try to work against this tendency throughout the
volume, with mixed success. An example of this comes in Chap. 8, where
I explore on the one hand normative understandings of death and the
person in Western thought, and then on the other some intriguing
counter-narratives that co-exist in normative Western settings with these
more axiomatic examples. I am certain that similar complexity and texture
exists within all the other cultural settings I explore not only in Chap. 8
but throughout this volume. However, it is also not feasible to continually
qualify every statement and claim from the ethnographic literature in this
way. But it is important to caution the reader here to bear these consider-
ations in mind throughout the text. Taking these distinctions into account
and recognising how anthropological writing continually runs the risk of
reifying cultural practices in our representations of them is of course not
something I can take credit for—we have the writing culture debates to
thank for that—but I recognise that it is often too easy in a book of this
scope to slide inadvertently into a mode of recounting that exacerbates
this rather than ameliorates it. I have tried throughout to be aware and
sensitive to this, but it is something that merits direct acknowledgement,
as the solution may be imperfect.
Thirdly is the dilemma of the “ethnographic present” which runs
throughout the ethnographic literature and in many of the examples I rely
on in this book, including my own. The materials I draw on span the
globe, encompass a number of different historical eras, and more than one
national tradition of ethnographic research. And yet, virtually all of the
examples are written in the present tense, giving the illusion that what the
ethnographer is reporting and analysing is occurring in the present day.
Few, if any, of the authors I have relied on give this much explicit
consideration in their writing, but one exception is Piers Vitebsky. He
addresses this issue in his 1993 monograph Dialogues with the Dead, based
in eastern India with Sora people whose use of shamanistic trance with the
dead I employ in Chap. 8, and which is worth quoting in some detail here.
As he writes:
I lived for four years on the Indian subcontinent between 1976 and 1983.
This book is based on eighteen months which I spent among the Sora,
mostly during 1976–7 and 1979, and the ethnographic present refers mostly
to the second of these periods. I also made brief return visits in 1984 and
1992. (1993, xix)
My 1992 visit, made while this book was going to press, showed that Sora
society is changing rapidly. The children with whom I played earlier are now
young adults and many are becoming Baptists. For those young people,
there are no more dialogues with the dead and the ethnographic present of
this book which I was still able to share with those over thirty is already
something which belongs to an older generation. (1993, xvii)
Indeed, Vitebsky’s reflections from 1992 were highly prescient. Just as

I was completing this manuscript in October 2017, his new monograph
called Living without the Dead (2017) was about to be published, analys-
ing at length precisely these shifts. It appears that contemporary young
Sora people are turning away from the beliefs and practices of speaking
with the dead, and are increasingly turning towards fundamentalist
Christianity or Hinduism. This marks a profound socio-cultural shift, with
consequences on many levels of experience, not the least being the fram-
ing of the person and what happens to the person after death. Lambek, in
his Afterword to a recent volume of Hau dedicated to interrogating the
anthropology of personhood via the lens of Christianity, addresses similar
points of concern. He notes that “The really hard questions, then, are in
what respects modernity is a radical transformation that not only disman-
tles given historical structures but replaces them with something in which
transacting units do have ontological priority over the relations between
them, and whether or to what degree dividuals are replaced by individu-
als,” acknowledging in turn multiple ways of answering such difficult
questions (2015, 401).
Such considerations, in a more general sense, are worth bearing in
mind across the examples presented in the chapters of this book, too. That
is to say, what I and other anthropologists are grappling with when we
describe and analyse questions of the person are all historically contingent.
Through participant-observation and immersion into the worldview of
other cultures, anthropologists have documented the extent to which
societies differ on the question of who counts as a person and who does
not and therefore, of which beings belong within the circle of society and
which do not (Carrithers et al. 2011). Some cultures treat as persons a far
smaller circle than we do now. Societies have variously excluded from this
circle of personhood women, infants, slaves, men without land, those
regarded as disabled, and the uninitiated, for example (Knight 2005, 2).
The “circle of society” is not a constant through time or place. But who is
included within it is not a banal issue. It points towards the enduring ques-
16 C. DEGNEN
tion of the relationship between citizenship and personhood, for instance,

and how exclusions from full citizenship could be understood as a kind of
state denial of full personhood.2 Examples that come to mind are the expe-
riences of apartheid South Africa; the Palestinian case and the degraded
‘suspect’ citizenship of those people reduced to objects of security
(Pasquetti 2013), and the global experiences of refugees (see, for instance,
Ramsay 2017). It is thus the politicisation of personhood and the use of
both classificatory and coercive power to diminish personhood in both
extreme and everyday situations that I seek to recognise here. These issues
remain for much of the time at the edges of an analysis focused on the life
course but do emerge throughout the volume as I illuminate certain
contexts.
On the other hand, the circle of personhood may be cast much more
widely, including animals, other living beings, inanimate objects, and nat-
ural forces. That such configurations change is in and of itself integral to
the study of personhood. Thus, what is described in this volume may well
not map onto contemporary practices or beliefs. But regardless of this, my
position is that whether or not these beliefs and practises have changed
does not transform the fundamental concern of this volume: personhood
is a question that demands answering, and the anthropological literature
demonstrates a compelling diversity in those responses.
Personhood and Perspectives on Relationality,

the Life Course, and the Body
In the chapters that follow, I examine the ways in which personhood is

built, affirmed, and maintained at various points in the life course. This
includes the beginnings of life, life as lived, life at the edges of being, and
the ends of life. Personhood emerges in many of these accounts as a rela-
tional and processual entity. By this I mean that personhood is something
that does not exist per se. Rather it is brought into being via reciprocal
fields of social relations and interaction as—no matter where they fall
along the spectrum of “dividual” to “individual” critiqued above—
“persons are only persons in the context of and in relation to other per-
sons” (Lambek 2013, 838), although the ways in which that is achieved
vary. Additionally, to stake the claim that personhood is processual means
arguing that it is not established in a one-off gesture or moment. Instead,
it requires making and remaking across many multiple points of interac-
tion, all of which are contextually situated. That is to say, this book exam-
ines the life course via a focus on how people build relations with the
world and each other at various crucial points across their lives.
Relationality as an analytical construct has its own multifaceted history,
and is employed across the social sciences in a range of distinct and yet
overlapping ways. My use and understanding of it has been influenced by
scholarly work in three main fields, namely the new kinship studies in
anthropology, animism, and human geography. In the first instance are
anthropologists who have elaborated on the ways in which connection is
forged via substance and practices that create relatedness. Attending to the
culturally and historically contingent ways in which people identify and
affirm connections between them via shared substances (such as blood,
food, genes, breast milk, bones, place) closely interrogates and upends
older anthropological certainties about the “social” and the “biological”
(see, for instance, Carsten 2000; Edwards 2000; Edwards and Strathern
2000). In Chap. 3, I explore some of these practices of making persons,
particularly via feeding, eating, and naming, as well as in Chap. 4 via the
substances of place in the constitution of the person. Such processes are
often significant sites of cultural and social meaning for transforming the
potentiality of an incipient person into a fully fledged attribution of per-
sonhood, and these themes appear again in Chap. 8 about the ends of life.
The second perspective on relationality that has deeply influenced me
comes from the literatures on indigenous worldviews in the Americas,
particularly from circumpolar and sub-arctic peoples. Broadly sketched,
and with some qualifications which I explore in much greater detail in
Chap. 5, this is a worldview that has been described as animistic. Such
perspectives on the world understand it as populated with spirits, sub-
stances, objects, people, animals, and materials that all exist within a
“dynamic, transformative” “field of relations within which beings of all
kinds…continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence”
(Ingold 2011, 68). Bird-David (1999) has termed animism a “relational
epistemology”. Animistic perspectives demonstrate how it is that person-
hood can be said to rely on relations with other people as well as on rela-
tions with the land and with an animated cosmos. My initial immersion in
this literature many years ago as a postgraduate student was a transforma-
tive experience. It changed forever my assumptions of what was possible
(and necessary) in terms of knowing the world, shifting the ontological
ground beneath my feet, and opened my mind to other forms of being
that I had not before contemplated. In Chap. 5, I draw on this rich body
18 C. DEGNEN
of ethnographic work to reflect on how personhood is firstly not an enti-

tlement solely of human beings and secondly how personhood is also not
a fixed category, itself a recurring theme across many of the chapters.
Lastly, my thinking on relationality has also been coloured by humanis-
tic geographers’ and anthropologists’ theorising of the mutual imbrication
of place, meaning, and society. Elsewhere, I have explored how people
collectively experience and manage social change in dynamic interaction
with other entities by employing processes such as sensorial and bodily
knowledge (Degnen 2013, 2016). This work has helped me better under-
stand the complex ways in which place is made relationally (Cresswell
2015), and I extend these perspectives to personhood in much greater
detail in Chap. 4. Drawing from the ethnographic literature, I am able to
explore there the ways in which persons and place are understood to be
consubstantial, how personhood extends beyond the physical body, and
the ways in which place the making of persons and the making of place are
elements of the same process.
This brief sketch of three distinct debates and areas of intellectual
thought on relationality and relatedness may strike some as incommensu-
rable. But I have found all three profoundly useful in approaching ques-
tions of personhood. Each in their own way helps sharpen my thinking
about how it is that personhood is negotiated in reference to more than
the individual, more than the biological, and more than the human. All of
these have informed the shape this book takes and also are very useful in
contemplating more critically the question of the person in juxtaposition
with the concept of the life course, a construct I would like to look at now
in a little more detail.
The life course perspective is a broadly sociological construct (Hunt
2017; Mayer 2009) developed in response to criticism of older models of
the life-cycle which posited that humans universally go through a series of
ordered, predictable life stages as they age (Johnson-Hanks 2002). This
life-cycle model was eventually recognised as being too rigid and unable to
accommodate the ways in which age-based social categories and identities
change through time (Hockey and Draper 2005, 42–3). The life course
model is meant to address these issues. Both however are conceptual
frameworks that address the broad stages that people pass through as they
age such as infancy, childhood, adolescence, and later life. Having said
this, contemporary sociological accounts of the life course carefully
acknowledge the contingent and shifting nature of “life stages” them-
selves as ideas and categories that change over time and in tune with
broader transformations in socio-cultural contexts. Indeed, sociologists

have recalibrated their understandings of the life course away from talking
about “stages” of life and instead towards “transitions” and “phases” of
the life course (Hunt 2017). This has been in order to reflect a growing
sense that once knowable and fairly fixed social roles that one would be
expected to pass through are now not nearly as set or predictable in late
modernity as they may have once been (Danely and Lynch 2013; Hunt
2017). Whilst the life course is not an unproblematic concept, it remains
one that is used sociologically to explore a number of core disciplinary
concerns such as the competing fields of structure and agency in the ways
in which people experience transitions socially as they age (Hunt 2017).
In bringing together cross-cultural perspectives on personhood with
the life course, I am not seeking to “apply” a model of life transitions
neatly onto the ethnographic record or vice versa. Instead, I want to
explore how cross-cultural materials unsettle some of the more normative
assumptions about the life course in Western thought. This includes the
ways in which Western personhood—like the life course—is predicated on
a naturalised notion of linear “development” through life’s phases. This is
a notion that others before me have critically interrogated (see, for
instance, Bledsoe 2002) but one which continues to hold much unreflex-
ive sway both in the social sciences and in popular culture (Johnson-Hanks
2002). Even in the planning of this book, the strength of these assump-
tions was confirmed to me. I initially proposed to order the chapters more
thematically, and not in tandem with the conventional life course model of
conception, pregnancy, birth, infancy, childhood, and so on. But the origi-
nal commissioning editor stated that this would be counter-intuitive and
difficult for her readers to follow, and insisted I amend my plans. I thus
found myself bound to a frame that I wanted to escape. This was initially
greatly frustrating, but I have come to realise since then just how much
clarity it generated for me: it forced me to articulate the dilemmas this
linearity generates, and also helped me understand how implicitly bound
we are to it in Western thought. Similarly, I have had to be very explicit
with the publisher about possible images for the cover, making clear that
the metaphor of a road, or a journey, or a path are all too limiting and
ethnocentric for a book that is attempting to convey personhood as some-
thing that exceeds Western models of linearity. For as Vitebsky has written
about Western psychologies, these models “tend to presuppose an intrinsic
essence of the person which then ‘grows’, ‘develops’, ‘unfolds’ or ‘matures’
as it is ‘socialised’ into the company of others” (Vitebsky 1993, 46).
20 C. DEGNEN
This is a description which I think is equally applicable to the notion of the

life course. My intention is to examine how those axiomatic truths of the
life course can be rendered much more complex and enhanced by the
ethnographic literature on personhood. That is to say, cross-cultural mate-
rials help us understand the making of persons relationally, about how this
entails a complex mixture of sociality and biology, but also in regard to
concepts such as place, other social actors, and non-human people. In so
doing, ontology (ideas about states of being and existence, with reference
to how these might shift through phases of life but also cross-culturally)
and relatedness (how people create and dismantle connections with each
other and the world) are key anthropological concerns that can enrich
more traditional sociological perspectives on life’s phases.
Methodologically, I believe that anthropology is also particularly well
suited to this task. Long-term commitment to field sites means that the
ethnographer’s own trajectory through the life course, as she or he ages,
facilitates experiencing culturally shaped transitions over time. These
changes can shape both what she learns but also what is deemed permis-
sible locally to enquire about (Rasmussen 1997). It also opens up the
opportunity to explore significant social transformations that both the
long-term ethnographer and today’s adults—who were yesterday’s chil-
dren—can remember and contemplate together in conversation today
(Phillimore 2014). Thus, it is in multiple ways that anthropology can
powerfully contribute to a fuller understanding of what is at stake in per-
sonhood across the life course.
So, for instance, as I will explore in Chaps. 2 and 3, the categories of
conception, gestation, pregnancy, embryo, foetus, infant, child, and par-
ent are not neatly containable. At times these entities have sharply delin-
eated boundaries, but much more often they do not. Also apparent in
anthropological accounts are the ways in which entities such as the foetus
or the newborn are often perceived as “unfinished”, highly pliable, and
potentially reversible categories. This is in contrast to Western models that
assume once egg and sperm have united, a new person will be the inevi-
table and unstoppable outcome, whereas in other models, personhood can
sometimes be “undone” and needs protecting (Morgan 1997). Such
unruly movement and disregard for sharply marked boundaries is in great
tension with commonplace notions of the life course itself, premised as it
is on linear development and neat stage-by-stage passage. Similar themes
emerge in Chap. 8, such as the extent to which (and the contexts within
which) the dead are or are not persons. But so too with the example of
reincarnation, explored in both Chaps. 3 and 8, and to what extent new-

borns are “new” persons. I write about these issues with an eye to the
continuity of relations between living and dead both in Western and non-
Western cultural settings, topics that are reflected in Chap. 7’s discussion of
the personhood of those whose consciousness is impaired and in Chap. 5,
where the personhood of companion animals is analysed as “flexible”
(Shir-Vertesh 2012), transitioning with the changing circumstances of the
family with which they live. The boundaries imagined in a model of the life
course and its linear transitions once again are challenged by these exam-
ples, all of which compel us to recognise the shifting complexity of person-
hood at different moments in life.
Another leitmotif winding through the book is the extent to which
technologies inflect the complexity of figuring personhood. This includes
in Chaps. 2 and 3 the ways in which foetal visualisation technologies like
ultrasound and 4D imaging, and the treatment of “preemies” in specialist
intensive care units, have made possible the attribution of personhood to
move backwards in time to yet earlier and earlier moments. It also includes
how biomedical technologies significantly shape the ends of life and defini-
tions of when death can be said to occur, as artificial respiration can now
keep biological bodies “alive” even if the social person is “deceased”
(Kaufman 2000; Lock 2003) as I detail in Chap. 7. Personhood can thus
be understood as something that needs to be achieved, needs to be worked
at. It is consequently also something that can become endangered, or even
rescinded. The experiences of people with dementia are powerful examples
of this (Taylor 2008), also explored in Chap. 7. Personhood can be placed
in jeopardy when individuals find themselves unable to fulfil the normative
expectations for performing full personhood (however that is culturally
defined), something that I scrutinise in Chap. 6 in regard to the pressures
of later life as well as in Chap. 3 and the pressures experienced by disabled
children and their parents. All of these examples point to the extent to
which personhood (and who counts as a person) is a deeply political issue,
too. It is linked into a series of ideas over rights, entitlements, and rela-
tions, whether those be between nations, generations, institutions, or indi-
viduals, and all played out in the most intimate registers of life.
Finally, the body is a thematic which weaves throughout this volume in
a multitude of ways. This is the case in cultural contexts where the exchange
of substance constitutes the person, as discussed above. Such bodily con-
cerns are particularly visible in conception theories, gestation, birth, and
childhood explored in Chaps. 2 and 3. But they are also significant in
22 C. DEGNEN
Chap. 4 on place and how substance of soil and of growing in shared land
can be understood as core components of person, and in Chap. 5 in regard
to human and non-human persons metamorphosis in bodily forms.
Corporeal aspects are implicated in Chap. 6 on later life both in terms of
how substance that connects people in some cultural contexts needs to be
managed and limited in order to permit a successful older age, but also in
how bodily decline can be “read” in other cultural contexts as confirming
the decline of personhood in later life. And in Chap. 7, from decisions
over organ donation and transplantations, to bodily comportment and
social judgements over “losing onself”, we see how the body and embodi-
ment powerfully mark measures and evaluations of personhood.
My desire throughout this volume is to better understand how and
when personhood is attributed. Personhood is a category that shifts and
moves when we apply the lens of cross-cultural comparison, but it is one
that also shifts and moves across the life course within and between various
cultural settings. It is these multiple movements on the one hand—in con-
junction with that everyday certainty I opened this Introduction with—
that compel this analysis. I have framed personhood here as a question.
But I think that we could equally posit that personhood is an answer—to
existential questions about life and living—that all cultures have sought
ways of addressing. In exploring ethnographically how notions of the
person are reproduced and vary substantially through time and space, the
profound and abundant diversity of human experience is brought to light.
In this way, this book celebrates the wide spectrum of cultural inventive-
ness that humans have responded with to the shared human challenge of
creating meaning and creating connectedness with each other and with
the world.
Notes
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 fur-
ther explore the complexity at work in English in differentiating between
“individualism”, “individuality”, and “individuation”.
2. My thanks to Peter Phillimore for flagging this point up to me and our dis-
cussions of it.
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CHAPTER 2
Making Babies and Being Pregnant:

The Debated Beginnings of Personhood
Introduction
Conception and pregnancy are perhaps the most literal of moments in the
Western life course when new people are “made”, biologically speaking.
However, biology is only ever one part of the meaning of personhood and
the phases of life. Indeed, as this chapter will demonstrate, the relative
significance and meaning of biology to these processes is itself culturally
contingent. The role biology plays in the making of people is not univer-
sally agreed upon. As such, a central premise of this chapter is that concep-
tion and pregnancy are not simply biological processes of development
that, once set in motion, continue apace in the inevitable creation of per-
sons (cf Conklin and Morgan 1996). Instead, drawing from a rich litera-
ture of ethnographic examples, I will be arguing that conception and
pregnancy are complex processes shaped by multiple factors including
society, culture, political ideologies, technology, and history in ways that
inflect (and are inflected by) notions of personhood and how or when
personhood might be said to come into being.
What the ethnographic literature also demonstrates is that the catego-
ries of conception, gestation, pregnancy, birth, embryo, foetus, infant,
child, and parent are not neatly containable. These concepts at times have
sharply delineated boundaries, but much more often they do not. Indeed,
this unruly movement is in great tension with the notion of the life course
itself that invokes the sense of linear development through time. Chapters
2 and 3 thus in many ways need to be read together as they artificially

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_2
30 C. DEGNEN
divide what could be otherwise organised as one topic. Where possible, I

indicate these points of intersection in the text to help the reader. But hav-
ing said that, there are also important clusters of meaning and analysis that
emerge from the literature which organise the material into this structure
of (effectively) “before” and “after” birth, a structure that I have chosen
to mirror here.
The chapter begins with conception. In this section, Beth Conklin and
Lynn Morgan’s finely drawn comparison between Wari’ and American
theories of conception (1996) is invaluable. It permits me firstly to explore
how conception is understood in a system of thought that is not domi-
nated by biological explanatory models. Secondly, Conklin and Morgan’s
comparison permits us to ask what it is that conception is actually under-
stood to be creating, and how that varies cross-culturally. That is to say,
and as they demonstrate, a Western model of conception that locates per-
sonhood in biology understands the essence of the unborn itself in a very
different way than a Wari’ model of conception which is grounded in
sociality. Closely implicated in this discussion, and in conception and preg-
nancy more widely, are notions of time. Conception and gestation are
often perceived as emblematic of potentiality, a temporal frame which is
both future facing but also wound with past histories and biographies
since the unborn is attributed with varying amounts of connection to its
own pasts and presents but also those of its parents and kin. But what
substances or processes such connections are fashioned from, how they are
transmitted, and how they are recognised vary markedly and in interesting
ways. Thus, and again in counter-distinction to a normative Western privi-
leging of biology in regard to conception, we shall also see how person-
hood can be fashioned in ways that are relational, social, and processual,
and non-linear.1
Embodiment is also a significant lynchpin in the material presented in
this chapter. As Conklin and Morgan remind us, “the beginning of life –
the time when new flesh must be interpreted, shaped, and transformed
into socially meaningful forms – is especially revealing of how competing
views of personhood are ‘worked through the body’” (1996, 663). They
argue convincingly that cultural variation in understandings of person-
hood is usefully explored in relation to socio-cultural theories of the body.
Experiences and meanings of pregnancy are one way into these issues, and
the cultural norms and expectations around pregnancy generate intriguing
insights into varying theories of foetal development and personhood.
Ethnographic research by Tsipy Ivry that contrasts the experiences of
MAKING BABIES AND BEING PREGNANT: THE DEBATED BEGINNINGS… 31
pregnancy for women in Japan and Israel is particularly insightful in this

regard. Her work is included here in some detail. It illuminates critical
issues around the nature of the relationship between gestating mother and
foetus, as well as serving as a spring board into debates over the extent to
which the foetus is understood to be a person or not.
A final key consideration of this chapter is the intersection between
technological developments, foetal personhood, rights, and entitlements.
Drawing from the literature in anthropology and feminist studies, I delve
into debates about how the visualising technology of foetal ultrasounds
have contributed to profound shifts in how mother and foetus are concep-
tualised in relation to each other. It has been argued that being able to
“see” the foetus whilst still inside the mother’s body has strengthened
notions of the foetus as an autonomous individual with rights and entitle-
ments, ones that may well be in conflict with those of the mother. Debates
about foetal rights and the rights of the gestating mother are visible in
arguments over abortion, but also in recent public debates in the UK over
food and alcohol restrictions in pregnancy, and whether or not women
could be prosecuted for causing foetal alcohol syndrome by drinking alco-
hol whilst pregnant (Boffey 2014). I will explore how such shifts upend
more “traditional” ideas of the foetus as part of the mother (and vice
versa) and permit instead notions of the foetus as its own sovereign entity,
bringing us back full circle to questions again over who counts as a person
and in what circumstances.
Cultural Variation in Ideas About Conception

and Personhood
Conception—by which I mean the generation of potential new human

life—is not universally framed as a purely biological process as it usually is
in Western belief systems. Conception is also not universally understood as
premised upon the union of egg and sperm. Take, for instance, Vezo per-
spectives on procreation, a group of fishing people living on the west coast
of Madagascar. Rita Astuti (1993) reports that for Vezo people, concep-
tion is understood to occur via the building up of male semen in a wom-
an’s body, with the placenta being built from the woman’s menstrual
blood. The foetus will grow strong with regular deposits of fresh semen
for as long as possible in the pregnancy, and the foetus requires the mother
to eat certain foods (made manifest by cravings) in order to be healthy.
32 C. DEGNEN
The significance of maternal blood is mirrored in Janet Carsten’s (1992)

account of conception amongst Malay on the island of Langkawi, an eth-
nographic site I return to in more detail in Chap. 3. As Carsten describes
it, conception here is understood as the mixing of the mother’s blood
(darah) and the father’s seed (benih); once this mixture has occurred, the
maternal blood in the womb nourishes the seed and “the blood of the
mother becomes the child” (1992, 27). A third example comes from
Phyllis Kaberry’s material from north western Aboriginal Australia first
published in 1939 and revisited by Wendy James (2000). James explains
that the hunting and gathering communities of the Kimberley Division
that Kaberry worked with understood conception to occur when a man
dreamt of a spirit-child (who first came to the land during The Dreaming)
that he had encountered whilst hunting and pushed it towards his wife.
The spirit-child would enter the woman via her foot and she would then
become pregnant. Semen in this case was not believed to have a role in
conception, but it was understood to collect in the uterus, serving as a
medium for the embryo to float in. The active role of men in conception
was thus not in sexual activity, but instead in providing food for the gestat-
ing woman.
Another account of conception in a non-Western context is Conklin
and Morgan’s masterful article “Babies, bodies and the production of per-
sonhood in North America and a native Amazonian society” (1996). In it,
they describe Wari’ notions of conception. Wari’ are an indigenous
Amazonian people who live in the Brazilian rainforests, near the Bolivian
border. As Conklin and Morgan write, “the sociality of the body is at the
core of Wari’ concepts of the person…Wari’ ideology acknowledges
babies, bodies, and persons to be the products of social action” and fur-
thermore understand both body and person to be made gradually, proces-
sually, and incrementally over time amongst networks of close kin (1996,
661).
This is a form of personhood Conklin and Morgan describe as rela-
tional, and thus one that “is contingent upon creating and maintaining
ties with others in a social field” (1996, 666). In relational systems of
personhood such as that of the Wari’, but also including those in many
other Amazonian societies and Melanesia, “such systems often emphasize
notions of ‘shared substance’ – the idea that individuals exchange sub-
stances between their bodies, and that these corporeal substances impart
qualities of identity to those who incorporate them” (1996, 668). In the
case of Wari’, the human body is “a social creation that is constructed and
maintained through exchanges of substance between individual bodies”,

premised on an understanding of “human bodies as porous and perme-
able, open to penetration by the body fluids of other individuals” (1996,
669). In such a system, sharing or transferring bodily substances like
blood, breast milk, sweat, semen, and vaginal fluids forges a shared social
identity, and exchanging substance via the skin, via sexual intercourse,
through the mouth or through the nose links individuals into “an organic
unity that transcends the boundaries of discrete physical forms” (1996,
669; see also Loizos and Heady 1999). Contact and exchange is devel-
oped over time via everyday activities such as sleeping in the same space,
touch, and eating the same foods (1996, 674) in the intimate heart of
family life.
Consequently, “even at the earliest margins of life, there is no concept
of a ‘natural’, asocial body that exists apart from human relationships”
(1996, 670). The creation of a foetus is understood to occur when mater-
nal blood unites with paternal semen, and conception is dependent on the
accumulation of semen “after multiple acts of sexual intercourse close
together in time” (1996, 670). As such, Wari’ women were incredulous at
Conklin’s query that pregnancy might occur after having sex only once:
‘How can you be so stupid?’ they laughed. ‘Don’t people know how to
make babies in your country?’. The belief that babies come only from
repeated sexual encounters means that a pregnancy cannot be regarded as a
simple slip-up, an unintended ‘mistake’. Casual encounters do not produce
babies. Rather, pregnancy is evidence of a sustained relationship between a
man and a woman…The human body instantiates the social interactions
that engender and maintain it. (1996, 670–671)
In the Wari’ view, “gestation is a social process that involves multiple

contributions of nurturance from at least two individuals (mother and
father) linked to two different kin networks. Coming into Wari’ person-
hood is not a process of overlaying sociality onto an asocial body. The
body itself is a social creation” (1996, 671; emphasis added). Conklin and
Morgan in turn contrast this to North American models of gestation, but
take care not to reduce into homogenised accounts this model of person-
hood as only individualistic, nor Wari’ model of personhood as only rela-
tional or socio-centric.
Attending to critiques of this dichotomy,2 Conklin and Morgan evi-
dence instead a spectrum of beliefs in both cultural settings. They point to
34 C. DEGNEN
“the relative value ascribed, respectively, to social ties and autonomous

agency” in Wari’ and American beliefs (1996, 659; emphasis in original).
However, whilst Conklin and Morgan acknowledge that individualism is
not the sum total of how Westerners experience themselves and that this
sense of autonomy is complemented by how people in the West also expe-
rience themselves in relation to others, they argue that “there is a notable
consistency in North Americans’ basic assumptions about how the criteria
for determining personhood should be established. Personhood is assumed
to be located in biology, in the capacity of the individual body to perform
specific functions…North Americans look for biological markers to define
the existence of personhood” even if there is great debate over what these
markers should be in arguments over, for instance, abortion (1996, 665).
As is evident in the example of Conklin’s Wari’ interlocutors chastising
her for how babies are made, Western notions of conception and foetal
development are premised on the concept of non-social, biological factors
whereby “a person can be created out of a minimal social interaction; tra-
ditionally, all that was required was for two people to have sexual inter-
course once” for personhood to come into existence (1996, 665). Thus,
Wari’ concepts help make evident just how culturally bound are notions of
what is required for conception to occur (A one-off union of egg and
sperm? Or sustained social interactions?) as well as what conception is
understood to generate (An entity that will autonomously develop regard-
less of social relations? Or an entity that requires ongoing social action to
sustain it?). By explicitly contrasting Wari’ and American notions of the
unborn, Conklin and Morgan generate clearer insight into both.
Pregnancy and Personhood

Pregnancy is a complex experience, one shaped profoundly by cultural
norms and expectations. Deborah Lupton, for instance, traces the ideals of
Western pregnancy and contrasts them with the actual lived experiences of
pregnant women (2013). Normative expectations include that pregnant
women will comport themselves in a demure and modest way (Longhurst
2000), that they will find pregnancy a wonderful, fulfilling, rewarding
time, and that gestating women would do anything for their unborn, a
notion grounded in an ideology of “maternal sacrifice” (Lupton 2013,
57–8, 66). In contrast, Lupton contends that pregnancy for many women
is a highly ambiguous and, at times, ambivalent experience. Women she
interviewed in Australia for instance found it difficult to put into words
what it felt like to be pregnant, and to be gestating another life inside their
own bodies; some of the women she spoke with felt that their unborn was
part of them, whilst others felt as though the unborn was an autonomous,
separate individual existing inside them, an experience which some found
disconcerting (2013, 57). In counter-distinction to a prevalent sugary,
“maternal” discourse of the “specialness” of pregnancy, some women
spoke to Lupton about how unsettling pregnancy could be: they described
a sense of losing control of one’s body, of feeling as though they had been
invaded, or how pregnancy made them feel unwell. Some women enjoyed
enormously the sensation of being pregnant, whilst others felt a sense of
relief at this loss of control, saying that they were glad to be freed from
worries over maintaining an idealised body size. But given the normative
pressures around the “wondrousness” of pregnancy, it was awkward for
the women who did not enjoy the experience to give voice to this, for fear
of social censure (2013, 57–8).
In a parallel fashion, but markedly different cultural context, Tine
Gammeltoft (2007a) has explored the experiences of pregnant women in
Hanoi, Vietnam, demonstrating that Vietnamese women also self-censored
during pregnancy. In the case of the women she worked with, it is “not
easy for pregnant women to explicitly voice fears and anxieties regarding
the outcome of their pregnancies” (2007a, 144). Expressing worry during
pregnancy is not easily done since there is a “moral imperative in Vietnam
to be happy and optimistic during pregnancy” (2007a, 144). Pregnant
women are expected to banish any “negative thoughts” and fears whilst
pregnant as either might harm the health of the mother or the foetus as it
develops (2007a, 139). I return to Gammeltoft’s research a little later in
this chapter to pick up on some of these themes in connection to the use
of ultrasound scans in Hanoi. But the ambiguities in the relationship
between mother and foetus that she and Lupton signal here are notably
shaped by cultural models of pregnancy, gestation, and foetal develop-
ment. As we will see, they can also be contingent on larger national histo-
ries and forces of global geopolitics.
Comparative work by Ivry (2010) on the meanings and experiences of
pregnancy in Israel and Japan is highly instructive in this regard. Ivry
examines how in these two distinct cultural settings there are different
kinds of relationships made between pregnant women and their gestating
foetuses. Both the Japanese and the Israeli women she worked with were
invested in delivering healthy babies, but there were noticeable differences
in the cultural scripts of the nature of pregnancy and in the theories of the
36 C. DEGNEN
gestation of healthy babies at work. For instance, one of the first variations
Ivry became aware of was that Japanese women and their obstetrician-
gynaecologists pay a great deal of attention to nutrition and mother’s
bodyweight during pregnancy, but rarely undertake prenatal testing. In
contrast, Ivry’s Israeli participants embraced prenatal testing for foetal
abnormalities, often paying privately for additional and costly exams, but
nutritional and body weight concerns, whilst of interest, were perceived as
a matter for popular magazines and not for discussion with medical
professionals.
Ivry goes on to show how such practices are based in both distinct
theories of gestation and also in historically contingent pro-natal national
projects. In Japan, she identifies what she terms an “environmental” model
of pregnancy, in a national context where declining birth rates and a grow-
ing percentage of older people are motivating pro-natalism. In Israel, she
describes a model of “genetic fatalism” of pregnancy, and a pro-natalism
motivated by a perceived demographic threat with Israel “being a lone
Jewish state surrounded by Arab nations” (2010, 21).
What then are these two models of gestation? The Japanese environ-
mental theory of gestation “allocate[s] direct responsibility to the preg-
nant woman’s body” and to her state of mind for creating the best possible
conditions for the healthy development of the foetus (2010, 94–6). Ivry
clarifies that the foetus in the Japanese context is thus not understood “as
a strictly genetically predetermined being” (2010, 99). Rather, the gestat-
ing mother is exhorted to create and maintain a maternal environment for
the foetus by eating nutritious food, by avoiding stressful situations, and
keeping well physically and mentally:
the idea of effort (gambaru) as a key to achievement and self-cultivation

plays a central role in the way doctors perceive the range of influences that
pregnant women can exercise over the process of gestation…the idea of
gambaru… renders the body (of both the pregnant woman and of her fetus)
as a designable and controllable entity by definition, and the woman herself
as a powerful agent who can actively design it. (2010, 119)
The gestating Japanese foetus is usually described as a “baby”, and

pregnant women are expected to speak to it, communicate with it, and to
bond prenatally with their unborn (2010, 147; 179–180).
The Israeli model of pregnancy and gestation on the other hand does
not emphasise bonding before birth. Ivry explains instead that “the Israeli
fetus remains an ambiguous being throughout gestation. Only after the

birth process has come to an end, and the baby has proved itself alive,
healthy, and visibly separate from the mother’s body, does the mother start
communicating with it seriously” (2010, 147). The physical and mental
aspects of pregnancy tend also to be trivialised in the Israeli cultural con-
text, Ivry argues, and women tend to operate in a more detached way
from their pregnancy than their Japanese counterparts. Ivry builds a con-
vincing picture of how both these aspects are based in what she calls a
wider “social script of catastrophe” in Israel. By this she means that there
is a perceptible, collective sense at work in Israeli-Jewish social life of living
under the threat of imminent catastrophe, with historical and contempo-
rary antecedents of such terrors permeating everyday lives (2010, 75).
Assumptions about the riskiness of all reproductive outcomes, what Ivry
terms a “regime of reproductive catastrophe”, is inflected by this broader
script whereby “a hovering presence of reproductive misfortune…has to
do with the readiness of Israeli Jews…to think with the key scenario of
‘threat’: to imagine that the worst is about to happen and to devise strate-
gies to defend oneself against it” (2010, 76). Detachment during gesta-
tion is a protective, preventative measure in case the pregnancy does not
end well (2010, 75, 225): “bonding” must wait until the baby has been
delivered.
Connected to this is the Israeli theory of gestation, which Ivry describes
as premised on genetic fatalism. In this case, the quality of the embryo is
understood to be determined at the moment of fertilisation and there is
virtually nothing that can be done to alter (for better or for worse) the
health of the foetus (2010, 234). As she concludes, these two theories of
gestation “represent two distinct ‘truth regimes,’ two ways of formulating
socially acceptable truth claims about gestation, complete with their prac-
tical implications and constructions of maternal responsibility” (2010,
238). In Israel, the destiny of the foetus is perceived as pre-ordained fate,
“written into a person’s body [and] cannot be altered to any meaningful
degree” and in such a context, maternal and other forms of nurturance
have limited efficacy (2010, 250). In contrast, in Japan, “coming of age is
less about developing individuality than about learning to connect and
relate to others skilfully” and learning to interrelate “is explicitly taught in
Japan as a key social skill” (2010, 247). So too with pregnancy which is
understood as “a socially interrelated physical and mental effort…physical
forms of behaviour and social circumstances lead to health or illness”, and
38 C. DEGNEN
pregnant women are thus active agents and held responsible for healthy
pregnancies (2010, 247).
A second intriguing point of overlapping contrast is the way in which
both models of gestation also connect with the specific pro-natal, nation-
alistic projects in each country. As mentioned above, the importance
assigned to women having children in Japan and in Israel is partly shaped
by each nation’s own geopolitical context. Additionally, Ivry points out
how each has their own historical set of eugenic concerns that initially
emerged in the nineteenth century as elements of nation-building, histori-
cal antecedents which still today inflect each nation’s body politics (2010,
252–3). A very abridged account of this is that both nation states aspired
to “improve” national characteristics with a focus in Japan on building
bigger, stronger physiques whilst still maintaining the valorised qualities of
“Japanese spirit”, and an emphasis in Israel on ensuring healthy, vigorous
disease-free bodies (2010, 253–4). Ivry identifies a significant nuance in
both models of pro-natalism, arguing that neither is a simple case of
nations promoting women to have many children. Instead, pro-natalism
in Japan—with its model of gestation emphasising the direct responsibility
of women for the quality of the foetus—“tends to exert on women the
long-term tensions of continuously creating the child”, a burden Ivry
argues is so heavy that many women have only one child; whereas in Israel
“a woman may spend much of her pregnancy – a state so desired from a
pro-natalist perspective – in anxiety” due to models of genetic fatalism and
social scripts of impending catastrophe (2010, 255).
In conclusion, the relative assumptions in the Israeli and Japanese mod-
els about the extent to which foetal development is pre-ordained or con-
tingent upon the actions of the mother have implications for the notion of
personhood. In Japan, this is particularly in regard to the ways in which
“Japanese fetuses are humanized. In the United States the rhetoric of the
fetus as person is informed by religious and other pro-life rhetoric that
construct it as independent life; Japanese ideas of the fetus draw on its
dependence on its mother” (2010, 248; emphasis in original). There are
also interesting implications for the notion of foetal rights in both the
Israeli and Japanese cases, for Ivry points out that in both contexts, foe-
tuses are “hardly endowed with ‘rights’, unlike the American ‘life’ rheto-
ric” (2010, 248). She explains that this is because in the example of Israel,
foetal subjectivity is delayed rather than attributed at conception, and in
the example of Japan, the foetus and mother are perceived as so closely
linked that subdivision of rights for the foetus is not possible. These are
themes I will return to later in this chapter.
“Seeing the Baby”: The Emergence of Ultrasound

Technologies and Foetal Personhood
One of the most common rituals of pregnancy in late-twentieth-century
urban North America begins when a woman and her partner are ushered
into a small darkened room by a white-coated person known as the ‘sonog-
rapher’. Asking the woman to lie down on a table, the sonographer squirts
her belly with a cool blue gel, moves a device over her abdomen, taps at a
keyboard, and suddenly a grayish blur appears on a bright luminescent
screen. It is customary during this ritual for the couple to smile, laugh, and
point at the screen even though they frequently do not recognize anything
in the blur. The sonographer taps at the keyboard again and peers intently at
the gray-and-white blur. She measures parts of it, calculates its age, weight,
and expected date of delivery. She looks closely at the couple to see if they
like the blur and show signs of ‘bonding’ with it. The couple also look
closely at the sonographer, anxious in case she finds something wrong with
the blur…After about fifteen minutes, the blur is turned off, the gel is wiped
away, and the couple are given a copy of the grayish blur to take home. This
copy is known as ‘Baby’s First Picture’, or as ‘Baby’s First Video’ if they get
the full-length, moving version. It is often shown to other people who are
also expected to smile at it. (Mitchell and Georges 1998, 105)
The Canadian scene described above is one familiar to millions of

women and their partners. This is particularly the case in developed coun-
tries where obstetric ultrasounds have become a normalised and a near
universal element of prenatal care (Garcia et al. 2002) but also increasingly
in developing nations where it is growing in use (Belizán and Cafferata
2011). Ultrasound technology uses high-frequency sound waves to create
images on a computer screen of the interior of the gestating body. It was
first developed as a diagnostic tool in the 1930s and 1940s by Karl and
Friedrich Dussik working on the ventricles of the brain (Draper 2002); the
technology was refined by military use in World War II (Duden 1993;
Petchesky 1987). By the 1960s, ultrasound technology was being used in
North American obstetrics but only in cases where there was a suspected
abnormality (Draper 2002), though this then began shifting to routine
use. By the late 1980s, over one-third of all pregnant Americans experi-
enced ultrasound imaging during their pregnancies (Petchesky 1987,
40 C. DEGNEN
273), a figure that now 30 years later feels a strikingly small figure. This
speaks to the way in which the use of ultrasound in pregnancy has become
so commonplace and normalised over the past three decades in many
countries across the globe.
Contemporary ultrasounds serve multiple purposes. On the one hand,
ultrasound sonographers collect data on the foetus via a series of measure-
ments during scans. This is a clinical, diagnostic process of prenatal screen-
ing for anomalies and abnormalities in foetal development and in placental
position. On the other hand, many expecting parents describe the ultra-
sound scan as the opportunity to “see” their “baby” for the first time, and
the great pleasure of that (Draper 2002; Garcia et al. 2002; Petchesky
1987). There is thus a disjuncture between the clinical purposes of ultra-
sound and what the gestating woman (and her family members’) expect
from the scan. These purposes often do not align, and unexpected results
or indeterminate outcomes that are reported in terms of elevated risks to
foetal health can come as an unwelcome shock to the gestating woman
and her family (Garcia et al. 2002). This is particularly the case as prenatal
testing via ultrasound is to collect data that may well indicate foetal anom-
alies, anomalies “that may undermine claims to fetal personhood” (Roberts
2012). As such, ultrasound can both increase the sense of the foetus as a
real person, a “baby”, but it can also provide cause to interrupt that sense
of imminent person if there is cause for concern.
With the advent of obstetric ultrasound imaging, it is now possible to
see inside the gestating woman’s body and generate knowledge about the
foetus in ways previously not possible; in the past, knowledge about the
foetus was restricted to the pregnant woman’s own embodied sensations,
and all other figures (clinicians, fathers, family members) were dependent
on her reports of these sensations (Draper 2002; Duden 1993; Petchesky
1987; Rothman 1986). This transition has been termed a shift from a
haptic hexis, centring on the embodied knowledge and authority of the
pregnant woman, to an optic hexis, based on visualising technologies as
the definitive source of knowledge and grounded in a long history in med-
icine which valorises sight above all other senses (Draper 2002). The ubiq-
uitousness of ultrasound technology and imagery stemming from it has
led some scholars to argue that women’s understandings of their own
uteruses and of the emergent personhood of their unborn are coming to
be achieved via generalised ultrasound images rather than their own spe-
cific bodily experiences (Lupton 2013, 61). But given its now normalised
role in many pregnancies, it is worth bearing in mind that obstetric ultra-
sound is not a homogenous entity. It varies over time and through space
in its uses and its forms (Garcia et al. 2002). One example is the rise in
commercially available scans, outside the usual clinical and medicalised
settings. Clients can pay for three dimensional (3D) and four dimensional
(4D) ultrasound images rather than the standard two-dimensional scans
currently most often used in clinical settings. The 3D and 4D scans visu-
alise the surfaces of the unborn’s body between 20 and 32 weeks’ gesta-
tion, making it possible to view foetal facial characteristics and expressions,
and are often termed “bonding” scans (Roberts 2012). These are not
diagnostic scans nor part of prenatal care, but rather are commercial enter-
prises. Another example is a recent report in the Wall Street Journal on the
significant increase in power and wattage used in ultrasound scans, five to
six times more powerful in 2015 than they were in the late 1980s and early
1990s when they first became a normalised element of prenatal care for
pregnant women (Helliker 2015).
An insightful body of work by critical social scientists has examined the
social, cultural, and political consequences of foetal imaging. One of the
consequences most relevant to any discussion of personhood is that in this
shift from haptic to optic, the foetus emerges as a patient and as a subject,
one that can be monitored and offered medical intervention (Petchesky
1987, 274), such as foetal surgery if congenital defects are detected
(Casper 1998).3 Whilst historically, before the late eighteenth century, “it
was the pregnant woman…who bore ultimate authority and knowledge
about her unborn”, developments in Western scientific and medical
knowledge from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth
century meant that “the unborn became increasingly viewed as human
and alive from an earlier stage” (Lupton 2013, 20–21). New knowledge
such as the field of embryology and new technologies such as the stetho-
scope—which meant the foetal heartbeat could be heard and monitored
whilst still inside the body of its mother—contributed to the ways in which
the foetus increasingly became attributed with individual status and the
status of a patient, conceptually separable from the mother (Lupton
2013).
The emergence of ultrasound thus sits within a larger history in the
West of technological developments that have made it possible to perceive
of the foetus “as separate and autonomous from the pregnant woman”
(Petchesky 1987, 271). As such, it has been argued that foetal images via
ultrasound technology “blur the boundary between fetus and baby; they
reinforce the idea that the fetus’s identity as separate and autonomous
42 C. DEGNEN
from the mother (the ‘living, separate child’) exists from the start”
(Petchesky 1987, 272). This is a significant transition in notions of the
unborn in the West, from a time when “the hidden mysterious organism
that was inextricably part of the maternal body” to “that of the unborn
entity as a miniature individuated human subject with its own rights and
privileges” (Lupton 2013, 9). In sum, foetal imaging and other related
technologies have over time contributed to a new imagining of person-
hood, namely the possibility of foetal personhood and foetal subjectivity.
Such developments are not without consequences. For instance, Casper
documents how in experimental foetal surgery, the foetus emerges as a
patient, and a person, whilst simultaneously the gestating mother’s pati-
enthood becomes demoted in discourse and practice to being “the best
heart-lung machine available” and secondary to that of the “primary
patient” who it the foetus itself (1994, 312). There is thus arguably a
sleight of hand occurring in this emergent shift to foetal personhood
whereby the more visible the foetus becomes, the more invisible becomes
the gestating woman’s body, her subjectivity, and the utter dependence of
her unborn on her (Petchesky 1987; Rothman 1986). Another conse-
quence, as Morgan (1996) writes, is that how whilst biological, social, and
legal beginnings of personhood were marked by birth in the US until
recently, they have since the 1970s become increasingly “uncoupled”.
This, she says, is due to technologies and practices such as ultrasound
which means that “the attribution of personhood (what I call ‘social
birth’) can now precede biological birth”, resulting in the emergence and
reification of foetal personhood (Morgan 1996, 59). With attribution of
personhood comes rights and entitlements, as I return to later in this
chapter.
Closer examination of what actually occurs during ultrasound experi-
ences in the clinic helps us better understand this speeding up of “social
birth” and the ever earlier emergence of foetal personhood. Ethnographers
of ultrasound scans, such as Roberts’ work in Britain (2012) and Mitchell
and Georges’ in Canada and Greece, respectively (1998), have demon-
strated how scanning sessions are moments when the sonographer and
expecting parents work together to build foetal personhood via the images
present on the screen. This includes the ways in which the sonographer
helps the woman interpret and read the ultrasound images on the screen.
But it also includes, reciprocally, how the woman being scanned and her
family members in attendance help narrate “specific connections with fam-
ily identity and history, annotating familiar facial features and behaviours,
and ‘weaving the fetus into a network of kinship relations’ (Mitchell 2001,
134)” via commenting on appearance, pose, personality, or behaviour that
evoke family resemblances (Roberts 2012, 305–7). So, whilst the sonog-
rapher often is engaged in constructing foetal personhood during scans by
drawing the viewers’ attention to various bodily structures of the foetus
such as the spine, bladder, heart, toes, fingers, and brain (Mitchell and
Georges 1998, 108), it is the family members who bring intensely person-
alised details to bear on the scan images, rendering the foetus into “one of
our own” and connecting it into a particular social nexus of family well
before birth (Roberts 2012).
This process seems to become intensified via 3/4D ultrasound scans
which bring into detailed view the surface features of the foetus. Roberts
describes how “fetal facial expressions…are used to help build a picture of
fetal personality, as clients identify smiles, frowns, yawns, ‘thoughtful’
expressions and more…as if talking about a small child”, interacting “with
the fetus on the screen as if it is the baby” (Roberts 2012, 307). Mitchell
and Georges (1998) identify a similar tendency, giving examples of how
sonographers behave during two-dimensional scans in ways which “closely
resemble people admiring a baby in someone’s arms” (1998, 110) such as
when they “touch, stroke, and ‘tickle’ the onscreen image, particularly the
fetal feet, and create a voice so the fetus may ‘speak’ to the expectant
couple and communicate its ‘feelings’” (1998, 109). In so doing, “sonog-
raphers must translate not only the physics of echoes but also the clinical
and social meanings of these different shades of gray” (1998, 108) visible
on the viewing screen in the consultation room.
Mitchell and Georges remind us that one of those translations occur-
ring via the interpretation of the ultrasound image is a shift from perceiv-
ing the unborn as a foetus or embryo, a liminal being with “uncertain
subjectivity, and contested personhood”, to perceiving a baby with subjec-
tivity; a human entity that manifests “awareness of surroundings and of
being distinct from other selves, intention, moods, and emotion”, all ele-
ments which feature often in the sonographer’s description of the image
for the woman and family members (1998, 109). The experience of ultra-
sound scans thus is a process that partially brings foetal personhood into
being, made more “real” by the photographs that many take home with
them from the scan for the family photo album. This marks “the status
passage of the baby from a liminal being (a fetus) to a post-liminal baby
(our baby)…a changing social status…from fetus to social child” (Draper
2002, 786). Also marked is a change in social status for other members of
44 C. DEGNEN
the kinship network with the arrival of the new member of the family.
Draper argues that in turn, as the foetus is granted a social identity via
viewing its image on screen and in print, “this process confuses temporal
and corporeal boundaries, as the future is brought into the present and the
social precedes the biological birth” (2002, 790). Such an observation is
perhaps less surprising anthropologically than it might be sociologically.
This is due to how the ethnographic record clearly disrupts this linear
notion of social and biological births, as we will explore in the next section
via Morgan’s work in Ecuador and the non-linear personhood she
describes. But in any case, what is clearly evident from this extensive body
of work is that for many there has been an “ontological extension back-
wards of infancy in the human developmental time-frame” with an
“increasingly common portrayal of (the unborn) as already loveable and
cute ‘babies’” (Lupton 2013, 16). Conceptualising the unborn as persons
earlier than ever before has social, legal, and political implications, made
possible by technological developments and interpreted within cultural
and historical contexts. Work by Kato and Sleeboom-Faulkner (2011) in
Japan with couples using IVF for instance demonstrates how the use of
both IVF and ultrasound technology extends the life course backwards in
time, with their participants reporting that they felt they “met” their
“child” when viewing the foetus via ultrasound scans but also how the
“meeting of the ‘child’ is radically put forward… Technology in this case
shifts the boundary of the starting point of pregnancy to an earlier stage,
and evokes a sense of motherhood among women. Reproductive tech-
nologies, then, play a role in determining when individuals start feeling
attached to the prospective child as ‘their child’” (2011, 441).
Attributions of foetal subjectivity and foetal personhood within an
expanding temporal frame are also rendered more complex by cross-
cultural comparison, such as Mitchell’s work in Canadian ultrasound clin-
ics with Georges’ in Greece. Mitchell and Georges, writing together,
remind us how it is that the creation of foetal subjectivity is culturally
made via practice and discourse, and that the ways in which information
garnered via ultrasound are interpreted is both culturally and historically
specific (1998). The vignette from their work that starts this subsection
comes from Mitchell’s data collected in Canada. The Greek experience of
ultrasound viewings, whilst also commonplace, is however a much briefer
session in the clinic, is conducted in near silence, and is understood to
generate information only on physical foetal attributes such as sex and age.
Unlike their Canadian counterparts, Greek women did not feel that
personality characteristics were revealed by the ultrasound, and they “do

not attribute to [the fetus] the qualities of a separate individual, with its
own subjectivity and potentiality” or agency (1998, 116). Mitchell and
Georges argue that this difference is in part down to distinctive national
positioning and cultural perspectives whereby Canadian women are living
in regimes structured by “public ideology of fetal risk and maternal
responsibility” and so undertake ultrasounds as a way of performing being
“good mothers”, whereas Greek women’s experiences are bound up in
contemporary Greece’s identity crisis whereby the nation seeks to assert
itself as fully modern and European; in such a context, undertaking ultra-
sounds becomes a way to “actively constitute themselves as modern preg-
nant subjects” (1998, 119–21). In both cases, what becomes abundantly
clear are the ways in which ultrasound technology is not a homogenising
force, but one that is culturally and historically contingent.
Indeed, whilst the majority of research into women’s experiences of
ultrasound has been based in nominally Western settings, some anthro-
pologists have produced important insights into its use in low-income
developing countries, focusing on the particular social processes and local
contexts that shape the meaning and use of this (now global) reproductive
health technology. Tine Gammeltoft’s (2007a, b) work with Vietnamese
women in Hanoi that I invoked earlier in this chapter is highly significant
in this regard. She has demonstrated that the average number of ultra-
sound scans taken by Vietnamese women is much higher than most of
their North American, European, and Australian counterparts. In Vietnam,
women average 6.6 scans per pregnancy and it is not unusual for women
to have more than ten scans in a pregnancy (2007a). For the sake of com-
parison, 2017 guidelines in the United Kingdom for low-risk pregnancies
recommend two ultrasound scans. The scale of uptake of ultrasound tech-
nology in Vietnam is even more remarkable when contextualised tempo-
rally: as recently as the late 1990s, ultrasound scanning in Vietnam was
rarely used and highly specialised, but that changed within a decade to
regular and extensive use.
Gammeltoft goes on to show that whilst in some respects the experi-
ences of women in Hanoi having scans mirror those in Europe and North
America (such as the technician “showing” the unborn to the gestating
mother, pleasure at “seeing” the unborn, and attribution of personality
and personhood extended to the foetus), it is not just the number of scans
that women undertake that is distinctive to this cultural setting. So too are
concerns and uncertainty over the safety of the technology, as expressed by
46 C. DEGNEN
the women themselves (something that rarely comes up in the literature

from Western settings) but also paradoxically a simultaneous urge to
repeatedly “check in on” the developing foetus to allay fears that it might
not be healthy or developing well (2007a, 140–144). Gammeltoft explores
this dynamic in terms of understandings of the foetus “as an ambiguous
being, with a provisional existence, not inanimate but not fully human
either” (2007a, 145). But she also examines how these ultrasound prac-
tices are grounded in a perception of pregnancy as risky and precarious,
especially in a cultural context where population exposure to the toxic
“Agent Orange” creates fears of birth defects and childhood cancers
(Gammeltoft 2007a, 147; b, 156). Agent Orange is a potent herbicide
that was sprayed by the American military over millions of acres of Vietnam
as a form of chemical warfare to kill plant foliage and disrupt food sup-
plies. The highly toxic dioxins in Agent Orange have caused numerous
serious illnesses, including cancers; as the substances entered the food
chain via polluting soil and water, their use during the war continues to
have a heavy significance in the modern day. As such, whilst women
Gammeltoft worked with in Hanoi are preoccupied with concerns over
whether their foetuses are developing “normally”, and perceive ultrasound
scans as offering reassurance, they also “generally perceive the fetus as a
fluid and changing being-in-becoming” which means that scans may offer
temporary reassurance but “the provisionality of each scanning result
often compels them to have yet another scan” (2007a, 148). These factors
contribute to the much higher rates of scans undertaken than in other
countries, despite the simultaneous fears that the technology might also
be damaging.
Can Beginnings of Life Be Relationships Instead

of Moments? Foetal Personhood and Abortion
in Cross-Cultural Perspective
The emergence of foetal personhood via new technologies such as ultra-

sound cannot be separated from its broader cultural, social, political, and
historical contexts. For many American feminist scholars writing about the
politics of reproduction, the viciously polarised debates in the United
States between pro-life and anti-abortion campaigners have understand-
ably come to profoundly shape the context within which technology,
women’s bodies, ideology, rhetoric, personhood, and the beginnings of
life come together in a toxic intersection.4 For a period of time, feminist

scholars avoided engaging with the foetus as a conceptual topic for analysis
as many were concerned that to do so would ideologically undermine a
pro-choice, woman-centred position by putting the emphasis instead on
the unborn (Morgan 1996, 47). For similar reasons, some feminist phi-
losophers have sought to invoke a relational rather than individualistic
model of personhood in order to disrupt pro-life arguments about foetal
personhood, arguing that foetuses—asocial and unable to relate—cannot
be persons until birth (Morgan 1996). This is a framework that is lodged
in “the Western ethnobiological view of personhood” with its assumptions
around what is biological and what is social; as Morgan concludes, bodies,
within Western thought, are perceived as naturally occurring but persons
require social effort and relationality to be brought into being (1996, 55).
Morgan elaborates on her point, arguing that in contrast are models of
foetal personhood that do not foreground corporeality but rather perceive
“a motely amalgam of many social influences which enable its constitution”
(1996, 56). Body substance in these models thus foreground social rela-
tionships, and relationships are imbricated “at every stage of potential,
incipient, and emergent personhood, from the social context of courtship
and sexuality through conception and early gestation through birth,
socialization, education, and initiation through to the end of the life cycle”
(1996, 56). These concepts are in and of themselves useful and interesting
to the issues I explore in this book. But they are also conceptual tools that
Morgan uses to return to the abortion debates and to move away from
well-trod terrain about whether or not a foetus is a person and at what
precise moment in time that might occur. Instead, it permits her to explore
how personhood is “a negotiated, dynamic concept currently being con-
tested through many overlapping public discourses concerning foetuses”
(1996, 49), and to explore those points of debate.
Morgan has written extensively as an anthropologist on the question of
personhood of the unborn (1996, 1997, 2003, 2006, 2009). She has
argued that increasingly for many in North America, the foetus has been
naturalised into a biological entity across multiple domains. These include
via specialist and expert forms of knowledge such as medicine, law, and
advertising but also in popular culture whereby foetuses are “depicted so
regularly in everyday US culture that their presence – outside the context
of pregnant women’s bodies – is scarcely remarkable anymore. Their pres-
ence has come to be accepted, by many, as natural” (1997, 326).
Consequently, Morgan argues that—contested as it is—the foetal subject
48 C. DEGNEN
in some cultural contexts needs to be understood as an emergent category

of personhood. Indeed, perhaps this tendency is most evident and magni-
fied in the Anglophone West, and the United States in particular, given the
historical shape of the abortion debates there.
But Morgan also invites us to consider a different perspective, drawing
from her fieldwork in the Ecuadorian highlands. She describes how foe-
tuses there are not normally considered to be persons, are not understood
as divisible from the woman gestating them whilst in the womb, and are
not perceived as moving along a unidirectional path of biological develop-
ment. Instead,
in the rural highlands of northern Ecuador, the unborn are imagined as

liminal, unripe, and unfinished creatures. Nascent persons are brought into
being slowly, through processes rife with uncertainty and moral ambiguity.
Adults are slow to assign individual identity and personhood to the not-yet-
born and the newly born. These criaturas, as they are often called, bear little
resemblance to disembodied, technologized, visualized, personified, and
revered U.S. fetuses. These unknown, unknowable criaturas may teeter on
the cusp of personhood for months before being fully welcomed into a
human community…in Ecuador social practices reinforce and perpetuate
fetal liminality, insuring that personhood will not be easily attributed to the
unborn…the unborn are not persons…they remain ambiguous and liminal.
(1997, 329)
Here, then, we again have a powerful example of how the unborn can
be conceptualised in a profoundly different way than that which is taken
for granted in Western contexts. The emphasis here is on process, ambigu-
ity, unknowability, liminality, and waiting rather than a pushing ever back-
wards the emergence and firming up of foetal personhood.
Also of significance in conceptualising the unborn in the rural
Ecuadorian context is the figure of the auca. Morgan explains that the
auca is “a special category of liminal quasi-person” that includes “unbap-
tized souls and other not-quite-persons” (1997, 330). The auca is not a
benign entity—people are afraid of them and they can be dangerous—and
some of the women Morgan worked with reported hearing aucas crying
at night, in the dark, in sadness that they had not been baptised (1997,
335–6). Morgan argues that the figure of the auca in Ecuador helps reveal
something particular about US abortion debates: There is a notable
absence of permissible “space that might be allotted to not-yet-persons”
(1997, 338) in the United States. Indeterminacy is avoided in these
debates. But in Ecuador, the figure of the auca can be interpreted as pre-
cisely this sort of indeterminate space, a figure that “accommodates those
anomalous, liminal beings who exist somewhere between nothingness and
full human personhood” (1997, 338). Consequently, a third point of
comparison with commonplace American notions is that whilst the women
Morgan worked with in Ecuador felt choosing an abortion was wrong,
this was not because abortion was conceptualised as “murder”. Rather, it
was because abortion was a form of self-mutilation, a way of taking fate
into one’s own hands rather than leaving it to God. As such, the familiar
moralising rhetoric of American public discourse that ties foetal person-
hood with abortion is a discourse that is for the most part not evident in
the rural Ecuadorian context (1997, 339).
A final distinction this example draws out is the related ways in which
the rights and interests of gestating woman and those of the foetus are
perceived. A number of authors have written about the ways in which the
rights of the unborn have become in some cases elevated over those of the
gestating mother, and of the rise of the foetal citizen (see Lupton 2013,
104–9). Foetal and maternal rights can become pitted against each other
in Western contexts, and contested in courts as I mention above. Examples
include the arguments over gestating mothers’ consumption of alcohol in
Britain as I note there, but also parallel cases from the United States
including brain dead pregnant women being kept alive for the benefit of
their unborn child, despite these women having signed advanced health
directives stating they would not wish to be kept on life support (Magnanti
2014).
Such pitting of maternal versus foetal rights is something Morgan notes
is not evident in rural Ecuador (1997, 332). She suggests that this is linked
to broader cultural imagery and referents, saying that there is an absence
in the highlands of Ecuador of the images of foetal gestational develop-
ment that are omnipresent in American health care clinics. Also absent are
books for pregnant couples, posters—and since Morgan’s time of writ-
ing—websites and smart phone apps, all elements of “a cultural iconogra-
phy that helps to fix an image and create the meanings attached to
particular gestational stages” in North America and which are non-existent
in the rural highlands of Ecuador (1997, 340). And as I explored earlier in
the chapter, it has been argued also that being able to “see” the foetus
whilst still inside the mother’s body has given strength to emergent
notions of the foetus as an autonomous individual with rights and entitle-
ments that may be in conflict with those of the mother; such “obstetrical
50 C. DEGNEN
technologies of visualization… disrupt the very definition, as traditionally

understood, of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ a woman’s body, of pregnancy as an
‘interior’ experience” (Petchesky 1987, 272) and of the foetus as a part of
the mother rather than as its own entity in cultural settings were ultra-
sounds are the norm. Instead, Morgan tells us, the women she worked
with in Ecuador learn from each other and from their own experiences
about the developing foetus. When personhood is said to come into being
emphasises not fixity but rather fluidity: “the physical and spiritual charac-
teristics of newborns are…changing up until birth and well into the post-
partum period” (1997, 342). Indeed, both foetuses and the newly born
are described with words that “indicated their unfinished quality: tierno
means young or unripe, and is used also to describe green fruit” as well as
the unborn and newborns (1997, 342).
This then is a cultural context where the “unfinished”, “still malleable”,
and not ripe characteristics of the newborn are emphasised (1997, 342–3).
Morgan argues this is in great contrast to the North American perspective
on personhood, that once established, cannot be taken away, and in which
case a foetus might come to be understood as also having entitlements and
rights that are both separable from and perhaps in contradiction to the
interests and rights of the gestating mother. In the Ecuadorian highlands,
there is instead an assumption of “a degree of ebb and flow” of person-
hood throughout pregnancy and infancy (1997, 346). Consequently,
Morgan relates how the women she worked with told her how a pregnant
woman might “‘undo’ the nascent personhood” of her foetus by breast-
feeding an older child; a pregnancy might stop or reverse because a gestat-
ing woman had inappropriately expressed favouritism and spent precious
energy feeding that child instead of nourishing the growing foetus (1997,
346). Emerging from this example and many others from Morgan then is
a “trajectory of personhood [that] need not necessarily be linear” and a
recognition that “incipient personhood [is] openly ambiguous and vari-
able, its character perennially liminal, amorphous, and irresolvable” (1997,
347) and indeed, at times reversible.
Conclusions
This chapter has focused on personhood at the beginnings of life. What
becomes evident is that whilst human beings have found very different
answers, culturally speaking, to the questions of both how conception is
understood to occur as well as what conception is understood to create,
there is consensus cross-culturally on how much such issues matter. In the

ethnographic literature on conception and pregnancy, the foetus appears
as a key figure, especially in highly technologised contexts. This is due to
the ways in which various technologies have rendered the foetus into a
“subject” in some cultural contexts with all sorts of political, moral, power,
ideological, discursive implications that follow from the emergence of foe-
tal personhood. The foetus itself is not a natural category or biological
entity, but one that is heavily socially constructed within particular cul-
tural, technological, and historical parameters, and a plural category with
multivalent meaning depending on context (Casper 1998; Lupton 2013;
Morgan 1996, 1997). Indeed, the genesis of much of the feminist scholar-
ship that has clarified this point has itself been provoked by the context of
the abortion debates in the United States.
This literature has explored through a cross-cultural lens the social and
cultural dimensions that shape when life and personhood are said to begin.
But these explorations also remind us of how “critical medical anthropolo-
gists demonstrate that reproduction narrowly construed (as procreation,
abortion, or childbirth) diverts attention from reproduction broadly con-
sidered as the power to determine who lives and who dies” (Kaufman and
Morgan 2005, 322) and how “social practices…work to establish (or
resist) different kinds, qualities, and degrees of fetal personhood” (Morgan
1996, 60). Technology is one of these forms of practice that I have focused
on in this chapter, and ultrasound scans in particular in regard to both the
establishment of personhood, rights, and entitlements, but also how it at
times can place in jeopardy the potentiality of the unborn.
This chapter has also highlighted the imbrication of personhood, time,
and body. Temporality weaves throughout the various accounts I track
above: ultrasounds are said to push back the beginnings of personhood for
some and are used by others to “check in on” the ever-changing foetus; in
other cases, pregnancies can be threatened by a winding back of time and
an “undoing” of a pregnancy if care is not taken in maternal comport-
ment. Some models of personhood emphasise a fixity or fatalism, stitched
in time once and for all; whilst others emphasis incremental, processual
building through time. The nexus of person, body, and sociality is a related
theme explored in this chapter. Revealing differences between Western
“ethnobiology” and other more relational perspectives on embodiment,
substance, and transmission in regard to both personhood as well as con-
ception and pregnancy come to light via the ethnographic record.
52 C. DEGNEN
But time and body also intersect in another level of scale in the ethno-
graphic examples presented in this chapter. That is to say, evident in many
of the examples is the profound influence of wider politics on something
as intimate as experiences of pregnancy and cultural models of foetal
development. By this I mean that understandings of bodies and persons
are contingent, shifting historically, and the durability of such notions not
always stable. “Truth regimes”, for instance, about what is necessary and
good for foetal development are inflected in the case of Vietnam by the
take up of ultrasound technologies, decisions made in a context of possible
environmental exposure to powerful carcinogens that persist today due to
the geopolitics and warring of decades past; contemporary maternal rela-
tions in Japan and Israel with the unborn are partially shaped by older
eugenic and nation-building concerns, and Canadian and Greek women’s
motivations for using ultrasounds are bound up in distinctly different pub-
lic ideologies and national discourses. Keeping such historical contingen-
cies in mind is crucial for sharpening our understanding of how it is that
both understandings of the body, the unborn and pregnancy, as well as
models of personhood, are not immutable.
Lastly, the chapter has illuminated the ways in which the issue of foetal
rights is brought into focus in regard to personhood. This is both the case
in terms of the debates over foetal personhood where the rights of the
foetus and the rights of the mother come to the fore. But it is also evident
in regard to the issues of provisionality and recognition that Wendy James
(2000) signals to us in terms of how personhood comes to be established.
This process of attribution and recognition is neither universal nor guar-
anteed as “not all early human life is socially ‘recognised’ in this sense”
(2000, 170). Recognition, furthermore, may “happen at birth, or imme-
diately after, but…it could often be said to be a process starting before
birth, and not only in the modern West” (2000, 178). As James says, the
emergence of personhood cannot be reduced to a mental or a physical
definition, but instead this emergence is a recognition of “a being which
can respond, can answer back in some way that signals the presence of a
potential partner in human reciprocity” (2000, 187). It is this potential
capacity to engage in reciprocal social relations with others over time she
highlights that is so crucial to ascertaining personhood. Indeed, in many
ways, it is this concept of recognition that is the bridge between this chap-
ter and the next on birth and childhood, and it is this that I shall return to
in Chap. 3.
Notes
1. Whilst the focus here is on theories of conception, and the normative
Western model of conception is premised on a biological model of egg and
sperm uniting, it should also be noted that the anthropology of new kinship
studies has clearly demonstrated the complex interplay of how both the
social and the biological are invoked in terms of reckoning kin relations,
with one at times being privileged over the other in a selective way (see for
instance Edwards 2000; Edwards and Strathern 2000).
2. See Chap. 1 of this volume for more detail on how this binary has been
critiqued by a range of authors.
3. And yet note the culturally and historically contingent nature of this claim
that the foetus now emerges as a subject with the widespread availability of
foetal imaging—the material explored in the previous section from Ivry on
Israeli models of gestation and construction of the foetus would be one
example that gives pause for thought in how even and widespread such
claims can be.
4. Palmer (2009, 176) contrasts UK anti-abortion campaigns with those in the
United States, noting how debates over abortion are much less prevalent in
the UK than in the United States, and are not linked to political parties’
platforms as they are in the United States. Examples from other nations are
also instructive in this regard. For instance, in France where abortion has
been permitted under law for more than forty years, it is also a criminal
offence to pressure a woman not to terminate a pregnancy. In December
2016, the National Assembly and the Senate passed a law that extends this
protection to include misleading anti-abortion websites (Chrisafis 2016).
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CHAPTER 3
Personhood, Birth, Babies, and Children
Introduction
Birth is conceptualised metaphorically in Western thought as the ultimate
beginning. In the English language, one can give birth to new ideas, to
new starts, and of course, to new people. In a similar way, birth is a key
moment in normative Western conceptualisations of the beginning of per-
sonhood. The newly arrived baby is understood to be a new person, albeit
a dependent and vulnerable one. Indeed, it is arguably this perceived vul-
nerability of newborns and the liminality of birth itself that mean the prac-
tices and experiences of birth attract significant cross-cultural ritual and
ceremonial elaboration (Jordan 1983, 1–2). But whilst Western audiences
may assume birth begets or bestows personhood, this is not universally the
case. As I will explore in this chapter, the attribution of personhood is not
guaranteed by physiological passage into the world: infants and children
are often perceived as liminal beings and not fully fixed human persons for
some period of time. As explored in Chap. 2 in regard to the unborn,
neonates are also often perceived as highly malleable and fluid entities that
require a number of practices from their closest kin and caretakers to ren-
der them increasingly fixed as persons. Attribution of personhood can thus
often be delayed. “Delayed personhood” is a term used to describe con-
texts where the neonate is not yet considered a person, a condition that
can also extend well into the part of life that most Westerners would term
“childhood”. Thus, instead of personhood being attributed automatically at
birth, “a majority of the world’s societies delay the conferral of p
ersonhood”

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_3
58 C. DEGNEN
with consequent implications for a range of practices including infanticide,

childcare, and the diagnosis of illness (Lancy 2015, 4).
As with ideas about how the neonate can achieve personhood varying
widely cross-culturally, so too with birthing practices and beliefs. Like
pregnancy, childbirth itself is a physiological process and experience that is
complexly interwoven with a wide range of cultural understandings.
Furthermore, the social and cultural norms surrounding birth are closely
bound up with beliefs about what can best facilitate a healthy outcome for
both mother and infant, about what the threats to both are, and about
how best to promote the emergence of this new person to be (cf DeLoache
and Gottlieb 2000b). All inform the wide diversity of how personhood at
the beginnings of life is understood.
It also highlights the extent to which medicalised forms of childbirth,
in a hospital setting isolated from the everyday flow of household life and
hidden from view, are not typical in the breadth and depth of history of
human experience. A related theme, and one that will be familiar from
Chap. 2, is the subtle ways in which technology shapes debates over per-
sonhood. So for instance, in cultural settings that are highly reliant on
biomedicalised birthing practices, medical technologies themselves can
become tightly bound up in demarcating personhood. Such technologies
have made possible the extension backwards in time to earlier and earlier
moments of what Wendy James (2000) terms “recognition” and defini-
tion of the person, such as “preemies” in intensive care (Weiner 2009),
and concerns over the “viability” of premature infants (Christoffersen-
Deb 2012). These are concepts that I will consider more closely in this
chapter. The advent and increasingly global spread of biomedicine has also
brought significant shifts in birthing practices, ones that are often both
incorporated into local orders of meaning, but which can also disrupt and
rewrite them. Birth is thus one of those moments when competing
assumptions around personhood come sharply into focus, both within but
also amongst various cultural settings.
So too are the multitude of cross-cultural practices required to shape
neonates into people once they have been born. In Chap. 2, I drew from
Conklin and Morgan (1996) on Wari’ perspectives on conception, and
their work is useful again here to illustrate how it is that neonates are not
people automatically by virtue of birth. As Conklin and Morgan write,
Wari’ distinguish between biological birth and social birth, recognising
“the fetus as a potential person and call[ing] it pije, the term used for all
children until adolescence. Although they consider fetuses to be sentient,
PERSONHOOD, BIRTH, BABIES, AND CHILDREN 59
socially produced, and endowed with relational capacities, this does not
automatically confer personhood on either the fetus or the newborn.
Social birth is enacted by a series of socializing actions” including bathing
the newborn, putting red annatto body paint on the newborn, and breast-
feeding the newborn (1996, 678). As they go on to explain, “with this
first exchange of nurturance outside the womb, the newborn is recognised
as a person, a member of its kin group and of Wari’ society” (1996, 678)
but not before. The processes of social birth can have a long duration
cross-culturally, far exceeding the experience of biological birth, extending
in some instances through adolescence and in others until the achieve-
ment of grandparenthood (Aijmer 1992, 7).
That is to say, the significance of social practices and processes for
bestowing personhood in this example from Wari’ society is not uncom-
mon cross-culturally. As babies become children and eventually adults,
practices including feeding, eating together, and naming are often criti-
cally important sites for transforming the potential person into a socially
recognised reality. In this chapter, I consider the roles of feeding and of
naming in closer detail in the attribution of personhood. But it is worth
pointing out too that cross-cultural understandings of what a child is and
what sort of personhood children might embody also vary substantially.
This is the focus of the second half of this chapter where I consider if chil-
dren are people; how disability in childhood can put at risk the social attri-
bution of full personhood and the work of mothers to counteract that; and
how cultural systems with a belief in reincarnation unsettle more linear,
developmental models of personhood. Emerging from these examples are
insights into how whilst childhood in Western thought is generally based
on assumptions of developmental stages, biological determinism, and
calendrical time, these are culturally bound concepts and not universal
truths.
I am aware that the structuring device I have chosen to use for dividing
Chap. 2 (conception and pregnancy) and Chap. 3 (birth and childhood)
is premised on a highly Western notion of biological birth being a “natu-
ral” divider between peri- and post-natal lives. Trying to neatly contain
and divide infancy from childhood is equally culturally biased. As will be
evident from Chap. 2, physiological birth itself can be a fairly arbitrary
marker in the attribution of personhood. This is because sociality and
relatedness spills over onto both sides of that imagined boundary of peri-
and post-natal existence. So, whilst birth is indeed the locus in many cul-
tural settings for significant ritual elaboration around personhood, it is
60 C. DEGNEN
also not always the clearest point of division when discussing and imagin-
ing the beginnings of the person. The concept of “viability” in highly
medicalised maternity unit settings for instance, mentioned above, is a
discourse predicated on a series of interconnected practices and technolo-
gies that are not just about newborns, but also include foetuses, embryos,
and pregnancy loss. All of these factors are then imbricated in determining
personhood in the management of birth in the United States
(Christoffersen-Deb 2012). The supposed certainty then about the deter-
minative role of biology in recognising personhood becomes a little less
certain, and the significance of social and cultural elements a little more
evident. I seek however in both Chaps. 2 and 3 to pick away at this bound-
ary, and to reveal the cultural peculiarity of it, including the conflation in
Western thought of social birth and biological birth, and the historically
contingent notion of childhood that we might assume is universal, but
which is certainly not.
Birthing and Becoming: Social, Biological, Spiritual

Unless labour starts during the night and the mother has no time to reach
the kitchen area, births still take place near the hearth…Huaorani women
give birth in an old hammock especially hung near the hearth for this pur-
pose. The middle cord is pulled out when labour pains finally appear. The
hammock, now split in two halves in the middle, allows the newborn to pass
right through the hole onto large leaves on the ground. The expectant
father helps his wife during labour by massaging her back. He applies sting-
ing nettles (huento, a common analgesic) on her stomach, back and temples.
He may reach into his wife’s body if there is a difficulty, as when, for instance,
the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck. He also knows how
to assist her in breech deliveries. The father cuts the umbilical cord with a
sharp instrument (usually a knife-shaped piece of bamboo), wraps the pla-
centa in the large leaves on which the baby was born, and buries the bundle
with the afterbirth in the nearby forest…A young husband is aided in all
these tasks by his mother-in-law…until he acquires sufficient knowledge and
experience. He might in fact do no more than observe her during the birth
of first child. But by the third or fourth delivery roles are reversed: the pro-
spective father is in charge; his wife’s mother might not even be present. The
other men of the longhouse…if they have not deserted the communal
dwelling, keep aloof from other co-residents and move about inconspicu-
ously. Today, few Huaorani still live in longhouses, but births have remained
communal events in which a woman’s close female kin (her grandmother,
mother, classificatory mothers and sisters) actively participate, along with

her husband and the young children who are commonly associated with her
household. (Rival 1998, 623–4)
This description of childbirth practices amongst Huaorani people of

Amazonian Ecuador brings to light several highly instructive points of
contrast to those many readers will be more familiar with, namely medi-
calised hospital birth in most contemporary Western settings. This includes
for instance how Rival demonstrates the role of knowledge transmission
from the mothers of birthing women to their husbands, so that over time,
the husband comes to be a competent and confident midwife. The hus-
band also has a very active role in assisting the woman giving birth. He is
present and involved not only as a birth “supporter”, but as a skilled par-
ticipant. This is a cultural setting whereby childbirth is not hidden away in
a clinic or hospital but instead occurs in the domestic space; it is further-
more one in which a number of close kin, including children, are included
and present in the birthing space. Many other descriptions of the wide
spectrum of cross-cultural birth practices exist in the ethnographic litera-
ture, and consideration of them invariably highlights the extent to which
the hospital settings of most contemporary American and British births,
for instance, are not representative of the wide spectrum of human experi-
ence. Instead, childbirth practices and beliefs vary significantly in regard to
a range of factors. This includes who attends the birth and who is prohib-
ited from attending, how the baby is delivered (onto the ground, in water,
on a bed), what the positions used during labour are, how the placenta
and the umbilical cord are treated, the location deemed appropriate for
childbirth, and whether or not the birthing mother has a period of con-
finement after the birth (DeLoache and Gottlieb 2000a, b).
Brigette Jordan’s Birth in Four Cultures (1983) is a landmark text
exploring cross-cultural variation in birth practices. She compares the
experiences and practices of birthing amongst Maya of the Yucatan, in
Sweden, in the Netherlands, and in America. She articulates a perspective
on birth that attends to its social and cultural aspects, exploring how this
intersects with the physiology of birth. She argues that whilst the physio-
logical processes of birth are shared ones, cultures have different norms for
appropriate behaviour during birth including the expression of pain, posi-
tion for birthing, location for births, and who should be present at the
birth (see also Aijmer 1992). Jordan attends to the ways in which varying
systems of medical knowledge and of technologies are relied upon in these
62 C. DEGNEN
four birth systems. She draws attention to how each system emphasises
different ways of doing birth which is premised in turn on different ways
of conceptualising birth itself. Jordan terms this a biosocial approach,
namely, one that recognises how the socio-cultural framing of parturition
shapes birth experiences.
Jordan argues that birth is framed in four distinct ways across her four
fieldsites. This ranges from birth as a medical procedure in the United
States, to as a natural process in the Netherlands, to as a normal part of
family life in the Yucutan, to as an intensely personal, fulfilling achieve-
ment in Sweden (1983, 34). Because of these different understandings,
what is appropriate and normative in one context might make little sense
in another. An example she gives is whether older children visit their new-
born sibling and mother after birth. The answer in the United States has
been “no” on the basis of medical grounds; “absolutely” in the Netherlands
and in Sweden on the basis of supporting family interactions; and met
quizzically in the Yucutan “since the woman never leaves her everyday
environment to which older children simply return after the birth” (1983,
34). Another example is the use of medication. In the Netherlands for
instance, an emphasis on natural child birth means that drugs used regu-
larly in the United States are not part of the language of birth in the
Netherlands.
Pain relief is an intriguing case study here as it highlights the wider
points Jordan makes about biosocial dynamics of birth experiences. Jordan
examines “what sort of an object pain becomes in different systems”, not-
ing that in some birthing systems pain is emphasised and much more vis-
ible such as in the United States, and in others, it is discounted and not
nearly as evident such as in the Netherlands (1983, 36). She says that
whilst the American system regularly employs pain relief medication, the
decision-making process about using these pharmaceuticals is under the
control of the medical professionals and not the labouring woman herself.
Consequently, “the woman’s…task is to convince her attendant of her
need for relief” (1983, 36) and the “required display of that need…adds
to the comparatively high level of noise and hysteria in American obstetric
wards” (1983, 37). In contrast are Swedish women. They also have pain
relief available to them, but they do not have to convince their medical
attendant to dispense these drugs to them: “Swedish women are informed
about what kinds of medication are available, the conditions under which
they are not advisable, and the known and possible side effects on the
baby. The decision of what to have, if anything, and when, is theirs”
(1983, 37). Jordan argues that this empowered decision-making results in

the routine use of pain relief medication, but that “the atmosphere is one
of quiet, intense concentration rather than vocal panic and despair” (1983,
37). Finally, for Mayan women in the Yucutan, “some pain is an expected
part of birth…pain appears in the stories women tell about their own birth
experiences, but the very telling also makes clear that the laboring wom-
an’s distress is normal and that her suffering will pass” (1983, 37), another
cultural frame for contextualising the physiology of birth that results in yet
another experience of the birth dynamic.
By building up multiple points of comparisons in birth practices across
these four sites, Jordan demonstrates the complex convergence between
culture and the physiology of labouring women, or how the social and the
biological intersect. But also of keen interest for the purposes of this vol-
ume is how these cultural practices of birth intertwine with notions of the
constitution of the person. An illustrative example of this comes from
Rival’s research that I introduced above. Rival recounts that Huaorani
often recognise more than one father: there is the “official father”, the
man who lives with the mother of the child, and who is the birth partner.
But “any man who has contributed semen” to the pregnancy is also under-
stood to have made a contribution to the forming of the child by helping
to create it. This is publically acknowledged via practices such as the cou-
vade whereby restrictions to diet and activity are observed by expectant
parents (1998, 622–3; 624–5). Thus, whilst it is only the official father
who is involved in the actual birth process, “more than one father can be
socially recognized” and observe couvade practices as an indication of this
(Rival 1998, 624). And so, how the neonate is understood to be related,
and to whom she or he is bound in kinship, is not a solely biological
calculation.
But more can be said about the relationship between the biological
moment of birth and the social attribution of personhood. As I describe
above, the processes used to confirm social birth of the neonate are often
distinct from physiological birth, though both are often markedly socially
significant. But what some ethnographic examples also demonstrate is
how insignificant birth can be altogether for “‘creating’ the social person”
and that birth is not universally “the prime mechanism through which the
person enters the moral world, or becomes defined socially” (Bloch 1992,
72). Maurice Bloch’s essay on Zafimaniry houses and marriage in eastern
Madagascar clearly illustrates this point. In it he demonstrates the key
significance of marriage and house creation that a couple embark on to
64 C. DEGNEN
confirm their relation. Zafimaniry’s understandings of birth are in turn a

pillar of this relation, but not because it marks the arrival of a “new per-
son”. As Bloch writes, “the child that is born is not born a social/moral
being…its birth is an essential part of the process by which its parents
become such beings, since it is a part of their marriage and house” (1992,
79). That is to say, “the embryo and the infant are not seen as social
beings” for “the child is only a potential person” (1992, 84). In other
words, in a Zafimaniry worldview the focus is on how childbirth confirms
the personhood of the parents and the processual realisation of their mar-
riage, not the personhood of the neonate. This incipient personhood of
the newborn can only be fully recognised upon successfully completing
the process of marriage oneself, which entails becoming a parent. This
point is underlined by Bloch when he describes the way in which those
Zafimaniry adults who are unable to have children (and thus cannot be
fully married) are treated socially in ways that mark “their total social and
moral failure” and are not seen as fully social beings themselves (1992,
85). As these examples reveal, the biological and the social moment of
birth can thus converge (and diverge) in quite distinct ways in the forma-
tion and attribution of personhood, and in moments of the life course.
In some cases, however, it is neither biological nor social considerations
that are the most evident with infants at birth, but instead spiritual ones.
For instance, consider Marissa Diener’s observation from her work in Bali
whereby “for their first 210 days (a full year in our ritual calendar), chil-
dren are divine” and newborns are spoken to “in honorific terms befitting
a newly arrived god” (2000, 102). This is because a newborn is “closer to
the world of the gods than to the human world”, and is understood to
have “just arrived from heaven…a celestial being” (2000, 105). A parallel
example comes from Alma Gottlieb, writing about Beng people of Cote
d’Ivoire, that I introduced in Chap. 1. Gottlieb recounts the intensely
spiritual lives that Beng infants are understood to lead, so much so that
“the younger [the infant is]… the more thoroughly spiritual their exis-
tence is said to be” (1998, 122). Gottlieb explains how this is linked to
Beng reincarnation beliefs whereby every baby is understood to be a rein-
carnated ancestor. At death, all Beng souls travel to a place called wrugbe,
a spirit village. After a variable period of time, souls are reborn into human
existence as infants. In Beng thought neonates have not fully emerged
from wrugbe until their umbilical cord falls off. Indeed, as Gottlieb writes,
the infant is also not recognised as a person until this occurs. This means
that if the newborn dies in the days following birth and before the cord
falls off, “there is no funeral…in this case the infant’s passing is not
conceived as a death, just a return in bodily form to the space that the
infant was still psychically inhabiting” in wrugbe (1998, 124). Gottlieb
notes that Beng women use herbs to dry out the moisture in the infants’
umbilical stumps, helping it to drop off and in turn “allowing the infant to
begin its spiritual journey from wrugbe to this life” by accelerating the
process (1998, 124). Evident here then is how childcare practices are
closely linked to ideas of the person. That is to say, birthing practices and
“childrearing practices and beliefs reflect local conceptions of how the
world is and how the child should be readied for living in it” as “all child
rearing is based on beliefs about what makes life manageable, safe, and
fertile for the spirit” (Bruner 2000, xi; xii) with understandings of person-
hood a key consideration running throughout.
Whilst the day that the umbilical cord stump drops off is celebrated by
Beng as a deeply significant moment marking the infant’s initial emer-
gence from wrugbe, departing that spiritual realm is also understood to be
a process that takes place over a number of years (1998, 124). Gottlieb
notes a series of rituals carried out to mark the beginning of this transfor-
mation including the regular administration of enemas to infants and chil-
dren, the wearing of a grass necklace, and the piercing (for girls) of the
ears, thus “beginning a series of ‘civilizing’ processes inaugurating the
baby’s entry into ‘this life’” (1998, 124) from the spiritual world. But
whilst these mark the beginning of a process of emergence of infants from
wrugbe, the infant is understood as still significantly connected to that
other world for some time. Babies and toddlers lead parallel lives in wrugbe
to their lives in this world (1998, 127). This includes having wrugbe par-
ents who monitor the parenting of the human adults in this world and
who will “snatch” the baby back to wrugbe to raise it themselves until a
better couple are able to serve as parents if the current parents are not
treating the baby properly (1998, 127). Babies are also understood to at
times be “homesick” for their lives in wrugbe, which is made manifest
when infants are unhappy in this world for no apparent reason; in situa-
tions like these, diviners are required to serve as intermediaries between
ancestors and the living in order to resolve whatever is troubling the infant
(1998, 125). Gottlieb suggests that the subsequent instructions from
diviner to parents “may serve to remind parents that the infant, while
seemingly helpless and unable to communicate, was recently living a full
life elsewhere and thus needs to be respected as a fellow person rather than
being viewed as a suffering, wordless creature” (1998, 126). Thus, in
66 C. DEGNEN
Beng thought, newborns are the most spiritually attuned members of the
social world, having only just left wrugbe, a slow process that will require
a number of years to complete. Consequently, the nature of their person-
hood and what they are capable of in comparison with adults is one firmly
imbricated with the world of the spirits that they have just departed in
order to be born into this one.
In other contexts, such as Rita Astuti’s work amongst Vezo people in
Western Madagascar, newly born babies are described as so “incomplete”,
“malleable”, “vulnerable”, and “fused with their mothers” that they are
arguably “not born human” but instead have a “less-than-human nature”
(1998, 35). Vezo newborns and post-partum mothers spend the first
number of weeks in close physical proximity in semi-seclusion and warmly
bundled together, reinforcing this notion of them “fused” together and
with the boundaries between them blurred (1998, 35). Astuti explains
that in infancy, a baby is understood to be “so susceptible to outside influ-
ences that its face will change completely if left alone for even a few min-
utes. My Vezo friends could hardly believe that Europeans keep their
babies in cots, soon after the birth, often in separate rooms; with Vezo
babies, I was warned this would just be impossible” due to the threat of
spirits that might pass by and trouble it, something that is of concern for
a couple months after birth (1998, 36). As her Vezo interlocutors explained
to her, “the problem is that if the baby is left alone, any passing angatse
[spirit] will be able to get hold of it…which will result in a change of fea-
tures. Angatse are able to reshape the face of an unprotected baby because
babies are still extremely malleable and plastic,” a feature that lessens with
time (1998, 36). As she concludes, and echoing Bloch’s point above, Vezo
perceives a
relative insignificance of birth in the making of full human beings…birth is

a relatively unimportant event for ‘creating’ the social person (Bloch 1993,
120). [W]hat is born among the Vezo is merely a potential person, still
closely fused with its mother, in need of constant protection from outside
influences, still wholly pliable…The significant point is that everyone’s
attention, among the Vezo…is focused on this crucial process of becoming,
rather than on the somewhat incidental moment of birth. (1998, 37)
In a paralleled fashion, Conklin and Morgan describe how Wari’ moth-

ers in Brazilian Amazonia and their newly born infants live together for
the first six weeks or so of the baby’s life in seclusion within the home.
This is so that the baby’s blood can be built up via nursing on its mother’s
breast milk; additionally, “in this liminal period, the sense that newborns
are still in the process of coming into social being is conveyed by naming
practices. Wari’ babies traditionally do not receive a personal name until
they are about six weeks old. Until then…babies of both sexes are called
arawet, which translates literally as ‘still being made’” (1996, 672). Such
practices are lodged in the highly social processes of building Wari’ bodies
and Wari’ personhood, as discussed in Chap. 2. In the womb, this is
achieved via maternal blood and paternal semen. After birth, it is contin-
ued via breastfeeding by the mother and via the provision of blood-
building meats to the mother by the father so that the mother can produce
this nourishing breast milk (Conklin and Morgan 1996, 673).
Vilaça, also writing in an Amazonian context, and drawing on material
from several Amazonian groups, argues that “the new-born is made
human by means of the production of its body as a human body in contra-
position to animal bodies” (2002, 347). She examines how it is that par-
ents being human is not a guarantee that their neonate will be born human
(2002, 349). As she explains,
according to Gow (1997, 48), at the moment of birth the Piro baby is
inspected to decide whether it is human or not: it could be a fish, tortoise,
or other animal. Among the Piaroa, the baby is called ‘the young of the
animals’ (Overing pers. comm.). Among some groups… the body of the
child is literally moulded with the hands after birth, in this way acquiring
human form. According to Fausto (pers. comm.), the Parakanã explain that
the moulding of the baby’s body has the aim of differentiating it from the
bodies of animals. (Vilaça 2002, 349)
Vilaça continues saying that “all of infancy…[is] particularly marked as

highly susceptible, very often being understood to involve the possible
loss of a properly human identity” which in turn is due to how “humanity
is conceived of as a position, essentially transitory, which is continuously
produced out of a wide universe of subjectivities that includes animals”
(2002, 349). Infants are thus susceptible and vulnerable to change, to
transformation. Whilst some of these themes will become more under-
standable in light of material discussed in Chap. 5 on perspectivism and
the concept of one culture but many natures (“multinaturalism” instead of
“multiculturalism”), for our purposes here in this chapter the key is to
consider what it is that may be (or may not be) guaranteed by virtue of
birth.
68 C. DEGNEN
In the case of the Amazonian material explored by Vilaça, what is not

guaranteed by birth to human parents is that the child is itself
human. Drawing from it, Vilaça argues that there are multiple natures pos-
sible that might emerge at birth. The task for human parents is to shore up
the neonate as their form of nature via the particular bodily form of the
parents (and not of jaguars or peccaries, for instance) (2002, 359–60). “By
observing taboos, the parents avoid this kind of symbiosis while they finish
making the child’s body similar to their own. This fabrication occurs espe-
cially through a commensality mediated by the mother’s milk and by the
circulation of substances directly between their bodies” (Vilaça 2002,
357). Similar concerns around the less-than-human nature of neonates,
their malleability and thus vulnerability to angatse that can reshape their
facial features is evident amongst Vezo; and Vilaça also draws on a parallel
example from Lévy-Bruhl’s work in northern Nigeria (Lévy-Bruhl 1966
[1927]: 45 in Vilaça 2002, 347–8). Famously in the anthropological lit-
erature, unusual forms of birth such as twinship can also generate concern
around the human nature and personhood of the neonate, with Evans-
Pritchard recounting Nuer analogies between twins and birds (1956,
128–33) and many authors documenting the extraordinary powers attrib-
uted to twins, particularly in African contexts (Renne and Bastian 2001)
such as amongst Mawri peoles in Niger (Masquelier 2001), Ndembu in
Zambia (Turner 1969), and the Cameroon Grassfields (Diduk 2001).
Lynn Morgan, writing in 1997 about her work in the rural Ecuadorian
Andes, also draws out thematics of fluidity and susceptibility from birth.
As explained in Chap. 2, Morgan describes how both neonates and foe-
tuses were described to her in “terms that indicated their unfinished qual-
ity: tierno”, a word that means young, and is used also for unripened or
still green fruit, verbal gestures that underlined the cultural consensus of
non-fixity of the very young (1997, 342). Morgan recounts how the bod-
ies, spirits, and souls of neonates are not fixed or finished, and as such,
require various practices to affirm and fix them. This includes how moth-
ers “should carefully and frequently mold and shape” the face, nose, head,
shoulders, and legs of their newborns in order “to make them assume the
desired shape” (1997, 343). The plasticity of babies’ physical form is par-
alleled in the way in which the souls of newborns “are not yet firmly teth-
ered to the social world. Babies are described as particularly vulnerable to
collective social and supernatural forces that older children are toughened
against. For example, babies are susceptible to fright (susto), evil eye (mal
ojo), dew, night air, rainbows, inauspicious hours (mala hora), and
traditionally dangerous places such as ravines” and as such “biological

birth [is a] necessary but insufficient condition for granting personhood”
(1997, 343). Here then we see ample evidence of both the complex inter-
relatedness of biological and social aspects of personhood, but also the
ways in which childcare practices and beliefs are closely bound to notions
of the person, threats to realising that potentiality, and responsibilities of
their carers in the face of those threats.
Noga Weiner, who carried out fieldwork in an Israeli neonatal intensive
care unit treating premature and sick neonates, is also focused on the
question of whether or not the moment of biological birth “coincide(s)
with the social conferring of personhood on the newborn” (2009, 320).
She notes the distinction made in the anthropological literature, and
which I describe above, between biological birth and social birth. As this
literature has documented, personhood is not necessarily attributed at the
moment of birth. Rather, it can be established gradually with the social
recognition of the neonate taking time to congeal. In contrast to this are
said to be “Western industrialized societies, where the biological act of
birth itself is imbued with social significance, marked by the instant con-
ferral of legal personhood on infants born alive (Morgan 1992, 30)”
(2009, 321). Weiner’s research, however, in a highly technologised and
medicalised Israeli neonatal ICU demonstrates a more nuanced account of
the timings of attribution and recognition of personhood. She is working
in a setting where premature and critically ill newborns receive extensive
medical care. Rather than humanness, subjectivity, and personhood being
confirmed and irreversible from the moment of biological birth in this set-
ting, Weiner shows instead how these categories are “constantly negoti-
ated and therefore tentative and reversible; even after birth human
subjectivity is neither given nor is it spontaneously emerging” (2009,
322). These tentative and reversible characteristics evident in the Israeli
neonatal ICU thus do not align with more generalised assumptions in
Western thought around the “instant conferral” of personhood at birth.
The richness of Weiner’s data in this particular setting at the beginnings of
life (and also sadly for some, their endings) calls attention to the complex-
ity of supposed certainties about how and when personhood is attributed
in technologically advanced Western settings.
Weiner’s findings are complimented by those of Astrid Christoffersen-
Deb (2012). Working with obstetric clinicians and scientists in Boston,
Massachusetts, Christoffersen-Deb explores how the “viability” of the
not-yet-born is determined, as well as “how viability is a structuring
70 C. DEGNEN
concern in the management of birth and the recognition of the person”

(2012, 576) in this setting. Foetal viability refers to a complex array of
categorisation by which the not-yet-born are determined to have a chance
of survival outside the womb. As Christoffersen-Deb shows, this is a cat-
egory that is made, not given, and “defin[ing] what kind of life ‘counts’ as
viable” involves an intricate orchestration of “calculations, rules and regu-
lations and myriad practices” (2012, 576). This includes worries over
medical liability and also the marker of 24 weeks of gestation whereby the
unborn foetus is conceptualised as transforming from “previable” to “via-
ble” (2012, 575). In distinction from the “legal and biomedical under-
standing of viability” which define it in absolute terms, she explores the
dilemmas and ambiguities that present themselves to clinicians and parents
experiencing “untimely births” (2012, 584). As she demonstrates, “the
recognition of the viable fetus brings to life conditional persons that blur
the distinction of born, and not-yet-born…designating a fetus viable is a
‘political-moral’ identification” (2012, 588–89; emphasis original).
Christoffersen-Deb concludes that the determination of viability thus also
creates or affirms a certain form of prenatal subjectivity, and the possibility
of an emergent notion of a “right to be born” as well as “that an entire
medical system will be beholden to fulfilling that right” (2012, 589). But
she also powerfully contrasts this emergent sense with a different political-
moral realm, namely a reminder of the structural inequalities that persist
globally whereby parents and clinicians in Boston are immersed in these
finely drawn lines between previability and viability—and the richly
endowed medical infrastructure that makes this possible—and her first-
hand experiences of working in public hospitals in western Kenya. Here,
as in many other parts of the world, it is “high rates of preventable mater-
nal moralities, stillborn infants and dead newborns [who] are potent
reminders of the fact that the protection of life that viability implies leaves
behind those entities that have…been systematically denied rights” (2012,
589). Neonatal and foetal personhood, and who counts as a person, is
thus deeply bound up in not just cultural contexts of meaning, but as this
important example reminds us, in the geopolitics of inequality and injus-
tice. Her observations bring to mind Kaufman and Morgan’s (2005, 322)
point in the conclusion to Chap. 2 over the politics of reproduction and
who lives and who dies, and the fields of power that these questions are
embedded in.
Childhood: Are Children People?

Whilst it may be reassuring when writing and reading this chapter to be
able to label this sub-section “childhood”, and thus neatly differentiate it
from “birth” and “infancy”, this is of course a deeply cultural structuring
device. Indeed, the implication of moving linearly through the stages of
life to now explore a topic called childhood as one distinct from birth and
infancy is entirely a culture-bound notion. The categories of “neonate”,
“infant”, “toddler”, and “child” may appear transparently self-evident,
but how they are defined and characterised cross-culturally is often any-
thing but (Gottlieb 2000, 122). What a child is understood to be and how
that category of personhood is defined varies markedly amongst cultures.
The only point upon which there seems to be some general agreement is
that children are not usually considered adults (Fechter 2014, 150),
although even this is something that has been debated in light of cross-
cultural and historical evidence. This sub-section bears such porousness of
boundaries in mind, and explores some of the ways in which anthropolo-
gists have explored personhood in childhood, as variable as these catego-
ries are.
The measures used to demarcate childhood in Western thought are by
and large premised on the concept of developmental stages, grounded in
discourses of developmental psychology (A. James 2007: 263; see also
LeVine 2007). Gottlieb (2000, 123) explains how from infancy onwards,
commonplace Western expectations of childhood are based on an assump-
tion of biological determinism and on calendrical time. That is to say,
much like the notions of conception and pregnancy discussed in Chap. 2
which are perceived in Western thought as straightforwardly biological
process of development that, once started, continue of their own accord,
there is also an underlying expectation that infants inevitably transform
into children by passing through fairly set and predictable stages.
Developmental psychology discourses assume benchmarks of achievement
by chronological age which in turn are used to describe categories of the
life course—infancy is from birth to two years of age, followed by toddler-
hood, and so on (Gottlieb 2000, 122). Conversely, individuals who do
not “achieve” these developmental markers present cause for concern and
scrutiny. As I will consider in more detail a little later on in this chapter via
the work of Gail Landsman, such scrutiny of developmental markers can
come to jeopardise the extent to which personhood is granted or
withheld.
72 C. DEGNEN
This developmental model is however in contra-distinction to many

other cultural understandings of childhood which are based instead on,
for instance, context, activity, or the acquisition of skills. Gottlieb (2000)
gives an example from Lahu of southwest China (Du 2002) who assert
“that children inhabit the ‘red-and-naked’ stage (which we might translate
loosely as ‘infancy’) until they can walk confidently and, more importantly,
speak with some degree of self-expression. But the Lahu acknowledge that
this may occur at different times in different children and resist specifying
a set duration of the ‘red-and-naked’ stage” (2000, 123). That is to say, in
the Lahu context, it is not calendar time that defines this phase of the life
course for all children in the same way; instead childhood is described as a
series of achievements which individuals may pass through at a different
pace. Indeed, as Heather Montgomery has argued, there is no universal
understanding of the parameters of childhood: “children may be recog-
nized as children long before birth, or sometime afterward. They may still
be considered a child until after initiation, marriage, or indeed until their
own parents die” (2009, 3). In the face of such diversity, what is key is that
childhood and “the child” are concepts that can only be defined within
their cultural context (Montgomery 2009, 3).
So, evident in the material above is how the edges and boundaries of
childhood are interpreted in different ways cross-culturally. But also of
great interest to me is what those boundaries are understood to contain.
That is to say, what are various cultural understandings of “child”? What
kind of a person is a “child”? Is a child a person at all? Whilst contempo-
rary Western understandings of childhood have been characterised as a
period of innocence, vulnerability, and one requiring the protection of
adults (Ariès 1962), this “special, privileged stage in human development
is…of fairly recent currency” (Scheper-Hughes and Sargent 1998, 26).
Ariès, drawing on an analysis of the dearth of images of childhood in
medieval art, argues that in pronounced contrast to contemporary Western
understandings of the nature of childhood, medieval and pre-modern
Western representations of the child are that of “a miniature adult…
endowed with the intentionality, passions, wishes, and malevolence of big
people” (Scheper-Hughes and Sargent 1998, 26), and uses this to point
to the social constructedness and historical and political contingency of
the notion of childhood (James and James 2004, 12–13). What also
emerges from examining the social construction of childhood is how it is
that personhood is made and attributed.
David Lancy explores in greater detail contemporary Western ideals of

childhood. He argues that it conceptualises children as “cherubs”, namely
“precious, innocent, and preternaturally cute” people who are not adult
(2015, xii). He says that this ideal is embedded in a larger social arrange-
ment that he terms a “neontocracy” whereby children are positioned at
the top of the social structure and supported by a vast array of institutions,
corporations, technologies, and ideologies that exist solely to meet their
(and their parents) needs and desires, including “pre-schools, paediatri-
cians, Barney, Toys ‘R’ Us, Baby Gap, Dr Spock, neonatal medicine, baby-
sitters, Gerber’s, playgrounds, Disney” (2015, 3).1 He contrasts this
model with arrangements in other societies, and especially in agrarian soci-
eties, which he terms “gerontocracies”. In these systems, children are not
at the pinnacle but rather at the very bottom of the social hierarchy.
Adolescents, adults, elders, and ancestors all rank significantly above them,
and social value is attributed to the oldest members.
Lancy elaborates in broad brush strokes on differences between geron-
tocracies and neontocracies in terms of the relative value they attribute to
children: “in a gerontocracy, children may be devalued, seen largely as a
liability until they reach an age when they become useful”, whereas in a
neontocracy “children are accorded a great deal of social capital – from
conception in some quarters – and are under little or no obligation to pay
back the investment made in them. Their account is always in the black”
(2015, 12). Lancy points out that historically on the spectrum of human
social arrangements, gerontocracies dominate; neontocracies are much
rarer—he goes as far as calling contemporary Western society unique in
this regard (2015, 12). He notes too how in Western societies, there is an
observable shift in the ways in which this neontocratic sheltering and nur-
turing of children seems to be moving upwards: people in their twenties
are not yet leaving home when in previous generations they would have
already established their own households, married, and had children by
the same age (Lancy 2015, 27). This is arguably a temporal expansion at
the ends of childhood that mirrors the material in Chap. 2, documenting
the earlier and earlier beginnings of the person before birth. But also evi-
dent in this model of the “cherub” is the attribution of a highly valued
social person to whom desires, needs, and rights are attributed by virtue of
birth.
In marked contrast to this neontocracy model with its children concep-
tualised as precious cherubic persons, Lancy (2015) proposes another
broad concept of the child in various societies: children as “chattel”. By
74 C. DEGNEN
this he means views on children as “desired but pragmatically commodi-

fied” members of the household who make a substantial contribution to
subsistence level labour of the family, to domestic work, and to childcare
for younger siblings (2015, 3; 12). In such societies, a child’s ability to
contribute to the household economy is described by Lancy as “the impri-
matur of personhood” (2015, 56). The growing ability to work thus
becomes a key component of transitioning from the “invisible non-
personhood” of infancy to developing into a contributor to the family
economy (Lancy and Grove, 2011). Lancy argues that an understanding
of children as chattel, having to “work for their keep” (2015, 13), means
that they are not perceived as having an inherent value, compared to that
of the cherubic figure in neontocracies (2015, 114). But citing the work
of historian Viviana Zelizer (1985), he also identifies significant shifts over
the past one hundred years that have occurred which “in Europe, North
America, and East Asia, transformed children from future farmers or fac-
tory workers – adding their critical bit to the household economy – to
economically costly but emotionally priceless cherubs” (2015, 26). Ideal
notions of childhood have thus transformed in these societies from chil-
dren being producers to consumers—though in ways certainly inflected by
class and gender—and protecting children “from the workplace and from
the necessity to earn money to support a family” is now a cultural ideal if
not always a full reality (Montgomery 2009, 67).
This historical context is an important nuance and whilst Lancy’s gen-
eralisations are useful for drawing out a number of insightful points about
broad categories of the concept of child, its relation to personhood, and
historical transformations, his model also runs the danger of overly pre-
scribing “types” and categories of societies. Heather Montgomery (2009)
for instance helps us understand an importance nuance in this picture.
Whilst she argues that indeed there are many contemporary and historical
examples of how children are understood as “an economic investment
with a specific return, whether this is that they should go to work as soon
as they are able to contribute to the family, or whether, in the longer term,
they are expected to look after parents in their old age…guaranteeing a
safety net for the elderly” (2009, 67), that this also is something to treat
with caution. She is careful to point out that interpreting children only as
a source of income or of long-term returns, or to set up “a false dichotomy
between Western and non-Western societies where children in the former
are valued for sentimental reasons and in the latter for economic ones” is
problematic for it may inadvertently mask the affective connections
between parents and children in these societies as well as the multiple

reasons for which people wish to become parents cross-culturally
(2009, 69).
Whilst economic contribution has been a point of discussion in the lit-
erature on childhood and achieving personhood, other models place the
emphasis on the acquisition of social competencies for marking person-
hood. An example of this comes from Yasmine Musharbash’s (2011) work
amongst Warlpiri people in a community called Yuendumu, located in the
Alice Springs region of Australia. She explores practices of child socialisa-
tion and the processes of becoming and unbecoming a Warlpiri person.
Examining child-rearing practices and the ways in which children become
socialised has been fruitful terrain over many decades in anthropology
(Montgomery 2009, 26–34), a tradition Musharbash contributes to by
examining a key Warlpiri concept, warungka. This is a term that “encom-
passes a range of meanings, including deaf, crazy, forgetful, mindless,
unconscious, intoxicated and irate” but which is also used to identify “the
state of being of…children from their conception until they become social
persons”(2011, 63). Warungka as a condition or state is positioned in
contrast to attribution of full adult personhood, and children are under-
stood as needing to be “pulled out of” this state of warungka. Infancy is
characterised as being a “state of not knowing” and a phase in which the
child “is not a full social being yet, in need to be taught” (2011, 66).
Musharbash explains that an individual incrementally gains social knowl-
edge as they move through the life course, and “childhood is the process
of slowly becoming a (knowing) person” (2011, 66).
Additionally, whilst some aspects of Warlpiri personhood are immuta-
ble, granted as they are by “spirit forces”, others aspects are pliable and
forged through socialisation and take time to acquire (2011, 67).
Immutable characteristics include gender, personality, and physical fea-
tures; the latter includes “knowledge about the social world” which can
only be learned from others (2011, 67–8). Imparting knowledge about
the social world to young Warlpiri children is the responsibility of their
kin, and in so doing, to pull them out of the state of warungka and into a
state of full personhood. Musharbash describes how key aspects of this
knowledge includes “creating a solid understanding of relationships
between people” and “imparting the ground rules of engaging in social
life within the cornerstones of autonomy and relatedness, ‘being boss’ for
oneself and looking after others” (2011, 68, 69). For instance, children
are from birth told “every day, from morning till night” how they are
76 C. DEGNEN
related to the people around them, are taught the appropriate forms of
comportment entailed by these kin relations, and receive fulsome praise
for doing this correctly (2011, 72). Also of great significance for Warlpiri
in building knowledge and child socialisation is valorising eye contact and
the responsibility of those around the child in fostering this:
Eye contact is thought of as an indicator of the child’s will to engage in

social interaction, an attempt requiring instant affirmation: a baby or young
child who makes eye contact with a person is immediately engaged with
through talk and physical contact. Warlpiri people are very good at picking
up on this; I am not. Statements such as ‘Napurrurla, Micky is looking at
you’, are often levelled at me – containing implicit criticism that I did not
spot it myself, and a summons to engage with the child immediately. This
regularly takes seemingly absurd proportions such as being told that a child
held by a woman on the backseat of my Toyota is looking at me while I am
driving, to which the only correct response is to look over my shoulder, no
matter what lies ahead on the road, and to engage with the child. What this
instils in children, I am sure, is a deep-seated knowledge that their social
surroundings are there for her or him, that they are mirrored, cared for,
looked after and enfolded into manifold and always available social relation-
ships. (2011, 73)
Thus, learning to identify kin and learning the importance of social eye
contact are two examples whereby the Walpiri child is transformed from
warungka into a comprehending, hearing, sensible, caring, knowing
socialised person by those around her, and one example of many in the
ethnographic record whereby the beliefs and practices associated with
child socialisation “are conceived in terms of broader notions of person-
hood and culturally appropriate behaviour” (Kavapalu 1995, 16).
The materials of this sub-section help illuminate the significant spec-
trum in cultural understandings of what a child is and to what extent
children can be said to be people. This in turn has implications for their
social position and worth. Interestingly however, whether children are
understood to be persons, and when that status is attributed via social
recognition, is as much in question whether children are perceived as
newly arrived from the world of the spirits, as persons from birth, or as
not-yet-people. Indeed, and as material earlier in this chapter in regard to
birth alludes to, the recognition of personhood is not a straightforward
nor guaranteed process. It requires significant social effort to ensure. I
turn now to an example from the North American context to explore this
in further detail, examining how it is that personhood can become dimin-

ished in childhood, and the work of intimate kin to shore it up.
Disabled Infants, Precarious Personhood,

and Developmental Models of Childhood
In Western models, personhood is seemingly attributed at birth if not

before. But is this really so simply the case? Is personhood so unproblem-
atically assumed once a foetus is visualised via ultrasound, or at moment of
biological birth, and then built up through developmental stages of the
life course? Weiner’s research in the Israeli neonate ICU has already begun
to open this question up for us, and I would like to press it a bit further by
turning to the work of Gail Landsman (2009) whose ethnographic
research has explored the intersecting issues of personhood, motherhood,
and disabled children in an American context.
Landsman examines mothers’ experiences of interpreting and negotiat-
ing “disability” that their infants and children have been diagnosed with
(2009, 3). She in turn shows how via these experiences, mothers often
redefine “pre-existing cultural understandings of what constitutes ‘nor-
mality’, perfection, and personhood” (2009, 11). Landsman puts such
discourse firmly into its contemporary frame, namely the omnipresence of
prenatal diagnostic screening technologies that I discuss in Chap. 2.
Landsman argues that undergoing prenatal diagnostic tests in the United
States has come to be understood as a way of “doing everything possible
to eliminate the risk of maternally induced poor fetal outcomes” and to
ensure the birth of a “perfect” baby (2009, 44). The mothers Landsman
worked with in the state of New York nearly all undertook such screening
diagnostics and they nearly all had been reassured by the results, ones that
had not identified any cause for concern. On the basis of these women’s
experiences, Landsman argues that the widespread, normalised use of pre-
natal diagnostics in the United States has a paralleled discourse: namely
that giving birth to a disabled child is not culturally valued and, further-
more, that there is a (highly negative) moral valence attributed to those
who do give birth to disabled children—that, somehow, they have failed
in their maternal responsibility to ensure the production of a perfect baby
and to guard against anything “less” than that.
Landsman charts how personhood can become diminished in the expe-
riences of the families she worked with and that their experiences make
clear that there are “gradations of personhood” at work here (2009, 242).
78 C. DEGNEN
But what does she mean by “diminished” and by “gradations”? In Chap. 2,

I cited Conklin and Morgan who argue that Western conception beliefs
that give primacy to a biological model of personhood also take for granted
the notion that “persons, once established (via conception), are not easily
undone” (1996, 665). Landsman, aware of this same literature and indeed
citing the very same passage from Conklin and Morgan, argues convinc-
ingly that the case of disabled infants reveals a more complicated landscape
of personhood, one in which “personhood is not necessarily an-all-or-
nothing proposition in North American culture after all…Indeed, the first
dilemma for many mothers of disabled infants is finding that the fetus to
whom they may have attributed personhood in their womb is now an
individual whose personhood is held in question by others, and indeed by
the mother herself” (2009, 56–7).
For instance, Landsman recounts the words of one mother, who she
calls Lily Beckett, describing the period of time after the birth of her
daughter. Lily’s baby girl was born with a heart defect and diagnosed with
Down syndrome. As Lily says: “‘When she was born and people heard
there was something wrong, like the congratulations disappears. You don’t
get any of that. It’s like you didn’t have a baby’ ” (2009, 57). Lily went on
to explain how thankful she was to her doctor for the delay in delivering
his diagnosis of her daughter’s disability, saying that “‘I never would have
had that part of it if he had said something. I’m actually grateful that he
had done that because we were thrilled, you know. We have this baby girl
and calling all of our friends. And we did have that part of it. It was the
part afterwards that we had to call everyone back and say – well, we did
have a baby, but things didn’t go according to plan’” (2009, 57).
Landsman explains that this brief period before the diagnosis meant that
Lily and others could, for that small window of time, “establish her daugh-
ter as a baby” and Lily as a mother; but “when the new information – the
child’s diagnosis of disability – was later transmitted publically, the conse-
quent negation of her child’s full personhood diminished her experience
of her own motherhood” (2009, 57), a perception and experience that
was not unusual in the narratives of the mothers Landsman worked with.
Analytically, the point that Landsman helps us understand is how the
personhood of a baby becomes “diminished” and “provisional” when a
diagnosis of disability is made. That is to say that “entities defined…as fetal
‘persons’ in the womb may become ‘non-persons’ or ‘less-than-full persons’
after birth” (2009, 58). Western personhood, once attributed, can it turns
out become endangered. It is not perhaps as linear as we might assume:
the birth of disabled babies suggests that for North Americans, personhood
may not necessarily be assigned absolutely at one point or another but rather
earned and/or reduced in increments. In this sense, North American con-
ceptions of personhood allow not only for persons and nonpersons, as pub-
lic debates over fetal personhood and brain death would imply, but for
gradations of personhood. (2009, 61)
In the face of this are the powerfully compelling ways in which the
mothers who Landsman worked with labour to redefine diagnosis and
perception of their infant’s achievements within the overarching frame-
work of development. For it is here that the developmental model of
childhood, so central to Western assumptions of “normal” children, forc-
ibly comes into play.
That is to say that the children of the mothers Landsman worked with
did not “attain particular development milestones at the expected times”
and in response, their parents “shift their focus from an absolute timetable
(used in the medical profession to determine disability or ‘delay’) to the
marking of a child’s relative progress along a linear developmental scale”
(2009, 95). In so doing, Landsman argues that these parents, highlighting
“forward movement” of their children, challenge medical discourse that
interprets these same movements as insufficient (2009, 95). Instead, the
parents “leav(e) open the possibility that disability is but a temporary con-
dition which, with therapy, science, a child’s intense motivation, and a
mother’s hard work, can be surpassed” (2009, 95). Simultaneously, the
personhood of the child can be protected and fought for. Using narratives
of “developmental delay” rather than developmental failure, the mothers
are asserting “personhood, or at the very least, the potential for its future
attainment” (2009, 109) of their children. That is to say, whilst develop-
mental measures are thus not abandoned by the parents Landsman worked
with, as this model of “linear development which in American culture
marks the full personhood of ‘normal’ children” (2009, 117), they are
instead putting in place alternative temporalities and alternative time scales
to attest to and shore up the personhood of their children. Protecting the
future potential of development and maintaining a narrative of linear
development through time of their children both asserts personhood and
also protects against it being stripped from or denied to their children.
80 C. DEGNEN
Reincarnation Versus an Ideology of “Development”

Evident in Landsman’s work with mothers of disabled infants and children
is a powerful Western ideology of developmental stages. Many of the
mothers she worked with are simultaneously immersed in but also work-
ing against this framing of childhood in order to protect the personhood
of their children. Their efforts are in some ways reminiscent of the Lahu
concept of the “red-and-naked” stage (Du 2002) that I mentioned earlier.
Gottlieb (2000) uses this notion to underline the distinction between cul-
tural constructions of childhood, as based on calendar time and develop-
mental stages, versus a series of achievements which individuals may pass
through at a different pace. What both highlight for us are the ways in
which ideas about personhood, temporality, and development are bound
together in particularly cultural ways. In this same vein, I would like here
to turn to Akhil Gupta (2002) and his work on reincarnation beliefs. Like
Landsman, Gupta’s work also helps to complicate Western assumptions
about the gradual development of the person from childhood into adult-
hood. He writes how Western ideas of developmental stages of life are not
“natural” or neutral but instead are a cultural construction with conse-
quences for how personhood is experienced (2002, 42). In contra-
distinction, he asks “how a cultural context in which reincarnation is
commonly accepted would help us think differently about the construc-
tion of the stages of life” (2002, 42). Using several cases from various
parts of the globe, Gupta summarises how many examples of reincarnation
narratives share a number of key features. In these documented
examples,
a young child starts talking about a previous life, providing a fair amount of
detail including place names, occupation, descriptions of a previous place of
residence or business, etc.; often expresses a yearning for his or her previous
life circumstances; then makes a series of recognitions of places, paths, and
people when taken to the site of his or her previous life; displays great emo-
tion at being reunited with the loved ones in his previous life, often preferring
their company to that of his present family; and finally displays distinct pho-
bias related to the cause of his death. (2002, 44)
In light of these powerful accounts, Gupta posits that in the West,

“growth and chronological distance from birth have become reflexively
intertwined: we have become habituated to use one as a measure of the
other,” but that this is only possible with “the rise of an historical
consciousness in which the self and the world were narrativised as moving
forward from an origin…historical causation when applied to the life cycle
meant that the explanation for events and attitudes in later life…could be
‘explained’ by attending to what had come before” (2002, 47). However,
in societies “where reincarnation is a common phenomenon…(this) dis-
rupts the teleologies of progress and development of individuals and…
should make us think about alternatives to the modern Western myth of
childhood” (2002, 52). Like the Beng case, where infants are newly
returned from the spiritual land of wrugbe, Gupta argues that cultural
models of reincarnation have implications for Western assumptions of
childhood as a time when “a new being…slowly finds his or her way in the
world” (2002, 36). This is because reincarnation posits a childhood
whereby “children are inhabited by their (adult) thoughts and gestures,
and clearly have to be conceptualized as more complex beings” (2002, 36)
than the normative Western model assumes. He suggests that contrary to
this “logic of developmentalism” (2002, 48), the lives of children experi-
encing reincarnation and remembering their previous lives need to be
understood not in terms of growth and progress but instead in terms of
metamorphosis, continuity, and transformation (2002, 49). Such a model,
again significantly like that of the Beng people, inflects how (and when)
personhood is understood to emerge.
Naming, Feeding, Eating: Making One’s Own People

Winding its way throughout this chapter are themes of the non-fixity of
personhood in only biology or physicality, and the salience of socio-
cultural practices and processes in fashioning personhood. In this last sec-
tion of the chapter, I would like to conclude by exploring how the practices
of naming and of feeding help forge personhood and social relations.
Whilst initial naming rituals tend to be a one-off process (though see
Bloch 1992 for an instructive contrast), it is in the everyday weft and
weave of life as names are used that they become through time indelibly
linked to the person. Food and feeding on the other hand are always an
ongoing requirement. They sustain physiological life, but as I will explore
below, they also nourish the construction of the person, and of the “right
kind” of person, making that person one of “us”, making them kin.
Names, arguably, do similar work.
Discussing life in a rural Turkish village, Carol Delaney describes how
in an ideal birth the midwife would wash the newborn, swaddle it, and
82 C. DEGNEN
then hand it to the paternal grandfather. He in turn speaks verses from the
Qur’an directly into the baby’s ear and also names the baby, as “speaking
the name makes the child a person” (Delaney 2000, 131). In the same
edited volume, Michelle Johnson describes a similar emphasis on naming
amongst Fulani cattle-herders and agriculturalists in Guinea-Bissau. Here,
the family of a newborn holds a significant ritual celebration—a naming
ceremony—in the first seven to eight days of birth. This ceremony is “of
utmost importance since, without a name, [a]…baby is not a person”
(2000, 183). In the naming ceremony, “presenting children to the village
and giving them a name are important early steps in establishing their
social position among family members and in the society at large” (2000,
184). Whilst practices and timings of naming may vary widely, the signifi-
cance of naming reoccurs throughout the literature on personhood.
Naming is a crucially important social and cultural marker as it often indi-
cates recognition and beginning of personhood (Littlewood 1999, 218).
Morgan terms the naming of infants as the “most common” of “socially
significant events which mark the end of liminality and the beginning of
personhood…a nameless infant, in many cases, is not considered a per-
son”, arguing that a substantial number of examples exist in the ethno-
graphic literature of “where a child who died prior to receiving a name was
not regarded as a person” (1989, 102–3). She also explores cases where
naming is delayed, which can in and of itself have different causes. For
instance, Morgan points to the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes in north-
east Brazil where “extreme poverty, widespread hunger, and high infant
mortality rates affect the mother’s emotional investment in her children”
and naming is delayed arguably as a form of “emotional defenses…to
shield themselves from the devastating psychological impact of frequent
infant death” (1989, 103). This example she contrasts with another from
amongst Hindus in the Himalayas related by Lois McCloskey where whilst
rates of infant mortality are also elevated, “children are named by a
Brahmin priest on the tenth day after birth, but no one calls a child by this
name for fear of making the child susceptible to the perils of ‘evil eye’”, a
peril from which the child must be protected (1989, 103). Names are thus
powerful conduits to and of personhood in many societies, not just a sym-
bolic or marker of personhood, but often a constitutive aspect of it.
Examples in the ethnographic and historical literature attest addition-
ally to the ways in which naming not only serves to mark the attribution
of personhood, but also as a way of attempting to influence the develop-
ment of the character of the person to be. So, for instance, in Puritan
colonial New England “names have special meaning and can have signifi-
cant bearing on the development of the child’s character”; carefully choos-
ing one that “conveys the character traits” a parent wants a child to develop
such as “Faithful”, “Godly”, or “Mercy” is a key consideration (Reese
2000, 49–50). Katie Glaskin, writing about Bardi and Jawi people in
Western Australia, says that “a conceptual equivalence is drawn between
persons and their names, such that names ‘stand for’, and indeed in a vital
sense ‘are’, the persons they connote: persons and their names are intrinsi-
cally connected” (Glaskin 2006, 113). Names and naming thus are often
powerfully social practices, deeply imbricated with an understanding of
both the qualities of person and affirming personhood itself. Also closely
woven together in the making of people and in the making of a particular
kind of person, namely kin, are feeding and eating practices. Indeed, both
naming and feeing are themes that will feature again in Chap. 8 on death
and dying. But in regard to the earlier stages of life under consideration
here, I rely here on via Janet Carsten’s work with Malay people in Langkawi
(1995) and Anne Allison’s (1991) writing on obentō s in Japan to explore
how it is that food and person can be said to be mutually constitutive.
Working in Malaysia, on a small island called Langkawi, Carsten explains
how feeding is a “vital component” in both becoming a person and in
engaging properly in social relations (1995, 223). Childbirth only “merely
begins the process of becoming a person”; it is the “feeding and living
together in houses” that eventually renders personhood complete by mak-
ing people into kin with each other (1995, 224). As Carsten says, “food
creates both persons in a physical sense and the substance – blood – by
which they are related to each other. Personhood, relatedness, and feeding
are intimately connected” (1995, 224). Key components in Malay person-
hood thus rest on food consumed and shared in the heart of the home,
and on substances of blood and rice. The hearth or the dapur is a crucial
space of the Langkawi house; Carsten notes how cooking and eating meals
(of which rice is a central element) together at the dapur is a key compo-
nent of being part of a household. To eat meals in another’s household is
not encouraged (1995, 225) as it “implies a dispersal of intimate sub-
stance to other houses” (1995, 234). Additionally, “the day-to-day shar-
ing of rice meals cooked in the same hearth…implies shared substance”;
rice is a substance that, like milk and blood, connects people with sharing
of any of these meaning “having substance in common…[and thus] being
related” (1995, 228).
84 C. DEGNEN
Carsten argues convincingly how “kinship in Langkawi cannot be

defined solely in terms of procreation, but also that it may be difficult to
distinguish ties we would consider ‘biological’ because they are derived
from procreation from those we think of as ‘social’ because they derive
from commensality” (1995, 229). That is to say, “in Langkawi, ideas
about relatedness are expressed in terms of procreation, feeding, and the
acquisition of substance, and are not predicated on any clear distinction
between ‘facts of biology’ (like birth) and ‘facts of sociality’ (like commen-
sality)” (1995, 235). Carsten considers how it is that Langkawi under-
standings of relatedness, understandings so powerfully predicated on both
procreation and on living and eating in the same household, demonstrate
the peculiarity of Western understandings that separate the realm of the
biological from the social. As she says, in Langkawi “it makes little sense in
indigenous terms to label some of these activities as social and others as
biological. If blood, which is the stuff of kinship and to some extent of
personhood, is acquired during gestation in the uterus and, after birth, in
the house through feeding with others as people in Langkawi assert, is it
then biological or social?” (1995, 236–7). Of interest too in her example
of the making of the Malay person is the gendered significance of women’s
labour. She notes that “the long process of becoming - acquiring sub-
stance” is a process that to a large extent happens “through the actions
and bodies of women. Children are produced from their mothers’ blood;
their mothers’ milk may activate or create kinship” (1995, 234). So too
does the food cooked by women in the heart of the home, food that tends
to bodily needs, but that also forges emotional ties which are key to the
processes of creating relatedness and persons (1995, 234).
In an entirely different setting, Anne Allison draws on her first-hand
experience as a mother living in Japan to write about obentō s (1991). These
are elaborate packed lunches made daily by Japanese mothers for their
nursery school-aged children. Obentō s require laborious and time-
consuming efforts from the mother (but never the father) to create highly
complex, “cute”, multi-course meals for their children to eat at nursery.
Ample guidance is available in obentō cookbooks and magazines, and since
the time of her publication now via social media and online, on how to
achieve daily these artistic and painstaking creations for consumption. For
instance, a doll that can be created
in a two-section obentō box [where] there are four rice balls on one side,
each with a different center, on the other side are two dolls made of quail’s
eggs for heads, eyes and mouth added, bodies of cucumber, arranged as if
lying down with two raw carrots for the pillow, covers made of one flower –
cut cooked carrot, two piece of ham, pieces of cooked spinach, and with
different colored plastic skewers holding the dolls together. (1991, 204)
Allison writes that “food in this context is neither casual nor arbitrary”
(1991, 195), and that the objective is a dual one: mothers have a duty to
make the child’s food tempting and palatable, which in turn facilitates the
duty of the child, which is to eat the obentō in its entirety. Both are moni-
tored and judged in their ability to achieve these goals, and censured for
failure (1991, 200).
But what is also occurring are the ways in which, via the mother’s pro-
duction and the child’s consumption of the obentō , the child is being
indoctrinated into a particular way of being and of acting in the world. In
this cultural context, this is a way that is about “becom(ing)…Japanese”
(1991, 199) and becoming indoctrinated into “the rules and patterns of
‘group living’ (shūdanseikatsu), a Japanese social ideal that…is first intro-
duced to the child in nursery school” (1991, 199). Thus, Allison’s
American son, David, becomes integrated into the Japanese school rituals
and expectations, including successfully consuming his obentō . This means
arguably that in some sense, David was becoming Japanese, and, as Allison
writes, “where his teacher recognized this Japanese-ness was in the daily
routines such as finishing his obentō ” (1991, 201). Thus, Carsten and
Allison masterfully draw out the fundamental role food and feeding plays
in the making of people in their fieldsites, but especially the centrality of
this in childhood for ensuring the formation of person and kin.
Conclusions
This chapter has considered birth, childhood, and personhood from a
series of different thematic perspectives. These are, firstly, the ways in
which the physiological processes of birth intersect with cultural and social
expectations around how birth should be done. This in turn is related to
what is deemed both appropriate and necessary for the birthing mother
and the neonate. Secondly, the ethnographic material in this chapter loops
back time and again to the ways in which the biological and the social are
co-constitutive in regard to personhood, and the processual ways in which
personhood is attributed, recognised, and made. These processes and
practices include rituals, childcare practices, naming, feeding, and eating.
86 C. DEGNEN
Thirdly, the chapter explores how this attribution of personhood is not an

even process nor an automatic one, with babies and children often being
perceived of as quite vulnerable and susceptible to a whole range of forces,
many of which present risks to the personhood of the individual.
Personhood is not always granted automatically nor by virtue of physio-
logical birth. The recognition of personhood can be delayed for some
period of time. Personhood often builds through time, being quite “unfin-
ished” at birth and requiring a great deal of time and energy to achieve
socially. Of notable significance in these processes is the labour of parents
and kin in securing and reaffirming personhood. Additionally, as we see in
so many of the cases in this chapter from Malay mothers in Langkawi, to
obentō making in Japan, to mothers in the United States with disabled
children, the affirming of personhood is often marked by gender and espe-
cially the labour of women, though not exclusively as the Huaorani exam-
ple reminds us.
The material I have explored here also helps dislodge and unsettle firm
assumptions about what we might think we know about how and when
personhood is attributed in Western thought. Representations of Western
perspectives on personhood often essentialise certainty and fixity in how
and when personhood is recognised, under a sort of sheen of rational sci-
entific knowing about the beginnings of life itself. And yet, as Weiner’s
work on in the Israeli neonate intensive care unit, and Landsman’s work
on personhood, motherhood, and disabled children demonstrate so pow-
erfully, these ideas of certainty do not always hold up when put under
closer scrutiny. Their research and that of others, such as the feminist
scholars interrogating the abortion debates in the United States that I
discuss in Chap. 2, reveal important nuanced complexities in how, despite
“our” sheen of certainty, personhood is anything but straightforward.
Lastly in this chapter is the work of temporality. The passage of time is
an underlying presumption in notions of the life course, and assumptions
in Western thought about generations and reproduction also have a
sharply temporal (simultaneously linear as well as cyclical) inflection to
them. But of particular significance in regard to birth and childhood, and
which I have explored in this chapter, are ideas about developmental
stages, delayed personhood, and reincarnation. Each concept emphasises
a different aspect of temporality in its own way: developmental paradigms
assume a linearity, based on biological determinism and calendrical time,
a “moving through the stages” in a relentlessly normative way that
pathologises any temporal deviations from agreed markers; “delayed per-

sonhood” is a term used to describe a sort of temporal pause or hesitation,
signalling a “wait and see” approach rather than the automatic recogni-
tion of personhood at the moment of birth; and reincarnation narratives
emphasise not tropes of progress and development but instead invoke
time in terms of metamorphosis and continuity. All do particular work in
framing personhood in relation to time, but the markers that are valorised
in each have significant implications for how birth and childhood are
made sense of.
Note
1. Note that whilst Lancy characterises such a structure as “Western”, the ver-
sion of neontocracy he describes here in his list is a highly consumerist one,
an emphasis that would be likely to vary in its extent across different
“Western” settings. My thanks to Sarah Winkler-Reid for calling this point
to my attention.
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CHAPTER 4
Place and Personhood
Introduction
Place is all around us. It is an integral component of our everyday lives.
Indeed, place is so central to human experience that it is virtually impos-
sible to imagine life in the absence of place. Having said this, place, like
personhood, is also something we often take for granted in daily life. We
may well be attuned to the feeling of places—they can feel familiar,
unknown, threatening, comfortable, uneasy, enticing—but place is so
relentlessly present to us as we go about our normal affairs that we rarely
comment explicitly on it. And yet, despite this everydayness of the places
we inhabit, we also know that they do not stay the same. Places change,
and so too do the feelings that we have for them and in them.
So, both the everydayness of place in our lives and the emotional regis-
ters of place clearly matter in human experience. Place can also be con-
structed or shaped in order to facilitate movement and human use. Place
can be shaped in order to prevent both, and in so doing, place can be used
to express and reinforce social divisions and power relations. Think for
example of the so-called poor doors in expensive blocks of flats in cities
like New York City and London. In order to gain planning permission to
construct luxury flats for wealthy clients, developers have been required by
local governments to include “affordable” housing components in the
new buildings. The affordable and luxury properties, however, are segre-
gated by separate entrances, with the affordable housing being accessed
via service entrances in side alleyways—the so-called “poor door”—while the

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_4
92 C. DEGNEN
luxury flats are accessed via opulent hotel-like lobbies (Osborne 2014). Or
consider “defensive street furniture”. These include raised brass orna-
ments which prevent people from sleeping outdoors in those spaces, or
elements of city design which are incorporated to prevent skateboarding
in public spaces (Quinn 2014). Both poor doors and street furniture thus
are examples of how place can be shaped to both physically and emotion-
ally reinforce social messages about who matters and who does not; who
is entitled to use and access place in terms of class, ethnicity, able-
bodiedness, disability, age, or need. Both experiences of and ability to
access place is governed by a range of social and cultural conventions to do
with categories such as age, gender, status, and class. Furthermore, an
individual’s relationship with place and ability to use various places can
and does change over the span of one’s lifetime.
In addition, who counts as a person is often a question answered with
reference to place. In this way, personhood is an entity, a value that does
not always and does not only reside in people, nor in the relations between
people. Instead, personhood can rely on relations with place, on relations
through place, and relations with the animated cosmos. In other words,
the attributions of personhood can be deeply imbricated with ideas and
experiences of place, and brought into existence via these (often intersect-
ing) relations.
This chapter thus explores how it is that personhood can be considered
in regard to place. Analytical themes which are especially critical here
include using place to rethink notions of “substance” and how it is that
people are brought into existence, but also in terms of relatedness and
what connects human beings to each other and to the world around them.
The material presented here underlines the extent to which personhood
can be made through social interactions and the transmission of substance,
grounded and embodied in place. There are a number of points of inter-
section that cross-cut concepts presented here and in other chapters, par-
ticularly Chap. 2 on conception, pregnancy, and rights and Chap. 5 on
human and non-human people. Place, this chapter will argue, is in some
contexts not just a setting or backdrop for the life course and personhood:
it can also be constitutive of them.
The chapter starts by outlining some key theoretical principles on place
and its significance as discussed by anthropologists and human geogra-
phers. This assists in contextualising the ethnographic material on person-
hood and place that follows. In the second half of this chapter, I draw on
four examples in close detail. I am greatly indebted to the accounts of
PLACE AND PERSONHOOD 93
these four authors. I work through them one at a time in order to draw
out the rich complexity of each case, but even still my account of their
work is necessarily an abbreviated one. Each author writes from their own
theoretical perspective and addresses a particular cultural setting. None of
them are particularly focused on the life course per se, but important les-
sons about what it means to be and to become a person in regard to place
is deeply salient in each account. These four ethnographers are Keith
Basso writing on Western Apache in Arizona; E. Valentine Daniel’s
research in a Tamil village in the south of India; Katie Glaskin’s work
amongst Bardi and Jawi peoples in Western Australia; and James Leach’s
fieldwork in Papua New Guinea on the Rai Coast with Reite people.
Taken together, this material helps us build a diverse set of perspectives on
how it is that the intersections of place and personhood demand an
accounting. These complexly detailed ethnographic cases are each distinc-
tively unique, but they are all animated by a shared inquisitiveness into
how it is that place and personhood can be said to be mutually
constitutive.
What Is Place?
In everyday speech, “place” is a term used to describe spatial locations or
physical environments. Places are understood to be where things happen.
Place is often perceived as the background to human activity, a sort of
surface on which the business of life occurs. Traditionally, anthropologists
have conceptualised place in a similar way: ethnographies often include
vivid descriptions of fieldwork locations as a canvas upon which the analy-
sis of social and cultural life in the volume are foregrounded against (Feld
and Basso 1996; Hirsch 1995; Rodman 1992). There have been some
inadvertent consequences of this trope of place as the backdrop to ethnog-
raphy, as it is often implicitly predicated on a sense of exotic difference and
evoked as proof of sorts that one was “really there”; descriptions of place
like this often emphasise what the unfamiliar locale looks and feels like to
the visiting anthropologist rather than to the people living there (Okely
2001). This impulse is of course now easier to recognise and challenge
thanks to important debates over writing culture and representation
(Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986). These debates
ushered in an era of more reflexive positionality in how we as ethnogra-
phers represent the people with whom—and where—we have conducted
fieldwork. Nonetheless, it remains a framing strategy that has been hard to
94 C. DEGNEN
move away from as anthropology is a discipline that in many ways is

grounded in place: the doing of ethnography presupposes our being
located somewhere as anthropologists, and we often make a disciplinary
virtue by challenging sweeping generalisations and universalising catego-
ries by invoking how “it does not look like that from here”, with “here”
being one’s own fieldwork site.
Having said that, anthropologists have also been called to account for
the ways in which ethnographies traditionally promoted an implicit link
between culture and geographical location. What has emerged in response
is a conceptualisation of “the processes of production of difference in a
world of culturally, socially, and economically interconnected and interde-
pendent spaces” (Gupta and Ferguson 1992, 14, emphasis original). Such
perspectives encourage a view of the world that is not bounded into neatly
discrete cultural and geographical spaces. Instead it promotes a view that
acknowledges the porousness of boundaries and the flux and flow of peo-
ple, ideas, meanings, and cultural forms. This is a provocation to which
anthropology has obligingly responded to since the early 1990s. Key
amongst these responses has been a rethinking of what this approach
means for place and the ways in which place is experienced. Margaret
Rodman, in a seminal article (1992), demonstrates, for instance, the ways
in which place is both multi-local and multi-vocal. She details how places
are not passive vessels, but rather are “politicized, culturally relative, his-
torically specific, local and multiple constructions” (1992, 641) with
places simultaneously holding multiple meanings for different groups and
individuals.
Other anthropological work that has been formative in challenging
binary interpretations is that of Tim Ingold. He identifies how Western
traditions of thought divide place into, on the one hand, nature or physical
reality, and then contrast it, on the other hand, to cultural and symbolic
interpretations of that same physical space. Ingold describes the former as
a way of imagining place and landscape as if it were “a neutral, external
backdrop to human activities” and the latter as taking the “view that every
landscape is a particular cognitive or symbolic ordering of space” (1993,
152). He famously offers as an alternative to this binary view a “dwelling
perspective”. A dwelling perspective encompasses the relations that people
have not on the surface of the physical world, but one in which life is
brought into being via (and not a priori to) relations through place (Ingold
2011).1
But place is of course by no means a topic of inquiry only for anthropol-

ogy. It has been a core concept in geography for many decades, and one
that has generated a substantial body of literature. Place as a concept wor-
thy of close consideration came first to the fore with the emergence of
humanistic geography in the late 1970s. This is an approach that seeks to
put human beings at the heart of geography as well as to challenge positiv-
ism which was at that time pronounced in the discipline (Gregory et al.
2009a, 356–7). One point of debate in this literature has been to differen-
tiate between “space” and “place”. Whilst often used interchangeably in
everyday speech, theorists have explored the significant differences
between the two terms. Yi-Fu Tuan, for instance, was one of the first to
suggest that “what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we
get to know it better and endow it with value” (Tuan 1977, 6). He argued
that place “has more substance than the word location suggests: it is a
unique entity…it has a history and meaning. Place incarnates the experi-
ences and aspirations of a people. Place is not only a fact to be explained
in the broader frame of space but it is also a reality to be clarified and
understood from the perspectives of the people who have given it mean-
ing” (Tuan 1979, 387). Foundational work by Tuan and others, including
Relph (1976) and Entrikin (1976), paved the way for a significant transi-
tion in geography that came to replace a disciplinary focus on universals,
spatial structures, and spatial logics (Gregory et al. 2009b, 469) with a
concern for meaning, experience, ideas, and feelings in regard to space and
place (Tuan 1976).
From these various disciplinary perspectives, and as will be patently
obvious from the above, place is a multivalent concept. It has multiple
meanings, it is experienced in a variety of ways, and it occurs in dynamic
interaction with a range of other entities including people, animals, ideas,
objects, and other places (Degnen 2015, 1650). Place can be used to
build a sense of identity and belonging, but can also be alienating and used
to exclude; place is mobilised to express power relations but is also imbued
with sociality and social relations. Thus, whilst attachment to place can
generate identity, emotional investment and facilitate “a sense of security
and well-being” (Gieryn 2000, 481), the subsequent “loss of place…[has]
devastating implications for individual and collective identity, memory,
and history” (Gieryn 2000, 482). The one thing place is not, then, is neu-
tral. This is because, as Time Cresswell asserts, what makes space place is
that people have saturated it with meaning (2015, 12).
96 C. DEGNEN
Place is thus not simply a vessel in which events occur, nor only a site
on which people do things. It can indeed be reconceptualised as an inte-
gral element of being and experience. As such, rather than being a static
backdrop to the activities of its inhabitants, place should instead be con-
ceptualised as an ongoing process (Hirsch 1995), and also as constitutive
of experience and being itself. To claim this is to take a phenomenological
and relational approach to place. Cresswell summarises this approach
neatly when he writes that “place is primary to the construction of mean-
ing and society. Place is primary because it is the experiential fact of our
existence” (2015, 50). He draws on a philosopher of place, Jeff Malpas
(1999, 35), to further underline this point. Malpas declares that “place is
not founded on subjectivity, but is rather that on which subjectivity is
founded. Thus one does not first have a subject that apprehends certain
features of the world in terms of the idea of place; instead, the structure or
subjectivity is given in and through the structure of place” (cited in
Cresswell 2015, 50). This is a profoundly important point. This is because
it reframes the literature on place to point to the way that place can be said
to be “something much deeper than a social construct, [but instead] as
something irreducible and essential to being human” (Cresswell 2015,
47). Such theoretical developments help extend and expand insights both
in human geography, but also in anthropology and other cognate disci-
plines, on the centrality of place as a cornerstone of human experience.
One such recent development seeks to reconceptualise the ways in
which agency, the sensorium, and affect are woven into place. As Kostas
Retsikas puts it, whilst social scientists are attuned “to the values and
meanings that [humans] attach to the places that they inhabit, the impor-
tance of place as an active force in the constitution and animation of those
human subjects whom it envelops and sustains is less widely elaborated
and discussed” (2007, 969, emphasis added). This is a move to assert the
agency of place alongside that of human subjects rather than social sci-
ence’s traditional focus instead on only the agency of human beings.
Drawing from his research in East Java on the spatialisation of kinship,
memories, and ritual practices, Retsikas explores place’s capacity to create
persons (2007, 969). His focus is how in this cultural setting “social rela-
tionships unfold spatially. As such, place is not extrinsic to social relations
but rather, an active ingredient of their realization, a presence in their
unfolding and a condition of their historicity” (2007, 982). Retsikas thus
employs a concept of personhood and of place whereby neither is static
and whereby place becomes an active agent.
In a parallel fashion, Kathleen Stewart, writing on place and sensorial

recognition, identifies how moments of knowing a place occur through
the colours, sounds, scents, and feeling of a place. She argues that these
registers of experience are not just symbolic or representative of a place.
Instead, she states that they are constitutive of our sense of place, always
emergent, potential, and not fixed:
I come from a place where the seasons are magnetized to tones of voice and
a quality of light. The winter is a dark tunnel. October is saturated in color.
The air is bitable. In May, it swells…a sense of being-from-here [also] hap-
pens in a look exchanged, a town accent – a sheer recognition of a sheer
recognition. These little scenes of recognition, and these sensory matters,
compose place. They do not symbolize or represent it. Rather, they are its
always emergent forms – precise actualizations of a field of potentiality.
From the perspective of acts of place and its sensory materiality, place is
something that throws itself together in moments, things, in aesthetic sensi-
bilities and affective charges. (Stewart 2012, 519)
Evident here in Stewart’s work, as in Retsikas, is a theoretical perspec-

tive on place that grants an active, agentive role to place (“acts of place”)
but also acknowledges place as an agentive force that is inextricably linked
to the “magnetizing” realm of affect. Indeed, it is this “bitable” quality of
relationships with and through place—this powerful affective charge—
that makes place so compelling for both people in their everyday lives and
for researchers studying place. I argue that it is these aspects which demand
recognition, namely how experiences of place move between past, present,
and future, knitting the social and the material worlds together to forge
relationships through place and to create a sense of belonging (see also
Bell 1997) via the sensorium. It forcibly invites us to contemplate the
relational, embodied qualities of place that far exceed the notion of place
as location. And so, we arrive at a powerful nexus that helps us make better
sense of what place is, and how it matters. With this conceptual framework
in mind, I turn now to the ethnographic record to explore in much greater
detail more of connections between personhood and place.
98 C. DEGNEN
How Might Place Link to Personhood:

Toponyms and Story-Telling
Following Heidegger (1962), Basso suggests that, just as people dwell in
their landscape, that landscape is said to dwell in them. This is because the
conceptions the Apache use to fashion their inhabited landscape are the
same as those used to constitute Apache persons (Basso 1988, 122). In the
reciprocal process of inhabiting the landscape and being inhabited by it, the
Western Apache and landscape become ‘virtually one’ (p. 122). (Eves
2006, 175)
One way of better understanding the intersection of personhood and

place is to consider the placenames used by the Western Apache people of
Cibecue, in east-central Arizona. In a series of publications (1983, 1984,
1988, 1996), Keith Basso explores the ways in which placenames are
employed to “summon forth an enormous range of mental and emotional
associations – associations of time and space, of history and events, of per-
sons and social activities, of oneself and stages in one’s life” (Basso 1988,
103). A cultural and linguistic anthropologist, Basso was highly attuned to
the ways in which the narratives and story-telling of the Western Apache
people he worked with were woven through with toponyms. During his
many periods of fieldwork in Arizona, Basso found himself fascinated by
the sorts of statements the people he came to know would make about
themselves and where they lived. So, for example, consider these four
examples he gives (Basso 1984, 21):
The land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right. The
land looks after us. The land looks after people. (Mrs Annie Peaches, age 77,
1977)
Our children are losing the land. It doesn’t go to work on them anymore.
They don’t know the stories about what happened at these places. That’s
why some get into trouble. (Mr Ronnie Lupe, age 42; Chairman, White
Mountain Apache Tribe, 1978)
I think of that mountain called ‘white rocks lie above in a compact cluster’
as if it were my maternal grandmother. I recall stories of how it once was at
that mountain. The stories told to me were like arrows. Elsewhere, hearing
that mountain’s name, I see it. Its name is like a picture. Stories go to work
on you like arrows. Stories make you live right. Stories make you replace
yourself. (Mr Benson Lewis, age 64, 1979)
We used to survive only off the land. Now it’s no longer that way. Now we
live only with money, so we need jobs. But the land still looks after us. We
know the names of the places where everything happened. So we stay away
from badness. (Mr Nick Thompson, age 64, 1980)
Basso was well aware that for a non-Native American audience such
statements could easily be misinterpreted as evidence of Apache “mystical
thinking”, or that Native Americans are “closer to nature” or “more spiri-
tual”. Basso takes care to point out that such a misunderstanding is
grounded in epistemological and ontological divides. What is needed he
says is an approach to cultural difference that recognises how the quotes
above from Western Apache people he worked with are drawing on a
worldview in which specific named places in the landscape have great
importance attached to them (1984, 22). Furthermore, there is a recipro-
cal fashioning of people and place, and of place and people at work here.
For “whenever Apaches describe the land – or…whenever they tell stories
about incidents that have occurred at particular points upon it – they take
steps to constitute it in relationship to themselves” (1984, 22). This is to
say that placenames are not just handy reference tools in this context, not
just a way of describing the topography. Instead, placenames are used and
valued for other significant reasons as well. But what are these?
For Western Apache people, placenames, and the stories attached to
these places, help people when they have not been “acting right”. Perhaps,
as one of Basso’s interlocutors tells him, someone has been stingy, or
cheating on a spouse, or acting in any other inappropriate way. In response,
family members will pull you up by telling you a story about the old days,
about historical times. These stories, likened to arrows, produce mental
and emotional wounds, ones that make the person reflect on his or her
bad behaviour, and make them try to change that behaviour. Placenames
figure centrally in these stories from long ago—names about where and
when things happened, places that people know and see in their everyday
lives. The names and stories of these places in the physical landscape con-
tinue to “stalk” the offender and help her to “live right” (1984, 41–2).
Living right is something that requires constant care and attention, but
place helps Western Apache meet norms of comportment and enact moral
values (1984, 23). In other words, “geographical sites, together with the
crisp mental ‘pictures’ of them presented by their names, serve admira-
bly…, inviting people to recall their earlier failings and encouraging them
to resolve, once again, to avoid them in the future” (1984, 43). Place, in
100 C. DEGNEN
this instance, has a “moral significance” (1984, 44) for personhood and
for comporting oneself in the correct way. Placenames have an “evocative
power” which can be used by Western Apache speakers to remark upon
the comportment of others: “Called ‘speaking with names’ (yałti’bee’ízhi),
this verbal routine also allows those who engage in it to register claims
about their own moral worth, aspects of their social relationships with
other people on hand, and a particular way of attending to the local land-
scape that is avowed to produce a beneficial form of heightened self-
awareness” (Basso 1988, 106). As such, stalking with stories and speaking
with names are clear manifestations of the reciprocal power of place and
person amongst Western Apache.
The precise geographical locations where events occur are significant as
“all Western Apache narratives are ‘spatially anchored’ to points upon the
land”, and it is placenames that serve as these spatial anchors (Basso 1988,
110). As placenames were first given long ago by the ancestors, by imagin-
ing the site from the perspective of the ancestors who first named it, “pla-
cenames acquire a capacity to evoke stories and images of the people who
knew the places first” and placenames can in turn “illustrate aspects of
‘ancestral wisdom’” (Basso 1988, 112). Speaking in names to another
person is thus not simply to name locations. Instead, it is understood by
both speaker and listener as a call to be mindful of ancestral wisdom and
to use this knowledge as insight for one’s own personal circumstances
(Basso 1988, 113). Historical stories like this have power to effect changes
in behaviour and in moral comportment (Basso 1984, 41). Speaking with
names is not undertaken lightly and is not to be used frequently. It can
however be used judiciously to help people
burdened by worry and despair to take remedial action… (to) travel in your
mind to a point from which to view the place whose name has just been
spoken. Imagine standing there, as if in the tracks of your ancestors, and
recall stories of events that occurred at the place long ago. Picture these
events in your mind and appreciate, as if the ancestors themselves were
speaking, the wisdom the stories contain. Bring this wisdom to bear on your
own disturbing situation. Allow the past to inform your understanding of
the present. You will feel better if you do. (Basso 1988, 114)
It is in this regard that the powerful nexus of place, placenames, story-

ing, moral action, everyday comportment, and personhood comes into
view in this example. Speaking with names is a way of reminding friends or
family members who are experiencing difficult and painful times that
“ancestral wisdom is a powerful ally in times of adversity, and that reflect-
ing upon it…can produce expanded awareness, feelings of relief, and a
fortified ability to cope” (Basso 1988, 122). Stalking with stories and
speaking with names invoke place as a resource for maintaining correct,
moral forms of interpersonal comportment. Place has a role in creating
and reproducing the “right kind” of person, a practical technique to help
those who have strayed or are hurting. Place in this example is very power-
fully more than a backdrop to social life. What is evident instead is a social-
ity of place, one that ties people to each other in the contemporary day but
also through time via stories and a concern with being a person who “lives
right”.
How Might Place Link to Personhood:

Substance and Compatibility
According to Daniel, the Hindu villagers of Kalappūr (a pseudonym mean-
ing ‘place of mixed substances’) believe that life is a constant interaction of
various substances, each with its particular qualities, and that the mixing and
separation of these substances accounts for health and sickness, success and
failure, harmonious and disharmonious personal relationships….A person is
born with certain qualities of body and mind which influence and are influ-
enced by the qualities of the soil and water of his or her place of birth and
habitation. (Lester 1987, 353)
A second way of considering the intersection of place and personhood

comes from E. Valentine Daniel’s Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil
Way (1984). Central to his account are four core concepts, each of which
he takes great care to explain and contextualise. These are: jāti, ūr, kuṇam,
and putti. All four concepts are interwoven with notions of substance and
compatibility; together, they are critical for comprehending what is at
stake for the Tamil Hindus he worked with in regard to place and person-
hood. I will return to definitions of all four in a moment, but turn first to
a vignette recounted by Daniel (1984, 61–2) that helps introduce the
connections at work in this complex array of concepts.
As is often the case in ethnographic fieldwork, Daniel tells his readers
how it was a moment of serendipity that first made him consider the
importance of place for personhood where he was working in Kalappūr, a
Tamil village in the south of India. In his case, it was the arrival of a
wealthy male visitor to the village who sparked this connection. The man,
102 C. DEGNEN
a successful businessman from Malaysia whose “ancestral lands” were in

the village, had come for a short visit to make arrangements for his son to
come live in the village for six months. He told Daniel that his own father
had insisted many years ago that he, too, live in his ancestral village for a
few months before travelling to study in England in his youth. Whilst as a
young man he was resistant to his father’s wishes, he ultimately complied.
Reflecting back on that experience to Daniel, he said “Now I know that it
was only during those four months in Kalappūr that I came to know who
I am and what it is really to be an ANV”2 (1984, 62). Daniel, intrigued,
asks the businessman how he had come by this knowledge. The man
replies that the knowledge had come from “‘bathing at the village well,
drinking its water, and eating the rice that grows in the fields of Kalappūr.’
Then he emphasized, ‘…to know who I am, I had to get to know the soil
of this village (ūr) which is, after all, a part of me’. He also maintained that
this business acumen became suddenly sharpened after he had spent this
period in the village (ūr)” (1984, 62–3). He further expressed the desire
for his son to spend time in the village as his son’s peer group and friends
are predominantly westernised Chinese and Malaysian Sri Lankans, and
that his son rarely interacts with members of his own caste or other Indian
Tamils (1984, 63). Daniel says that it was this chance encounter which
made him first realise that he needed to better understand the significance
of ūr in all of its complexity.
Ūr is thus an inhabited place. But it is also more than this. That is
because the entities that exist in a particular locale “are believed to share
in the substance of the soil of that territory”; furthermore, “one of the
most important relationships to a Tamil is that which exists between a
person and the soil of his ūr” (1984, 63). Daniel 3 continues, saying that
Tamils make a distinction between the ūr where one is currently resid-
ing and the ūr that is “one’s real home…that is, the place whose soil is
more compatible with oneself and with one’s ancestors”, giving the
example of second-generation Sri Lankan Tamils for whom Kalappūr is
still their contra ūr as it is the most suited to their bodily substance
(1984, 67). What is emerging from Daniel’s account then are the ways
in which individual and collective substance are of key concern, as too is
compatibility of substances brought together, as well as relations through
place.
A side note here is necessary in order to take up another key term: jāti.
Daniel begins his book by saying that the overarching focus on caste for
two generations of anthropologists working in South Asia has been so all
consuming that it has blocked scholarly enquiry into other “symbolic con-
structs more pervasive and regnant than caste” (1984, 1). He continues,
arguing that
the inability to go beyond or beneath caste arose from the failure to see that
jāti, meaning ‘genus’ (the source concept of the ill-translated ‘caste’) is not
applied to human beings only, but to animals, plants, and even inorganic
material, such as metals and minerals, as well. What is more, jāti itself is a
development from a generative system of thought that deals with units at
both the suprapersonal as well as the infrapersonal levels. There is no better
term than substance to describe the general nature of these variously ranked
cultural units. In other words, differentially valued and ranked substances
underlie the system known as the caste system, which is but one of many
surface manifestations of this system of ranked substances. (1984, 2)
Indeed, it is the other properties of substances that Daniel seeks to

explore in his ethnography, particularly “their ability to mix and separate,
to transform and be transformed, to establish intersubstantial relationships
of compatibility and incompatibility, to be in states of equilibrium and
disequilibrium, and to possess variable degrees of fluidity and combinabil-
ity” (1984, 3). This statement resonates strongly with material introduced
in Chap. 1 on substance and on the dividual. Crucially for my purposes
here in this chapter, substance, compatibility, mixture, and transformation
are properties and capacities of person and place, as we have seen above
with ūr.
Daniel further contextualises ūr by telling us that it varies “according to
any given person’s changing spatial orientation” as it is a highly person-
centred definition and is defined in relation to oneself (1984, 65; 68). This
perspective, he says, is underpinned by Hindu understandings of substance
and tenets for how substance can and should be mixed:
Because each person has a uniquely proportioned composite substance, in

his search for equilibrium he must observe unique codes for determining
what substance is compatible with his bodily substance. Considerable effort
is expended by the person in determining just what external combinations
will suit him best…The Hindu is, in short, well accustomed to a very idio-
syncratic definition of what is moral, what is compatible, what is relevant,
and so on. This is not to suggest that there are no universal cultural premises
underlying his search for compatible actions and relationships but that as a
uniquely constituted, internally composite entity, he is vulnerable, as is any
104 C. DEGNEN
other composite substance, to the unique conditions of place, time, and

other equally vulnerable substances with which he comes in contact. For this
reason he must find what is suited to him and his unique essence at any
given moment in time and position in space. (1984, 71–72)
What thus becomes apparent is the significance of the substance of the

ūr—the soil in particular—and how this mixes with the bodily substances
of the ūr’s residents in “ūr-person substance exchanges” (1984, 79). The
ūr affects its inhabitants in a “transformative relationship” (1984, 81) and
ūr is understood to have an effect on its residents as its residents absorb
the nature of the soil, eat the food grown in the fields, and drink the water
coming from the village’s soil (1984, 84). Reciprocally, inhabitants of the
ūr also affect the ūr’s substance by living there as the bodily products and
processes of the living (and the dead) combine with the soil of the ūr
(1984, 85).
Compatibility of the individual with the ūr is also of great importance.
The example Daniel gives is of when someone is considering travelling to
a new ūr (a new village, a new country), they will try to establish whether
or not a relation has moved there with success. This, Daniel specifies, is
not so that the new arrival will have a social network in situ to ease her
integration to an unfamiliar location. Instead, “it is based on the assump-
tion that if the new ūr is compatible with one of one’s own, there is a good
chance that it will also be compatible with oneself…the more similar the
bodily substance of the person in the new ūr is to one’s own substance, the
surer the indication of ūr compatibility” (1984, 82). Additionally, soil
itself varies. It can be sour, sweet, bitter, astringent, pungent, or salty, with
particular jātis flourishing on one or the other of these; Brahmins, for
instance, should live on sweet soil (1984, 85). Daniel elaborates, saying
that “a given ūr has greater ūrness – defined in terms of compatibility of
shared substance – with respect to one jāti than it has with respect to
other jātis” (1984, 88). These characteristics of the substance of people’s
bodies and elements of place are borne in mind to enhance compatibility.
But it is the type of kuṇam of both the ūr and of the person that is the
most important variable in regard to compatibility of ūr-person (1984,
89). Kuṇam, or “quality”, is the third core concept Daniel explores in his
account. He explains that kuṇam “is a substance that fuses the particular
qualities of mind and body. For example, when villagers speak of a person
as being of a stingy kuṇam, they mean that this kuṇam substance charac-
terizes his mental and physical substance as a whole” (1984, 89). Daniel
elaborates, careful to point out that whilst to a Western audience being

stingy might be interpreted as a personality characteristic (and thus of the
mind) rather than a corporeal aspect, Tamil audiences perceive mind and
body as “simply different manifestations of one substance”; as such, “it is
sensible to speak of a person as being composed of and suffused by a stingy
kuṇam substance” (1984, 89). Consequently, if his research participants
were to describe a particular village as having a stingy kuṇam, three differ-
ent things might be meant by this: firstly, they could be intending to say
that the people living in that village are stingy; secondly, they are saying
that the soil of that village is itself of a stingy kuṇam. The soil of the village
“is not thought of as a person and hence cannot manifest its stingy kuṇam
in the way humans do (i.e., in consciously willed acts of stinginess). The
soil can, however, cause its human residents to exhibit stingy behaviour”
(1984, 89–90). Lastly, “in a context in which the soil of an ūr is spoken of
as a form of the goddess Pūmātēvi, it is a ‘person’. Therefore, when people
say that Marayūr is a stingy ūr, they mean quite literally that this particular
form of Pūmātēvi is stingy…in dispensing the blessings of bountiful crops”
(1984, 89–90). There are thus two ways of conceptualising the soil of an
ūr: in some contexts, it is not thought of as a person but rather just a type
of substance. In other contexts though “the soil is treated as a person who
interacts with villagers on a person-to- person basis (i.e., the soil as
Pūmātēvi)” (1984, 90). But in either case, the reciprocal relations of per-
son and place are evident in that the soil can cause its inhabitant to behave
in a certain way.
In addition to kuṇam, Daniel explains that the putti of the ūr is a
fourth key consideration. Putti, or intellect, is paralleled to kuṇam in that
both are dispositions, but it is distinguishable from kuṇam in that putti “is
expressed through active, decisive consciousness” whilst kuṇam is “a pas-
sive quality, an inherent disposition regardless of consciousness” (1984,
90). Furthermore, putti evokes traits which may change as they are pres-
ent only at the surface, whereas kuṇam is a deep-level trait which only
changes in very exceptional circumstances (1984, 91) and the kuṇam of
the soil is able to transform a person’s putti (1984, 92). To illustrate this,
Daniel gives a detailed example of individuals of the ANV jāti who
migrated from India to Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan soil or ūr is said to hold
gullibility, as does the kuṇam of the people living there. The kuṇam of
ANVs on the other hand is understood as crafty and enterprising. But
when ANVs settle in Sri Lanka and interact with that ūr, they become
affected by the kuṇam and putti of the soil there. The outcome is that
106 C. DEGNEN
their putti shifts from being crafty and scheming to gullible. The soil can-
not change their kuṇam, but it can be muted by their putti which has
shifted. Despite this muting, the crafty kuṇam of the ANVs resident in Sri
Lanka still manifests itself in a sharper business sense than that of the local
gullible Sri Lankans. This is why ANVs are said to have so much financial
success in Sri Lanka. And yet, when these migrants return to India, they
are often no longer able to exert enough guile against ANVs who did not
migrate and whose putti has not been altered, and are often swindled by
their Indian kin. The only returnees who are said to avoid this and keep
their wealth intact upon return are those who returned gradually from Sri
Lanka, making short visits to their ancestral villages and benefitting from
a gradual reintroduction to their ūr (1984, 92–4). The kuṇam of the soil
of an ūr can thus change the putti of the people living in it (1984, 101–2).
So, in conclusion, Daniel reveals how “the underlying concern of the
Tamil for establishing a relationship is of identifying compatibility with an
ūr…This concern with compatibility results from the belief that an ūr is an
entity composed of substance that can be exchanged and mixed with the
substance of human persons” (1984, 101). Whilst the ideal is to live in the
ūr with “the soil substance [that is]... most compatible with his own bodily
substance” and which “can only be achieved when the kuṇam of the soil
is the same as the kuṇam of one’s own jāti”, this ideal is not always pos-
sible to achieve (1984, 101). When people must live “in an ūr that is not
congenial to the substance of their jāti” (1984, 101), they can adjust since
the kuṇam of the soil where they are living transforms their puttis. And
yet, such transformations, whilst they might help the person adapt, may
also result in “dysfunctional consequences” (1984, 102) such that their
bodily substance can become tainted by the acquisition of another jāti’s
putti. And so,
the substantial relationship that a person establishes with a certain ūr is,
therefore, not at all trivial. The consequences of such a relationship can be
far-reaching, affecting the very nature of social obligations and ties. When
the apparently innocent and polite question ‘What is your ūr?’ was asked of
me by the villagers of Kalappūr, I had no idea that in my response there lay
potentially a store of information. Moreover, when I was asked to give my
contra ūr, I was being asked not merely to betray my intellectual disposition
(putti) but to divulge an essential part of my nature, my kuṇam. (1984,
102)
Daniel’s account is a vivid and richly nuanced account of the intersec-

tion of substance, the qualities of mind and body, and a concern with
compatibility in regard to the constitution of the person. And place
emerges as the nexus of this all. Far more than a container or backdrop to
human activity, place instead is an “essential part” of one’s “nature”, and
is revealing of one’s nature in this cultural context. There are also key
points of connection to other parts of the life course in his account. For
instance, he explains how the formation of the foetus is understood to
result from the compatible mixing of substance of a woman and a man,
and furthermore that “the health and welfare of the foetus and of the child
that is eventually born are believed to depend to a large extent on the
compatibility of a couple’s intiriam [the sexual fluids of women and of
men]” (1984, 164). Compatibility itself is established by a wide spectrum
of elements, including “time of congress, planetary influences, location
where congress occurred, jāti of male and female, diet of both partners”
(1984, 164); furthermore, “there are certain cardinal points in the house
that must be avoided for sexual intercourse” in order to maximise the most
auspicious conditions for conceiving a child who will have a long, wealthy,
and successful life (1984, 176–7). Place and location is thus a lifelong
concern, pre-dating birth, and carrying on throughout the stages of life.
How Might Place Link to Personhood: Embodiment

(I recall) an elderly woman’s report of coming up in a rash because someone
used wire to dig out the soak that is her barnman. Although I did not wit-
ness the woman’s rash nor the interpretive discussions about its cause – this
was reported to me afterward – I have seen many discussions in which causes
of illness and death are speculated on with respect to a person’s relationship
to their country…This reflects the body as ‘the central interpretive matrix
for apprehending country’, as Redmond (2001: 13–14) has described this
in relation to Ngarinyin Aboriginal people, whose country lies to the east of
Bardi and Jawi. (Glaskin 2012, 302)
A third way to contemplate the relations between personhood and

place is via the lens of the body. A recent and powerful account of this
comes from Katie Glaskin’s work in Western Australia with Bardi and Jawi
people, elaborating on what she calls an “embodied relationality” (2012)
and the ways in which personhood extends into the world. Glaskin explores
the equivalences that are drawn by Bardi and Jawi between people, parts
of people, and their place (“country”). These equivalences in turn connect
108 C. DEGNEN
individuals not just to place but also to others (people, ancestors, species)
tied to these places. Central to comprehending these connections is the
activities of ancestral beings (inamunonjin) in the past. These beings left
their traces in the country whilst travelling across it and naming places as
they moved, a period known in English as “The Dreaming” and one
described by many other Aboriginal Australian peoples (Glaskin 2012,
301; see Keen 2006, 517–21, for instance).
Also left in the land during The Dreaming were raya, or invisible spirit
beings, called “kids” or “spirit kids” in English by Bardi and Jawi. Although
raya are not visible, they have a presence that can be felt. Raya are indica-
tive of the “relationship between a person and a place or terrestrial or
marine feature, and between a person and a species” (Glaskin 2012,
301–2). So, for instance, a raya may appear to a man in his dreams or in
the form of a living creature; both are understood to mean that his unborn
child will be a human actualisation of that raya (2012, 301). People may
also “have a special association with particular sites or features of their
estate (such as a particular tree, a soak, a rock, a cave, a creek); these are
locations in which their raya dwelt before they were born” (2012, 302).
Similarly, birthmarks (lanbirr) on a child signify that he or she “has a con-
substantial identity with a creature speared by his or her father at some
stage before their birth and with the species that his or her father speared.
In this case they are called lanbirr buruyun [birthmark from country]”
(2012, 302). This animal is termed that child’s barnman (which Glaskin
says is described by Bardi in English as “totem”). People treat their barn-
man with special consideration and would, for instance, avoid eating their
barnman as it would make them ill if they did (2012, 302). People are
understood to have barnman inside them, and will speak of bodily feelings
associated with their barnman:
The association of physical feeling with barnman (which is also in the form
of these sites and features of land or sea) is explicit: rarrdambal, a word used
to describe the feeling someone has when their ‘blood runs cold, hair stands
up, and (they) get goose pimples’, is ‘connected to’ that person’s barnman
telling them something ‘very serious’…Barnman is both in people and in
country simultaneously: it ontologically and relationally connects them both
to others and to particular parts of country, consubstantially identifying
them with other people and places. (Glaskin 2012, 302)
Raya, barnman, country, and the traces left there by ancestral beings
are thus tightly woven in a complex nexus in which person, body, place,
and others intersect. In some regard, this is reminiscent of a problematic
binary in the anthropological literature on self and person, as I have dis-
cussed in Chap. 1. This is namely the notion of a binary between “Western”
persons, taken to be highly individualistic and autonomous, and “Eastern”
persons described as sociocentric and relational (see e.g. Dumont 1980;
Geertz 1984; Marriott and Inden 1977).
A significant body of work has addressed many of these concerns, par-
ticularly in regard to problematising a uniquely sociocentric “non-
Western” self, and Glaskin also is careful to caution her readers to not
simply interpret Bardi and Jawi perspectives as another example of socio-
centric, interdependent, and relational non-Western selves. She asserts
that the concept of “individual” “remains heuristically and comparatively
useful as a broad description” (2012, 298) and that Aboriginal Australian
personhood has been described as “characterized as a tension between
interrelated patterns of autonomy and relatedness” (2012, 298), but spec-
ifies that “relatedness” is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Instead, “in con-
texts in which kin terms are extended to all known persons, there are of
course varying degrees of intimacy, intersubjectivity, and obligation. There
are also various ways in which the tensions associated with relatedness
might be negotiated to preserve one’s own autonomy and to maximize
social distance” (2012, 298). These are important nuances Glaskin calls
our attention to in terms of how we manage and use these concepts.
But she also emphasises how Bardi and Jawi people interpret damage to
sites in the terrestrial or marine landscapes with which they have an equiv-
alence as damage to their own health, such as the example of the woman
with which this section begins. It is this “direct and immediate expression
of the relationship between body and country [that] can be understood as
an example of embodied relationality in practice” (2012, 302). The Bardi
and Jawi people she worked with count bones, flesh, blood, and hair in
their reckoning of bodily substances; they also include place as a bodily
substance (Glaskin 2006, 114). People thus have a “metaphysical and con-
substantial identification” with place of their barnman and when those
places are damaged, a person of that barnman will also be hurt; conversely
when a person dies, place is marked by that death by, for instance, trees
perishing or dropping branches (Glaskin 2006, 114). These relations
between person and place are reflected in the wider anthropological litera-
ture on Aboriginal Australia and are not unique to Bardi and Jawi concepts.
110 C. DEGNEN
Elizabeth Povinelli (1994) and Ian Keen (2006), for instance, have both
written about how “the country recognizes one from one’s smell” of
sweat (Keen 2006, 521), a recognition that is made possible by the sub-
stance shared between place and person. This is not a passive land on
which people go about their business—rather, agentive aspects of country
and place are manifest here. These are connections between person and
place that are evident during life, but also at the beginnings of life where
those connections are recognised, and at death when those connections
are dismantled.
As Glaskin explains it, embodied relationality is a model of “character-
izing personhood… derived from a cosmology in which ancestral beings,
their traces, and the country in which these are left have equivalence, in
the same way that detached parts of a person’s body (such as hair)” do
(2012, 298). Equivalences such as these in turn forge “a relationship
between persons and places regarded as consubstantial, and that has con-
sequences for how people, and people and country, are linked through
space and time” (2012, 298; emphasis in original). Indeed, it is these very
connections through space and time that render the example of the woman
above and the soak that is her barnman comprehensible. That is because
in Bardi and Jawi ontology, the boundaries between human beings, spirit
beings, persons, place, terrestrial or marine features, and animal species are
intrinsically porous (Glaskin 2006, 110) and embodied relationality itself
is, as Glaskin asserts (2012, 305), at the very core of Bardi and Jawi con-
ceptions of the person.
How Might Place Link to Personhood: Kinship

The gathering of relations shows that a person’s make-up is also porous. It
depends on sharing the relations by which places come into being. It
depends also on what is implicated in the process of a place’s recognitions as
such: in this case that is the production of persons. One cannot then specify
the relations of kinship without reference to exchange; that is, to place.
(Leach 2003, 211)
The fourth and final way I wish to consider the relationship between
personhood and place in this chapter is via the lens of kinship. Kinship is
one of the loadstones of anthropological enquiry, and has a weighty his-
tory in the discipline. This is a history James Leach is well aware of and
engages with in his monograph Creative Land: Place and Procreation on the
Rai Coast of PNG (2003). His account is a wonderfully complex exploration
of genealogy, kinship, and place and of how “persons are generated by

places” (2003, 117) in Reite on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. Key
to his account is the contrast between a Western kinship model—what he
calls a “genealogical model”—and a Reite kinship model—which he terms
a “regenerative model”. He argues that “understandings of kinship and
personhood [in Reite] are intimately bound up with land and placement,
not as a backdrop to people’s lives, but as mutually entailed in the process
which is life and death” (2003, 190). This then is an account that is
grounded in issues of genealogy and of kinship, but also in “creative
endeavour in the making of people, and the emergence of places” (2003,
xiii). Creativity, Leach tells us, “lies in innovation through combination,
and recombination” (2003, xiii–xiv) and “the theme of this book is how
social life here [in Reite] is geared to the creation, and innovative incorpo-
ration, of people” (2003, 18) which he seeks to explore via anthropologi-
cal thinking on kinship.
But Leach also makes clear that conventional anthropological under-
standings of the taken-for-granted aspects of kinship, such as lineage affili-
ations or gender identity, are not sufficient in order to make sense of Reite
notions of kinship. This is because these more standard anthropological
and Western assumptions about kinship do not accommodate place, place-
ment, or mobility. And yet, without these aspects, kinship in Reite is not
possible to describe. That is to say, it is the “actual enfolding of person and
land within a process of becoming for both that poses the descriptive and
theoretical challenge” (2003, 22) for what Leach seeks to explain. Leach
also returns time and again in his monograph to a key dilemma posed by
studying kinship in Reite as a Western anthropologist. This dilemma can
be summarised by two polarised positions: that of pre-given, a priori enti-
ties in Western models of kinship versus in Reite/Melanesian models of
kinship whereby it is assumed that entities are made to appear out of pro-
cesses. In the first, Western sense, Leach says that kinship terminology
becomes largely representational of those entities which are presumed to
be a priori. In the second, Reite/Melanesian sense, Leach reminds us that
kinship terminology is largely constitutive. That is to say, the emphasis on
kinship in Reite should be understood as “a coming-into-being, rather
than a revelation of what is already there, or an animation of entities some-
how pre-specified” (2003, 24). This however proves difficult for Western
audiences who operate on assumptions of principles of classification and a
priori entities that can be grouped together in a kinship system whereby
“differentiation is given by biology. Thus the project of classification arises
112 C. DEGNEN
through recognition of the reality, or nature (biology), of the pre-given

entity. This works as much for gender as for recognition of siblingship”
(2003, 86). This line of argumentation will be familiar from Chap. 2 on
conception, and is reminiscent of the material there that discussed the
non-universality of biological understandings of gestation.
Reite concepts are not grounded in pre-given, a priori entities that
require grouping or classification. Instead, they are grounded in
assumptions of processes and relationships: “thus when Nekgini people
use kinship names in their speech, these usages are not classificatory or
taxonomic, but are part of the process by which persons are made to
appear...The relationship does not follow from pre-recognition of the per-
son as of a certain biologically or genealogically defined type” but instead
what is foregrounded is “the history of relations, and of the places where
kinship comes into being” (2003, 86).
This in turn has significant epistemological consequences for the use
and meaning of kinship terms. That is to say, in a Reite context, kinship
terms need to be understood “as pragmatic acts, as acts that secure an
effect, not ones that serve to express realities which are already specified by
either biology or society” (2003, 86). The issue at stake here then is work-
ing across cultural, epistemological divides and the problem
of how words relate to concepts, and of how concepts relate to the world;
but we must remember these are our problems, the products of an episte-
mology that insists that knowledge is prior to action, that one knows the
world by representing it conceptually in the mind, and that language is the
vehicle by which such representational knowledge is expressed and shared.
(2003, 86)
Leach writes how taro, the staple crop and a prestige food in this area,
is grown by Reite people in their gardens, gardens which are in turn a
source of pride, and that generations of anthropologists working in
Melanesia from Malinowski on have documented the extensive gardening
knowledge and practice in this region (2003, 92–3). Drawing inspiration
from the social and cultural centrality of gardens and gardening, Leach
examines kaapu (spirits) as
a linking element across what would usually be thought of as different

domains of activity, namely: agriculture, the growth of children, ritual initia-
tion, and artistic production. I do so because Reite people themselves call
what happens in all these domains ‘kaapu’. Thus I follow their connections
and analogies ‘across’ contexts, seeing ‘the same’ things in different areas of
life. (2003, 94)
Kaapu is a concept that is used in many different contexts to account

for bodily growth and change (2003, 95) and kaapu is understood as a
shared aspect across the domains of kinship, gardens, and gardening—
domains which Westerners tend to perceive as separate but which in Reite
are not. Instead, “control of the powers of growth (kaapu) is recognised
as agency, and has social effects, whether this occurs in gardens, or in
producing persons. The outcomes are commensurate because the creative
process is the same” (2003, 95). In contrast, previous anthropological
work on kinship in this area assumed that “land is a substrate upon which
the relations of society work to order people’s activities and associations”;
careful consideration of Reite concepts demonstrate instead how life is
generated via an imbrication of land, place, and histories of social rela-
tions (2003, 29). Place could thus arguably be rendered partially agen-
tive, but certainly exceeds simply being a background for human
activity.
By virtue of growing in the same land, Reite people are thus under-
stood to share substance and to be kin (2003, 30). This perspective, what
Leach terms a regenerative model of kinship, is fundamentally at odds
with a Western genealogical model of kinship. A genealogical model
understands a kinship connection via the transmission of substance from
parent to child, represented in our kinship diagrams as a line from parent
to child (Leach 2003, 30). But such a model of transmission is meaning-
less for Reite people as the role of the parent “is not to pass on some
component of substance [to the child], but – through [parenting] work –
to establish the conditions for the [child’s] growth on the land” (2003,
30). The emphasis in the genealogical model on kinship as transmission of
substance (genetic, biological) thus becomes clearer, but so too do
assumptions about place in Western thought. This is because “in the gene-
alogical model, the land – indeed the environment – may be viewed as a
kind of container in (or on) which life goes on. It holds life, but is in no
way constitutive of it” (2003, 30). The land is inanimate in regard to
human life, and has no role in human reproduction. Place is simply occu-
pied—it is simply where you happen to be. In great contrast, however, in
the regeneration model “ the land is very much alive, and enters directly
into the constitution (generation) of persons…places enter directly into
114 C. DEGNEN
the generation of persons, while persons – through their work – engender

places…the constitution of persons and of places are mutually entailed
aspects of the same process. In this sense kinship is geography, or land-
scape” (2003, 30–31).
Leach also shows, for example, how siblingship does not rely here on a
perception of shared biogenetic substance. Reite people speak of brothers
and sisters, but this is kinship reckoned via a “common origin in regards
to place and not to biogenetic ancestry” (2003, 48; emphasis added). Kin
groups are based on residence, landholding, sharing land, and “aid[ing]
each other’s enterprises” (2003, 48), not on transmitted biogenetic sub-
stance. The crucial thing to accept here, and which Leach so eloquently
shows us, is that one cannot assume that “real kinship” implies a genea-
logical/biogenetic connection – it is not a case of “real” relationships
residing in biology and “fictitious” relationships being socially defined
(2003, 52). Instead, Reite logic must be considered in terms of how peo-
ple are made and how kin relations are made and known. This is an under-
standing of personhood and of kinship that is not based on biological
substances. Reite people do not consider the connections created from
genealogical descent to be substantial connections. Instead, the connec-
tions that count between people, and the connections which help you
know who you are kin with and who you are related to, are the connec-
tions created in shared land and production (2003, 53). It is these by
which persons are defined and how they are produced, and thus place has
a pronounced and significant role in the constitution of persons.
Conclusions
The vibrant ethnographic material presented in this chapter helps us
understand how it is that personhood requires a consideration of place.
Place can be invoked to remind others of what kind of people they should
aspire to be when they need reminding, as in the Western Apache example;
the substance of place can be an essential part of who one is, such as in the
case of ūr in Kalappūr; one’s personhood may be grounded in equivalences
drawn between body and place as for Bardi and Jawi people in Western
Australia; and kinship may be forged via the mutual constitution of people
and place as it is for Reite people in Papua New Guinea. Across all of the
examples explored in this chapter then, it is evident how place is keenly
relevant to personhood. This thus challenges us to open up the frame of
what might “count” as relevant to the constitution of the person.
This material also opens up a pertinent conversation with recent theo-

rising in human geography that has sought to go beyond more conven-
tional notions of place as socially constructed. On the one hand, all sorts
of places have “socially constructed meanings without which it is impos-
sible to talk about them but the things themselves are there whether we
construct them or not” (Cresswell 2015, 51). Social constructionists thus
rightly point out that place is not “natural”—the meanings and materiali-
ties of place are made by the actions of human beings, as Cresswell tells us.
But on the other hand, phenomenological and humanistic geographers
have begun to argue that place is a necessary requirement for social and
cultural action (Cresswell 2015, 46–51). That is to say that “society itself
is inconceivable without place…that place is primary to the construction
of meaning and society…In other words there was no ‘place’ before there
was humanity but once we came into existence then place did too”
(Cresswell 2015, 49–51). This is not a social constructionist perspective,
but a relational perspective. As Cresswell argues by drawing on Casey
(who in turn is indebted to Heidegger), place can be conceptualised as “a
site of gathering” (2015, 52) whereby “places gather…various ‘animate’
and ‘inanimate’ entities. Places also gather experiences and histories…
memories and expectations” (Casey 1996, 24 in Cresswell 2015, 52). This
perspective
suggests that there is a relationship between the inside of a place (which

gathers) and an outside (from which things are gathered). It underlines the
relational nature of place – the necessity of a place being related to its out-
side…places are syncretic wholes made up of parts and how any particular
place is connected to the wide world beyond from which things are gathered
and to which things are dispersed. Any consideration of the unique collec-
tion of parts that makes up a place has to take into account the relations
between that place and what lies beyond it. (Cresswell 2015, 53; 54)
I contend that the ethnographic examples explored in this chapter evi-

dence precisely these processes. The ways in which personhood are made
and remade in regard to place (and vice versa) permit us to clarify our
thinking on both categories, and challenge us to rethink them, including
ideas of agency and moral force. In Basso’s account of Western Apache,
place is evoked to help people conduct themselves in a moral fashion; they
are held to account by ancestral memories/stories lodged in places. People
here stalk with stories and speak in names to remind each other of how to
116 C. DEGNEN
live right. In Kalappūr, Daniel tells us how the soil causes its inhabitants to
behave in a certain way. In both these cases, place, personhood, and com-
portment are linked, albeit in culturally distinct ways. But in both cases,
place can alter people and can help fashion the “right kind” of person—it
is not just people who alter place. In Reite, Leach helps us understand a
regeneration model whereby the land is not passive but alive, and it enters
into the generation/constitution of people whereby the making of per-
sons and the making of place are elements of the same process. Glaskin’s
account of embodied relationality explores the ways in which Bardi and
Jawi personhood extends into place as persons and place are understood
to be consubstantial, and personhood extends beyond the physical body.
All this material helps further the point about relationality by connecting
it to intersecting ideas of the body, the life course, and well-being. It also
ties back to material linking conception, pregnancy, and rights in Chap. 2,
and it underlines the theme of cultural ontological variation for the ways
in which what it means to be a person can be embodied in place.
Notes
1. Note too that a number of anthropologists have explored the significance of
place for creating a sense of belonging and of collective identity. This exten-
sive body of work includes Basso (1984, 1996) in the Southwest United
States amongst Western Apache who I explore in close detail in the next
section of this chapter; Myers (1986) working with Pintupi people in the
Western Desert of Australia, Cohen’s work (1987) in Whalsay, in the
Shetland Islands, Weiner (1991) amongst the Foi people of Papua New
Guinea, and Stewart in West Virginia (1996). In addition to these mono-
graphs, a number of influential edited volumes have included Bender
(1993), Hirsch and O’Hanlon (1995), Feld and Basso (1996), and Árnason,
Ellison et al. (2012). Some of my own work has sought to develop this field,
by exploring the ways in which absence and time figure in the interstices of
belonging and place (Degnen 2013), the work of social memory in regards
to place (Degnen 2005), and the embodied and relational aspects of place
attachment (Degnen 2015). There is thus a healthy and now long-standing
body of work in the discipline that engages critically with the connections of
people and place.
2. ANV is the abbreviation for Ā ru Nāt ̣ṭu Veḷḷāḷa, a jāti whose members are
thought to be astute business people, an ability “which is strengthened when
they reside in the ancestral villages of their jāti” (Daniel 1984, 62, fn 2).
3. Daniel, like Cresswell, is heavily influenced by Heidegger and so the parallels

between their accounts are not accidental. See Daniel’s website at Columbia
where he writes that “My consuming interest is in the relevance of the writ-
ings of Charles S. Peirce and Martin Heidegger for anthropological theory
and practice. European modernity begins and is sustained, I hold, by the -
unwarranted? - questions raised by Descartes and the - inadequate? - answers
provided by him and most major thinkers in the western intellectual tradi-
tion who followed him. And anthropology is a capricious child of such a
modernity because of its encounter with systems of thought and action that
interrogate this modernity on the one hand and its filial loyalty to its own
disciplinary heritage on the other. Peirce and Heidegger, as two of the most
powerful critics of Cartesianism, show us ways of connecting non-western
(ethnographic) critiques to western modernism’s (philosophical) critiques
deriving from these two thinkers. Against this broad problematique, I do
research and write on semeiotic, violence, refugees and plantation labor. My
geographic areas of research are South India and Sri Lanka.” http://anthro-
pology.columbia.edu/people/profile/350, viewed 14 June 2016.
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CHAPTER 5
Human People and Other-Than-Human

People
Introduction
As incomprehensible as it will seem to some readers, personhood is not a
status that only human beings have a claim on. Indeed, since this proposi-
tion is so fundamentally opposed to normative Western ways of thinking—
a mode of thought that is based on a deep demarcation of the realm of
human beings (“culture”) from the realm of animals, plants, and objects
(“nature”)—anthropologists have also sometimes struggled with it.
Researchers have toiled to account for the ways in which other humans
they work with can say with confidence that, for instance, jaguars, stones,
bears, the wind, elk, elephants, and thunder are persons. Some have attrib-
uted such beliefs to “primitive” religious systems but not to reality as it
“actually is”. Some have attributed it instead to metaphorical constructs:
that humans are speaking “as if” a bear is a person, or that jaguars “are
like” people. That is to say, some anthropologists have argued that the
attribution of personhood to non-humans is a cultural model that sym-
bolically extends human forms of experience to those of animal and non-
animal worlds, but that these cannot “really” be people.
What remains the case, however, is that the way of ordering the world
whereby only human beings are candidates for personhood is not repre-
sentative of the wide range of human responses to the question “who
counts as a person?”. Instead, time and again, it is manifestly evident in the
ethnographic record that many human beings understand the world they
live in to be a world where animals, spirits, plants, and material objects can

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_5
122 C. DEGNEN
also be people. Personhood, it turns out, is not something only human

beings have a claim on. Persons can be human, and they can be other than
human.
This chapter outlines the core theoretical concepts and history of ideas
on personhood in the human and other than human realms, working
through concepts such as animism, reciprocity, perspectivism, and multi-
naturalism. Its foundational core draws substantially from the anthropo-
logical literature on northern hunting cultures in the sub-arctic, as well as
hunting peoples in Amazonia. I recognise the inherent dangers in compar-
ing such a wide range of culturally diverse groups, taking them out of their
context, and putting them together here for my own purposes. For
instance, in this chapter I use material from several Algonquian groups in
Quebec and Ontario (Berens River Ojibwa, Waswanipi Cree, Wemindji
Cree, Mistassini Cree, Waskaganish Cree) and connect them with material
from the Yukaghir of Siberia, and then move to Amazonia to draw on a
range of material including Jivaroan Achuar people of lowland eastern
Ecuador, and then to Western material from Britain and Israel. In many
instances, I am tracing connections that others have already made, such as
recognising the contribution of Irving Hallowell who has inspired many
working in this field. But I am also seeking to make comparisons without
making generalisations, as discussed in Chap. 1.
Of particular importance here again, as in previous chapters, are issues
of ontology, epistemology, and relationality. The chapter also explores
emerging debates on multispecies ethnography as well as on human-
animal relations such as companion species (pets). Both of these have
helped render more complex Western assumptions about the supposed
nature-culture divide. Taken as a whole, what this body of literature chal-
lenges us to do is reflect on Western epistemologies and ontologies that
firstly divide the world into separate realms of human and non-human—of
culture on the one hand, and of nature on the other on the grounds of
human exceptionalism—and then secondly order these worldly domains
in hierarchical relation to each other whereby humans are seen to have
dominion over the natural world. What becomes apparent is the extent to
which these assertions—ones that many readers will arrive at this text with
as their taken-for-granted understanding—are simply alienating and puz-
zling for many millions of other human beings both historically and today.
This story of human and non-human personhood could start in any num-
ber of places, but one of the most illuminating is with the Aboriginal peo-
ples of Canada, and it is to this part of the world that I first turn.
HUMAN PEOPLE AND OTHER-THAN-HUMAN PEOPLE 123
Bears, Stones, and Ontology

There is an extensive literature documenting the lives of the Algonquian
peoples of Ontario, Quebec, and Labrador stemming from the late 1800s
and early 1900s and running through the present day. Algonquian peoples
include a number of distinct groups (Ojibwa, Cree, Innu) who share com-
mon linguistic roots and many cultural similarities as sub-arctic hunting
societies. A number of anthropologists working with these peoples have
explored Algonquian cosmological orderings of the world (Adelson 2000;
Black 1977; Feit 1992; Hallowell 1964; Landes 1969 [1938]; Preston
1975; Scott 1989; Speck 1935; Tanner 1979). Time and again these
authors make clear that this is a world in which human people and non-
human people both reside and in which they are mutually imbricated.
A. Irving Hallowell, for instance, recounts a story told to him by an
Ojibwa man called Birchstick and his meeting with a bear:
One spring when I was out hunting I went up a little creek where I knew
suckers were spawning. Before I came to the rapids I saw fresh bear tracks. I
walked along the edge of the creek and when I reached the rapids I saw a
bear coming towards me, along the same trail I was following. I stepped
behind a tree and when the animal was about thirty yards from me I fired. I
missed and before I could reload the bear made straight for me. He seemed
mad, so I never moved. I just waited there by the tree. As soon as he came
close to me and rose up on his hind feet, I put the butt end of my gun
against his heart and held him there. I remembered what my father used to
tell me when I was a boy. He said that a bear always understands what you
tell him. The bear began to bite the stock of the gun. He even put his paws
upon it something like a man would do if he were going to shoot. Still hold-
ing him off as well as I could I said to the bear, ‘If you want to live, go away,’
and he let go the gun and walked off. I didn’t bother the bear anymore.
(Hallowell 1964, 66)
Writing 50 years later, Colin Scott describes a series of encounters with

bears when he lived with another Algonquian group, Wemindji Cree
hunters of Quebec (2006). Scott recounts how one night in late spring,
whilst living in a spring goose-hunting camp on the shores of James Bay
with his Cree hosts, a mysterious visitor kept attempting to enter the
camp. The nocturnal visitor repeatedly moved into the section of the camp
where the geese taken during the hunt had been processed earlier that day.
Each time, the camp dog raised the alarm, barking loudly and setting off
124 C. DEGNEN
a commotion; eventually, one of the hunters shot with his shotgun at the
intruder. Although no animal body was found the next morning, the
tracks it had left indicated that a juvenile bear was the culprit. A bear’s
activity, so close to camp, was unusual. The bear’s behaviour prompted
great interest and conversation amongst those present. But this was careful
conversation since the “importance of the bear is such that respect
demands circumspection – one is cautious in speaking the bear’s name, for
the bear will know…Instead, the bear is referred to as miichim (food)”
(2006, 56). Speculation about the bear’s activities and motivation contin-
ued, with one of the hunters, Johnny, saying “he didn’t think the bear
would come back; ‘he knows he’ll be killed. The bear knows what you say
about him, what you’re going to do’” (2006, 56). The events also
prompted hunters to share anecdotes about previous encounters with
bears and outcomes of them. An underlying state of anxiety however per-
meated the camp. This is because the bear might have been wounded in
the night by the shotgun blast. Scott recounts why this was so troubling
to those present: “It is a serious matter to wound a bear, and a serious
matter to waste one. An accident on the ice that ended in a drowning two
winters earlier had been attributed (among other possible factors) to the
victim’s participation the previous summer in killing a bear whose meat,
due to improper butchering in hot weather, had spoiled” (2006, 57). The
anxiety in the hunting camp was thus because they “were concerned to kill
the bear, especially inasmuch as it might have been wounded, to respect
the bear and to end the risk of offence” (2006, 57).
Both Hallowell and Scott are very reflexive about these bear events and
stories. Hallowell is fully aware of how unintelligible the interaction he
recounts from Birchstick would seem to a Western audience. Scott contex-
tualises his account by referring to the affinities between Cree animistic
hunting ontologies and objectivist science postulates (2006, 52; 62). Both
anthropologists however seek to push beyond these epistemological and
ontological gaps in ways of understanding the world. Hallowell, for
instance, encourages his readers to consider “Ojibwa concepts of the
nature of animate beings, [whereby this] behavior becomes intelligible to
us…[Birchstick] was not confronted with an animal with ‘objective’ ursine
properties, but rather with an animate being who had ursine attributes and
also ‘person attributes’” (1964, 66). Scott, for his part, writes about how
such experiences as the ones he recounts above helped immerse him into
a Cree understanding of the world, a cosmology whereby he had
responsibility as a hunter to the bear, and that the bear also had responsi-
bilities to “less powerful animals and, of course, properly behaving
humans” (2006, 60). Indeed, this is a world whereby “relationships of
sharing and mutual responsiveness between human and other-than-human
aspects of the environment constitute ‘personhood’” (Scott 2006, 53).
These bears then are not “like” people; they are not symbolic representa-
tions of human concerns, nor simply elements of a religious system. They
are instead thinking, communicating, planning subjects who must be
engaged with respectfully.
The anthropological impulse, manifest in both Hallowell and Scott’s
approaches to the material presented above, is to seek to understand
Obijwa and Cree understandings of the world. But the dilemma for
anthropologists is that such ways of understanding are very far indeed
from Western perspectives. What is one to do, asks Martin Holbraad,
“when the people you study say that a stone is a person…or engage in any
other activity or discourse that during an unguarded moment you would
be tempted to call ‘irrational’” (Holbraad in Alberti et al. 2011, 902),
including stating that a bear is a person?
Holbraad argues that if we approach this issue through an ontological
lens, the “answer is that if these things ‘appear irrational’, it is because we
have misunderstood them. If people say a stone is a person, it is because
they are talking about something different from what we talk about when
we say that it is not” (2011, 902). That is to say, personhood can be attrib-
uted to stones, or be withheld from stones, depending on what stones are
understood to be within each cultural frame.1 Both sides can be simultane-
ously right.
But we must also grapple with the question of cultural relativism.
Saying that both sides can be simultaneously right is arguably not simply
to revert to cultural relativism. Instead, as Holbraad (2011, 903) writes:
if the problem when people say that stones are persons is to understand what
they are actually saying (as opposed to why they may be saying such a silly
thing), then the onus is on me as an anthropologist to reconceptualize a
whole host of notions that are involved in such a statement…to literally
rethink what a stone and what a person might be for the equation of one
with the other to even make sense.
In other words, an ontological lens presses us not to simply account for

Ojibwa and Cree ways of understanding personhood, but to account for
126 C. DEGNEN
what it is about Western epistemology and ontology that would lead read-
ers to feel uncomfortable, troubled by, the assertion that bears are people,
too.
It is in precisely this way that the material presented here challenges us
to confront the dilemmas of Western ontologies posed by other world-
views and other ontologies, ones that have different starting points to our
own. It reveals important considerations about the assumptions in Western
societies about the cosmos of living beings, about assumptions over the
supposed agency of humans and the passivity of animals, as well as perhaps
how “personhood, rather than being an inherent property of people and
things, is constituted in and through the relationships into which [people]
enter” (Willerslev 2007, 21; emphasis added). Indeed, in many ways, what
this chapter comes down to is the concept of human exceptionalism. That
is to say, to what extent and under which circumstances are human
beings understood as so uniquely a special form of life that only humans
can claim the status of person.
Reclaiming Animism: Hunting Relations, Love,

and Seduction
Grappling with the notion of human and non-human persons has a long
history in anthropology. Indeed, one of the so-called founding fathers of
the discipline, E. B. Tylor, famously developed the notion of “animism”
to describe the attribution of souls and life to inanimate objects and natu-
ral phenomena. So, for instance, Feit’s description of the entities included
within the term “life” in Waswanipi, a Cree community in Quebec on the
shores of James Bay, might be seized upon as evidence of animistic beliefs:
The basic James Bay Cree term for ‘life’ can apply to a wide range of beings.
These include animals and plants, natural objects and phenomena (such as
certain rocks and water), implements (such as guns, traps, snowshoes, and
canoes), spirit beings (such as lightning, wind persons, and animal bosses),
legendary figures (such as Chikapesh, the trickster), Jesus, and God. (1994,
292)
Tylor’s definition of animism would in turn interpret this example as a

“primitive” form of religion, one that was not sufficiently evolved to
distinguish between natural and supernatural realms, and which instead
childishly attributed life to a range of living and non-living entities
(Bird-David 1999). Whilst anthropology long ago abandoned Tylor’s

social evolutionist perspectives on religion, the concept of animism has
been harder for anthropology to disentangle itself from. It is still pre-
sented in foundational anthropology textbooks and encyclopaedias, and is
used in everyday English in largely unrevised form from its nineteenth-
century Tylorian version (Bird-David 1999). Given that the concept of
animism is premised on a highly derogatory set of evolutionary principles,
ones that frame indigenous people as “primitives”, incapable of rational
thought and trapped in supposedly superstitious beliefs, animism has
become a deeply problematic term in anthropology (Bird-David 1999).
There has however been a recent renewal of interest in revisiting the con-
cept, linked to a developing work body of work on the relations between
humans and non-humans as well as the ontological turn (Halbmayer
2012). This has proved extremely productive and valuable via the work of
authors such as Bird-David (1999), Ingold (2000), Willerslev (2007) to
whom I shall return shortly.
Animism is thus a contested concept. But since it gestures to world-
views that perceive life in a broader sense than that relied on in Western
thought, it is also a useful point of entry into beginning to understand
how it is that personhood can be said to be not solely a domain of human
beings. As Holbraad signals above, giving due consideration to the ques-
tion of personhood from this point of view also unsettles assumptions
around a series of taken-for-granted concepts in Western thought. This
includes core notions such as individuality, autonomy, the biological and
the social, fixity of form, mimesis, nature/culture divide, and Cartesian
mind/body dualism. It is a rethinking of our own assumptions that we
must attempt in order to work with the concept of “other than human
persons”. A related task is to attempt to recognise the extent to which our
own frames of reference have informed so deeply what is knowable and
thinkable.
In order to begin to do this, let us return to Feit’s account of Waswanipi
Cree. Feit’s description of Waswanipi understandings of the world and
what the term “life” encompasses might, out of context, be taken as evi-
dence of animistic thought. But putting these—as Feit does—into their
proper cultural context of hunting practices and hunting knowledge is to
better understand how humans and non-humans are persons. As Feit
writes, “hunting, in the Waswanipi view, is not simply an application of
human labor to passive resources, and human action does not alone trans-
form animals into ‘food’. Hunting is, rather, a social and sacred occupation
128 C. DEGNEN
involving communication with spirit beings” (Feit 1994, 296). This view
of the world is thus clearly not one whereby human beings are the only
entities endowed with control of their environment. Instead, the human
ability to engage successfully in the world is intimately connected with
their ability to communicate with spirit beings and with animals. Spirit
beings control the hunt and will guide hunters where to hunt. Animals
also participate in hunting “not as passive resources but as active ‘persons’.
That is, they possess intelligence and wills, and are capable of independent
action” (Feit 1994, 295). According to Adrian Tanner, Cree hunting is
thus a carefully planned activity whereby hunters do not generally come
upon animals by chance, but rather can predict with good accuracy what
game will be available in a particular area. This is due to astute observation
and knowledge of the environment and animal behaviours, as well as divi-
natory practices such as dreaming (Tanner 1979, 133-4). Animals and the
spirit masters which control the various animal species can decide whether
or not to give themselves to humans, as well as which humans they will
permit to hunt them (Feit 1994; Preston 1975; Tanner 1979).
But as the material from Scott’s time in the Wemindji Cree goose-
hunting camp signals, this is also a world where communication matters in
regard to showing proper respect and gratefulness to animals when talking
about them, when killing them, and when butchering them (see also
Nadasdy 2007). This is a way of understanding the world that is not lim-
ited to Cree peoples in Quebec, but one repeated throughout the litera-
ture of sub-arctic aboriginal hunting peoples (Nelson 1986; Ridington
1988a, 1990; Willerselv 2007). Broadly speaking, these expectations for
proper human comportment includes butchering animal bodies appropri-
ately, treating animal remains respectfully, and sharing what one has caught
(Henriksen 1973; Tanner 1979). If humans act accordingly, animals will
respond by giving themselves to hunters (Tanner 1979, 136). The litera-
ture on northern hunting peoples thus attests to the multiple ways in
which human and non-human people are bound in relations of mutually.
The nature of these relations is however described differently by various
authors. Preston, working amongst Waskaganish Cree in Quebec, describes
the human person-animal person relationship as based to “a significant but
variable degree on perceived love relationships, where animals give them-
selves so that men can live” (1975, ii). Preston argues that the concept of
“love” at work in Cree perspectives is not one of a Western romantic ideal
of love as a big, powerful, “exhilarating entity” that sweeps all before it.
Instead, he states that “love (including varying degrees of respect) is a
quality that waxes and wanes and grows cumulatively with the efforts and
manifestations and mutual understanding of the persons involved, as it

succeeds or fails in influencing personal relationships (in this case we are
including food-animals as ‘persons’)” and furthermore that love can be
experienced in different ways for different classes of people in one’s life
such as the distinctions between wife, daughter, son, grandfather, bear, or
caribou (1975, 215).
This notion of love and voluntary giving of themselves as animals to
human hunters has come under some scrutiny. Robert Brightman, for
instance, argues that amongst the Rock Cree people he worked with in
northern Manitoba, there are not one but two versions of this relation-
ship, models he describes as “benefactive” and “adversarial” (1993). In
each of these two models, the respective levels of power and agency of the
hunter and the animal vary accordingly as well as what hunting, killing,
and eating signify. Thus, Brightman argues that the extent to which the
animal-hunter relationship can be understood as love-based depends very
much on the context and time frame within which they take place.
In a parallel but different case, Rane Willerslev, writing about the
Yukaghir people living in the Upper Kolyma region of Siberia, another
boreal hunting people, argues that the nature of the relationship between
hunter and prey is inherently sexual (2004, 2007). Whilst Yukaghir lives
have been deeply affected historically first by Soviet collectivisation and
then by post-Soviet privatisation, contemporary Yukaghir men still hunt
for up to eight months of the year in the forests. This used to be for fur
trapping to sell but is now subsistence level hunting of elk. Willerslev tells
us that Yukaghir consider some animals, some of the time, to be persons
with souls. Elk of either sex are seen as essentially feminine, giving them-
selves to hunters not because they sacrifice themselves freely, but out of
desire for the hunter disguised as a lover. The hunt is an act of seduction,
described in language full of sexual imagery. This conflation of hunting
and sex, with the prey cast as a woman to be conquered, is widespread
amongst hunters in a broad range of societies, including Western ones.
For Yukaghir, however, it takes on its own dynamic. The night before a
hunt, hunters make small offerings to the animal master spirit so that the
spirit will have sex with them in their dreams. This desire is then trans-
ferred to the prey who are also enticed by the hunters’ decorated clothing.
During the hunt, the Yukaghir practice what Willerslev calls mimesis: they
imitate the elk to the point that they become almost-elk (or as he terms it,
not elk but not not-elk). Killing the animal re-establishes the human-
animal boundary preventing seduction from becoming love and the
hunter from becoming wholly and permanently elk (2004, 2007).
130 C. DEGNEN
An important caveat, however, is that how animals and personhood are

understood can vary significantly by context. Willerslev reminds us that
when Yukaghir people say that elk are “people like us”, perceptions of
animals are plural and contextually different (2007, 73–4; 117). A hunter
may well in one context “talk about elk and reindeer not as persons but
simply as material entities to be killed and consumed” but in another con-
text, such as when he is pursuing prey, “animals are often related to as
persons who have distinctive modes of behavior, temperaments and sensi-
bilities that hunters take into account” (2007, 116). That is to say, the
same animal can take on rather distinct meanings, which are in turn depen-
dent on the situation in which it is experienced. As Willerslev says, “it is
within situations of actual, perceptual engagement with prey that non-
human entities are experienced as persons” (2007, 117). Similarly, Nurit
Bird-David (1999, S74-75) writes about examples from both Hallowell’s
and her own work when some—but not all—stones are described as alive
to Hallowell by an Ojibwa man. She recounts how this mirrors her own
research experiences with Nayaka hunting people in South India whereby
context (and the presence or absence of “mutual engagement”) is every-
thing in regard to whether a particular elephant may or may not be con-
sidered devaru by Nayaka (1999, S75). This is a term that Bird-David
translates as “superpersons”, referring to Hallowell’s “other-than-human-
persons” category, but also seeking to improve on it (1999, S75).
Challenging the Binary Modes of Western Thought

and Their Implications for Personhood
[Hallowell] viewed the Ojibwa concept of person as more inclusive than

that of the culture that produced anthropology. (Ridington 1988b, 100)
How then can we build from these examples to examine more closely
ideas of personhood and Western ontology? One of the most evident
starting points is perhaps the series of divisions in Western thought that
the material above makes visible. In building this argument, I am deeply
indebted to the work of Tim Ingold, and in what follows, I use his insights
to help me develop my account. Ingold is an anthropologist who first
conducted fieldwork with Saami people in northern Finland. He has
worked on northern circumpolar reindeer herding and hunting more
broadly as well as human-animal relations, perception, and skilled
practice.
Ingold argues that the tradition of Western thought is underpinned by

a series of separations that come back to a “basic contrast between physical
substance and conceptual form, of which the dichotomy between nature
and culture is one expression” (2000, 41). Other forms this dichotomy
takes are mind/body, subject/object, active/passive, person/thing, rea-
son/instinct, and human/animal. Westerners can be characterised by their
way of understanding the environment in which they live “as an external
world of nature that has to be ‘grasped’ conceptually and appropriated
symbolically within the terms of an imposed cultural design, as a precondi-
tion for effective action. They…see themselves as mindful subjects having
to contend with an alien world of physical objects” (Ingold 2000, 42).
Consequently, it follows that within Western ontology it is taken for
granted that the mind is separate from the world; that in turn the mind
must “literally formulate [the world] – to build an intentional world into
consciousness – prior to any attempt at engagement” with the world
(Ingold 2000, 42).
Ingold then contrasts this normative Western way of apprehending the
world with that of hunter-gatherers. He argues that hunter-gatherers take
“the human condition to be that of a being immersed from the start…in
an active, practical and perceptual engagement” with the world, some-
thing he terms an “ontology of dwelling” (2000, 42). As he says, appre-
hending the world thus becomes “not a matter of construction but of
engagement…not of making a view of the world but of taking up a view
in it” (2000, 42). This then is an understanding of the world not predi-
cated on a fundamental division into two realms of nature and culture,
mind and body, subject and object, persons versus organisms or things. It
instead perceives a world composed of one realm, a world that is
saturated with personal powers, and embracing both humans, the animals
and plants on which they depend, and the features of the landscape in which
they live and move. Within this one world, humans figure not as composites
of body and mind but as undivided beings, ‘organism-persons’, relating as
such both to other humans and to non-human agencies and entities in their
environment. (2000, 47)
Ingold goes further, saying that “in the hunter-gatherer economy of

knowledge…it is as entire persons, not as disembodied minds, that human
beings engage with one another and, moreover, with non-human beings
as well…the constitutive quality of intimate relations with non-human and
132 C. DEGNEN
human components of the environment is one and the same” (2000, 47).
Understanding this contrast lays the groundwork for being able in turn to
apprehend how it is that human people and other-than-human people can
be understood to co-exist.
Indeed, it is the difficulty of this notion for Western audiences—that
not only human beings can be persons but so too can other than human
beings be persons—which brings us back to that series of cleavages in
Western thought. This cosmology insists on rigid divides between the
polar opposites of humanity and animality; it further posits human beings
as uniquely situated, as exceptional, within the natural realm (Ingold
2000, 48). The consequences of this in turn mean that:
Underwriting the Western view of the uniqueness of the human species is

the fundamental axiom that personhood as a state of being is not open to non-
human animal kinds…Human existence is conceived to be conducted
simultaneously on two levels, the social level of interpersonal, intersubjective
relations and the natural ecological level of organism-environment interac-
tions, whereas animal existence is wholly confined within the natural domain.
Humans are both persons and organisms, animals are all organism. This is a
view, however, that Cree and other northern hunters categorically reject.
Personhood, for them, is open equally to human and non-human animal
(and even non-animal) kinds. (Ingold 2000, 48; emphasis in original)
Ingold is careful to underline that although hunter-gatherers like Cree

do not limit the attribution of personhood to human beings, this does not
mean that the differences between humans and animals are not important
to them. The key however is “that the difference between (say) a goose
and a man is not between an organism and a person, but between one kind
of organism-person and another” (2000, 50). Ingold continues, pointing
out that in Cree thought personhood is not the obvious realm of only
human beings. Instead, humanity is one of many possible versions of per-
sonhood. Furthermore, “whereas Western thought sets out from an
assumed dichotomy between the human and the animals and then searches
about for possible analogies or homologies, the Cree trajectory – as Scott
explains – ‘seems rather the opposite: to assume fundamental similarity
while exploring the differences between humans and animals’ (1989,
195)” (Ingold 2000, 50). And so, the theme of division, the ontological
strategy of separation in Western thought, in contrast with an ontology of
dwelling which is so profoundly evident in the literature on northern
hunting peoples, becomes inescapable in regard to personhood. As an

interesting counter-point, Bird-David points out that whilst she celebrates
Hallowell for his groundbreaking work on Ojibwa personhood, his phrase
“other-than-human-persons” (one that seeks to evade Western biases)
“still conserves the primary objectivist concern with classes (human and
other-than-human)” (1999, S71), an anchoring point that permeates
Western categories of thought.
Having said this, my reading of Hallowell is that although his proposi-
tion of “other-than-human” may well still draw on Western categorical
thinking, there is clear evidence in his writing that he was aware of this
contradiction. Indeed, his work is reminiscent of debates that would occur
later in anthropology and to what extent Western anthropologists had
been limited by their own cultural assumptions that kinship is universally
a question of biogenetic descent (Schneider 1984, 1980). In a parallel
fashion which anticipated these debates over kinship, Hallowell identified
a similar issue confronting anthropologists about personhood. As he
writes about Ojibwa cosmology,
the concept of ‘person’ is not, in fact, synonymous with human being but
transcends it. The significance of the abstraction only becomes apparent
when we stop to consider the perspective adopted. The study of social orga-
nization, defined as human relations of a certain kind, is perfectly intelligible
as an objective approach to the study of this subject in any culture. But if, in
the world view of a people, ‘persons’ as a class include entities other than
human beings, then our objective approach is not adequate for presenting
an accurate description of ‘the way a man, in a particular society, sees himself
in relation to all else.’ A different approach is required for this purpose.
(1964, 51)
But what then is a Cree or an Ojibwa understanding of the person?

Hallowell describes it thus: all persons
– human or other than human – are structured the same as I am. There is a
vital part which is enduring and an outward appearance that may be trans-
formed under certain conditions. All other ‘persons’, too, have such attri-
butes as self-awareness and understanding. I can talk with them. Like myself,
they have personal identity, autonomy, and volition. I cannot always predict
exactly how they will act…Many of them have more power than I have, but
some have less…I must be cautious in my relations with other ‘persons’
because appearances may be deceptive. (1964, 73)
134 C. DEGNEN
He adds that all persons (human and other than human) have “vital
personal attributes such as sentience, volition, memory, speech” (1964,
72). Consequently, “the world of personal relations in which the Ojibwa
live is a world in which vital social relations transcend those which are
maintained with human beings” (1964, 73).
Ingold, building on Hallowell, further elaborates that “any being that
possesses these attributes [of sentience, volition, memory, speech] is a per-
son, irrespective of the intrinsically unstable form in which it appears”
(2000, 92). He again helps us see how difficult this is for Westerners to
understand, for
the very project of natural science is premised on the detachment of the

human subject from the world that is the object of his or her inquiry. The
Ojibwa, starting off from the opposite premise – that the subject can exist
only as a being in the world – have arrived at something quite different: not
a natural science but a poetics of dwelling…And it is within the context of
such as poetics that Ojibwa ideas about metamorphosis, the personhood of
the sun, the winds and thunder, the liveliness of stones, and so on, should
be understood. (2000, 102)
Metamorphosis is a characteristic quality of beings in many of the soci-

eties I have been discussing in this section. Willerslev, for instance, tells us
that for Yukaghir both human and other-than-human persons are able to
adopt multiple identities, with one class of beings able to transform into
another: “humans become animals, animals convert into humans, and one
class of spirits turns into another. There are no fixed identities here, only
continuous transformations among different kinds of beings” (2007, 6).
Hallowell similarly explains that in Ojibwa ontology, human people, ani-
mal people, and spirit people do not consistently manifest anthropomor-
phic traits (1964, 60), but instead are capable of metamorphosis depending
on the extent of their power as the more powerful a person, the more able
they are to transform (1964, 69).
Metamorphosis occurs often in Algonquian myths, where for instance
humans marry animal persons in human form, or are themselves
transformed into animal persons and go live with their (animal) spouses.
Particularly powerful people in non-myth times—Hallowell refers spe-
cifically to these people as “sorcerers” amongst the Ojibwa (1964, 66)
and Preston refers to “conjurers” in his work with Waskaganish Cree
(1975) as having this capacity—are also renowned for their ability to
assume the form of animals. As such, boundaries between bodily forms

are not fixed. They are instead permeable and changeable. What unifies
these different categories of beings into one person class however is the
“inner vital part that is enduring”, the core essence of being (Hallowell
1964, 72).
With a slightly different inflection, Willerslev argues that Yukaghir con-
cepts of the person are not intrinsic or self-sufficient givens. Instead, per-
sonhood for Yukaghir is a potential capacity. For Yukaghir hunters, “all
entities in their environment are considered potential persons by virtue of
their shared inner essence, ayibii, which provides them with similar ratio-
nal capacities. Whether or not an entity actually reveals itself as a person
depends on the context in which it is placed and experienced” (2007, 117;
emphasis in original). Additionally, “personhood, rather than being an
inherent property of people and things, is constituted in and through the
relationships into which they enter”; personhood is a potential capacity
which might—or might not—be activated depending on “the relational
context in which it is placed and experienced determines its being” (2007,
21). There are echoes here too of Hallowell who many decades ago
remarked upon something similar. He stated that the ways in which
Ojibwa apprehend the potential capacity for vitality exists “in certain
classes of objects under certain circumstances” but that “the crucial test is
experience” (1964, 55; emphasis added). Thus, experiential context mat-
ters significantly for how potentiality might come to be realised and made
manifest.
As Scott has written, and as I allude to in the Introduction to this chap-
ter, much of the literature on animism treats as metaphoric the “extension
of personhood or animacy to the world at large” (2006, 61). Scott chal-
lenges this, saying that to argue that this extension is metaphoric is to stay
grounded in Western ontologies that divide the world into animate and
inanimate realms. But by rethinking this divide, we can begin to see that
Cree, Ojibwa, Yukaghir, and many other perspectives are not engaged in
“attribut[ing] life to the non-living” (2006, 61). Rather, as he argues, the
Cree “world [is] perceived as so many different modalities of life, of emer-
gence. In such a world, figurative practice is…to understand the differ-
ences among beings in the world as variations on the underlying themes of
life in community. For my Cree interlocutors, the world is a place of deep
vitality, sometimes restful, orderly, sometimes surprising phenomena”
(2006, 61). Paul Nadasdy (2007) is an author who has treated this issue
of metaphor and animism at length. He addresses the ways in which
136 C. DEGNEN
hunting, understood in a number of cultural settings as a long-term “pro-

cess of reciprocal exchange between hunters and other-than-human per-
sons” (2007, 25), has been demoted in anthropological accounts to the
level of symbolic or metaphorical processes. He argues that describing
these processes in terms of “as if”, in terms of “beliefs” and as cultural
constructions—rather than as literally valid—social scientists in turn repro-
duce and enforce unequal post-colonial power relations in arenas like land
claim negotiations and in government wildlife management strategies.
Nadasdy challenges his readers to let go of the deeply held Western belief
in sharp boundaries between the world of human and the world of non-
human, and to accept at face value that northern hunters’ “notion of
human-animal social relations is literally accurate” (2007, 32). Correlates
of this are that animals are “spiritually powerful beings who can think,
talk, and interact with humans” (2007, 34), and that there is a need to
“accep(t) the premise that humans and animals are actually (rather than
metaphorically) engaged in an ongoing process of reciprocal exchange”
(2007, 37) in which both human and non-human people are agentive,
communicative subjects.
In so doing, Nadasdy highlights just how much is at stake politically in
the answers people might give to questions about whether a bear is a per-
son, or a stone, and that these are urgent, contemporary issues for many
aboriginal people across the globe in contesting and protecting their sov-
ereign rights. Together, Scott and Nadasdy’s points help draw this sub-
section to a close. Their thoughts serve as reminders of the epistemological
issues in this chapter: on the one hand the profound divisions permeating
Western thought and on the other hand cosmologies that do not parse
nature from culture nor animals from humans. The latter furthermore
permits attributions of personhood that are not limited to humans. The
literature on northern hunting peoples demonstrates how it is that humans
and non-humans are all persons by virtue of a shared vitality and social
relations. Their ability to metamorphose from one shape or class of being
to another speaks to the permeability of boundaries between human and
non-human; to claim this is “as if” or “metaphoric” is to stay locked within
a normative Western ontology.
The Amazonian Tradition

by affirming that certain people attribute human and social characteristics to
natural beings, we suppose an ontological distinction between humans and
nature which belongs only to our own thought; we then deprive ourselves
of any possibility of approaching the system which we wish to understand.
(Lima 1999, 110)
There are many striking parallels in the ethnographic record between

the circumpolar sub-arctic hunters that I introduce above and that of their
continental neighbours much further south in the Amazon. These paral-
lels are both in terms of the empirical content itself, but also in regard to
the intellectual agendas explored by anthropologists writing on both
regions. Stolze Lima, quoted above, writing about a Tupi-speaking people
in Amazonia, the Juruna, is a good example of this. She highlights the
direct challenge such material presents to anthropology’s own Western
certainties about the organisation and categorisations of the world that
Hallowell, Ingold, and Nadasdy reveal above.2 Co-existing with these two
ethnographic parallels are of course many significant cultural differences, also.
This is the case both within the two broad clusterings of “northern” and
“southern” aboriginal peoples of the Americas, as well as the many distinct
cultural groups that these broad clusterings represent. Additionally, there
are clearly demarcated histories of distinction (but equally, of interconnec-
tion) between the groups of anthropologists who have tended to work
and write on these areas, with predominantly (but by no means exclu-
sively) anthropologists trained in Canada, the United States, and
Britain working in the arctic and sub-arctic and predominantly (but by no
means exclusively) Spanish and Portuguese speaking and trained anthro-
pologists working in the Amazonian regions. Whilst I have separated dis-
cussion of other-than-human peoples in the circumpolar north in this
chapter from that of this discussion that follows which draws on the litera-
ture about Amazonian peoples, this is only for convenience and by con-
vention. The discussion in both fields has very much been one of mutual
influence and debate. Indeed, a recent volume by Brightman et al. (2012a)
puts into direct conversation researchers working in Amazonia and Siberia
on issues of social relations between humans and non-human entities. The
significance of this work in Amazonia for anthropology has been pro-
found, not only for those working on issues of personhood, but also as
138 C. DEGNEN
part of what is termed the ontological turn in anthropology. Much of this

influence comes from the concept “cosmological perspectivism” (or, more
simply, perspectivism), and to which I turn my attention now.
Perspectivism has added greatly to anthropological understandings of
the category of the person. Since the late 1990s, a group of scholars has
contributed to its development with Viveiros de Castro being perhaps the
most widely recognised. As with the material from aboriginal North
America and the circumpolar north, the material from Amazonia immedi-
ately confronts one with the insufficiency of categories such as “nature”
and “culture” for contending with the world, premised as they are on a
series of oppositions in Western thought including “universal and particu-
lar,… physical and social, fact and value, the given and the instituted, …
body and mind, animality and humanity” (Viveiros de Castro 1998,
469–70). Such categories, these authors tell us, do not reflect Amazonian
ways of apprehending the world. But what then is this way of apprehend-
ing the world? Perspectivism is the term that has been coined to try and
encapsulate these ways of understanding.
Perspectivism is “the conception…according to which the world is
inhabited by many different sorts of subjects or persons, human and non-
human, which apprehend reality from distinct points of view” (Viveiros de
Castro 1998, 469). Unlike a culturally relativist position which would
interpret this as “alternative points of view of the same world”, perspectiv-
ism takes this instead to be a “carrying over of the same point of view into
alternative realities” (Ingold 2000, 424; emphasis added). That is to say,
unlike Western thought that assumes sharp, binary divides between cul-
ture/nature, human/animal, mind/body, and so on, Amazonian peoples
understand the world “to be inhabited by different types of subjects, all
possessing souls, who apprehend the world from distinct points of view
related to their bodies” (Vilaça 2002, 351). In contrast to Western cos-
mologies that assume many cultures and one nature, Amazonian cosmolo-
gies assume one, universal culture that transcends species and the existence
of many different natures (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 470; 478).
As Vilaça (2002) neatly summarises, instead of the Western view that
assumes one shared nature with multiple cultural forms (multi-culturalism),
here with perspectivism we have one shared culture but with many natures
(multi-naturalism). What follows from this is that being a person “is to
assume a particular subject-position, and every person, respectively in their
own sphere, will perceive the world in the same way – in the way that per-
sons generally do. But what they see will be different, depending on the
form of life they have taken up” (Ingold 2000, 424). In other words,
there is a shifting perspective depending on bodily form which is key to
perspectivism. But this again can be very tricky for a Western audience to
conceive of. A direct example from Viveiros de Castro helps contextualise
what is at stake. He writes that in the Amazonian context:
animals and spirits see themselves as humans: they perceive themselves as (or
become) anthropomorphic beings when they are in their own houses or vil-
lages and they experience their own habits and characteristics in the form of
culture – they see their food as human food (jaguars see blood as manioc
beer, vultures see the maggots in rotting meat as grilled fish, etc.)… they see
their bodily attributes (fur, feathers, claws, beaks, etc.) as body decorations
or cultural instruments…they see their social system as organized in the
same way as human institutions are (with chiefs, shamans, ceremonies, exog-
amous moieties, etc.). (1998, 470)
Perspectivism thus draws from multiple examples in Amazonian eth-

nography of indigenous cosmologies that take for granted that the way
animals perceive themselves is as persons. This is not metaphorical lan-
guage: “ ‘to see as’ refers literally to percepts and not analogically to con-
cepts” for “animals are people, or see themselves as persons” (Viveiros de
Castro 1998, 470). He continues, explaining that the bodily form of each
species is simply an envelope (a “clothing”) which conceals an internal
human form and “soul”, which is universal and shared by all living beings.
Thus, Amazonian ontologies are premised on the notion that “the
original common condition of both humans and animals is not animality
but rather humanity…Humans are those who continue as they have always
been: animals are ex-humans, not humans as ex-animals” (Viveiros de
Castro 1998, 472). Perspectivism is grounded in an assumption of a
shared interior spiritual quality but with different bodily affects. It is
through different physical forms that different points of view and perspec-
tives are forged. There are some caveats however: perspectivism is not a
general blanket principle for all animals, but rather one that emphasises
key species and those who are either significant predators or significant
prey (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 471).
Anne Christine Taylor, writing of the Jivaroan Achuar of lowland east-
ern Ecuador, helps ground these complex concepts with a tangible exam-
ple. She explains that for Achuar people, outward form is what distinguishes
between plants, animals, and humans—but that their interior substance is
the same (1996, 205). She elaborates, writing that
140 C. DEGNEN
things posited as alive, that is to say credited with intentionality and con-
sciousness, are all fundamentally the same in terms of organic attributes and
physiological mechanisms: a bat or a dog, or for that matter a manioc plant,
are all believed to be organized in the same way. They function according to
identical biological processes, and their bodily stuff – appearance apart – is
the same. If we humans are not normally aware of this fact it is for epistemo-
logical reasons – because we do not ordinarily communicate with them –
and not because these metabolisms are ontologically distinct. We are thus
led to the conclusion that what differentiates species is essentially shape or,
more accurately, appearance… Jivaroan bodies do not possess organic speci-
ficity. (1996, 205–6)
A Western point of view is fundamentally committed to a particular

notion of the body, one that presupposes a clear division between nature
and culture. Perspectivism, on the other hand, presupposes “no pre-given
natural or objective universe”; “things, like persons, are constituted within
relations” (Vilaça 2005, 455–6; emphasis added). Furthermore, perspec-
tivism is based not on multi-culturalism, but multi-naturalism, and in per-
spectivism “another point of view is acquired” via the body of a different
species (Vilaça 2002, 351). But what can this possibly mean?
In order to begin to understand this, it is necessary to see how subjec-
tivity is a crucial aspect of perspectivism:
It is not that animals are subjects because they are humans in disguise, but
rather that they are human because they are potential subjects…Animism is
not a projection of substantive human qualities cast onto animals, but rather
expresses the logical equivalence of the reflexive relations that humans and
animals each have to themselves: salmon are to (see) salmon as humans are
to (see) humans, namely, (as) human. If, as we have observed, the common
condition of humans and animals is humanity not animality, this is because
‘humanity’ is the name for the general form taken by the Subject. (Viveiros
de Castro 1998, 477)
Here again we see themes familiar from the circumpolar north emerg-
ing, such as the ways in which characteristics of being (“qualities”, above)
are foregrounded in Western thought over relations. What is perhaps
much more evident in the Amazonian literature, however, is the ways in
which the body and the somatic aspects of personhood are a key trope in
the Amazonian context (Vilaça 2002, 351). This is an aspect that has been
less emphasised in anthropological accounts of their northern neighbours.
However, this bodily, somatic aspect also requires careful analysis and
examination for once again it is not necessarily what a Western audience
might assume. Viveiros de Castro defines what he means by “body” and it
is not “physiological differences…but rather…affects, dispositions or
capacities which render the body of every species unique: what it eats, how
it communicates, where it lives, whether it is gregarious or solitary, and so
forth” (1998, 478). Perspectivism has thus been described as a “theory of
relative ontologies”, one that pivots around somatic considerations and
bodily process in the making and maintenance of personhood (Brightman,
Grotti, and Ulturgasheva 2012b, 4; 14).
Personhood, Human-Animal Relations,

and Multispecies Ethnographies
As the material and concepts presented in the first two sections of this
chapter make abundantly clear, interrogating personhood through the
lens of human and other-than-human persons has been revelatory for mul-
tiple generations of anthropologists. But animals have also proved instruc-
tive for anthropologists in other ways. That is to say, the anthropological
record has for many years asserted that humans use animals symbolically to
think about themselves, and to think symbolically about their relations
with the world and with each other (Candea 2010, 243). It has conse-
quently been argued that how humans explain and describe animals can
provide insight into local cultural beliefs and practices (Mullin 1999).
However, over the past 15 years, there has been a significant shift in the
anthropological study of human-animal relations. Researchers in this field
have asserted that a focus on animals as symbols of human society strips
away the possibility for animal agentivity and subjectivity, “reducing ani-
mals to their human-determined meanings” (Knight 2005, 1). In response,
a post-symbolic theoretical perspective on human-animal relations is
emerging, one that does not begin from reductionism but instead is
grounded in issues such as questioning the nature-culture dichotomy,
ontology, and epistemology (Candea 2010, 242–3). This shift in the
anthropology of human-animal relations draws into view what it might
mean to consider animals not as objects but as subjects; animals not as
symbols of human societies but as part of them; and to foreground the
interactions and relationships humans have with animals rather than focus-
ing on how humans represent animals (Knight 2005, 1).
142 C. DEGNEN
How does this return us to personhood? Once again, the crux of the
matter is subject and object. These binary divisions in Western thought
separate the realm of human beings (understood as agentive subjects)
from that of animals and the material world (understood as objects of use
for human purposes). But once we start to put this binary into question,
subjectivity becomes not only a human entitlement. Instead, subjectivity
and agency become a shared potentiality of both human and non-human
beings including animals. The sharply delineated lines between human
beings as persons and animals as not-persons in turn suddenly become
harder to sustain. As such, in this final section of this chapter, I wish to
consider a different example of human-animal relations than those of
hunting societies explored above. In so doing, I want to explore what
further insights we might gain into how we know who counts as a person,
and under what circumstances, but in Western contexts of human-animal
relations. I turn thus to the example of what Donna Haraway (2003) and
others call “companion species”, and what is more colloquially known as
“pets”.
As I have emphasised the divisions in Western categorical thought in
the sections above, it will not come as a surprise to readers that many
authors have written about how relations between humans and non-
human animals are marked by deep ambivalence: that humans often sense
affinity and attachment with animals and describe animals as having quasi-
human characteristics, but simultaneously that humans regularly exploit
animals and treat them as inferior (Charles and Davies 2008). Some sug-
gest that this ambivalence can be attributed to the way in which humans
at times focus on the individuality of particular animals (Dolly the sheep,
for instance), and at other times, emphasise the generic, abstract category
of animals (such as a flock of sheep) (Charles and Davies 2008, 4; Knight
2005, 2). However, as Knight argues, once the individuality of animals is
emphasised, so too do they start to become “a somebody”; when human
people are regularly in contact with particular animals they tend to build a
sense of the uniqueness of those individual animals to the extent that such
“personalized knowledge” of the animal “is likely to extend the potential
for effective communication and interaction” of humans with those ani-
mals (2005, 2–3; emphasis in original). It is this human interaction with
“animals in person” on which Knight focuses, and especially relationships
with domestic animals which he says “involves patterns of interaction that
engenders a high level of mutual familiarity” (2005, 5). Pets—or compan-
ion species—are perhaps the most familiar example of this in a Western
context. Indeed, pets offer a series of instructive insights on the shape and
form of the category of the person, and it is to this that I now turn my
attention.
My first example is that of pets as fictive kin. I draw here on the work of
Nicki Charles and Charlotte Davies (2008) who examine, based on their
research in Swansea, Wales (UK), if and how pets become members of
family and kinship networks, and the roles they play within these social
networks. The animals in their sample were predominantly dogs, but also
included cats, horses, a fish, and a budgie (2008, 9). Charles and Davies
asked their research participants “who counts as family?” and evaluated
the answers received in terms of the emotional support and the quality of
that relationship as reported by research participants. The people they
worked with expressed grief upon the death of their pets, spoke about the
company that their pets provided, and discussed how pets’ needs (such as
for going outdoors) structure the broader pattern of daily family practices
and activities (2008, 13). On the basis of their findings, they argue that as
pets’ requirements, needs, preferences are “taken into account in decisions
about family activities such as visits or where to live” that pets are thus
actors in these family networks (2008, 14). Other examples they explore
of pets as actors are how pets can help incorporate new arrivals in a neigh-
bourhood by facilitating chat with strangers, and that pets can also “influ-
ence the way networks operate” by creating tension in families whereby
“family members change their behavior in response to animals” by, for
instance, no longer wanting to stay with family members who have pets
(2008, 15). One woman who “had constructed her dog as a child” came
under pressure when she became pregnant, and she attempted to start to
make him “realise” that “he is a dog not a child” by telling “him who is
boss” in order to try and lessen possible jealously from the dog when the
human baby arrived (2008, 14). In light of all this material, the authors
press home the point that this data “suggests that the boundaries between
human and non-human animals are not fixed and that they can easily be
transgressed; this is particularly clear when pets are constructed as chil-
dren” (2008, 14).
Their work resonates with research by Dafna Shir-Vertesh, an anthro-
pologist who has conducted fieldwork in southern Israel. She explores the
ways in which her research participants, mainly dog and cat owners in their
20s to 30s and who are either middle or upper class, incorporate animals
into their families. But as Charles and Davies indicate, this familial inclu-
sion can also become compromised and limited, as Shir-Vertesh also
144 C. DEGNEN
found. Whilst the families she worked with “repeatedly spoke of and
treated their animals as children” (2012, 420), Shir-Vertesh simultane-
ously identifies a significant ambivalence of her research participants
towards their companion animals. On the one hand, pets are described by
their human carers as “babies”. One respondent she quotes states about
his cat that “this is my baby. I do not care that we are not from the same
species, I do not care that she has fur. I am her father. Period” (2012,
422). Shir-Vertesh also documents how pets are treated at times by divorce
courts as kin with rights, including an “emergent tendency…to take into
account the animal’s best interest when its owners divorce, treating these
cases as custody hearings, sometimes granting one party visitation rights”
(2012, 422) with the pet after the marital home and relationship has been
dismantled. All of these examples point to a recognition of the person-
hood of the pets in question.
On the other hand, the legal status of animals under Israeli law is that
of property. Shir-Vertesh argues that as such the status of animals is
“obfuscate[d]… as it is treated both as property and as a rights-vested
creature or ‘person’ under the law”, and she argues that such “ambiva-
lence between being and property, person and nonperson, family and
other” extends perceptibly into the ways in which the people she worked
with include their companion animals into taheir family networks and
daily lives (2012, 422). Outlining four distinct models of how pets’ per-
sonhood is attributed amongst her research participants, she demonstrates
how these categories are not stable. Instead, attribution of animals’ per-
sonhood shifts between categories over time and through changing life
circumstances (2012, 423).
Shir-Vertesh labels these four categories as the animal as a “prechild”,
the animal as a child substitute, the animal as a “semichild”, and the ani-
mal as significantly different from a child (2012, 423–4). She says these
four models “are by no means fixed or mutually exclusive but should
rather be viewed as more of a flexible continuum, a spectrum of the various
ways animals are attributed personhood” (2012, 423). An awareness of
the shifting spectrum of life circumstances and how this inflects the extent
to which animals are (or are not) attributed personhood in turn introduces
a pertinent life course aspect to the dynamic Shir-Vertesh is exploring.
That is to say, the animal as pre-child is most clearly evident in the families
who had not yet had children but were planning for it; the majority of
these families “referred to their pet at some point as a preliminary stage for
their human baby” and talked about how caring for this “needy babylike
being” helped them prepare for their future (human) child by practis-
ing techniques of parental care (2012, 423). The animal as a child substi-
tute category emerged from the families who had decided not to have
children, and the pet was described as “a satisfying replacement for a
child” with the pet said to provide the same love and fulfilment a baby
would bring but without the significant investment of lifestyle changes
(2012, 423).
The animal as a “semichild” category was expressed in those families
wishing to have children but who did not see pets as a form of practice for
parenthood nor pets as a substitute child. Whilst the pet was the recipient
of a sense of committed love and obligation, these emotions were of a
lesser degree than those towards human children (2012, 424). The final
category, that of the animal as significantly different from a child, was
most clearly evident in families who had children (but two childless cou-
ples also expressed it). In this category, although pets were referred to as
part of the family, and were shown love and attention, the care and emo-
tion attributed to them was “defined as completely separate from those
formed with a child” (2012, 424). Aware of how these transitions are
linked to life course shifts, Shir-Vertesh notes that she was caught off
guard by these profound changes in how human-animal familial love was
expressed and experienced. This is because the depth of feeling previously
expressed by people for their pets had been so profound. The case of a pet
dog called Albert is particularly strong in this instance. Shir-Vertesh
explains how Albert moves from various categories within the family, first
as a baby substitute before the couple was pregnant to eventually, after the
arrival of the baby, being described as “a vacuum cleaner”—itself a house-
hold machine that “hoovers up” food from the floor. In so doing, Shir-
Vertesh traces how Albert moves through a series of demotions of status
within the family and consequently in terms of what personhood can be
attributed to him/it.
Her analysis of human-animal familial love highlights how animals are
perceived in this setting both as “person” but also “nonperson” and how
the category “pet” is itself highly fluid and instable (2012, 428). Ultimately
this leads her to argue for a form of personhood that is flexible, stating that
“flexibility in the treatment of animals shows that human boundaries are
not becoming insignificant or blurred and that ‘the human’ is not losing
its distinction from ‘the other’. Animals in the families I researched may be
treated as ‘persons’ at times, yet they are never accepted as actual humans;
rather, they serve a flexible function in terms of the human role they play”
146 C. DEGNEN
(2012, 429). In arguing for flexible personhood, she proposes that we can
come to understand these roles pets play not as commodities or as symbols
put to work for human needs, but rather attend to the “intimacy created
with pets as a flexible, yet structured, space with its own objectives and
meanings” (2012, 429). Such a flexible personhood attuned to intimate
relations with companion animals helps render more complex assumptions
of boundaries in Western thought drawn between humans and animals in
regard to personhood.
This argument can go both ways however as some writers have claimed
that pets are actually powerful evidence of such boundaries. That is to say,
pets in Western society “are credited with human feelings and responses,
spoken to and expected to understand, given names, put through life-
cycle rituals and sometimes even dressed in clothing” (Ingold 2000,
90–1). Ingold goes on to argue that pets can only be persons “to the
extent that some of our humanity has, so to speak, ‘rubbed off’ on them
through close contact with human members of the household. And just as
the animal can never become fully human, its personhood, too, can never
be more than partially developed. That is why pets are often treated as…
locked in perpetual childhood” (2000, 91). Shir-Vertesh appears to agree,
writing that “although the extent to which pets are loved and incorpo-
rated in Israeli families may appear as a challenge to human boundaries…
the presence of pets actually strengthens and preserves conceptions of
humanity by demarcating those boundaries that we are not ready or will-
ing to cross” (2012, 429). And yet, what is also striking is that in both
cases, personhood is being defined in relation to other entities, entities
that are—almost despite ourselves and our Western ontologies—able to be
attributed in some instances with characteristics of personhood that other-
wise are strictly limited in the West to only human beings. Thus, these
examples push us to interrogate our assumptions about those boundaries
of personhood, and to consider how and when they are at times more
permeable then we might tend to expect.
Conclusions
Bears, elephants, jaguars, stones, and companion species: this chapter has
covered a great deal of ontological, epistemological, and geographical dis-
tance in my attempt to explain how it is that personhood is not a status
that only human beings have a claim on. This is an area of anthropological
work that began many generations ago with the emergence of the discipline
itself, during early attempts to grapple with religious systems of belief. It

has subsequently travelled through a chequered history of the disci-
pline’s interest in animism, a field that has itself transformed over time.
Studying animistic worldviews has engaged ethnographers working in
distinctly different cultural regions, and has come to be part of contem-
porary debates over ontology and the emergent field of multispecies
ethnographies.
These contemporary theoretical developments in anthropology con-
cerned with ontology and multispecies perspectives are united by a desire
to rethink concepts such as “culture”, “species”, “human”, and “nature”
by focusing instead on “ ‘becomings’ – new kinds of relations emerging
from nonhierarchical alliances, symbiotic attachments, and the mingling
of creative agents (cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 241–42)” (Kirksey and
Helmreich 2010, 546). Such intellectual moves are reminiscent of Scott’s
description above of Cree understandings of the differences amongst
beings in the world: not as between animate and inanimate, but instead
“as variations on the underlying themes of life in community” (2006, 61).
Indeed, these theoretical developments in anthropology are part and par-
cel of a larger movement away from that of human exceptionalism. But
they are also predicated on the foundational theoretical work of others
such as feminist anthropologists in reconfiguring our understanding of
nature/culture and gender, work which helps trouble old certainties about
the biological and the social as stable categories, of biological universalism,
and work that has helped promote intellectual interest in ideas of related-
ness and connection (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010, 550).
Ultimately, what becomes evident in considering personhood via the
categories of human and non-human are the ways in which themes of
cleavage and division have so profoundly shaped Western thought. It has
permitted us to explore why the (human) person has for so long in Western
thought been a category posited in sharp opposition to animals. This
chapter has sought, in contrast, to examine the assumptions underlying
other forms of thought about human and other-than-human persons and
the relationships between them. In so doing, what firstly comes into focus
is how personhood is not an entitlement solely of human beings. Secondly
it demonstrates how personhood is also not a fixed category. Humans can
become non-humans; sometimes humans and non-humans are persons
and sometimes they are not; beings can change shape depending on how
powerful (or not) they are; and personhood is a category that in many dif-
ferent cultural contexts is made in relation with others. And personhood
148 C. DEGNEN
can also change shape depending on and in relation to place within the life
course, with Shir-Vertesh’s accounts of pet ownership being a case in
point. Taken together, the material in this chapter offers a series of instruc-
tive insights on the shape and form of personhood that far exceeds assump-
tions that to be a person necessarily entails being a human.
Notes
1. Such a position alludes to precursor parallels in anthropology and attempts
to push Western readers to think about what they might assume is “irratio-
nal”. Evans-Pritchard (1937) is a prime example of this with his work on
Azande witchcraft beliefs, but there are many others.
2. See also Taylor (1996) and Vilaça (2002), both working in an Amazonian
ethnographic context, who take umbrage with the ways in which Western
assumptions about how the world is ordered creep their way into anthropo-
logical analyses.
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CHAPTER 6
Older Age and Personhood
Introduction
Although this chapter on later life is one of the final chapters of this book,
it is also the topic which in many ways was the initial spark for this volume.
As I wrote in Chap. 1, it was working ethnographically with older people
that made me first begin to think about the ways in which personhood
comes in and out of focus at different moments in the life course. Before
I began researching later life, I was already aware of the extent to which
notions of personhood varied cross-culturally. This knowledge came pri-
marily from my immersion in the ethnographic literature on sub-arctic
peoples’ cosmologies. But it was not until I began systematically research-
ing older age from the perspective of older people themselves that I came
to think about how personhood varies not just cross-culturally, but also
how personhood is seldom still across the life course. What I mean by this
is that personhood is something which for long stretches of time in one’s
life might appear unassailable, such as in middle age. So assured does per-
sonhood appear during these periods that it effectively becomes some-
thing of little note. It is rendered virtually invisible by its very strength of
presence. But at other points in the life course, such as in later life, person-
hood can suddenly come into focus again as it comes into question and
comes under pressure. For example, in normative Western contexts, older
age has been described as a part of the life course whereby there is a move-
ment out of personhood (Hockey and James 1993, 87) and as a time of
perceived loss of social personhood (Lamb 2015, 37). But why? And with

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_6
152 C. DEGNEN
what implications? And how does this compare with the ways in which
personhood and older age is understood in other cultural settings?
Working ethnographically on later life as I have in a Western European
cultural setting, a central research issue for me has been attempting to
grapple with a profound tension underpinning experiences of older age.
On the one hand, this is a profoundly ageist society. “Old age” is feared
and deeply stigmatised (Degnen 2007; Gullette 2010). Later life is char-
acterised as a one-dimensional series of relentless decline. So, for instance,
it is often assumed that older people are unable or uninterested in learning
new things, that they are childlike, “stuck in their ways”, suffering from
memory problems, and burdensome demographic to be borne by the
younger generations. Loss is also a familiar trope in public discourses and
imaginations of what becoming “old” will entail: loss of independence,
memory loss, being “lost in the past”, loss of friends, loss of home, loss of
control over ones’ faculties (mental, physical), loss of continence and
bodily control, loss of ones’ driving licence, loss of status, loss of auton-
omy, loss of health, loss of spouse. And in a youth-oriented society such as
this whereby older age is defined by its other, namely younger age, the
primary loss of all is seen as the loss of youth itself (Gubrium and Holstein
2003, 5 cited in Andrews 2012, 388–9). These losses are all implicitly
(and sometimes very explicitly) ones that put full personhood in jeopardy.
We are exhorted to resist such change and be active, “successful” agers for
as long as possible.
But, on the other hand, later life and older age as they are actually lived
and experienced is so much more complex and multifaceted than this.
Loss and transition may well feature, but so too does exuberance, humour,
wit, prowess, and skill. The full range of human emotion, achievement,
and failing is part and parcel of later life just as it is in earlier life. And yet,
negative and reductive stereotypes reify older people into simplistic,
homogenised, and often patronising caricatures of their once younger
selves. Indeed, it is the profound vitality of the people in their 70s, 80s,
and 90s who I was fortunate enough to come to know during my doctoral
and postdoctoral research that—day in and day out—utterly disrupted
such negative cultural scripts about “old age” for me, and in so doing,
challenged me to make sense of the processes at work that reproduce and
sustain this ageist paradigm (Degnen 2012).
What I have come to understand is that this tension between nega-
tive cultural stereotypes and actual lived, multifaceted experiences
reveals a great deal about idealised forms of personhood in normative
OLDER AGE AND PERSONHOOD 153
Western cultural contexts. Many of these negative assumptions about

what older age entails are directly aligned to the pillars of full (Western)
personhood that are now familiar points of reference in this book. These
include the valorisation of autonomy, agency, independence, cognition,
rationality, and the notion that the mind is in many ways the seat of the
person. Later life is stereotypically imagined as the inevitable decline in
many, if not all, of these capacities. Arguably, it can thus also be claimed
that what is feared in these negative stereotypes of older age is an imag-
ined precarity of personhood itself, an imminent spectre and corrosive
threat that shapes how later life is socially positioned. We thus also make
distinctions between different kinds of older age, which I explore in
more detail below. The older people I worked with in South Yorkshire
in the north of England called these “normal old age” and “real old
age”; in the social science literature, this is often referred to as “the
third age” and “the fourth age”. What both sets of terms are searching
for is a way to distinguish “healthy” old age from “decline” and “frailty”,
concepts which are complex bundles of physicality, cognitive ability, and
sociality. And yet, in all of these attempts to distinguish levels and
amounts of “oldness”, personhood is crucially at stake. Fall on one side
of the imagined boundary of these sub-categories and personhood is
intact; fall on the other and it can come under threat or be called into
question. As such, this chapter explores Western assumptions around
older age and personhood, juxtaposing them with other ethnographic
accounts of later life. I am particularly indebted in this respect to Sarah
Lamb’s exemplary work in West Bengal, and I draw too on wonder-
fully diverse material from Susan Rasmussen’s work in Niger with the
Tuareg; Judith Barker’s research in Niue, South Pacific; Elana Buch in
Chicago, United States; and Emily Wentzell in Cuernavaca, Mexico. By
working through these different examples, what becomes evident is that
older age universally poses dilemmas for the individual and the collec-
tive. At what point this occurs, what aspects of later life are seen as
unproblematic, which others are profoundly disturbing, and how tran-
sitions are managed are all however responded to in different ways. The
material in this chapter also help elucidate a sub-theme that I have not
yet explored in the volume, namely the ways in which gender, socio-
economic status, and sexuality (in conjunction with ageing) prompt
salient distinctions in how personhood is constructed and experienced.
154 C. DEGNEN
What Is Older Age?

Defining older age and determining who is “old” are not straightforward
matters. In English speaking contexts for instance, researchers have strug-
gled to find a vocabulary that captures the heterogeneity of later life.
Various attempts include the “old old” versus the “young old” (Myerhoff
1984, 307), “advanced old age” (Heikkinen 2004) or “deep old age”
(Featherstone and Hepworth 1989), but there is little agreement about
what such labels mean either objectively or subjectively (Degnen 2007,
70). Many of these attempts at categorisation rely implicitly on chrono-
logical age or physical disability, but do not take into account the ways in
which older people themselves time and again assert that they “do not feel
old”, and they do not self-identify as “old” (Thompson et al. 1990). These
terms also have difficulty accommodating the extent to which attributions
of oldness are not always fixed but can be situationally contingent, and the
extent to which the category is also dependent on processes of social inter-
action (Degnen 2007). Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, oldness is itself
a relational concept:
Where old age begins is not a linear frontier, not an imaginary line that
before being stepped over one is ‘not yet old’ and after stepping over the
same person is irrevocably ‘elderly’. It is instead a complicated mixture of
comportment, attitude, and acuity, adjudicated on by other people in one’s
life. Old age as a culturally assigned category is created within the dialectics
of interpersonal interactions and varies a great deal depending on one’s own
relative position. (Degnen 2007, 78)
In my own ethnographic research on older age and everyday experience

in the north of England, what became abundantly clear was that whilst
there is a broad social consensus that old age epistemologically exists and
is “real”, there is also a great deal of ambiguity in actual practice in terms
of how the category is applied to oneself and to others (2007, 2012).
Additionally, it is not a phase of life that is experienced uniformly by
women and men nor across the lines of race, class, or sexuality (Arber and
Ginn 1995; Calasanti and King 2015). The older people I worked with in
the north of England however do identify both “normal” old age and
“real” old age as distinct categories (Degnen 2007). “Normal” old age
entails a certain “slowing down” whereby some inevitable physical and
cognitive changes due to the ageing process are tolerated and allowed for.
“Real” old age on the other hand is perceived in very negative terms, is
signalled by sharp declines in mental acuity and corresponding shifts in
social comportment, and can be grounds for rescinding attributions of full
personhood (2007, 77–8).
Defining older age is of course also culturally contingent—Sarah Lamb,
for example, explains that life course stages in Mangaldihi, West Bengal,
India, are not marked by numerical age but rather by family responsibili-
ties. Entering into senior stages of life means transferring “the duties of
reproduction, cooking, and feeding to junior” members of the family such
as sons and sons’ wives (1997, 286) and to embrace a range of practices
focused on “decentering and cooling one’s activities, body, and heart-
mind” (1997, 287), transitions which are in turn linked to understandings
of the concept of the person. I will explore this below when I return to
Lamb’s ethnography in much closer detail. Another example comes from
Susan Rasmussen, working with Tuareg in Niger, who argues that whilst
biological and physical changes are observed as ageing processes, these are
not primary to local understandings of older age (1997). Instead, to grow
old means to have children of marriageable age whereby one takes on
“elderly” (tamghart) status. Becoming tamghart in turn entails shifts in
modes of comportment (including in dress, ritual roles, and personal
expression) and a move towards “gradually increasing reserve, indirect
expression, and religious devotion…convey[ing] transformations in activ-
ity and personhood” (1997, 14). In a more recent publication, Rasmussen
clarifies that tamghart time of life is that of “a still-vigorous older adult”
with married or marriageable children, and with significant involvement in
key social and ritual roles, but that a further age category of “frail”
“advanced age” also exists, called ta wacheret (2012, 132). Such “frail
elders” no longer live in the main household compounds, but are instead
housed adjacent to them in relative seclusion, with “their primary visitors
and caregivers” being their grandchildren “who bring them food cooked
by the adults” (2012, 130). Despite such spatial marginalisation,
Rasmussen argues that those in this category are respected, generally
treated well, and are perceived as mediators with ancestors which grants
them an empowering quasi-sacred status in tandem with their increasing
fragility (2012, 134). Thus, in both Lamb and Rasmussen’s accounts,
what emerges are indications that whilst bodily changes due to the ageing
process are indeed acknowledged in both cultural settings, the shifts expe-
rienced in older age are not necessarily framed as being inherently prob-
lematic as they are in say North America or Britain. The focus in Mangaldihi
156 C. DEGNEN
is instead on familial duties, the appropriate transfer of those burdens, and

transitioning into a new set of requirements posed by later life; and for
Tuareg peoples, later life connotes both shifts in appropriate behaviour
but also relative position in regard to spiritual matters. Seemingly absent
in both cases are relentless discourse over loss, decline, and abjection.
Recent attempts in Western settings to define older age have subdivided
later life into a “third age” and a “fourth age” (Laslett 1989). This is a
model grounded in contemporary Western experiences of a prosperous
baby boomer generation retiring on generous pensions and benefitting
from economic wealth and improved physical health. The third age is
imagined as a time freed from previous roles and responsibilities in the
work force and in the family, but also as a time of positive, active, healthy
ageing. In Laslett’s original terms, the third age and the fourth age were
imagined as categories “to distinguish healthier groups of older people
from those more prone to impairment and decline” (Grenier and Phillipson
2014, 57). Third-agers are exhorted to “live it up” and enjoy a creative
period of personal fulfilment before they enter the fourth age, conceptual-
ised in sharp contrast as impending decrepitude and decay, a highly stig-
matised condition “at the intersection of advanced age and impairment…a
socio-cultural construct aligned with frailty” (Grenier and Phillipson
2014, 57). Whilst on the one hand the third age model has been cele-
brated for bringing a more positive valence to representations of later life
and challenging assumptions around older age, on the other hand it is also
problematic. This is on the grounds of “overstating the potential of the
‘third age’, defining illness and impairments as negative, and for pushing
the stigmatising aspects of ageing into the ‘fourth age’” (Grenier and
Phillipson 2014, 57). Creating a category of the fourth age arguably sani-
tises the third age by lumping together all those who are “really old” into
a category of those humans experiencing an erosion of personhood, the
fourth agers. A classic illustration of this comes from Gubrium and
Holstein’s work in a nursing home where the residents are described by
the care home workers as “bones” and “vegetables”, terms that strip per-
sonhood away to boney underneaths and non-human, non-sentient
objects (2002, 202 in Higgs and Gilleard 2015, 125). Indeed, Higgs and
Gilleard, writing extensively on the fourth age, have argued that in societ-
ies which embrace the ideal of the third age, the fourth age becomes
socially imagined as “something to be feared and avoided”, rendering
those in the fourth age as an abject other (2015, 126).
Personhood is thus crucially at stake in these imagined boundaries

between the third age of “active” and “successful” ageing and the fourth
age of “decrepitude” and “abjection”. These categories are premised on
idealised forms of Western personhood whereby the ageing individual is
encouraged to exercise agency and control over the ageing process, remain
active, avoid dependency, maintain independence, and choose to resist
ageing; such notions also demarcate any other experiences of ageing as
“failures” and as “spoiled” or lesser forms of personhood (Lamb 2014).
Lamb has described the American discourse on “successful” ageing as one
centrally premised on maintaining independence, “a goal tied to individu-
alist notions of personhood” (2015, 38). She has also highlighted the
ways in which the successful ageing paradigm promotes a notion of what
she calls “permanent personhood”, an idealised concept whereby to age
well means to avoid ageing altogether and to strive to maintain one’s
younger self, unchanged by the passage of time (2014).
Both the third age and “active” or “successful” ageing models have
been roundly criticised for the ways in which they personalise and indi-
vidualise responsibility for how one ages, erasing from view the social,
cultural, and economic inequalities mentioned above, and in turn masking
profound discrepancies and lifelong inequalities that map from younger
life into older life that are gendered, raced, and classed (Calasanti and
Slevin 2001; Luborsky 1995, 278; Zajicek et al. 2006). They have also
been critiqued for valorising independence and an ethos of “declining to
decline” whilst rejecting “coming to meaningful terms with…possibilities
of frailty, and the condition of human transience” (Lamb 2014, 42) in
later life. Despite this, the ideal of “successful” ageing and the rhetoric of
“anti-ageing” are notions that have been widely embraced in many
Western contexts. It appeals “to those who envision themselves having the
physical, financial and mental means to pursue lifelong health and activity”
(Lamb 2014, 42). Furthermore, as Lamb notes, this discourse of anti-
ageing is one on the move with “Western models… becoming globally
hegemonic – at times recognized not as cultural but rather as ‘fact’, espe-
cially when grounded in biomedicine and science” (2015, 42), an asser-
tion supported by the recent edited volume on successful ageing across
multiple cultural settings that she has published (Lamb 2017).
Other authors such as Amanda Grenier and Chris Phillipson (2014)
have contemplated the extent to which assumptions about agency are
intertwined with both these normative definitions of active or successful
ageing and their stigmatised other of the fourth age whereby agency is
158 C. DEGNEN
assumed to disappear. Grenier and Phillipson highlight how participation,

activity, health, and independence are tacitly understood in Western con-
texts as requirements for exerting agency, and furthermore, that agency is
assumed to be either present or absent, with no gradation (2014, 56). In
contrast to such models which assume virtually by definition that the
fourth age is marked by a lack of agency, they seek instead to explore “the
possibility of expression, communication and agency in the ‘fourth age’”
(2014, 58). In order to do so, what also is required is close critique of the
assumptions under which we operate when we discuss ‘agency’, assump-
tions they say are “are too closely aligned with expectations of choice and
voice” (2014, 60). Grenier and Phillipson posit that contemporary forms
of understanding agency do so in a way that prevents the recognition of
what might be ‘agentic’ in the fourth age; they suggest that “what is needed
for the ‘fourth age’ is a model that detaches agency from physical activity
and action” (2014, 66). This is because, as they argue, awareness, strength
and control “can be difficult to achieve by older people with severe impair-
ments” (2014, 67) and so, alternatively they point to how agency may
indeed be possible in the fourth age, but that the ways in which this agency
is expressed, or the forms that it might take, is likely to be distinct from
those that are currently attributed recognition (2014, 69).
In attempting to reinstate the possibility for recognising agency in the
fourth age, Grenier and Phillipson highlight the extent to which agency is
currently understood as absent in current models, the impact this has on
the ways in which personhood is denied/stripped from severely impaired
individuals in the “fourth age”, and how we might challenge these assump-
tions by forensically examining the pairing of agency with personhood.
Ultimately, Grenier and Phillipson exhort us to consider that agency
“exists on a continuum” (2014, 72) and not as a binary; agency may well
be “reduced” via physical or cognitive conditions.
They recognise the dilemmas in this proposal, primary amongst them
that “by articulating agency in late life as reduced, we implicitly reinforce
the idea of control and action, and the idea of a gradual slope into late
life…whereby the older person moves closer to an unagentic position over
time,” but they suggest that simultaneously this is countered in that “atten-
tion to agency as reduced or diminished in late life – and/or constructed as
reduced – draws attention to the importance of analysing and addressing
power relations where increasing marginalisation and vulnerability are con-
cerned” (2014, 72). One of those dynamics of power includes defining
agency itself. Grenier and Phillipson urge us to remember that
agency may look different in late life than currently conceptualised…the

forms or expressions of agency from within the ‘fourth age’ may differ from
those which we currently know and expect of agency…What we suggest is
based on social relations, socio-cultural expectations, time and context: the
agency of someone who is in the ‘fourth age’, possibly bed-ridden and ill, is
likely very different from an able-bodied young person. Acts may be non-
verbal or take place through forms of communication that are often difficult
to understand (for example, cries, moans or screams)…They may also take
the form of outright resistance or disruptive acts…agency from locations
such as the ‘fourth age’ are likely not characterised by a physically active and
public act of collective social change, as is implied in dominant definitions.
(2014, 72)
Taken together, the various strands above create a complex picture of

later life and personhood in Western cultural contexts such as Britain and
North America. That is to say, this is firstly a cultural setting where the
category of the person is deeply imbricated with assumptions about inde-
pendence, agency, sovereignty, and control. Secondly, whilst older age is a
category that everyone agrees exists, there is simultaneously great indeter-
minacy about who is “old” and when “old age” begins and what different
kinds of “old age” there are. “Old age” is however imagined as a time of
increasing dependence, the growth of bodily and cognitive decline, and
the loss of agency. As all of these aspects undermine claims to full person-
hood, older age is thus both feared and stigmatised. Individuals resist
being labelled as “old” and the marginalisation that it brings (Hockey and
James 1993, 164–7; Matthews 1979). In seeking to square this circle—
acknowledging that ageing exists but to avoid being tarnished by it—we
distinguish different kinds of ageing in everyday discourse and practice.
This includes in daily life, such as the older people I worked with in the
north of England who distinguish between “normal” old age and “real”
old age, and also in the academic literature via its categories of the third
age (“normal”, “active”, “successful” ageing) and the fourth age (“real”
old age, decrepitude). Personhood in later life thus comes sharply into
focus as it comes under a series of intersecting pressures (social, economic,
physical, cognitive, emotional). But these are a series of pressures that
unpredictably may (or may not) present themselves in various individual’s
lives at various times. These are also individuals who have varying abilities
and resources to push back and shape these pressures and, in so doing,
assert their claim to full personhood. I will return to the issues of
160 C. DEGNEN
independence and agency later on in this chapter when I compare the

work of Judith Barker in Niue (South Pacific) with that of Elana Buch
(United States), but I wish first to introduce a cultural setting where
avoiding dependence and maintaining independence in later life is not the
key imperative for later life. Instead, of central concern in later life for
personhood here is how to loosen one’s ties with the world.
“The Net of Māyā”: Personhood, Ageing,

and Connections in Mangaldihi, India
People in Mangaldihi spoke of their connections to the people, places, and

things of their worlds as māyā, a multivalent term often translated as ‘illu-
sion’ but to Bengalis having the more immediate meaning of attachment,
affection, compassion, love. People described māyā to me as something
wonderful and compelling, yet nonetheless problematic and painful because
the more māyā people feel for other persons, places, and things, the more
difficult become the separations that inevitably ensue. This is a dilemma
faced especially in late life, people said, for the longer one lives, the stronger
and more numerous the ties of māyā become. Yet it is in late life also when
relations are more ephemeral, as people face the myriad leave-takings of
death. (Lamb 2000, xxii)
In Chap. 4 I explored the work of E. Valentine Daniel in Tamil Nadu,

India, and the ways in which individual and collective substances, the
compatibility of substances, and relations through place are of key concern
throughout one’s life (1984). Working in a different part of India with
Bengali people, overlapping themes are also identified by Sarah Lamb in
her research on ageing, personhood, gender, and the body (1997, 2000).
However, unlike Daniel and most other South Asian specialists, Lamb’s
research places ageing front and centre in the analytical frame.1 Her engag-
ing ethnographic account makes an important contribution to anthropo-
logical understandings of personhood as a gendered experience. She draws
inspiration in this regard from Henrietta Moore’s insight that “indigenous
concepts of the person and self are presented, most often, as gender neu-
tral, but on closer examination it is clear that the implicit model for the
person in much ethnographic writing is, in fact, an adult male” (Moore
1994, 28 cited in Lamb 1997, 281). Lamb asserts in contrast that person-
hood is not “ontologically prior to … [nor] separate from gender identity”
(Lamb 1997, 281), crafting a gendered approach to the processes of age-

ing and personhood.
Lamb’s work also makes significant contribution to the well-established
and influential literature on personhood in South Asia (see Chap. 1). This
is because of the insights she brings to the shape and nature of relational
“dividual” models of personhood, based on the notion of exchange of
substance, but taking into account the ways in which the character of these
exchanges shift over the life course (1997). This important distinction of
drawing into account change across the phases of life had not been made
so clearly before, and enriches wider understandings of relational person-
hood. But for the purposes of this chapter, Lamb’s work also powerfully
illuminates alternative ways of imagining later life, and I turn now to the
detail of her ethnography to explore this.
Lamb recounts the stories of three older women, all widows, whom she
came to know in the rural West Bengali village of Mangaldihi: Mejo Ma,
Khudi Thakrun, and Pramila Mukherjee (1997, 279–80; 2000 xi–xii).
Taking each woman in turn, she first describes meeting Mejo Ma, a woman
in her 70s. Mejo Ma “could not stop complaining about clinging. Her
connections to her family, to things, to good food, and to her own body
were so tight, she said, that she was afraid of lingering for years in a decrepit
state, unable to die. She feared that after her body died her soul (ātmā)
would not ascend but would remain emotionally shackled nearby as a
ghost (bhūt)” (1997, 279). “‘How’”, Mejo Ma worried, “‘will I leave all
these kids and things and go?’” (2000, xi). Lamb compares Mejo Ma’s
concerns over having so many connections to those worries experienced in
her own American family whereby older adults, widowed and living alone,
seemed too isolated with connections to others becoming too loose rather
than too constricting (2000, xi). This contrast, Lamb tells us, became a
key insight that helped her develop her own research interests.
The second woman Lamb describes, Khudi Thakrun, was “a spry
ninety-seven-year-old Brahman widow” who, in contrast to Mejo Ma,
pursued many attachments that she did not consider worrisome, even
though others did. She lived in a house with three generations of descen-
dants and daily roamed the village to gossip with friends, arrange marriages,
seek out the sweetest mangoes and bananas, and transact her prosperous
business of moneylending. Other residents spoke of her disapprovingly, say-
ing that her outgoing behaviour would cause her soul after death to become
an insatiable ghost troubling the village. (2000, xi–xii)
162 C. DEGNEN
Lastly, Lamb tells us of Pramila Mukherjee, a third widow who unlike

the other two women was “precariously unconnected” due to being wid-
owed at the age of 14 (1997, 280). This meant that she had no children
“to call her own, and no property with which to support herself…her
marital kin did not want her any more, and her natal kin saw her as married
and ‘other’” (1997, 280). Despite these circumstances, Lamb says Pramila
“seemed to find some value in her unconnected life, for she hoped it
would free her to die more easily, to find God, or at least a more fortuitous
rebirth” (1997, 280). The presence or absence of connections and attach-
ments that are too tight thus quickly emerge in Lamb’s account as points
of central concern in later life in Mangaldihi.
Indeed, as Lamb reminds us, a substantial literature on personhood in
South Asia has widely documented “the fluid and open nature of persons”
as dividuals rather than as bounded, closed, individuals; this “open nature”
in turn means that persons are understood to be “connected substantially
with the other people, places, and things of their lived-in worlds” (1997,
280, emphasis in original). Understandings like these result in what peo-
ple of Mangaldihi “often refer(red) to as māyā, the ‘net’ of bodily-
emotional ‘ties’, ‘pulls’, or ‘connections’ that make up people” (2000,
37). Māyā, connection, attachment, and substance are thus integral to
understandings of what constitutes the person in this cultural setting. This
is because people become connected via the exchange of substance. That
is to say, “by means of substantial transactions with other persons, such as
through sex, childbirth, living together, feeding, touching, and exchang-
ing words, people are thought to absorb and give out parts of themselves”
(1997, 280), an understanding of personhood that I have explored else-
where in this book and which is often described as a “relational” model.
Māyā, this powerful net, bond or web of attachment, is made through
the exchanges of substance in everyday life. Māyā in turn links people to
people (family, friends, neighbours) as well as people to “places, animals,
and objects that make up their worlds”; once those links are made, it is not
easy to loosen or cut them (2000, 28). Lamb describes these links as social
and emotional bonds, but also as ties that “involv[e] substantial or bodily
connections as well. Persons see themselves as substantially part of and
tied to the people, belongings, land, and houses that make up their
personhoods and lived-in worlds. These ties, for Bengalis, are all part of
māyā” (2000, 116, emphasis in original). Because of the multiplicity and
strength of such ties, māyā is also described as troubling and difficult: the
more māyā people have, the more suffering and pain they can anticipate
when the time comes to be separated from the people, objects, or places
of everyday life (2000, 117).
Lamb recounts how she spent many hours talking about māyā with her
older research participants and that “the older people of Mangaldihi spoke
and worried about māyā all the time” (2000, 121). What people had to
say about māyā varied a great deal depending variously on their
personalities, family living situations, material wealth, physical health…of

those who had plenty – of kin and possessions – most argued that māyā defi-
nitely increases with age. Of those who had almost nothing – such as beg-
gars and dwellers in old age homes – many claimed that for them, māyā had
all but disappeared. (2000, 118)
However, the majority agreed that for most people māyā increases as
one ages. This was attributed partly to the growing number of kinship ties
that build over time, but that so too to do “connections with all things –
including possessions, money, houses, and village soil – accumulate and
intensify over a long life” (2000, 120). But the people she consulted also
knew that the ties of māyā must become loosened, or else death will not
be successful as the soul (ātmā) and person risks becoming stuck and
unable to die (2000, 121), bound by the net of māyā. Indeed, māyā can
“make the process of dying itself very slow and painful”, and even if death
is achieved, “a person with too much māyā may cling to his or her familiar
places and relations in the form of a lingering ghost, or bhūt” (2000, 123).
Loosening the ties were thus a keen point of discussion.
Lamb states that the older people she came to know attempted in a
range of ways to unmake the binds of their māyā. She argues that “the
everyday routines often practiced by older people that constituted aging
worked also as techniques for loosening their ties of māyā or disassem-
bling their personhoods, at least a bit” (2000, 124; emphasis in original).
As she explains and as I wrote above, life course phases in Mangaldihi are
not marked by chronological age but rather by domestic responsibilities.
Becoming a senior person meant transferring a range of responsibilities
(reproduction, cooking, feeding) to less senior family members such as
sons and sons’ wives (1997, 286). It also meant focusing on a range of
practices that sought to render the individual more peripheral, “decenter-
ing and cooling one’s activities, body, and heart-mind” (1997, 287). This
was accomplished in a number of ways, but Lamb describes how it includes
physically moving from the centre of the household’s activities to its edges.
164 C. DEGNEN
For instance, communal areas in Mangaldihi households such as central

courtyards are key spaces for socialising, eating, cooking, studying and
sleeping; but senior adults “tended to move to the outskirts of the house-
hold, perhaps resting on a string cot at one end of the veranda”, a sym-
bolic move to the edges of family life and one which “indicated their
freedom from former ties and duties, while also signalling surrender of the
kinds of control over goods and people that are best exercised from cen-
ters” (2000, 125). This decentering was both an indication of growing
freedom from the ties and duties of younger adulthood, but also a simul-
taneous loss of “tangible political and economic powers” (1997, 287) and
one that Lamb reports many of her participants feeling a certain ambiva-
lence about.
Another practice for ‘cutting’ the ties of māyā included changes in eat-
ing patterns. Older family members do not eat with the rest of the family
but are instead fed before, “a privilege recognizing their seniority, and one
that also resulted in keeping them from mixing their substance with oth-
ers’” (1997, 288). Other considerations to do with flows of substance are
the natural physiological changes older people described to Lamb, and
particularly how their bodies grow ever cooler (ṭhāṇḑā) and drier (śukna)
(2000, 126). As Lamb explains, cooling and drying are understood to
“constrict the channels through which an individual’s substances flow and
mix with those of others, thereby making the bodies of older people rela-
tively self-contained” (2000, 126) and thus are another mechanism to
limit the growth of māyā. Practices some adopted to enhance the cooling
of their bodies included avoiding ‘hot’ foods in their diets, embracing celi-
bacy as a ‘cooling’ practice and wearing mainly white clothing as a ‘cool’
colour (2000, 126). A range of behaviours could also be practised to cut
the ties of māyā by reducing connections to the world, including by being
argumentative and quarrelsome, chanting deities’ names, and giving away
favourite possessions (1997, 288–9). In sum, and as Lamb demonstrates,
all of these are ways of dismantling the network of ties that constitute the
relational person and serve to unmake aspects of personhood in later life
(1997, 289), a pressing concern for so many of the older people she
worked with. She takes care to signal though that this concern is not
shared equally by all older people. The individuals she knew who were
most concerned with cutting māyā and of employing practices of decen-
tering and cooling were both well-off and members of upper castes (2000,
128). Worrying over achieving a good old age and eventually a good death
were luxuries not open to the lower-caste older people in Mangaldihi who
had to contend with the more pressing needs of obtaining enough food,
warmth, and shelter (2000, 128). As such, the making and unmaking of
personhood in later life is shaped not only by cultural but also by socio-
economic considerations.
But so too does gender play a role in the making and unmaking of per-
sons, as I alluded to in the beginning of this section. Lamb explains that
both men and women in Mangaldihi face the shared dilemma of how to
cut or loosen the ties of māyā as both men and women “defined them-
selves strongly in terms of their relations with others” (1997, 290). And
yet a fundamental distinction is that women “experienced the (often pain-
ful) unmaking and remaking of their personhoods, not only in aging and
dying but also in marriage and widowhood” (2000, 115) in a way that
men do not. Lamb argues that women and men are made via relational ties
in different ways through the life course, including via differing notions of
female and male biologies and via different practices in upbringing and in
marriage (1997, 290). This can be briefly summarised as women being
understood as “transforming” and men understood as “continuous”;
whereby the relational ties that make women were repeatedly constituted,
unconstituted, and reconstituted, the relational ties constituting men are
made once and then endured (1997, 290).
For instance, Lamb explains that whilst both women and men’s bodies
are conceptualised as being “relatively open or permeable”, women’s bod-
ies are understood to be “naturally more ‘open’…than men’s” due to their
ability to menstruate and give birth but also their role in marriage and
sexuality, “all processes that entail, for women, substances going into and
out of the body” (1997, 290). Residence is a vital aspect of the logic shap-
ing these gendered distinctions. Mangaldihi men rarely lived anywhere
but for their natal community and thus had even deeper ties with the
substances and soil of their home (1997, 291), but women move to their
husband’s village upon marriage. For women, marriage is a comprehen-
sive process of unmaking and cutting the substance of her natal ties and
being remade: during the wedding, “the bride would be made to absorb
substances originating from her husband’s body and household” includ-
ing rubbing her body with paste used on him, eating his leftover food,
taking in his sexual fluids, moving to his residence, being in contact with
his kin and with his soil, taking his name and becoming “by marriage the
‘half body’ (ardhāṅginı̄) of her husband” (1997, 291). Conversely, wid-
owhood, like marriage was also a time of unmaking and disconnection but
also as potentially polluting, since widows become perceived as “repulsive
166 C. DEGNEN
anomol[ies]…the remnant, leftover half-body of a corpse, or as a faithless

companion who had abandoned her husband by remaining on earth”
(1997, 294). This is particularly the case amongst high-caste women. As
Lamb describes however, since “the husband was not considered to be the
wife’s half-body… [he was not] said to be diminished by (or responsible
for) his partner’s death” (1997, 295) and so widowers do not experience
the same stigma and unmaking.
The gendered making and unmaking of personhood thus contextual-
ises later life and the issues that older people are concerned with in
Mangaldihi. Unlike their peers in North America or Europe whose per-
sonhood can become endangered and put under pressure if their indepen-
dence or agency come into question, or whose changing bodily or mental
states risk being interpreted as evidence of “real old age” against them,
older people in Mangaldihi are under pressure to manage the ambiguity
and multivalence of māyā in later life. Attachment, affection, connection,
and love grow over a lifetime but just as they reach their apex in later life,
they need to be “cut”. The stories of Mejo Ma, Khudi Thakrun, and
Pramila Mukherjee that this sub-section began with call attention to the
dilemmas posed by later life for a worldview like this with its emphasis on
the ties that make up people. Through her rich ethnographic analysis,
Lamb helps us understand how ageing brings into focus the “simultane-
ous, contrary pulls in the kinds of ties that make up persons” (2000, 37)
in Mangaldihi—ties that grow in number and in intensity as one ages—
but also how older age requires an unmaking and loosening of these ties
that constitute the person in order to be eventually ready for death.
Managing Transitions in Later Life: Personhood,

“Decline”, “Decrepitude”, and “Dependency”
The making and unmaking of personhood can thus be very much at stake
in later life. As I argued at the beginning of this chapter, however, later life
is itself a broad, heterogeneous, indistinct category. It is not easy to pin
“old age” down conceptually, despite our certainty that such a thing exists.
Simultaneous continuity and change in social, bodily, cognitive, and
emotional registers need to be accommodated as we age, but as Lamb’s
material above so clearly demonstrates, how this is achieved is profoundly
shaped by cultural frames of meaning. For instance, and as Lamb herself
demonstrates in her critique of it, the successful ageing discourse so
rominent in North America is one cultural frame that struggles to

p
accommodate “human transience and decline” in later life (2014, 41);
decline is to be worked against and actively resisted. Lamb finds the con-
trast between this model and her work in Mangaldihi deeply informative
for as she says, “an alternative Indian Hindu perspective is that life funda-
mentally entails decline and transience – not only in old age, but as an
essential feature of the human, material condition. Coming to realize this
transience can be a positive and enlightening move, potentially making
both ageing and dying meaningful” (Lamb 2015, 43). Taking inspiration
from this insight, she convincingly argues that some recognition of human
transience is precisely what is needed to nuance those “successful” ageing
paradigms that have become so normative in North American contexts.
Lamb states that most people experience some form of decline in later life,
either personally or via their partners or friends, but the successful ageing
paradigm, premised as it is on maintaining health, fitness, activity, and
independence cannot countenance decline as anything but failure. Lamb
proposes instead that a notion of “meaningful decline” could be recog-
nised as “a valid dimension of ageing and personhood” (2014, 51), and
that this would offer an alternative to an otherwise intolerant paradigm.
But of course, given the cross-cultural complexity in how the making of
persons—and in turn, the unmaking of persons—is understood, “decline”,
“transience”, and “dependency” are all highly culturally contingent. In
this section, I draw on material from Judith Barker working in the South
Pacific and Elana Buch working in Chicago, United States, in order to
push a little more into that wide spectrum of human responses to ques-
tions about what old age “is”, different ways of understanding the making
and unmaking of persons posed by later life, and what else comes to be at
stake in those configurations. Both Barker and Buch explore social person-
hood in later life and the ways in which it is eroded and also maintained in
these two very different cultural settings.
Barker (1997), working in Niue, an island in the South Pacific, puzzles
over the distinctions made between the high status and regard for some
older individuals there and what she describes as the profound “neglect”
of others by both family and community. Barker states that “elders” are
recognised locally as a category of people who have achieved important
political and social positions and responsibilities. This status is generally
achieved in mid-life, but “a competent person maintains that power into
advanced old age. Because the role of elder is well established before a
person reaches chronological old age and begins to experience significant
168 C. DEGNEN
decline in physical or mental abilities, elders suffer little disruption of roles

as a result of mere chronological aging” (1997, 408). Additionally, Niue
is a cultural setting whereby “a focus of socialization throughout Polynesian
life, especially during childhood, is the inculcation of respect for those
who are older….older people are to be obeyed, respected, served and
emulated… This form of relationship continues throughout life, younger
persons always being socially obligated to care for older ones” (1997,
408–9). However, as Barker goes on to explore in more detail, “some frail
elders on Niue were not receiving the kind of care and attention I had
expected they would. By Western standards, some elders were clearly
being neglected” (1997, 413). In particular, she elaborates on both the
forms of comportment and characteristics of the people who were not
being attended to, as well as what she means by neglect:
old folk who yelled constantly, swearing at neighbours and kin; those who
fought all the time, hitting out at all and sundry; those who forgot people’s
names or forgot what they were doing; those who wandered away at all
times of day and night; those who talked only of events in the remote past,
who conversed with absent friends and long-dead relatives; those who stared
vacantly about them, constantly drooled or were incontinent. Little effort
seems to have been made to bathe these elders, who were generally clad in
filthy rags, to clean their homes, or to provide them with any material com-
forts. Many of these elders complained of being constantly hungry… (1997,
412)
Barker states that such individuals “were not completely abandoned

but rather received inadequate care or minimal attention” (1997, 414).
Barker recounts that she came across a number of instances where there
were older people who she felt needed medical attention but who were
too ill to independently access such care; such individuals “were generally
left unattended or received minimal care” (1997, 412), a lack of familial
care that Barker found quite difficult to accept and which struck her as
insufficent.
Acknowledging however that “neglect” is a culturally situated concept,
Barker seeks to contextualise the categories of later life and of forms of
interaction between generations in terms of Niuean concepts of the per-
son and of ageing. These are categories which she broadly divides into
“intact” versus “decrepit”2 and “respected” versus “neglected”. In par-
ticular, she argues that what would be described as the “neglect” of people
in later life who are “decrepit” in Western contexts is instead understood

in Niue as helping to ease their way out of the world. This is because
“decrepit elders…especially those who no longer look or behave like com-
petent adults, who rave incoherently, who speak of long-past events or
converse with long-dead kin, are being actively courted by aitu [ghosts or
spirits of the dead], are mate, in transition. They are ‘the nearly dead’”
(1997, 422–3). Barker explains that mate is a Niuean term that covers
“delirium, unconsciousness and death…there are no clear distinctions, lin-
guistic or conceptual, between being incoherent, being comatose, being
dying or being dead” (1997, 422). A mate person is in transition as they
are “somewhere out of this world, on the way to the next” (1997, 422),
and the descriptions of comportment of those “decrepit” elders above,
who are not behaving as competent adults, is consistent with this view.
Such individuals are understood to be moving between life and death;
they are “in transition, inhabiting a twilight world of not-quite-human-
but-not-quite-ancestor” (1997, 423). Furthermore, in the Niuean view,
“death is a process of transition, a gradual shucking of the competencies
and responsibilities of this world…death occurs over a period of time,
months or even years” (1997, 422). That the boundary between life and
death thus is not imagined as a precise boundary may come as a surprise
to some readers, but this is a common theme in the literature, and one that
I take up again in Chaps. 7 and 8. In the Niuean context, however, Barker
argues that it is a highly salient point for contextualising the relative lack
of attention given by family members to those older people manifesting
the kinds of behaviour described above. For, as she says, “neglect” in this
case “is appropriate precisely because in reducing the customary ties and
emotions between humans it allows decrepit elders to complete an
expected transition as smoothly as possible” (1997, 423). Barker also
notes the gendered aspect of this transition, saying that it is most often
Niuean men who experience this form of treatment in later life. She
explains that aitu of men with high social prestige “can be especially
malevolent and hard to control” and that these men are thus even more
prone to “neglect”: “they are not elders but some other category of being
engaged in a normal, expected and important but nonetheless difficult
social process, that of dying. Casualness, ‘neglect’, with respect to decrepit
elders is a way of distancing oneself from such powerful and potentially
dangerous transformations” (1997, 423). Thus, Barker answers her origi-
nal puzzle—why some elders are treated with respect and others treated
with little regard—by attuning her definition of “elder” to Niuean
170 C. DEGNEN
categories of being. These Niuean categories make salient distinctions

between those who are older but are still full persons and those who are
older but are moving out of personhood and are instead transitioning
into, effectively, a state of after-personhood.
In Barker’s account of advanced later life in Niue, transitioning is not
easy. But it is essential that it occurs so that the boundaries between the
realms of the living and the dead can be protected, and any possible pol-
lution from aitu limited. In this respect, there are some parallels with
Lamb’s material from Mangaldihi and the need in later life to find ways to
lessen the ties of māyā so that one may exit the world of the living smoothly,
as well as the inflections of gender and social hierarchies in ageing person-
hood. And once again, we see how later life is by no means a static time of
life. It is instead, across many cultural settings, recognised as a time of
profound transition, replete with its own existential questions about the
human condition itself.
Another way into thinking about dependency, disability, and decline in
later life comes from Elana Buch’s work in Chicago (2013, 2014, 2015).
Working with paid home carers and their clients who are seeking to main-
tain independent living in their own homes, Buch explores a series of
interrelated themes around personhood and older age for these Chicagoans.
In this respect, Buch’s work is in tandem with the Niuean material explored
above. This is because she, like Barker, examines the profound transitions
people grapple with in later life as well as the social consequences of the
cultural frames within which individuals age. However, working as she
does in a North American setting with its cultural valorisation of indepen-
dence and autonomy in regard to full personhood, Buch’s research partici-
pants are profoundly invested in maintaining both for as long as possible.
The deep significance of continuing to live in one’s own home as a
marker of maintaining independence, agency, and local social relations in
their neighbourhoods were recurring messages from the older people
Buch worked with. Her research participants understood “their homes as
bulwarks against their social unmaking” (2015, 41). This made continu-
ing to live in their own homes critically important to them. Employing
home carers helped them achieve this and to resist perceived declines in
personhood. Indeed, as Buch argues, the connection between indepen-
dence, personhood, and an individual’s ability to manage private property
(including homes) is an example of how “homes act as extensions of per-
sons” in this cultural setting, serving as a resource for maintaining person-
hood and sense of self (2015, 43–4). And yet, staying at home, even with
help, is not a straightforward matter for the people Buch worked with.
This is due to the increasing physical difficulties many of her older partici-
pants experienced (for instance, the increased possibility of falls without
anyone to help), as well as the pronounced changes in social environments
over time in some of their neighbourhoods (2013, 2015).
In the face of such precarity, Buch demonstrates how paid home care
workers labour to sustain the social personhood of their older clients. This
is accomplished via a complex of care practices by the workers who “help
older adults maintain their homes, their sociality, and their bodies” and
support the agentic choices of their clients in everyday life (2013, 639).
Additionally, Buch argues that these layers of care practices—whilst
enabling the older clients to maintain the necessary condition of indepen-
dence, self-determination, and autonomy required by normative Western
concepts of the person—are also simultaneously based on profoundly rela-
tional forms of personhood. Buch asserts that the personhood of the older
clients is “constituted through the circulation of bodies and substances” of
their care workers and thus consequently is evocative of a model of the
partible or dividual person, based as it is on the necessary involvement of
others to sustain (2013, 638–9).
Consider, for instance, the paid home care worker that Buch calls Sally
and Sally’s older client, Ms Murphy. Sally visited Ms Murphy’s home twice
weekly for around four hours at a time to assist in a range of tasks that Ms
Murphy, in her early 80s and with chronic illness, needed help with. This
included cleaning, cooking, laundry, shopping for food, toileting, bath-
ing, supporting daily routines, and getting out and about. But it also
included the smelling of milk. As Buch describes, Ms Murphy’s sense of
smell was no longer acute and she could not rely on it to tell her if the milk
in her refrigerator had spoiled or not:
Pasteurized milk, which spoils before it changes appearance, had thus

become a particularly risky course of sustenance for her. Yet Ms. Murphy
persisted in drinking several glasses of milk a day because, though she could
no longer appreciate its flavour, consuming it evoked her childhood in rural
Ireland, where milk played a central role in the culinary rhythms of daily
life… (thus, as part of her regular tasks in Ms. Murphy’s home) Sally rou-
tinely opened and smelled each carton of milk in the fridge, inspecting it for
freshness. While she seemed to think that smelling milk was too mundane to
be noteworthy, this simple precaution had long made it safe for Ms. Murphy
to continue drinking milk, a substance so entwined with her sensibilities that
172 C. DEGNEN
to go without made her feel diminished in both health and wealth. Sally’s
milk sniffing, along with hundreds of other similarly subtle and mundane
acts of care, enabled Ms. Murphy to continue living in the manner to which
she was accustomed. But smelling milk did more than keep Ms. Murphy
alive, for this simple act of intersubjective recognition also sustained Ms.
Murphy’s memories and personhood despite her ongoing physical declines
and social losses. (2013, 637–8)
milk sniffing improved Ms. Murphy’s physical well-being. Yet this could
have also been accomplished by eliminating milk from Ms. Murphy’s diet
and substituting the non-perishable nutrition drinks her physician recom-
mended. That Sally continued to purchase and then smell milk indicated
that she was trying to do more than simply sustain Ms. Murphy’s life. Sally
was also attempting to sustain Ms. Murphy’s way of living. To do so, she
cultivated her ability to rely on her own physical senses, emotions, and expe-
rience to imagine the significant of Ms. Murphy’s sensory history. She then
drew on this embodied imagination to guide her home care practice….
Drinking milk, made safe because Sally used her more able body to stand in
for Ms. Murphy’s aging body, helped Ms. Murphy recognize herself as her-
self. This embodied care thus helped Ms. Murphy feel that she was still the
person she had previously been, despite – or, rather, against – her dimin-
ished sense of smell and the ravaging pain of rheumatoid arthritis that had
so limited her activity. (2013, 641)
This case of milk sniffing is one of multiple examples explored by Buch

whereby the paid home care workers she came to know sustained the per-
sonhood of their older clients via deeply embodied care practices. Without
such care, the physical and social transformations being experienced by
clients such as Ms. Murphy could be difficult for the older people to push
back against, difficult to “make their subjective preferences – their will –
manifest in the world” (2013, 639). Buch observes that the care workers
she worked with used their own bodies empathetically to envisage and
recreate the social and sensorial worlds of their clients. And in so doing,
they upheld the social personhood of those people they worked for.
A second example comes from a carer called Doris and her client Mr
Thomas, a recent widower in his mid-90s (Buch 2015). Doris helped Mr
Thomas with general household tasks, but also was an important compan-
ion for him when eating out:
(Doris) accompanied him to breakfast at a favorite restaurant and then later

to lunch at a favorite bar at the beginning and end of nearly every one of her
workdays, often working unpaid overtime to do so…As Mr. Thomas told
me, his favorite thing about having Doris around was that ‘I have someone
to talk to…she keeps me up to date about her family, which is interesting.’
Through her presence and conversation, Doris helped Mr. Thomas sustain
connections to the social world beyond his home. (2015, 52–3)
Cooking had become a painful reminder both of the meals he had prepared
for his wife during her long illness and of his wife’s tentative attempts to
cook as a newlywed 64 years earlier. However, Mr. Thomas and his wife had
had a long tradition of eating breakfast at Seven Brothers every Sunday
before church, and so he began going there daily after her death. Recognizing
that this meal was the highlight of Mr. Thomas’ day, Doris regularly wore a
skirt and high heels to breakfast, imitating the formality of those earlier
breakfasts he had shared with his wife. When they returned to his home,
Doris changed into flats and scrubs to clean. During the meal, Mr. Thomas
mostly sat quietly and listened to Doris talk about her children, grandchil-
dren, distant relatives, and neighbors. As I learned later from Mr. Thomas’
son, Mrs. Thomas had been something of a gossip, and Doris had recog-
nized that, though Mr. Thomas was not much of a conversationalist, he
took great pleasure in being able to listen to a woman discuss the problems
of her relatives and neighbors. Through her dress and gossip, Doris
attempted to sustain the social and material tenor of Mr. Thomas’s prior
relationships. (2013, 644)
Buch argues that mundane events such as mealtimes when one has
experienced the death of a spouse can become painful reminders of pro-
found loss in the fabric of everyday life. She shows how the example of
Doris and Mr Thomas is one of many whereby home carers empathetically
worked to maintain the daily practices of their clients which in turn helped
their clients feel as though “they were still the same people they had previ-
ously been” (2013, 644). Like the example of Sally and the milk sniffing
for Ms Murphy, which is an embodied form of care that was also deeply
attuned to the emotional and symbolic valence of that particular substance
for Ms Murphy’s “subjective preference” and agentic will, Doris also
meets more than basic care needs for Mr Thomas. Doris employs various
embodied techniques (dressing in a certain way, adopting a particular style
of comportment, eating out with her client) in a manner that helps Mr
174 C. DEGNEN
Thomas sustain his own way of being from his prior social world when his
wife was still alive. In so doing, Buch argues that Doris is also sustaining
Mr Thomas’ social personhood in the face of otherwise threatening social,
physical, and emotional decline.
Relations between older clients and their home care workers were not
necessarily straightforward, however. For instance, being the recipient of
such care could potentially render the older person “dependent” and thus
endanger their claim to full personhood. Tactics to control this, that Buch
observed, included the gifting of material goods, money, time, and advice
by older clients to their home helps, a strategy that “offered older adults
an avenue by which to resist the potential unmaking of personhood that
threatened to accompany their receipt of home care services” (2014, 605).
Additionally, it was not only the older clients who were in socially precari-
ous positions, and Buch’s research is not just a story about late life, per-
sonhood, and agency. Instead, Buch takes great care to analyse the ways in
which the home care workers themselves are positioned in structural rela-
tions of inequality and how aspects of their own personhood are at stake.
Home care work is poorly paid (usually just over minimum wage) and
with few, if any, employment benefits, such as paid leave, medical insur-
ance, or retirement benefits; it is also work disproportionally carried out
by minority and immigrant women in Chicago (2015, 45–6). All the
home care workers that Buch came to know “lived with substantial and
unrelenting financial insecurity in some of the city’s poorest and most
dangerous neighbourhoods”, the “working poor” who despite working
long arduous hours as carers were often themselves recipients of govern-
ment benefits and consequently subject to public scorn as “dependents”
on the state that endangered their own claims to full personhood (2013,
640). Thus, as with the significance of formal government-set retirement
ages in contributing to shaping local ideas about when “older age” might
be said to begin, we see here too another aspect of the impact of the state
and it is part in creating (and at times diminishing) personhood.
Buch documents how arduous home care work is, with nearly half the
workers she came to know during her fieldwork quitting or being fired by
the time her research ended, all “for reasons related to the toll care work
took on their bodies” and which in turn “threatened the economic secu-
rity of their families and households” (2013, 646). Many of the care work-
ers Buch knew lived a substantial distance from where they worked, and
relied on public transportation to get to their clients’ homes. Their com-
mutes were often hours long which meant that whilst they might be on
duty (and paid) for four hours, they were away from their own homes and
dependents for twice that amount of time (2013, 640). Home care work
is thus highly demanding work that is poorly paid and not socially valued.
But the workers “articulated a sense of their own moral value as stemming
from their willingness and ability to prioritize others’ bodily needs and
desires over their own” (2013, 644). This was at times carried out under
very difficult conditions: Buch details multiple ways in which home care
workers experienced “sensorial discomforts and bodily risks” and some-
times in “dangerous and difficult” domestic settings in the course of their
employment (2013, 645), but that they persevered in order to provide
good care to their clients.
Such a series of points may well seem to be taking us off-piste and away
from the concerns of this chapter. But its relevance comes from how Buch
demonstrates that it is via the home care workers’ labour that moral value
is forged. That is to say, this labour goes above and beyond the require-
ments of the job, but the home care workers she came to know do it any-
way in order to provide better care for their clients (by prioritising client’s
needs over their own, working extra unpaid time, working in homes that
were not always comfortable). In so doing, home care workers create a
sense of their own moral value and moral personhood. But, as Buch makes
so clear, this embodied labour that sustained the independence, will, and
personhood of their older (often wealthier) clients was enmeshed in social
hierarchies, in “a kind of corporeal hierarchy, in which poor women of
color were positioned to literally incorporate and embody the felt values
and sensory histories of their clients without the expectation that the
moral worlds of their own sensorial landscapes would circulate in a similar
fashion” (2013, 639). In this way, the bodies of the care workers “became
the ground on which moral hierarchies between persons – by which I
mean the sense that some people’s needs and desires ought to take priority
over others’ – were built, experienced and justified on a day-to-day basis”,
and thus reproducing and shoring up those hierarchies (2013, 638).
In attending to such overlapping layers of detail, Buch reveals the intri-
cate mutual constitution of personhood at play between the home care
workers and their older clients. Personhood in later life in this ethno-
graphic example is made vulnerable due to decline and dependency. But
personhood can also be supported via a series of relational processes, ones
that rest on embodied labour across multiple “mundane” sites of practice.
Buch shows us how these practices sustaining personhood are often deeply
corporeal (sniffing and ingesting of milk, eating meals out) and gendered
176 C. DEGNEN
(Mr Thomas “needing” a wife figure which Doris provides). But she also
demonstrates how deeply unequal are these mutually constituting forms
of relational personhood—the good care the workers provide to their cli-
ents helps affirm their own sense of moral personhood in a context of
deeply racialised, economic, and gendered forms of social inequality—as
the personhood of the carers and the personhood of the clients are both
precarious but in markedly different ways. As such, what her ethnography
brings out so powerfully are the ways in which personhood in later life for
the clients, and in younger life for the home carers, is not an isolate.
Personhood is instead embedded in multiple, overlapping, interconnected
frames of the body, of gender, of race, of inequality, and of moral value
which play out accordingly in distinct, but always connected, ways across
the life course.
Ageing, Masculinity, Sexuality, and Personhood

When trying to address head on the damaging social stereotypes sur-
rounding later life in many Western contexts, it is too easy to slide inadver-
tently into speaking about older age as if it is necessarily a series of losses
or as if it is the inevitable unmaking of the person. As such, Sarah Lamb’s
challenge to her own home society above to consider ways in which transi-
tions due to ageing could be accommodated as meaningful decline is a
poignant and politically significant one. However, working models of
what that might look like in North America seem few and far between.
But a compelling example comes from Emily Wentzell’s research in a hos-
pital urology department in Cuernavaca, Mexico (2013). She explores the
complex intersection of ageing, masculinity, sexuality, and erectile dys-
function via the deliberate choice to not use drugs such as Viagra amongst
many men being treated in that unit. As she explains,
although study participants used medical treatment for certain problems,

lived in a city where ED [erectile dysfunction] drugs were readily available
over the counter, and often described penetrative sex as a key way of dem-
onstrating manliness, the vast majority did not understand their erectile
function change as a medical problem. Instead, in a life-course shift so com-
mon that one study participant called it ‘the Mexican classic’, most partici-
pants came to view decreasing erections as a physical prompt to renounce
the frequent, penetrative sex they associated with youth and machismo, and
to begin to live out a more ‘mature’ masculinity enacted through emotional
interactions with family rather than sex…accepting age-related decrease in

erectile function as ‘natural’ enabled participants to embody locally respect-
able older manhood. (2013, 5)
The men she worked with ranged in age from their early 20s to mid-
90s, but the majority were in their 50s and 60s and were experiencing a
number of medical issues that had caused them to be referred to the urol-
ogy unit.
Wentzell contextualises “the Mexican classic” in a broader anthropo-
logical literature that indicates how cross-culturally changes in sexual
activity (particularly in reductions to it) are often linked to notions of
being “a ‘good’ older person” (2013, 6).3 Wentzell also documents how
in Mexican popular public discourse, appropriate masculinity includes a
heavy interest in sexual conquest, maschismo, frequent penetrative sex,
extramarital sexual liaisons, and hard physical labour. But what emerges
from her research are the ways in which the men she worked with narrate
these as part of youthful pursuits. Rather than assuming one form of
appropriate masculinity over the life course, they instead articulated age-
appropriate ways of performing masculinity. In later life, her participants
felt that limiting their sex lives to focus instead on providing emotional
support and leadership to their family—such as by being a good role
model for grandchildren—was key to being a good, respectable older man
(2013, 10). They described these roles in terms of great pride and satisfac-
tion, valorising “being loving, emotionally present husbands, fathers and
grandfathers” and content to leave their sexual exploits as part of their
youth (2013, 11). Erectile dysfunction was understood as part of normal
ageing processes whereby the body slows down, and also perceived as a
“catalyst that prompted them to ‘mature’” and take on those new roles at
the heart of the extended family (2013, 10).
Thus, rather than changes in sexual activity being framed as a loss due
to ageing, the men Wentzell worked with understood it as an “embodied
marker of manly maturity” that permitted them to “enact respectable
older sexuality” with a focus on “affective family relationships rather than
sexual conquest” (2013, 15). Wentzell further demonstrates that a range
of socio-economic barriers contributed to this interpretation being widely
taken up instead of embracing erectile dysfunction pharmaceuticals such
as Viagra. Barriers such as resource scarcity in public health care provision,
economic hardship, and financial insecurity all “encouraged them to
accept rather than try to medicate changes in erectile function” (2013,
178 C. DEGNEN
14). Wentzell thus calls to our attention a significant example of how gen-
dered forms of personhood can and do shift across the life course, and that
these are embedded in broader structural contexts. She reminds us too
that sexuality can be understood “as a social space for enacting cultural
norms for personhood (Lancaster 2003; Parker and Gagnon 1995)”, and
a deeply gendered personhood at that.
Conclusions
Wentzell’s ethnographic example helps bring a number of salient points
together from this chapter on personhood and later life. One theme that
has clearly emerged from the authors I have engaged with here is that of
transition and change in later life. The shifts experienced in older age pres-
ent dilemmas for how to explain who is old, how we know this to be the
case, when that occurs, and what the implications of that become for
appropriate comportment and attributions of personhood. The complex
heterogeneity of such transitions in later life is partially addressed by cat-
egories used by research participants and social scientists alike across mul-
tiple cultural settings: “normal” and “real” old age, the “third” versus
“fourth” age, “intact” versus “decrepit”, tamghart versus ta wacheret. All
such categories seemingly attempt to impose a form of order and certitude
onto a period of the life course which is shifting and slippery and which
present a number of risks. Many of these risks are directly linked to per-
sonhood and the maintenance of it—such as the fantasy of “permanent
personhood”—as well as the managing of it by grappling with māyā, facil-
itating mate individuals to transit, or embracing a new “mature” male
status of “the Mexican classic”.
A second key theme of this chapter has been how older age is not a
status that stands in isolation. Significantly, the ethnographers I rely on
here to explore older age and personhood have permitted us to consider
how the category of the person intersects with other social categories.
Gender has been a prominent example of this, highlighted powerfully by
Lamb, Buch, Rasmussen, Barker, and Wentzell across their various field-
sites. But also evident has been how older age intersects with sexuality (in
Wentzell and in Lamb), with race and ethnicity (in Buch particularly), and
with socio-economic status and divisions (in Buch, Wentzell, and Lamb).
These are instructive lessons for understanding the category of the person
throughout the life course, but as Moore acerbically indicates earlier in this
chapter, such considerations have not always been evident in the literature
which has tended to focus implicitly on adult males.
A third thematic, and one that continues discussions in other chapters
in the book, is the extent to which the body comes into focus in regard to
personhood. This is perhaps due to those omnipresent corporeal transi-
tions that so many definitions of older age try to grapple with, but also of
course in regard to how personhood is fashioned via substance and
embodiment. That that should be the case is perhaps not a surprise in
some of the ethnographic sites explored here, such as Lamb’s analysis of
māyā in Mangaldihi given the prominence of the exchange of substance in
such “dividual” and relational contexts. But it is perhaps less evident when
substance (in the guise of milk) appears as a constitutive aspect of Ms.
Murphy’s sense of continuity in person and way of being. And yet, as Buch
eloquently explores, not only is substance relevant to personhood in this
North American context, so too is relationality in the maintenance of per-
sonhood via the care and embodied empathy of home workers for their
ageing clients in Chicago. In calling attention to this, it is not my intent to
assert any grand universals for later life and personhood. Personhood, as I
have been arguing in this monograph, is a category that takes on pro-
foundly different cadences cross-culturally and throughout the life course.
But this chapter has explored more of what can be learned about those
categories via older age, complex as that category is. In so doing, my hope
is that such cross-cultural comparisons can help Western audiences prob-
lematise the public discourses that focus on older age as “the other within”,
and to recognise instead that the dilemmas of creating and maintaining
personhood are a shared project, and one that presents challenges across
the life course.
Notes
1. Cohen (1998) is a notable exception, although his primary concern has
been on the construction of senility rather than older age per se.
2. Barker variously describes this category of elders as “decrepit”, “frail”,
“senescent”, “infirm”, and “impaired”. These strike me as highly charged
terms, and leave me feeling uneasy; I prefer “advanced older age”, but can
also see how this might be interpreted as overly sanitizing language.
3. Indeed, one example of many comes from Lamb’s own work that I describe
above, whereby older adults in Mangaldihi embrace celibacy as a “cooling”
practice that in turn helps them manage the ties of māyā in later life by limit-
ing the exchange of substance (2000).
180 C. DEGNEN
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CHAPTER 7
Endangered Forms of Personhood
Introduction
On 17 March 2012, a young man called Fabrice Muamba, then a 23-year-
old midfielder for the Bolton Wanderers, stepped onto the pitch with the
rest of his team.1 They were about to begin an important away match, a
FA Cup quarter final with Tottenham Hotspur, held in north London at
White Hart Lane stadium. Forty-three minutes into the contest, Muamba
collapsed, lying motionless on the pitch. He had suffered a sudden cardiac
arrest—his heart had stopped. Muamba was given emergency CPR by the
medically trained assistants on site and by the St John Ambulance unit
present. They also tried to revive him with a defibrillator, a machine that
puts an electric current through the body in order to try and restart the
heart. Muamba was electronically charged on at least two occasions on the
pitch, and 15 times altogether in transit to the hospital. He did not resume
consciousness and was not breathing when he was taken off the pitch and
down the tunnel to the ambulance.
For 48 minutes, medics tried unsuccessfully to revive Muamba before
he arrived at the London Chest Hospital, and it then took another 30
minutes before Muamba’s heart started beating again once there. The
Bolton Wanderers medic when interviewed said that Muamba’s heart had
been stopped for 78 minutes and that “in effect, he was dead in that
period of time”. Muamba was initially kept under anaesthesia in intensive
care in a medical coma in the hospital. By 19 March, his heart was beating
without medication and he was able to move his limbs. Later that day, his

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_7
184 C. DEGNEN
condition was described as “serious” rather than “critical” and he was able
to recognise family members and respond appropriately to questions. By
21 March, his consultant stated that Muamba’s progress had “exceeded
our expectations” and that although he faced a “lengthy recovery period”,
“normal life is within the spectrum of possibility”. Two weeks after the
incident, a photograph was released of Muamba sitting up in his hospital
bed and smiling. He was discharged from hospital on 16 April, having
been fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. In August 2012,
he retired from his professional career in football but has since then worked
as a sports media commentator, studied for a BA in sports journalism and
in July 2015, graduated with honours.
Fabrice Muamba’s story is by any measure an extraordinary set of
events. As a televised football match in an important national competition,
it also gripped and shocked many in the UK and internationally. Indeed, I
was one of those people. But in the months and years that have passed
since then, I have also come to think anthropologically about some of the
bigger issues around personhood that it brings into focus, and how it con-
nects up with a number of the issues that I shall explore in this chapter. For
instance, Muamba’s experiences call attention to the ways in which tech-
nological developments are remapping the notions of “life” and extending
the possibilities for the continuity of the person. Muamba would have died
without immediate recourse to the life support he received on pitch and in
the ambulance, via professionally administered CPR, and the use of defi-
brillator. Also present in the stands that day, as chance would have it, was
a consultant cardiologist attending the game as a spectator. He was able to
get onto the pitch to help treat Muamba as well as in the ambulance, and
to advise the paramedic team that Muamba be taken not to the nearest
emergency room but instead to the London Chest hospital in Bethnal
Green, a specialist coronary care unit that had the expertise to treat
Muamba’s complex medical needs. Exponential shifts in technological
capabilities and biomedical infrastructures over the past couple of decades
have made his recovery possible. These include the development of spe-
cialist units, the ability to put him into a medical coma, the capacity to
keep his heart beating and keep oxygen circulating through his body (and
the medicine and equipment this necessitates), and the existence of
implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. Such biomedical technologies are
stunning in what they make possible. But, as I will show, these develop-
ments in the medical sciences also pose real dilemmas for the category of
the person. This is especially true in regard to how one piece of equipment
ENDANGERED FORMS OF PERSONHOOD 185
in particular, the artificial respirator, permits the creation of what Sharon

Kaufman has called “uncommon persons” (2003), those in a range of
unresponsive, unconscious states who are kept alive by technological
intervention alone.
Muamba’s experiences thus also call attention to the boundary between
life and death and when death can be said to occur. Such a definition is
seemingly straightforward: surely we know via common sense when death
has occurred, and surely someone is either alive or dead. In fact, defini-
tions of death are historically contingent and changeable. At various points
in time and in various cultural settings, death has been defined in various
ways. This has included, for instance, definitions based on heart activity, or
on breathing, or on brain stem activity. Whilst I will focus entirely on
death and personhood in Chap. 8, here in Chap. 7 I want instead to attend
to those socially and culturally troubling boundaries between life and
death. I call this “endangered personhood”. Fabrice Muamba being “in
effect dead” for 78 minutes is striking example of this. He fortunately has
recovered to continue on with his life, but he is arguably a rare example of
a life and a person who was endangered and yet who has returned to both
full life and full personhood. The majority do not.
Medical anthropologists have critically engaged with this troubling
boundary, and unlike the case of Muamba, most of this research has been
in cases where recovery does not occur. It is these that I trace and explore
in this chapter in two main ways in relation to personhood. Firstly, I con-
sider the intersecting cluster of issues around disordered states of con-
sciousness such as persistent or permanent vegetative state (PVS),2 the
notion of brain death, and organ transplantation; and, secondly, dementia.
Indeed, like the category of “uncommon persons”, ethnographic accounts
of dementia call to attention the socio-cultural fears over the “loss” of the
person (Leibing and Cohen 2006; Taylor 2008), and highlight the com-
plex intersection of biology and culture in the ways in which this disease is
experienced. As Leibing writes, reflecting on biosocial death,
a person’s capability of participating in society diminishes to the point that

the person is considered a nonperson or as not having full personhood. I
here use the term biosocial because the two are inseparable; a social death
occurs because of a person’s biology, and biology cannot be described apart
from the social body….People who are able to stay alive only with the help
of machines provide examples of biosocial death, but reduced cognitive
functioning (as in, for example, dementia) in an individual can lead to the
perception that the individual is a nonperson. (2006, 248)
186 C. DEGNEN
Thus, both those who are kept alive only with the assistance of machines
(such as the brain-dead) and people with dementia call into sharp relief the
boundaries between life and death. All serve as examples of when person-
hood can be understood to come under threat, and becomes endangered.
Throughout this book I have sought always to forefront how “person” is
not a homogenous entity cross-culturally, but also how it is not always
homogenous or stable within particular societies either. The material in
this chapter achieves that perhaps the most explicitly, revealing the extent
to which the achievement of personhood is something that needs always
to be worked at, maintained, shored up, protected. The cases of disor-
dered consciousness, brain death, and dementia that I explore in this
chapter offer sobering examples of when personhood becomes diminished
and threatened and in turn help us better articulate what we often take for
granted about personhood in our everyday lives. The cases also generate
sharp questions around the nature of consciousness itself, the profound
ontological challenges presented by trying to define and categorise per-
sonhood, important reminders about the significance of narrativity and
social relations in the assertion of subjectivity, issues of embodiment, and
the “loss” of the person versus the person “living on”.
Locating the Boundary Between Life and Death?

In the late 1960s, a group of doctors from Harvard University along with
a lawyer, a historian, and a theologian sat as a task force to consider a con-
dition they described as “irreversible coma” and as “brain death” (Lock
2004, 138). The report they published, the 1968 Harvard Ad Hoc
Committee report, identified irreversible damage to the brain—brain
death—as the moment when death occurs, challenging the traditional
definition of heartbeat cessation as the moment of death; this definition
was soon adopted in most countries globally, apart from Japan and
Denmark where the definition was not legislated until the 1990s (Haddow
2005, 94).
Some authors, such as Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (1994), have explicitly
linked this definition of brain death to Western Enlightenment concerns
with rationality. She argues that in Western philosophy, “rationality is the
most important criterion for humanness. As a corollary, the brain – the
seat of rational thought – occupies the most prominent place among the
body parts. In this…perspective, a ‘person’ ceases to exist when the func-
tions located in the cerebrum are ‘irreversibly’ lost. The brain-dead indi-
vidual is, naturally, dead as a person” (1994, 237). Other authors have
emphasised how it is consciousness that is “unavoidable and fundamental”
to discussions of personhood in Western philosophy (Kaufman 2003,
2252), and have reminded us of the centrality of autonomy, subjectivity,
and agency to the existence of the person, too (Bird-David and Israeli
2010). However, as Ohnuki-Tierney points out, “rationality as the hall-
mark of humanity and the pre-eminence of the brain are not universally
shared” (1994, 237), and as Margaret Lock writes (2002, 8), “if the con-
cept of the ‘person’ is diffused throughout the body, or even extends out-
side the body, then the destruction of the brain is not easily reckoned as
signifying death” (2002, 8). As we shall see, it is thus not always straight-
forward to determine if conscious agency has been extinguished, and fur-
thermore, this is not always the pre-eminent consideration in determining
if death has indeed occurred.
Additionally, as Kaufman and Morgan (2005) have written, the intro-
duction of the term and category of brain death has provoked significant
debate. That is because “rather than specifying and clarifying the moment
and conditions of death, the notion of brain death made death more inde-
terminate and troubling, for some observers, because it became almost-
but-not-quite death” (2005, 329–30). This is particularly because of “the
existence of dead persons kept in life-like conditions of ongoing respira-
tion suggested that there was more than one kind of death or that brain
death was not actual, final death” (2005, 329). Both Margaret Lock and
Sharon Kaufman are two medical anthropologists who have made signifi-
cant contributions to the literature on these emergent categories of per-
son, and I consider the work of each now in turn, supplementing their
material with that of other authors, to draw out more of what is at stake in
the debates over this form of endangered personhood.
Brain-Dead Bodies and Organ Transplantation:

Contrasting Views from North America and Japan
In a series of publications, Margaret Lock explores the category of brain-
dead bodies, created by major trauma to the brain whereby the victim of
such accidents can no longer breathe on their own and require artificial
ventilation to survive (2002, 2003, 2004). Indeed, it is the brain stem that
maintains functions essential for life (such as breathing, heartbeat, blood
pressure, swallowing) and if this part of the body sustains a traumatic
188 C. DEGNEN
injury and stops working, the patient is deemed to be brain-dead (NHS

2017). However, “brain-dead patients remain betwixt and between, both
alive and dead, breathing with technological assistance but irreversibly
unconscious” (Lock 2004, 136) via the use of ventilators. This piece of
equipment delivers oxygen into the lungs. Because of the ventilator, and
other life support such as medications, the brain-dead person continues to
look as though she is still alive. Such patients continue to have normal skin
pallor, a heartbeat, bodily functions (digestion, metabolism, excretion),
and hair and nails which do not stop growing (Lock 2002, 243). These
patients are dead but do not look dead—they are categorised as dead but
they manifest signs of life—and are thus dead people in a living body
(Haddow 2005; Lock 2002).
As Lock shows, the “alive-and-yet-dead” are attributed different mean-
ings across different cultural and historical settings. Of central concern to
her analysis are the ways in which the emergence of this new category of
person intersects with organ transplantation. For it is “the majority of
human organs used for transplantation” that are “procured from brain-
dead bodies” (2004, 136). Furthermore, in order for organs to be suc-
cessfully transplanted, “‘maintaining organs for transplantation actually
necessitates treating dead patients in many respects as if they were alive’”
(Younger et al. 1985, 321, cited in Lock 2004, 138). Lock’s research is
based on work with clinicians, and she draws on material collected across
a range of sites including Japan, Canada, America, and Britain. This per-
mits her to explore contrasting and converging views in different national
traditions of biomedical clinical practice on “the way in which the concept
of the ‘person’ is construed, and whether brain-dead bodies are under-
stood as living entities towards which a complement of human rights
remain attached, or else as corpse-like objects deserving only of respect”
(2004, 138). Particularly enlightening are the contrasts she draws between
the United States, Canada, and Japan in regard to beliefs about death and
about organ transplant.
These cultural distinctions are partly due to a long historical precedent
in Europe of dissection of the human body, which is in marked contrast
with a “shallow tradition in Japan” of “body commodification for medical
purposes” (2004, 138). Lock argues that the former has helped facilitate
an acceptance of organ donation in North America whereas the latter has
rendered this much less popular in Japan. Indeed, “organ procurement
and donation is unreservedly promoted in North America as the right
thing to do,” couched in terms of being an altruistic “gift of life”, “whereas
in Japan concerns about violation of newly dead bodies and of disruption

of family obligations and sensibilities take precedence over the ‘western’
practice of routine organ procurement” (2004, 138).3 What becomes
powerfully evident here are thus the ways in which it is not only advances
in biomedical technology that make the “living dead” possible—such
transformations also hinge on “a legitimating socio-economic and bio-
ethical apparatus” (Kaufman and Morgan 2005, 330).4 These technologi-
cal and socio-cultural elements intersect in a historically contingent way to
forge new categories of person, something we have seen earlier in this
volume with notions of conception and the foetus.
In Lock’s interviews with Canadian and American intensivists about
diagnosing brain death, the physicians all agreed that the tests to deter-
mine if brain death has occurred are straightforward and robust and that
brain death is an irreversible state. However, despite believing brain death
is irreversible, “not one believes that a diagnosis of brain death signifies
the end of biological life” (2004, 140). This is because “organs and cells
of the body, including small portions of the brain, remain alive” due to the
use of the artificial ventilator, and furthermore, if organ “harvesting” and
transplantation are to be successful, keeping the organs functioning and
nourished with oxygen and blood is essential (2004, 140).
But if the brain-dead are not biologically dead, what then of the per-
son? Lock found that the majority of North American intensivists she
interviewed understood the “‘person’ and/or ‘spirit’” to be “no longer
present in the body” (2004, 141). Instead, a new entity exists, “that of a
dead-person-in-a-living-body” also called “living cadavers…[or] the ‘brain
dead’ – [who] have bodies that function close to ‘normal’ thanks to tech-
nological support, but their brains are permanently destroyed…breathing
with technological assistance but forever unconscious” (Lock 2003, 167).
Lock says that all but one of the physicians she interviewed explained that
they knew the person to be absent because “the irreversible loss of brain
function [ensured] … a permanent lack of consciousness, no awareness
and no sensation of pain. In other words, a sensate, suffering, individual
has ceased to exist because their mind no longer functions” (2004, 141).
So, although life is understood to be present in the brain-dead, it is the
general consensus that “no sentient being – no person – exists” any lon-
ger, something that makes the physicians Lock interviewed feel confident
about harvesting organs from such patients (2004, 144). But Lock then
highlights how a powerful “discursive apparatus” and social consensus
facilitates organ harvesting and transplantation beliefs and practices; as she
190 C. DEGNEN
says, “without the weight of more than 30 years of systemization and rou-
tinization of brain death criteria, supplemented by positive recognition
from the media and from professional, legal and political quarters, few if
any organs would be procured from brain-dead bodies, and no doubt few
intensivists would be comfortable about participating in such a proce-
dure” (2004, 144).
There is in Japan, too, a powerful discursive apparatus around brain
death and organ transplants. Indeed, Lock says that there has been “enor-
mous, unrelenting media coverage on the subject” (2004, 149) in Japan.
She recounts in an interview how struck she was by the extent to which
issues about brain death appeared in popular media (including newspa-
pers, magazines, and children’s comic books) and began wondering why
brain death was a contentious issue in Japan—it “was proving to be the
biggest bioethical problem in contemporary Japan”—whilst simultane-
ously attracting no public debate at all in North America (Haldane 2002).
The emphasis in Japan has been on a sustained critique of organ procure-
ment and transplantation, a critique that is based in “doubt as to whether
death can be understood as a clearly diagnosable event [and asserting] …
that irreversibility of brain damage is difficult to establish conclusively”
(Lock 2004, 149). Additionally, whilst there is a powerful discourse of
organ donation as the ultimate altruistic “gift of life” in countries such as
the United States, Canada, and Britain as mentioned above, this discourse
does not translate well into the Japanese context. According to Lock, this
is because gifting (a form of reciprocal exchange) a highly valuable item
(such as a life-giving organ) would create a sense of obligation and a need
to reciprocate which would not be possible in the case of anonymous
donation or, conversely if the donation was not anonymous, would con-
nect the deceased’s family with “complete strangers with whom one has
had no personal contact”, a prospect which also provokes discomfort to
many in this cultural setting where great sensitivities prevail around reci-
procity and obligation (2002, 10).
At the time of her writing in the early 2000s, Lock draws on interviews
she conducted with Japanese physicians in 1996, a year before the 1997
Organ Transplant Law was passed in Japan. This law
states that a person whose brain has stopped functioning can be defined as
dead in cases where the patient has given prior consent to donate organs for
transplant and the family has also signed a donor card…those patients diag-
nosed as brain dead, but who have not given consent to donate, are consid-
ered to be alive and continue to receive medical assistance if the family so

wishes. (2004, 146)5
As such, whilst the Japanese physicians Lock interviewed agreed with

their North American counterparts that “brain death is an irreversible
condition…[and that] a brain-dead body is not dead” (2004, 146), they
tended not to raise the issue of organ donation with the family of patients
who had been decreed brain-dead, nor did they always make the diagnos-
tic tests for brain death.
Instead, Lock documents how language such as the patient “is almost
brain dead” is used by clinicians with families, and once the attending
physician is certain brain death has occurred, treatment will gradually be
reduced which includes not administering any further medication and
gradually reducing the amount of oxygen in the artificial ventilator (2004,
147). Also in marked distinction to their North American counterparts,
“no one in Japan talked about the shell of a body remaining after the per-
son or the soul has departed” (2004, 148).6 But why would this be?
Lock attributes it in the first instance to the doctors feeling that it is not
“appropriate to persuade families” that their relative has died (2004, 148).
Secondly, whilst many of the clinicians she interviewed “stated clearly that
once consciousness is permanently lost patients are as good as dead, they
do not believe that most families would agree with this”, nor are sharp
divisions between mind/body regularly made (2004, 148). The third rea-
son is that “‘person’ is not usually understood as an autonomous entity
firmly encased inside a brain” (2004, 148). Rather, as Lock relates, in
discussions she had with 50 college-educated Japanese on the location of
the ‘person’, “only one-third clearly locate the ‘centre’ of their bodies in
the brain”; the rest instead “elected kokoro as the centre, a very old meta-
phorical concept that represents a region in the thorax where ‘true’ feel-
ings are located” (2004, 148). This was the case across a range of ages in
respondents which suggests that these beliefs are not being eroded.
Furthermore, “the individual is understood as residing at the centre of a
network of obligations, so that personhood is constructed out-of-mind,
beyond body, in the space of ongoing human relationships” (2004,
148–9). All of these reasons help explain why it is that the Harvard Ad
Hoc Committee’s new definition of brain death was not accepted for some
time in Japanese law, in contrast with the marked majority of nations.
Indeed, even though the 2009 bill recognises brain death, mainstream
beliefs in Japan continue to resist it. Lock explains that part of this dynamic
192 C. DEGNEN
is because firstly understandings of death and dying in Japan are norma-

tively understood as a process and not a singular moment; and secondly,
because cognitive capacity and consciousness of the individual on life sup-
port is “of secondary importance for most people”; what is instead of
primary importance is if “biological life clearly remains” (2002, 8). As
stated above, in the case of those on life support, the body continues to
look alive and biological live is apparent. Thirdly, death is not reducible in
this cultural context to the demise of an individual body. Instead, death in
Japan “is above all a familial and social occasion. Even when medically
determined, death becomes final only when the family accepts it as such”
(2002, 8), which in turn helps explain why it is that doctors are reluctant
to try and convince families that their relative has died, especially given the
highly life-like appearance of patients on life support.
Clearly emergent from this one example then are crucial questions over
“where” it is that the person is actually located; the extent to which this
can (or cannot) be a purely biological or physiological measure; and the
role of social relationships in the existence and location of the person.
These are key considerations I want to now explore in more detail, par-
ticularly arguments about the contextual aspects of personhood and of
familial relations in endangered forms of personhood. I turn now to a
body of ethnographic work on patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS),
their families and the health-care professionals treating them.
“Uncommon Personhood” and Relational

Frameworks: The Case of Mr Paul Lenczyk
The work of Sharon Kaufman overlaps in some key ways with that of
Lock. Both authors are focused on the ways in which endangered person-
hood in the margins between life and death is an emergent category; both
also critically examine the wider historical, social, cultural, economic, and
political dynamics that have created and which serve to reproduce these
emergent forms. Unlike Lock, however, Kaufman’s work is entirely based
on ethnographic material gathered in the United States, and she does not
focus on organ donation or transplantation. Instead, she has written very
movingly on her ethnographic work in four units in a Californian com-
munity hospital. In one unit, 54 patients who are “in some form of long-
term or permanent comatose condition” are cared for (in one case, for as
long as 17 years); many of these patients are in a persistent or permanent
vegetative state (2000, 69). In another specialist unit at this hospital, there
are patients who are dependent on ventilators or other technologies, but
who are experiencing a range of conditions which means they span a spec-
trum from alert, partially conscious, unconscious, and comatose states
(2003). Indeed, and as we shall return to below, not only is consciousness
key in regard to personhood, but it is also a quality that is not neatly dis-
crete. It can be frustratingly elusive to pin down.
Kaufman describes the patients in these units as “uncommon persons”.
These patients are “ventilator and other technology-dependent persons”
who are “neither fully alive, biologically dead, nor ‘naturally’ self-
regulating” (2003, 2249), existing in the technologically enabled border-
lands between life and death. Kaufman’s primary interest is “in how
relations among persons who care for and interact with those patients are
understood and how the agency and subjectivity of the person who is a
patient are approached, known, and enabled” (2003, 2250). As Kaufman’s
combined body of work so eloquently explores, it is the complex nexus of
financial resource, social consensus, medical technologies, familial care,
and specialist care that facilitate these particular forms of endangered
personhood.
Kaufman contends that in the absence of consciousness, the person-
hood of these patients “emerges and is known through the activities of
others”, namely the family members, friends, and health-care professionals
who become the channels via which the person is made (2003, 2250–1).
Kaufman describes the ways in which specialist hospital units caring for
PVS patients can for some families become sites that cast “into relief the
grotesque and questionable ontological status of their relative” and the
terrible, tragic, anguish experienced by these families as they grapple with
the near impossibility of what they are faced with (2003, 2251). In one
publication, she closely details the case of Mr Paul Lenczyk, a pseudonym
for one of the patients on the unit (2003). This is an extended ethno-
graphic description, which I borrow from her and summarise here. It
richly encapsulates what is at stake in such a complex configuration of
patient, person, network of carers, and institutional setting.
Mr Lenczyk had sustained a traumatic head injury six months prior
when he had fallen from a window to the ground, three stories below. He
was hospitalised and unconscious, and needed mechanical ventilation to
survive. After being medically stabilised, he was admitted to the specialised
hospital unit for long-term ventilator-dependent patients where Kaufman
was conducting her ethnography. Whilst the initial medical assessment was
194 C. DEGNEN
that Mr Lenczyk was “vegetative”, the specialist unit determined that he

was not vegetative as, according to his attending physician, “he was mak-
ing ‘purposive’ moves…[and] had become more responsive in the weeks
he had been on the specialized unit. He was sometimes acting intention-
ally. He could follow commands and walk with assistance…A CT scan was
done. He had extensive brain damage and there were no correctable
lesions” (2003, 2255). The key points of consideration here, and to which
I will return, are words like “intentionality”, “vegetative”, and “purpo-
sive” as all have implications for the “uncommon personhood” state into
which Mr Lenczyk has entered.
Kaufman introduces Mr Lenczyk’s case in the context of a hospital eth-
ics committee meeting that she attended and which had been arranged by
the physician caring for Mr Lenczyk. The physician called the meeting in
order to discuss the request by Mr Lenczyk’s relatives “to withdraw all
medical care and life support from him so that he could, and would, die”,
a troubling request to the physician who instead thought that Mr Lenczyk’s
condition was in actual fact, very slowly, improving (2003, 2251). Because
of this, his physician was not prepared to withdraw care and allow Mr
Lenczyk to die (2003, 2255). As Kaufman explains, “the attributes that
constitute ‘improvement’ and whether or not improvement means recov-
ery of the qualities that constitute the category of ‘person’ can be ques-
tionable for severely brain-damaged persons and were the source of
confusion and debate” for all concerned at the ethics committee meeting
she attended (2003, 2251).
Thus, the family’s “request was both practically and ethically complex”
(2003, 2251). It was practically complex because whilst family requests to
remove life support for patients who have been comatose for many months
or years are generally positively received by the staff caring for those
patients, such requests to withdraw care are very rare, even though con-
tinuing medical care is “futile” in terms of actually promoting an improve-
ment in the patient’s condition or recovery. In contrast, Mr Lenczyk was
not fully comatose and his medical team felt that his treatment was not
futile as he was showing medical signs of improvement; in turn, the ethical
dilemma was because “he had emerged from deep unconsciousness into a
grey area, some kind of partial awareness,” but he also presented a
murky ontological status…by what parameters could one approach and

define Mr. Lenczyk as a person now that he was not in a vegetative state?…
[could he] be classified as being fully a person, that is, as having subjectivity
(an awareness of himself as a human subject, emplaced in relation to other

subjects), agency (the ability to reflexively, intentionally, and meaningfully
act in the world), or self-identity (a knowledge of who he was in the world,
a sense of others and the ability to distinguish between the two)? (2003,
2251–2; emphasis in original)
Furthermore, as Kaufman points out and which the health-care profes-

sionals attending the meeting voiced, without such characteristics, “could
life be meaningful”? (2003, 2252). The dilemma remained though: from
the perspective of the physician, Mr Lenczyk was a person demonstrating
“signs of increasing mental responsiveness as well as physical gain” whereas
in contrast, the family’s request was on the grounds that Mr Lenczyk
“would not want to live like this” (2003, 2255; emphasis in original).
At the ethics committee meeting, which included 14 different people
representing various medical specialisms and two family members, long
debate and discussion unfolded. There was a wide spectrum of interpreta-
tion of Mr Lenczyk’s medical symptoms. A second physician said that
unlike his colleague, “he did not see any purposive moves” (2003, 2255).
A neurologist attending stated that Mr Lenczyk could not “communicate
with language…[and] had not made eye contact” (2003, 2256) though
the physician who initiated the meetings contradicted him saying he does
make eye contact and that he also “smiles reactively… It feels like he fol-
lows what I’m saying. I asked him to show me his tongue, and he did”
(2003, 2256).
In the midst of this debate, Mr Lenczyk’s sister interjected, asking can
he “experience life? Is he a person? … Some sort of person, or more pre-
cisely, some vestige of a person, she argued, may reside in the hospital unit,
but her brother, as a sentient, relational human being, whose qualities of
self she could identify, was not there” (2003, 2256). It is thus Mr Lenczyk’s
sister who recalibrated the conversation away from a language of improve-
ment and instead onto what it is to be a person, fully human, and how
suffering, recognition, and agency are so critical to her in evaluating these
permutations. In so doing, she throws into relief contrasting notions of
the foundations of personhood, points of comparison, and of reference.
She feels that it is his suffering and his truncated full personhood that
needs to be addressed. If Mr Lenczyk “was no longer a person, and would
not become a person capable of having a meaningful relationship in the
sister’s terms, then the sister wanted to allow the patient’s self-destruction
to be complete”, a particularly poignant point given that as we discover,
Mr Lenczyk’s fall had been an intentional choice and he had been attempt-
196 C. DEGNEN
ing to kill himself by suicide; his sister consequently “wanted to allow an

ending to the story that the patient had started. That closure would, at
least, acknowledge (and even honor) the identity and agency of the patient
and the completion of the life as the patient had enacted it” (2003, 2258).
The meeting ends with no clear-cut consensus, but a feeling that on
balance it was too early to end treatment, despite the sister’s wishes, and
that some more time—although if this was a month, six months, or a year
was debated—was necessary to evaluate if Mr Lenczyk would “improve”
or stall on a plateau. By then perhaps more moral clarity would be evident
around either continuing or withdrawing treatment. What was not know-
able was if this would happen, and if he would ever again be recognisable
to his family as the person they had known. Without this, the family would
continue to be faced with the ontological chasm of a living body but with
“no recognizable person in the body” (2003, 2259). As Kaufman rightly
concludes, this is a set of virtually unanswerable questions, ones which
clearly highlight the limits of what medical knowledge and technology can
achieve. These dilemmas also highlight both the extent to which biologi-
cal and physiological definitions of what makes a person are not clear cut
(how do we measure and assess intentionality and consciousness on these
extreme edges of the spectrum between life and death?) as well as the
extent to which personhood is not simply reducible to biological function-
ing. It is instead the ways in which the PVS patients are “incomplete
persons” who can only ever be rendered complete again by being immersed
in relational, embodied lives (2003, 2259–60) that really stands out.
The Complex Range of Consciousness: Diagnosis,

Misdiagnosis, Competing Definitions
Consciousness is thus a key consideration in these cases of endangered
personhood. But whilst consciousness features significantly in Western
notions of personhood, “the idea of consciousness – whether it is present,
to what degree, and how it can be located, observed or known – has been
debated by clinicians, bioethicists and others for medical conditions
involving impaired brain function” (Kaufman 2003, 2252). Furthermore,
as Kaufman describes in the specialised unit where she conducted her eth-
nography, the staff working there recognise a wide range of forms of con-
sciousness that their patients manifest. This spectrum includes:
from fully cognizant persons who participate in their own care; to brain-
injured persons who can only speak a word or two at a time and move their
limbs without a great deal of fine-motor control but who seem to under-
stand simple language, enjoy human contact and interaction, and communi-
cate via very simple speech or gesture; to persons very impaired neurologically
who can sometimes direct their gaze and respond to simple commands
(open your eyes) and thus who are described as conscious; to “locked-in”
individuals whose cognition seems to be intact yet who cannot move or
express themselves except in the most subtle and abbreviated ways; to those
defined as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), that is, who are some-
times awake (and do move and make noises though without intention) but
who are never aware. (2003, 2252–3)
In addition to the debated nature of consciousness in the context of

brain damage, and to the wide range of variation in how (and to what
extent) it presents, Kaufman also explores definitions of unconsciousness.
She says that the precision of medical definitions of permanent uncon-
sciousness that distinguish, for instance between PVS and coma, are in
everyday clinical practice not employed in rigid ways. So, whilst a bio-
medical distinction of permanently unconscious adults is made between
those in PVS (a damaged neo-cortex but an intact brainstem resulting in
“ ‘an eyes-open normal wakefulness’” [Kaufman 2003, 2253 citing
Cranford and Smith 1987, 237]) and those in a coma (extensive damage
to the brainstem resulting in “ ‘an eyes-closed unconsciousness’” [Kaufman
2003, 2253 citing Cranford and Smith 1987, 237]), these are not held to
in a hard-and-fast way in the everyday experiences in the specialist unit.7
Instead, “at the bedside…understanding of various kinds of conscious-
ness is much more open and flexible. Many patients on the unit have been
diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state yet staff sometimes
describe them as though they had consciousness, even if that consciousness
is only partial or occasional” (2003, 2253). This is a point Bird-David and
Israeli explore in more detail in their article on such oscillation in attribu-
tion of personhood, and something I return to below. But Kaufman also
describes how it is that “the boundary between a medically designated con-
sciousness and unconsciousness is highly permeable” and that a number of
patients being cared for in the special unit “are considered by staff to be in
a ‘grey area’ somewhere between complete unconsciousness and partial
awareness”, an area that is spoken of by the practitioners with whom she
worked as “slippery, variable and changeable even on a day-to-day basis,
198 C. DEGNEN
and which medical science is unable to fully categorize” (2003, 2253). As

such, there is no clear-cut answer to questions about “the nature of con-
sciousness…[or] about what constitutes the category of the person” (2003,
2254). Indeed, on the PVS unit, there are also cases of patients who “wake-
up” and are able to leave the unit and return to their home: Kaufman
reports that this occurs about once a year (2000, 69).
In addition to these complexities, both Kaufman (2003, 2254) and
Lock (2003, 179) cite the findings of a survey of neurologists and medical
directors of nursing homes with PVS patients by Cassell (1996) whereby
“almost half of [those surveyed] thought that PVS patients are dead”
(Kaufman 2003, 2254). This is so even though “PVS patients breathe
without assistance, have sleep-wake cycles, exhibit reflexes, and can swal-
low and yawn. A few patients can, with great patience on the part of their
attendants, chew for themselves when food is place in their mouths” (Lock
2003, 179). And yet, despite this, in Cassell’s findings, “Four-fifths sur-
veyed thought it would be unethical to give PVS patients a lethal injec-
tion; yet most thought it would be ethical to use the organs of those
patients for transplantation – while they were still considered, by defini-
tions established by medical science, to be alive” (Kaufman 2003, 2254).
As Lock tersely concludes, “obviously confusion reigns in the minds of the
specialists” (2003, 179), a sense that can only be heightened by discus-
sions she reports with Keith Andrews, one of the clinicians she
interviewed.
Andrews, at the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability in West London,
reports that “eleven out of forty-three cases regained awareness four
months or more after suffering brain damage, contrary to received medi-
cal wisdom…six were able to make use of nonverbal means of communica-
tion, and four were able to speak” (Lock 2003, 182). Furthermore,
Andrews relayed that of the 40 patients referred to his unit (which is for
PVS patients), 17 had been misdiagnosed and “although severely impaired,
were not PVS” (Lock 2003, 182). Indeed, one of the patients Andrews
was looking after then was “‘locked in’, that is, fully conscious and aware,
but due to irreversible damage to the brain stem, unable to speak or make
any movements other than to blink”; the physicians previously treating
him had diagnosed him as PVS and “had assumed that he was fully uncon-
scious and unable to experience pain” (2003, 182). Patently evident here
then are a series of interconnected issues and definitions, none of which
have sharply demarcated boundaries. That is to say, relocating definitions
of death to the brain instead of the cardio-pulmonary system has created a
new urgency around issues of consciousness and awareness (and the range
of qualities of both) in terms of demarcating personhood. “Establishment
of an irreversible loss of consciousness is key to this assessment, even
though it is abundantly clear that no consensus exists among neurologists
or philosophers about exactly what consciousness is” (Lock 2003, 190).
This can be a highly problematic diagnostic field; people can be misdiag-
nosed (as, for instance, PVS when they are “only” severely impaired),
states can shift, and all of these create slippery ontological ground beneath
one’s feet, for both families and health-care practitioners.
Personhood: Relational, Narrated, and Embodied

In the face of such blurred categories and definitions at the boundaries of
life and death, it would be understandable to begin to think that person-
hood is rendered irretrievably unknowable in these states. And yet, an
emerging body of ethnographic work challenges this. For instance, Nurit
Bird-David and Tal Israeli write about the personhood of patients in a
permanent vegetative state in an Israeli hospital, individuals who “fall out-
side categories of ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ and ‘subject’ or ‘object’” (2010, 54).
Whilst they too identify “irresolvable confusion as to their ontological
state” amongst the people caring for these patients, they argue that mul-
tiple aspects of personhood come in and out of focus in various contexts
and moments of interaction with staff at the hospital (2010, 54). They
identify both an essentialist notion of personhood of which the PVS
patient is “emptied” at point of admission to the hospital, but also forms
of a “fluid, relational personhood” that is brought into being and disap-
pear again (2010, 55). It is the shifting and situational aspects of person-
hood that are their key point of interest and which I focus on in this next
section.
In describing the PVS patient, Bird-Davis and Israeli remind us that
this is a category of personhood made by biomedical systems and technol-
ogy, a system firmly entrenched in Western epistemology and ontology,
firmly wedded to mind/body and nature/culture binaries explored in
Chap. 4, and where a notion of personhood is predicated on “the idea that
there is an individual who experiences his or her body-in-the-world, a self-
aware individual who constitutes agency” (2010, 55). They draw on eth-
nographic data from this Israeli hospital unit caring for between 30 and 40
patients, the majority of whom were diagnosed as being PVS. Bird-David
and Israeli argue that the process of testing for PVS in this unit includes
200 C. DEGNEN
“framing the patients as lacking consciousness, feelings, and sufferings

(henceforth, for brevity, ‘subjectivity’)…the tests examine the patients’
capacity to feel, think, communicate, and be aware of themselves and the
environment” (2010, 58) and to show that this is a permanent loss. These
tests, Bird-David and Israeli claim, are a process of “emptying” the PVS
person, ontologically voiding her or him of autonomy, subjectivity, and
conscious agency as the tests seek to confirm if there is a body without “a
‘someone’” (2010, 58) still inside.
However, and in great contrast to this “empty” body, there are also
practices observed by Bird-David and Israeli that render more complex
this diagnostic process. So, for instance, they write about the work of pro-
fessional carers in the hospital, carers who are responsible for the daily
minutiae of bodily care of the PVS patients. This labour includes washing
their bodies, brushing their teeth, feeding through a tube, collecting urine
and faeces, dressing, treating the skin to keep it supple, and lifting the
patients into wheelchairs: virtually everything required to maintain a
healthy body. Over time and through these practices, the carers become
expert in “minute and changing details” of their patients’ bodies, and they
“perceptively respond to what a patient needs through every growing
familiarity with…changes in her body, appearance, and functional perfor-
mance” (2010, 59). In turn, “the caregivers begin to approach the patients
as responsive persons themselves” (2010, 59) and to understand “the
patient as a person with conscious actions” (2010, 60) despite this PVS.
Bird-David and Israeli illustrate this firstly by referring to the contrasts
that staff members make between “good” and “bad” or “problematic”
patients, as “the unit’s caregivers commonly classified patients according
to how much work and effort they had to put in to look after the patients
properly…on how easy or difficult it was to keep the patients alive” (2010,
60). So, for instance, one patient is categorised by staff in the unit as a
“good patient” as he is physically functioning well and is seldom ill, mean-
ing that he does not normally require special care from them (2010, 60).
There is however a female patient on the ward who is classed as a “bad
patient” because she is medically vulnerable and particularly prone to
pneumonia which incurs an additional burden on staff responsible for her
care and who must protect her from such a life-threatening state (2010,
60–1).
Secondly, the professional caregivers in the hospital construct “imag-
ined life stories” for these patients (2010, 54), drawing on “whatever is
known about their social and family backgrounds” and the events “that
caused them to be admitted to the unit” (2010, 60). In so doing, the

caregivers narrativise the patients, creating personality characteristics and
narrative depth to them, and in effect “reessentialise the beings that lie on
the beds and their lives: each is turned into a solid, bounded ‘this’ and not
‘that’ type of character and past” (2010, 61) and inverting the “empty-
ing” process which simultaneously exists, too. The “good” and “bad”
characteristics the caregivers recognise in the two patients’ bodily states
above are also reflected in the aspects of their narrativisation of those
patients’ personalities and life stories.
Similar processes of narrativisation feature in Kaufman’s (2000) descrip-
tion of the interactions between patients, family members, and health-care
professionals in the hospital where she worked. In one poignant example,
she recounts the ways in which a husband she calls Mr Sato cares for his
wife. Mrs Sato is a non-responsive patient in the unit, reliant on life sup-
port. Kaufman recounts how in the face of his wife’s diagnosis as being in
a vegetative state and “the acute care medical staff consider[ing] her
meaningful life to be over,” Mr Sato regularly recounts who his wife is in
a different narrative framework (2000, 73). In counter-distinction to the
narratives told by the medical staff, Mr Sato’s “story of his wife’s current
condition is situated in the history of the couple’s strong marriage, their
family life and work ethic, and in his all-encompassing sense of duty and
responsibility for her care and continued life” (2000, 73). It is thus the
socially powerful process of narrativising Mrs Sato “in the context of her
life history, pre-illness personality, and family” (2000, 74) that Mr Sato
regularly conducts which maintains and protects her as a person and an
individual, albeit in the seeming absence of her being able to do this any
longer for herself as an aware and conscious human. There is thus a strik-
ing similarity in the data presented by both Kaufman and by Bird-David
and Israeli that attests to the processes of storying the PVS patient by oth-
ers around the patient through narrative accounts.
As I have written elsewhere, “narrativity is the vibrant process of story-
ing lives (our own and those of others), recounting who we are, how we
place ourselves in the world and what our relationships are in and to that
world” (Degnen 2012, 6). Narrativity is an essential aspect of how we
make sense of the world we are immersed in (Ochs and Capps 2001) and
it is a deeply interpersonal, social activity. As such, narrativity is not simply
a way of representing or symbolising knowledge; it is instead “an onto-
logical condition of social life” (Somers 1994, 614) and is intimately
bound up in creating lived worlds of meaning. Narrativisation is thus
202 C. DEGNEN
arguably an example of how it is that personhood is made relationally, via

the social work of ties and connections.
The final example I wish to draw on to illustrate the complexity of issues
around endangered personhood in this section returns us back to brain
death and organ transplant. I refer here to the research of Gillian Haddow
(2005). She worked with Scottish families who had been approached by
medical professionals requesting they consider donating the organs of
their next of kin who had suffered brain stem death, and who had accepted
this request. Haddow explores if these next of kin relatives thought that
death had occurred when their kin experienced brain stem death. She finds
that despite the “life-like” appearance of these individuals as described
above, their family members understood that death had indeed taken
place. Haddow subsequently wanted to understand if these family mem-
bers perceived death as a moment whereby the self became separated from
the body of their kin, or if they believed that the person and body contin-
ued to be part of each other in spite of death, if “the person remains
embodied at death” (2005, 93) and what “the nature of embodiment,
personhood, and corporeal identity” (2005, 104) was in the decision mak-
ing these families took in regard to organ donation.
Haddow grounds these questions within firstly the Cartesian dualism of
Western thought whereby “the non-tangible aspects” of person are con-
ceptually separate from the body, and secondly within a parallel frame of
Western belief whereby lived experiences of embodiment profoundly
shape our subjectivity and our notions of self, summarising these two
frames as “dualist” and “holistic” (2005, 96–8). Haddow argues that both
models co-exist in complex ways in Western thought, but that it is a dualist
perspective which would emphasise “having a body” whilst a holistic per-
spective would emphasise “being” a body (2005, 97). Haddow then in
turn charts these competing views on death and embodiment (or not) of
the person with reference to her interviewees’ beliefs.
Some of the people she spoke with were very clear that the newly dead
body of their kin is “not really a person”, likening the dead body to “an
empty car and, ‘as the driver had got out’” (2005, 102–3), the corpse’s
organs could have utility for others and be donated. In contrast to this
highly dualistic view, others she interviewed took a more holistic view of
embodiment whereby “the once living person and the dead body” are not
easily separable (2005, 104). For these respondents, “a continuing link
between corpus and self caused concern not only about the transplanta-
tion removal procedures” (2005, 103), procedures that one man described
as being “too much like a butcher’s shop to me” (2005, 102), but one
that also meant that other respondents felt comforted at the thought their
loved ones “lived on” in people who had received organs donated from
them.
One woman, for instance, recounted to Haddow how she felt as though
her niece “is not gone. Not completely gone” and that “there is a little bit
of her out there somewhere” as her organs were donated and are now in
the bodies of recipients (2005, 105). Another woman had asked the
transplant co-ordinator managing the transfer of her son’s organs if the
organs “could stay in the area”, preferring that they be donated to some-
one living in Scotland and not in Bristol, a city that she hated (2005, 105).
Both examples attest to ways in which the organs of the deceased are at
times understood to “carry” elements of the person. So too do the exam-
ples of which organs kin chose to donate. Eyes, in particular, were organs
that almost a third of the kin refused to donate, even if they permitted
other organs to be used. Haddow posits that this is because eyes are “a
visible expression of the less tangible aspects of personhood” (2005, 103),
rendering them particularly sensitive in donation decisions in this context
and a compelling point of contrast with the material presented above from
Simpson’s (2017) work on eye donation in Sri Lanka.
Although Haddow is careful to point out that these holistic embodi-
ment perspectives are not beliefs shared universally by her respondents,
she also helps us see how this holistic perspective paradoxically leads to
organ donation in some cases (letting the person “live on”) whilst restrict-
ing the donation in others (such as not permitting the donation of eyes).
One factor that seemed to impact on the extent to which her participants
felt there was a continuation of the person, despite accepting that their kin
had died, was indeed the nature of that social bond the relative had had
with the deceased. Mothers, for instance, often expressed “a continuation
of the maternal role that they had had with the deceased”; in their
accounts, there was often an emphasis placed “on the previous relationship
with the person and not the representation of their body” (2005, 107;
emphasis in original). Another example Haddow gives are cases where
relatives feel particularly close to one another, such as a woman who,
although was prepared to permit the donation of her sister’s organs, says
she would not have chosen to do the same after her mother’s death as she
had a “very close relationship” with her mother but had not with her sister
(2005, 107).
204 C. DEGNEN
Thus, the strength of the social relationship prior to death—whilst not

preventing the parents from recognising that biological death had
occurred—inflected the extent to which social death was recognised.
Social death was not necessarily entirely complete. These themes of social
and biological death are ones I will return to in Chap. 8, and the complex-
ity of this material in the borders between life and death are useful intro-
ductions to that. But what is evident from Haddow’s work are the deeply
contextualised and fluid ways in which the relationship between the per-
son and the body are understood, and that corporeal death is not n ecessarily
perceived as the full annihilation of the person. Coming clearly into view
here then are the ways in which the extension of personhood continues
despite the death of the corporeal body via social relations, but also,
slightly paradoxically, via a parallel (and yet contradictory) belief in embod-
ied traces of the person—a sort of essence—that resides in that very body.
This “living on” that she identifies is in instructive contrast to idioms of
“losing oneself” that I now turn to in the next section on dementia.
Dementia and “Loss of Self”

It was during my doctoral fieldwork in the north of England that I first
remember becoming aware of the expression “losing herself” (Degnen
2012). It was used by an acquaintance who was asking after a mutual
friend, a woman who was increasingly manifesting behaviours that made
people concerned, uncomfortable. She would, for instance, say things in
socially awkward ways, repeating herself extensively, and was becoming
increasingly forgetful. There also were stories that circulated locally about
iconic characters from the village in the recent past who had “gotten past
it” and were not just ageing but who were perceived to be tipping over
into a new category, one that seemed to be partial personhood at the very
best and possibly something much less than that: they were “losing
themselves”.
For instance, two people, Mrs Asquith and Jack Woffenden, had both
lived in this village, one in South Yorkshire in the north of England called
Dodworth, where I carried out my doctoral fieldwork. Both had died sev-
eral years before I arrived, but both had been such dominant presences in
the village during their lifetimes that they were still talked about and
referred to when I was living there. Mrs Asquith was a wealthy land-owner
who lived in one of the biggest residences in Dodworth. Due to her wealth
and to the nature of social divisions, most people locally would not have
socialised with her but they knew her through services rendered to her.
One woman I knew who had been employed by Mrs Asquith as a domes-
tic servant when a young teenager many decades ago described her to me
as “a nightmare to work for” and remembers her time working there with
distaste. Jack Woffenden, on the other hand, is someone that nearly every-
one who lived locally in the 1950s through the 1980s seems to have had
some regular interaction with. As an influential union man at one of the
local coal mines and a local councillor, he was well-known, influential, and
at times controversial.
Despite widely different social backgrounds, both individuals entered
local folklore as nearly mythical characters. Stories about their personali-
ties and prowess when younger still featured regularly in local chat.
Equally, stories about them “getting past it” were also told. For example,
one man recounted to me a story about “Lady” Asquith. One day, he told
me, when “Lady Asquith had started losing herself”, she was walking
along High Street in the village when suddenly her knickers fell down
because the elastic had snapped. Seemingly unperturbed, she stepped out
of them in the middle of the High Street, put them into her handbag, and
carried on with her journey. Other similar versions of the same story were
told to me over the years I lived in Dodworth, all centring on how she had
“started to lose herself”. A comparable story about Mr Woffenden circu-
lated locally, claiming that before he died, he had also “started losing him-
self”, that he kept going for walks with his wife’s apron on, and that his
wife had to “keep her eye on him” so as to prevent this.
In both cases, the transformations due to “losing one’s self” are made
even stronger by the previous status enjoyed by both figures. These stories
about them are not told maliciously, but their shock value is strengthened
by the disparity between Mrs Asquith and Jack Woffenden’s personalities
before they started “losing themselves” and after. Not only was their con-
sequent comportment unusual, but the particular behaviour manifested
by each figure carries heavy symbolic weight in terms of the strong social
inversions that the stories represent. The story about Mrs Asquith and her
knickers jolts the listener because of the obliteration of modesty and pro-
priety (key characteristics of a “Lady”) that the story represents. The taboo
of her underclothes appearing in a public space and being coolly disposed
of into her handbag seemingly demonstrates the extent to which she had
lost her normal sense of decorum and respectability. Similarly, Jack
Woffenden, who was not only a former miner with all the social weight
that this carries locally but also a union man at one of the most militant
206 C. DEGNEN
pits in the area, was the very vision of masculine graft and shrewdness.
These are highly valued male characteristics regionally. The same man is
then reduced to going out (again, in public) in his wife’s apron, a symbol
of the height of domesticity and “women’s work”. This represents the
utter antithesis of who he was before he started “losing himself” and the
inversion of his former status. As such, “losing one’s self” is an extremely
threatening prospect as it can erase the very essence of someone’s
personhood.
The notion that the self can be “lost” and the consequent implications
of this for personhood are deeply significant. They are premised on a series
of complexly linked ideas about what is at stake in the category of the
person, and under what sort of conditions personhood might come to be
eroded. In regard to later life, they are also interwoven with the broader
ways in which personhood is figured in this part of the life course, as Chap.
6 has shown. Indeed, dementia is put to work as a category that “makes
manifest one aspect of the ethics and politics of life itself in the negotia-
tions it elicits about ‘quality of life’, ‘loss of personhood’ and ‘diminishing
life’” (Kaufman 2006, 23). Despite popular notions to the contrary,
dementia should not however be conflated with older age, as dementia is
not something experienced by all older people, and not all people with
dementia are older. It is however the ways in which understandings and
experiences of dementia can come to endanger personhood that I seek to
address below.
Dementia, Personhood, and Politics of Recognition

Dementia is as an umbrella term for a syndrome in which there is progres-
sive degeneration of a range of areas (memory, reasoning, ability to com-
municate) and also a series of specific behavioural and psychological
changes (“wandering”, aggression, depression) (Brittain et al. 2017;
Department of Health 2009). This syndrome can be “caused by a number
of illnesses”, the reason for which “are not well understood…but they all
result in structural and chemical changes in the brain leading to the death
of brain tissue…the term ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ is used sometimes as a
shorthand term to cover all forms of dementia”, but there are a range of
different types (Department of Health 2009, 15–16). Reminiscent of the
debates over consciousness above, there is thus significant difficulty in
defining dementia and “in actual fact, the boundaries that might delineate
the various dementias, and distinguish between normal and abnormal
cognitive functioning, are unclear and are constantly debated within the
medical professions” (Whitehouse et al. 2005, 321). Additionally, demen-
tia is a changing disease category, one that has shifted markedly since the
early twentieth century and one which continues to shift in biomedical
discourse and practice (see Fox 1989; Gubrium 1986; Holstein 1997;
Lock 2013).
Popular, mainstream notions of dementia (and of Alzheimer’s disease)
in Western cultural settings often problematically evoke metaphors of “the
living dead” whereby the body continues to function but the “person
within” is thought to disappear. Some scholars have argued that the behav-
iours manifested by people with dementia “cal[l] into question the very
personhood of those who exhibit them. Alzheimer’s attacks the cognitive
skills necessary to maintain both an inner sense of selfhood and, perhaps
more important, to present a stable and coherent self to others” (Ballenger
2006, 114–115). Elizabeth Herskovits proposes that the person with
dementia in Western settings often comports her or himself in ways that
transgress “core cultural values, such as productivity, autonomy, self-
control, and cleanliness” (1995, 153). Kaufman reminds us that dementia
progresses through stages including “early, moderate, advanced, severe,
and end-stage”, but that as it develops into its later states, it becomes “a
condition both of death-in-life and of life-in-death. This ambiguity…is
what makes dementia so compelling for families; so unnerving in the con-
text of the cultural importance of memory, control, and reason: and so
unsettling to the existing order of things” (Kaufman 2006, 23). It is thus
the deviation from a normalised sense of comportment and forms of social
engagement which in turn endangers the attribution of full personhood to
people with dementia. Key characteristics of personhood are, in this cul-
tural setting, believed to be corroded by dementia. This is an assumption
that demands a closer accounting, and I turn to the work of Janelle Taylor
to help me in this task.
Taylor, a medical anthropologist, has written a deeply compelling essay
in which she reflects on her experiences of her mother’s progressive
dementia. She explores how the cognitive changes of people with demen-
tia “get invested with decisive importance in determining whether and
how they are (or are not) granted ‘recognition’ as fully social persons”
(2008, 315). She recounts how one of the questions she is most predict-
ably asked by others when she speaks about her mother and her mother’s
condition is “does she recognise you?” On the one hand, as Taylor writes,
this question seems to be about her mother’s cognitive abilities and the
208 C. DEGNEN
extent to which they are still intact as this is a social measure of one’s per-
sonhood. If her mother can name Janelle, can recognise her as her daugh-
ter, then that social measure is met and satisfied.
On the other hand, Taylor identifies how there is also a moral and ethi-
cal judgement at work around memory of names, and that an inability to
remember the name of someone is taken as a failure of caring about that
person: a cultural logic whereby “if my mother has forgotten my name,
and does not ‘recognize’ me, then she has surely stopped ‘caring’ about
me” (2008, 318). Taylor details the ways in which this cultural logic of
recognition wreaks havoc on previously close social bonds such as friend-
ship. Dementia seems “to act as a very powerful solvent on many kinds of
social ties” (2008, 319), for since “friendship is grounded in reciprocity,
then a person who no longer can engage in the usual social exchanges is
difficult to ‘recognize’ any longer as friend” (2008, 320). This sort of cor-
roding effect combines with the wider negative cultural assumptions about
dementia discussed above so that popular assumptions become that
although “the body may continue to live…the person with Alzheimer’s is
dead, gone, no longer there, no longer a person. He or she does not know
your name, does not ‘recognize’ you, therefore cannot ‘care’ about you”
(2008, 322) in the mainstream North American culture in which she
writes.
Taylor eloquently pushes back against these assumptions. She writes
that, on the one hand, “the term Alzheimer’s (with which all forms of
dementia are commonly equated) is so frequently conjoined with the
word ‘horror’” (2008, 321; emphasis in original). She continues, arguing
that in popular accounts of dementia a common trope for writing about it
is “the classic gothic plot” whereby “a person you love, and to whom you
are bound by unbreakable ties, turns out to be someone you do not know
at all, who does not ‘care’ about you and may even seek to harm you”
(2008, 321). But, on the other hand, Taylor clarifies that such gothic plots
do not resonate with her experiences of her mother’s dementia. This is
something for which she feels fortunate, but which she also feels needs to
be accommodated within “the domain of the possible” (2008, 324) in
accounts of life with dementia, and which are often entirely screened out.
She also argues that the relentless questions about her mother’s ability to
recognise her need closer examination. For, as she puts it, “why is it appar-
ently so difficult for people to ‘recognize’ – as a friend, as a person, as even
being alive – someone who, because of dementia, can no longer keep
names straight?” (2008, 324; emphasis in original). Ultimately, Taylor
considers that what is required are ways into understanding dementia, self,
and person that are not rigidly wedded to notions of the individual but
rather how the person and personhood are “distributed among networks,
sustained by supportive environments, emergent within practices of care”,
as a series of social practices (2008, 326).
Susan Behuniak arrives at a similar conclusion. Behuniak seeks to chal-
lenge a “politics of revulsion” that colours public discourse on dementia
in North America, a discourse that uses “zombie” metaphors and notions
of death-in-life (2011, 72). She argues instead for an emphasis on recog-
nising that the “other” of the person with dementia is “us”; that dementia
not be
constructed as a disease of the unfortunate few but as a disease that affects

us all… [that] the constituency needed for advancing socially-compassionate
responses to those with [Alzheimer’s disease] should not be limited to those
most affected, but expanded to include all of society. Thus understood,
[Alzheimer’s disease] is no longer a private problem but a social issue. Only
in this way will what Nussbaum (2010, xviii) calls a ‘politics of disgust’ be
replaced by a ‘politics of humanity’. (2011, 88)
Such perspectives on how people with dementia might be understood

and reframed draw on notions of personhood as social, as distributed in
wider networks of family, friends, and indeed as a question of “humanity”.
What Taylor and Behuniak are proposing is no less than a radical rethink-
ing of the extent to which personhood in normative Western thought
demands an acknowledgment of the relational and of the moral valences
of recognition. To fully embrace this would be to re-order and redress the
corrosive social practices and assumptions surrounding people with
dementia, ones that otherwise permit them to be interpreted in such dam-
aging ways. These are approaches to dementia by scholars who have
embraced a “quest to broaden our understanding of personhood beyond
the narrow confines of memory and consciousness…ultimately in the
interest of humanising our interactions with persons with dementia, and
their care” (Kontos 2006b, 825). Indeed, as Annette Leibing writes, “if
memories were exteriorized, the boundaries of the self would be blurred
and the therapist/caregiver transformed into part of a social brain (if we
perceive it as the site of memory)…this kind of extension…by blurring the
boundaries of the self and other, is one way to continue thinking person-
hood” (2006, 260), and to rethink the implications of dementia for “loss”
of self or person.
210 C. DEGNEN
Whilst this may at first view strike readers who are immersed in norma-
tive Western models of personhood (with its entrenched understanding of
the primacy of the individual) as unthinkable, work across a range of fields
has contributed to a fuller understanding of how the individual is always
immersed in the social. Social theory on identity, for instance, has demon-
strated the extent to which identity—who we think we are and how we
express that to the world—is not simply based in individual’s subjective
qualities, but is instead created processually and in interaction with others
(Lawler 2008; Mead 1934). Other scholars have explored the ways in
which carers and significant others are involved in “curating” the identity
of people with dementia (Crichton and Koch 2007) as well as the role of
spouses in particular in fashioning a “nurturative relational context” that
can sustain both identity and couplehood (Hellström 2014; Hellström
et al. 2007). In the last section of this chapter, I wish to briefly explore two
final examples that help develop and further Taylor, Behunik, and Leibing’s
propositions above. Both examples unsettle easy assumptions about the
primacy of cognition and the individual for personhood and, in so doing,
also raise questions about why, how, where, and when dementia is—and is
not—understandable as a form of endangered personhood.
Challenging the Frame of Reference: Embodiment

and Competing Cultural Modes
I turn first to work on theories of embodiment that seeks to rethink the

presumed loss of person in dementia. As previously discussed in this book,
the tendency to correlate personhood with cognition, the individual, and
memory are core tenets of Western thought. These concepts are grounded
in a Cartesian division of mind and body whereby mind is valorised over
body, and mind is understood as the seat of the individual. But in the
social sciences, theoretical perspectives of embodiment have been put to
work to examine these assumptions, and to take the body into consider-
ation in regard to social life more broadly. This has proven an insightful
approach to dementia, too.
One author in particular who has explored theories of embodiment in
regard to dementia is Pia Kontos (2003, 2004, 2006a). Her work is based
on ethnographic participant observation in a long-term care facility for
people with dementia in Canada with moderate to severe cognitive impair-
ment. Drawing from this work, Kontos argues for an analysis “that advo-
cates the irreducibly embodied nature of agency” (2006a, 196). Kontos

describes a series of narrative vignettes from the course of her fieldwork
that all speak to the complex way in which bodies, meaning, and experi-
ence are deeply intertwined (2006a). There is, for instance, Molly. Whilst
Molly is so frail that she is no longer able to feed herself, Kontos describes
how Molly observes table etiquette of making eye contact with the others
sharing her meal, how she smooths her napkin onto her lap before eating,
and how she ensures her string of pearls are carefully laid atop her bib and
not hidden beneath it, though it causes her great physical discomfort to
do so. There is also Ethel who, when asked directly, cannot remember that
she was an avid needleworker but who—when she has a needle and thread
placed in her hands—stiches with great confidence until the needle runs
out of thread and then knowingly threads a new one and continues with
her work. There is Jacob whose verbal communication has eroded badly
due to dementia, to the point that he “was unable to put a sentence
together”, but who could partake in reciting prayers and blessings with
absolute fluency during services at the care facility’s Synagogue.
Kontos argues that these and other examples she presents
clearly demonstrat[e] that the residents…exhibited selfhood in the face of

even severe cognitive impairment…a notion of selfhood that speaks of a com-
plex interrelationship between the primordial and the social characteristics
of the body, all of which reside below the threshold of cognition, grounded
in the prereflexive level of experience, existing primarily in the corporeal…
selfhood resists the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease precisely because it resides
in corporeality. (2006a, 203; emphasis in original)
That is to say, Kontos—drawing from Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu—is

arguing that selfhood is “enacted in the actual movements of the body”
(2006a, 204) and that the body is “a primary source of selfhood and facili-
tator of its articulation…the prereflexive body (is)…fundamental to the
whole of (our) selfhood” whether or not we are experiencing cognitive
decline (2006a, 215). Thus, bringing the body back into an analysis of
daily experiences and life as lived for people with dementia permits Kontos
also to highlight forms of embodied agency and the self. This consequently
returns crucial elements of personhood to view, such as agency, rendering
in turn much more complex those common-sense assumptions that such
elements of person have been extinguished.
212 C. DEGNEN
My final example turns to the work of Charlotte Ikels (1998, 2002) in

Guangzhou, China, to bring this chapter to a close.8 Ikels work calls atten-
tion to the ways in which the descriptions and analysis discussed so far in
this chapter are all grounded in perspectives on cognitive decline that
define it as a disease, but that there are also competing ways of framing
cognitive impairment that do not see it necessarily as a medical issue
(Whitehouse et al. 2005, 321). During her fieldwork in Guangzhou
between 1987 and 1991, which at the time was the sixth largest city in
China, Ikels explains that dementia was a category that the older people
and their families she worked with were familiar with, but that it did not
prompt the feelings of revulsion and fear that I charted earlier in this chap-
ter (1998, 257; 261). She argues that although the observable symptoms
and changes provoked by dementia are overlapping in settings such as
North America, Britain, and Guangzhou, including “memory loss, confu-
sion, inappropriate behaviour, personality changes, physical deteriora-
tion”, it is the meanings attributed to them that differ in Guangzhou
compared to many Western cultural settings (1998, 271; 2002, 235). So,
for instance, Ikels gives the example of Mr Liu who she knew when he was
in his late 80s and early 90s, and who “been seriously impaired cognitively
since even before” she met him in 1987 (2002, 236). Regardless of his
cognitive impairment, Mr Liu
had been a welcomed and respected guest at neighbourhood weddings. His

advanced age was attributed to his abundant life force, and his presence was
thought to contribute some of this life force and, thereby, fertility to the
newlyweds. For this reason Mr. Liu was actively sought out as a guest and
not simply tolerated because he fell within some designated category of kin
whom one must invite to one’s wedding. (2002, 236)
As she rightly concludes, it is difficult to imagine a parallel scenario in

North America. Thus whilst dementia is recognised in Guangzhou, it does
not in turn “disqualify a person from social participation” (2002, 236) as
it does, for instance, in Taylor’s descriptions of her mother’s friends’
responses. In an attempt to explain these differences, Ikels suggests that in
evidence here is firstly a more relational model of self whereby “the pro-
cess of social interaction and the practice of proper role relationships”
figure significantly and secondly the influence of Confucian notions that
assume “that as human beings, all people share a common underlying
essence that is gradually discovered as we strip away the layers of self-
centeredness that separate us from each other” (1998, 274). In regard to

what this means for understanding dementia, Ikels argues that in
Guangzhou “the cognitive domain is not taken to be the total sum of the
person, i.e., the loss of memory or the inability to manage daily affairs
does not erase a person’s identity in the eyes of others” (1998, 274–5).
Instead, it is the “affective domain” that is attributed more significance: “if
the individual is severely impaired intellectually but nevertheless demon-
strates some capacity for social interaction, he or she is probably still ‘there’
in Chinese eyes and entitled to a place in the family” (1998, 275).
Additionally, Ikels says that Confucian conceptions of the self empha-
sise the values of interdependence and becoming responsible as people age
rather than an imperative to remain independent. Echoing themes
explored in Chap. 6 with later life, in Guangzhou, this also in turn allevi-
ates stigmas around reliance on others in older age which the changes
provoked by dementia often lead to. However, Ikels is also careful to con-
sider the various stages of progression of dementia and to not romanticise
these cultural differences. She notes, for instance, how in the earlier stages
of dementia, “when disability is perceived as minimal and more or less
normal and requires little modification in either the individual’s or the
family’s lifestyle” (1998, 280), managing family care is arguably favour-
able in Guangzhou. But in the later stages of disease progression, Ikels
argues that the wide range of support services open to many in the West
that were not available in Guangzhou at the time of her research, such as
“selfhelp groups for caregivers to day care, respite care, and the option of
institutionalization” (1998, 280), all render care for people with dementia
more manageable in Western settings. Thus, evident here are the extent to
which differing cultural values and meanings shape the interpretation of
dementia and personhood, but also how the implications of these cultural
differences are not static.
Conclusions
This chapter on endangered personhood begins on a north London foot-
ball pitch in 2012 with a young man’s heart suddenly stopping; it ends in
Guangzhou where the extent to which personhood is or is not at risk is
shaped by local understandings of dementia. Many issues have been at
work through these various twists and turns: the definition of death itself,
disorders of consciousness, the “uncommon personhood” of the “living
dead” who are dependent on life-support machines, organ transplantation
214 C. DEGNEN
controversies, technological advances in biomedicine, and critical frames

used to contest and challenge the supposed “loss of the person” in demen-
tia. The lynchpin throughout all of these examples has been twofold:
firstly, to explore the ways in which the category of the person can become
vulnerable, fragile, and precarious and, secondly, to engage with the
ontological insecurity that such in-between states in the borderlands

between life and death provoke, as well as to consider the analytical light
it sheds onto normative assumptions around the making of personhood
itself in various cultural contexts.
Cognition emerges as a thread that ties both disorders of consciousness
and dementia together in relation to evaluating the extent to which per-
sonhood remains. In many respects, this is entirely unsurprising given the
largely Western settings analysed in most of the literature I draw on in this
chapter. What is more interesting however is the extent to which the nor-
mative model of the Western autonomous individual is rendered more
complex via the ethnographic work of the authors represented above. This
material forces the question “where is the person actually located?”, a
question that we seem at a loss to answer once and for all. Is the person
located in the physical body? Where? Is it in the (healthy) brain? Is it in the
heart? Is it located in kokoro? Is it the eyes? Or is the person located not in
one site but rather diffused into social relationships? Can the person thus
be kept in view via an insistence on a new politics of recognition or embod-
ied agency? Or perhaps where the person is located is relational but also
contextually dependent on the quality of those relations? We see here too
then how concerns about the body and about embodiment also power-
fully mark measures and evaluations of personhood. From decisions over
organ donation and transplantations, to bodily comportment and social
judgements over “losing oneself ” in Dodworth, to Molly’s pearl necklace
and Jacob’s reciting of prayers, the body is inextricably woven with ques-
tions about the person.
What also emerges from consideration of these various examples is the
ways in which seemingly fixed and internally coherent models of person-
hood can simultaneously accommodate contradictory elements. So, for
instance, we have, on the one hand, a firm insistence on Cartesian dualism
in Western notions of personhood as a contributing factor that makes defi-
nitions of brain death (and consequently organ transplantation) possible
as well as contributing to fears of “losing the self” to the cognitive decline
of dementia. And yet, on the other hand, also in Western cultural settings,
we have growing evidence of the relational models at the bedside of PVS
patients and in the care for people with dementia that maintain personhood
in the face of ontological confusion prompted by their endangered status.
I propose that these relational aspects of personhood, both as evidenced
in care for patients with disordered consciousness (such as those described
by Kaufman and by Bird-David and Israeli) and for people with dementia
(such as in the writings of Taylor, Behuniak, and Kontos) are indeed pow-
erful counter narratives to models that would otherwise screen out such
relational aspects of human lives. But relational models of person are also
notably bound up in ideas around narrativity and the social construction
of person, self, and identity. That is to say, they are premised on the notion
that when an individual can no longer sufficiently narrate herself and thus
reproduce her claim to personhood, it is to others around her to whom
this responsibility falls. By narrating the strands of her life (roles, status,
biography, likes, dislikes) these others continue to bring the patient’s exis-
tence into being. That this happens is unequivocally documented in the
ethnographic literature. But it also happens in admittedly complex and
sometimes contradictory ways, and there is something powerfully compel-
ling about how the making of the person might thus (at least partially) be
protected and continued despite such injury and disarray. Ultimately,
however, such effort invested in these processes of narrativity also speaks
volumes about the depths of ontological crisis presented by endangered
personhood, and the lengths we will go to in attempts to shore up the
slippery edges of ontological uncertainty it provokes.
Notes
1. I am indebted to The Guardian’s coverage of this story in my recounting
of it in this chapter. I have relied especially on these two articles in recon-
structing the events Muamba experienced: https://www.theguardian.
com/football/2012/mar/25/muamba-collapse-minute-by-minute and
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/mar/21/fabrice-muamba-
on-the-mend
2. There is a medical distinction made between “persistent” (called “continu-
ing” in the UK) and “permanent” vegetative states based on length of time
spent in that state. The NHS (2017) specifies that a persistent or continuing
vegetative state is when the state has lasted for longer than four weeks; a
permanent vegetative state is indicated when the state has lasted for more
than 6 months (if caused by a non-traumatic brain injury), or more than 12
months (if caused by a traumatic brain injury).
3. For an instructive point of comparison to these public discourses about
organ donation in Japan and North America, consider Bob Simpson’s work
216 C. DEGNEN
on the significance and popularity of eye donation (2017) and donation of

other human tissues (2004) in Sri Lanka. Simpson explores how it is that
whilst eye donations globally are notoriously difficult to procure—they are
often interpreted as connected to the “essence” of person as I explore later
in this chapter via the work of Haddow (2005)—in Sri Lanka there is a pro-
nounced willingness to donate. The supply is so great that the country can
both meet its own internal demand for corneas and also be a major global
exporter, providing 47,015 corneas to date to over 50 other countries
(Simpson 2017). Simpson contextualises this remarkable rate of eye dona-
tion firstly within Sinhala Buddhist concepts of virtuous and meritorious
giving. In this regard, selflessness via bodily donation is understood to assist
in achieving a better rebirth. But also of significance is the wider context of
the end of recent civil war and from which the nation is attempting to recon-
stitute itself. In this regard, and as he explains (2017), rhetorics of donation
seek on the one hand to minimise internal divisions along racial, ethnic, and
religious lines as part of post-war reconstruction, but on the other hand
reproduce the dominant Sinhala Buddhist state.
4. This includes the respective Bar Associations in America and Japan, and
their contrasting positions for physicians seeking to practise organ transplan-
tation: The American Bar Association and the American Medical Association
were aligned in their support (Lock 2002: 111) whereas in Japan, the Bar
Association was not in support of the definition of brain death, nor conse-
quently of organ transplantations (Haldane 2002).
5. Since the time of Lock’s publications, a new bill on brain death and organ
transplantation was passed in 2009 in Japan, coming into effect in July
2010. This new bill recognises “brain death as actual death and…allow(s)
organ transplants from a brain-dead person of any age if his or her family
members approve and if the person had not openly rejected the possibility
of becoming a donor” (Japan Times 2009). This bill revises the 1997 Organ
Transplant Law discussed above. The newspaper coverage in 2009 makes
clear that whilst the new law implements a new definition of death—as the
1997 law did not “recognize brain death as actual death and allows organ
transplants only from people who accept brain death as actual death” (Japan
Times 2009)—there is still a widespread and pronounced resistance amongst
many Japanese people to brain death as “actual” death. Also of note are the
relatively low numbers of organ transplants in Japan. Between October
1997 when the Organ Transplant Law came into effect and the time of writ-
ing in 2009, “hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, pancreases and small intestines
have been transplanted from 81 brain-dead people into 345 people in
Japan” (Japan Times 2009). This contrasts with 1364 people in the UK
becoming organ donors in 2015–6 alone resulting in 3519 transplants
according to the NHS donor organisation website (https://www.orgando-
nation.nhs.uk/news-and-campaigns/news/highest-number-of-organ-
transplants-ever-across-uk-but-many-families-still-say-no-to-donation/
viewed 22 April 2017). For comparison, the population size of Japan was
approximately twice that of the UK in 2017, based on United Nations data
(http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-coun-
try/ viewed 22 April 2017).
6. This is a point I scrutinise in greater detail below when I discuss Haddow’s
(2005) work on the families of organ donors in Scotland.
7. The NHS website on disorders of consciousness states that consciousness
requires awareness and wakefulness and that “A disorder of consciousness,
or impaired consciousness, is a state where consciousness has been affected
by damage to the brain…Wakefulness is the ability to open your eyes and
have basic reflexes such as coughing, swallowing and sucking. Awareness is
associated with more complex thought processes and is more difficult to
assess. Currently, the assessment of awareness relies on physical responses
being detected during an examination. The main disorders of consciousness
are: coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state.”
(see http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vegetative-state/Pages/Introduction.
aspx Viewed 20 April 2017.
8. For readers keen to further explore dementia in locales outside of North
America and other “Western” settings, the work of Lawrence Cohen in
Banaras, India (1998), and Bianca Brijnath (2014) with middle-class fami-
lies in Delhi are two excellent points of departure.
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CHAPTER 8
Dismantling the Person?: Death

and Personhood
Introduction
A primary concern of this book has been with the making of people and
the ways in which personhood is built, affirmed, and maintained. All of
these practices have brought into view the ways in which the category of
the person is a relational, processual entity that draws from the vibrancy of
living: life about to begin, life as lived, or life at the edges of being. By
considering a wide range of cultural practices and beliefs about how per-
sonhood is brought into being and reaffirmed throughout life, even when
those edges become blurred or threatened as we saw in the previous chap-
ter, I have sought to explore the dialectics of the slippery categories of
“the social” and “the biological”, as well as the complexity of personhood
itself.
But whilst a focus on making and maintaining illuminates multiple
facets of personhood, so too does an examination of the practices and
beliefs around the ends of life. In other words, what can death tell us
about personhood? Cross-cultural beliefs around dying, death, and
memorialisation have attracted considerable anthropological attention
since the very beginning of the discipline. The ethnographic record is
extensive in its charting of the wide-ranging spectrum of cross-cultural
difference in the practices of grieving, mourning, disposal of the corpse,
and memorialising. Chapter 8 builds on this long-standing disciplinary
interest to explore how the category of the person comes into focus via
cultural practices and beliefs about death and dying.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3_8
222 C. DEGNEN
There are many difficulties for the living presented by the dead for
“emotionally, socially and politically…much is at stake at the time of
death” (Hallam and Hockey 2001, 4). Not least of these difficulties is the
existential question posed by death of “what happens to the person?”. A
wide gamut of cultural practices exists in response to these dilemmas.
Some involve sharp demarcations between the living and the dead physi-
cally, spatially, and conceptually; others emphasise the ongoing relations
between those living and those dead; some seek channels for the person to
be “unmade”, whilst others seek instead to “complete” the person; and in
others, death is not an end but a remaking or reincarnation of the person
into new persons. As such, one of the focal points of this chapter is to
continue developing notions discussed in Chap. 7 about the boundaries
between life and death, and how these are at times highly indeterminate.
That is to say, this chapter will explore in part how the death of the person
is not always something that occurs in a single moment in time. Instead
death—and what happens to the person after death—is often perceived as
a long process of transition whereby the relations between living and dead
are not suddenly severed. Whilst death may be understood as an irrevers-
ible event in Western cultures, many other cultural systems emphasise
instead cyclical or processual notions of death and person (Robben 2004,
4), including notions of rebirth and regeneration.
Additionally, just as after reading Chap. 3 one might arguably state with
some confidence that there are different kinds of children as children are
not everywhere understood as persons, one might also argue in light of
the material presented in this chapter that there are different kinds of
dead. That is to say, firstly, worldviews vary significantly in the extent to
which they perceive the dead as persons. Normative Western models
assume the dead are no longer persons. But there are many other world-
views that conceive of both the living and the dead as persons; both living
and dead are understood as having agency and are able to affect outcomes
in the world. Secondly, many worldviews also perceive different types of
dead people, making distinctions for instance between the recently
deceased and the long-deceased, and the actions attributable to these dif-
ferent categories (Glaskin 2006). As an example of this, Sora dialogues
with the dead in eastern India, something I will return to below, recognise
different modes that the dead inhabit and which they “evolve” through;
this begins with the “Experience mode” whereby the dead person is “still
unhappily trapped in the Experience of his own death; while as he becomes
more settled, he will be more inclined to remain in his Ancestor mode”
DISMANTLING THE PERSON?: DEATH AND PERSONHOOD 223
(Vitebsky 1993, 12). These two modes in Sora belief also mark two differ-
ent kinds of relations the dead have with the living: in the Experience
mode, the dead threaten the living with violence and illness, but once the
dead have transitioned into Ancestor mode, this aggression is transformed
into a sustaining identification with descendants (Vitebsky 1993, 14–15).1
Perhaps not surprisingly then, the nature of such relations between living
and dead shape the everyday practices in Sora daily life. The extent to
which social relations and personhood continue after death, and what
shape these take, is thus a recurring theme to be explored in this chapter.
In order to achieve this, I begin with a brief summative account of
anthropological approaches to death. One strand that emerges from this
material is the extent to which Western notions of death and personhood
are bound up in individualistic, autonomous models of person, what Bloch
identifies as a “punctual” model of death. Whilst it is indeed the case that
the individual is granted primacy in normative Western accounts, and that
death is often thus perceived as an extinguishment of personhood, there
are also examples that co-exist with and challenge some of the assumptions
of this model which I will also consider. After this opening I then turn to
three longer ethnographic examples in order to provide sufficient depth
and detail in charting the complexity of relations between living and dead.
I am indebted in this regard to the work of others whom I draw on,
namely that of Magnus Course in rural Chile on Mapuche funeral oratory,
Mark Nuttall in Kangersuatsiaq, an Inuit community in northwest
Greenland writing on reincarnation and name souls, and Kari Telle work-
ing with Sasak people in Lombok, Indonesia, on the importance of feed-
ing the dead. Ultimately, what this chapter seeks to explore is the complex
array of personhood in death, and how the relations between living and
dead are managed and made sense of cross-culturally.
Contextualising Death in Anthropology

What could be more universal than death? Yet what an incredible variety of
responses it evokes. Corpses are burned or buried, with or without animal
or human sacrifice; they are preserved by smoking, embalming, or pickling;
they are eaten – raw, cooked, or rotten; they are ritually exposed as carrion
or simply abandoned; or they are dismembered and treated in a variety of
these ways. Funerals are the occasion for avoiding people or holding parties,
for fighting or having sexual orgies, for weeping or laughing, in a thousand
different combinations. The diversity of cultural reaction is a measure of the
universal impact of death. (Metcalf and Huntington 1995, 24)
224 C. DEGNEN
Death and its broader social and cultural ramifications have been a
point of long-standing interest in anthropology. How death is understood
to occur, what its consequences are for the living, how the dead body
should be treated and disposed of, when and how and over what period of
time funerals should take place, how mourners should comport them-
selves, how the dead are memorialised, and beliefs about whether life con-
tinues after death vary significantly cross-culturally. This wide spectrum of
cultural beliefs and practices around death has generated anthropological
attention since the era of the early evolutionary theorists such as Edward
Tylor’s Primitive Culture in 1871 and James Frazer’s The Golden Bough in
1890, followed by Émile Durkheim on suicide in 1897 and Hertz’s land-
mark publication in 1907 on collective representations of death (Palgi and
Abramovitch 1984, 387). Functionalist and structuralist interpretations of
death and mortuary ritual have had their heyday as have analyses of rites of
passage and liminality, transitioning into more contemporary ethnogra-
phies influenced by medical anthropology and anthropological interests in
violence, trauma, and memory (Robben 2018). Over these many years of
anthropological attention to death, an extensive literature now exists
attesting to the compelling dilemmas that death universally poses and the
wondrously wide-ranging solutions that humans invoke in response. In
this record, what is of particular interest to me are the implications of
death for the connections between persons dead and alive. That is to say,
to what extent culturally speaking are the dead and the living both per-
sons? How should the living manage relations with the dead? While some
societies emphasise the continuity of relations between the living and the
dead, others stress the need for total separation and the importance of
finishing relations established during life.
Bronislaw Malinowski (1948) many decades ago posited a universal
ambivalence in the face of death: a simultaneous fear of death—and a need
to cut ties with the dead to avoid pollution and contamination on several
levels of scale—as well as a desire to prolong connections with those who
are deceased (Robben 2004, 2). Death is also in many societies the site of
elaborate cultural ritual, practices that seek to resolve the dilemmas
presented by death. Ellen Corin (1998, 84) describes ritual as a “privi-
leged space”, one “where the cultural coordinates of the person are made
explicit”. This is because ritual “punctuates and marks the life cycle [and it
also] … clarifies and reworks the meaning of illness and misfortune”
(Corin 1998, 84). Other anthropologists, noting this significant connec-
tion between the category of the person and mortuary rituals, have
ondered if mortuary rituals “provide an important gateway to explore

p
the extent to which concepts of personhood are transformed amidst evi-
dent material and cultural change” as “the exploration of the relationship
between concepts of death and the person can reflect more broadly on
how cultural change is understood” (Glaskin 2006, 107), a sort of ethno-
graphic canary in the mineshaft.2 There is thus a general consensus that
death and mortuary rituals can reveal a great deal about those “cultural
coordinates” that locate personhood within a particular frame in any
society.
Initial anthropological interest in death by evolutionist theorists was
largely preoccupied with tracking the origins of religion and thus beliefs
about what happens after death; this was based primarily on cross-cultural
comparison and a search for universals in the great range of mortuary rit-
ual practices that exist (Palgi and Abramovitch 1984, 386). This interest
in comparative work on death, such as that in a later era by Effie Bendann
(1930), identified how social variables including rank, gender, age, and
status of an individual often determine the ways in which mortuary rituals
within a particular culture can vary in accordance with those variables
(Palgi and Abramovitch 1984, 388). So, for example, consider how differ-
ent the mortuary rituals in contemporary British society will be for a senior
politician, a repatriated soldier killed overseas, or a member of the royal
family compared to those of “normal” citizens, and how the death of a
young person versus that of someone in later life is received. All of these
point to various subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences in status
and qualities of personhood attributed to the deceased, as well as their
surviving family members.
The contribution of the Année sociologique group, particularly
Durkheim’s student Robert Hertz, to anthropological understandings of
death is regularly pointed to as landmark work, charting the significance of
social, collective responses to death (Robben 2004; Metcalf and
Huntington 1995; Bloch and Parry 1982). Crucially, Hertz argues that
death is never only a biological event or an individual event but rather
“that death evokes moral and social obligations expressed in culturally
determined funeral practices” (Robben 2004, 9). Indeed, Hertz’s “A
Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death”
from 1907 was one of the first publications to examine the intersection of
the social nature of the relationship connecting corpse, concepts of soul,
and ritual practices of mourners, exploring how death as a social event is
the beginning “of a ceremonial process whereby the dead person becomes
226 C. DEGNEN
an ancestor”, and that death “is like an initiation into a social afterlife,
making it a kind of rebirth” (Palgi and Abramovitch 1984, 388).
Anthropology is also indebted to Hertz for illuminating how death is
often understood cross-culturally as something that occurs “as part of a
long transformative process” and not as something instantaneous (Bloch
1988, 11). This identification of death as something that can be proces-
sual and occur over a long period of time is an instructive contrast to typi-
cally Western notions of death. In pointing this out, Hertz also gives us
some analytical purchase for exploring how managing death shapes and
reshapes the personhood of both the living and the dead. That is because
the social responsibilities and connections that may endure throughout
these transformative processes bring cross-cultural notions of the person
more clearly into relief, such as the examples of feeding the dead in
Indonesia and name souls that are reborn in Greenland that I will return
to later in this chapter.
“Enduring” and “Punctual” Views of Life, Death,

and Personhood
Ritual thus has a key role in managing some of the dilemmas presented by
death. But what of death itself? What actually happens to personhood
when someone dies? As alluded to above, the typically Western view is that
death is a precisely demarcated end, something that occurs in an instant
(Bloch 1988, 13). A person is “either alive or not alive” in this binary
model (Bloch 1988, 11, citing Hertz 1907), and whilst this is the
common-sense definition of death in Western contexts, as Chap. 7 has
demonstrated, it is not always as clear-cut as this. But as Maurice Bloch
goes on to say, and again crediting Hertz, such a common-sense notion is
not one widely shared cross-culturally. It is instead transformative models
of death that are much more prominent globally, models that emphasise a
processual series of intermediate states of persons being not alive but not
yet dead, and which are often marked by funeral rites that occur over an
extended period of time and multiple stages (Bloch 1988, 11–12, citing
Hertz 1907). Such understandings of death often emphasise continuity
across living and dying rather than rupture; they are worldviews that
understand “death [as] not all that different to living” and do not perceive
sharp boundaries between life and death (1988, 14). Life and death are
thus seen as intertwined and not separate processes. Bloch calls this an
“enduring” view of death, one whereby personhood is not automatically

extinguished at death. He contrasts this to more typically Western views
that understand death as a unique moment in time with a distinctly demar-
cated “before” and “after”, and no “in between”. He terms this Western
understanding a “punctual view of death” and argues that it is a funda-
mental “aspect of our concept of the person as a bounded individual”
(1988, 15).
Bloch elaborates on this point, writing that the normative Western
assumption is “that people are separate entities, unique bounded units”
comprised of different parts such as blood, skin, flesh, soul, and body but
that these “parts are linked to each other in a much more real and intimate
way than the way ‘different’ people are linked to each other” (1988, 16).
That is to say, Westerners perceive relationships—social, moral, emotional
relationships—as existing between different people, “but these relation-
ships are not for us as real as those which exist between the component
parts which make up the individual” (1988, 16). Once these different
parts that are the building blocks of the individual person “are separated
from another, there is an end – and that is it…one is either an individual
with all the parts joined, or one is divided, which in our system means
being nothing at all, or in other words, dead. There cannot be an in-
between”; death is not perceived as a stage of life nor as part of a process
of transformation, but rather as an end (1988, 16).
Bloch contrasts this with other systems “where the unique combination
of the individual is not of such primary importance because the elements
which combine in the person are capable of a form of independent exis-
tence” (1988, 16). Such independent existence is not possible in isolation,
he says, but “when the constituents which make up the person are at the
same time constituent parts of a different kind of cross cutting whole, then
the end of the person need not be the end of the constituents themselves
or of that other totality” (1988, 16). The implication of this for death is
that whilst dying would “still mark the end of individuality, since it implies
the separation of the parts which make up the individual”, it would by
contrast “not mean total annihilation, since parts can survive the break up
of the individual because they can live in those cross cutting wholes…parts
of the individual…can ultimately be re-used in new combinations to pro-
duce new individuals” (1988, 16–17). In this framework, death is not
complete loss but is instead “a stage in a long and continuous transforma-
tion of taking apart and putting together” (1988, 17). What Bloch
228 C. DEGNEN
illustrates here then are the consequences of death for a nominally indi-
vidual versus dividual model of person, as introduced in Chap. 1.
A classic ethnographic example of this enduring and non-punctual view
of death is that of reincarnation and regeneration. Hinduism, for example,
is premised on a belief that “life can only be created by causing death,
while death regenerates life” (Robben 2004, 11). Reincarnation beliefs
exist in a number of belief systems including those of some aboriginal
North American groups (Mills and Slobodin 1994), Hindus (Lamb 2000;
Parry 1994), and Buddhists (Gellner 2001), amongst others. Although
the precise detail and content of these beliefs vary, reincarnation broadly
speaking is a process whereby the soul of the dead is reborn into the body
of a new living entity (Gupta 2002). Examples from aboriginal North
America include naming practices amongst many Inuit peoples, and I
return later in this chapter to an example of this in much greater detail via
the work of Mark Nuttall (1992).
This complex interconnection between life and death is something that
Western models of the life course and personhood simply cannot accom-
modate, predicated as they are on their linear, developmental, stages. But
as Bloch shows us, the divide between being dead and being alive is not
always clear cross-culturally. It is often predicated instead on a complex
series of exchanges. Multiple examples of this exist in the ethnographic
literature, and I explore three in much closer detail in the second half of
this chapter. A useful way into thinking about this however is Bloch’s gen-
eralised example of spirit possession. As he says, “in spirit possession a part
of what we would call a dead person, their spirit, is empirically seen and
heard by the living…the ‘life’ of the dead is possible when the spirit is
combined with a different part of a different person, the body of the
medium. In such cases…the death of members of one’s own society is not
experienced as the end of earthly activity” (1988, 14). But it is not only
the spirit of the dead returning via the medium that attests to blurred
boundaries between the alive and the dead. The reason for this is that, as
Bloch indicates, the process of becoming possessed is itself akin to dying
with the medium needing to “expel her own spirit and abandon her con-
trol over her body in the trance” (1988, 14) in order to permit the posses-
sion and use of her corporeal self by the spirit.
Piers Vitebsky (1993) writes at length about similar practices but in a
specific cultural setting, exploring how Sora shamans speak with the dead
in trance dialogues. The Sora are an aboriginal group living in forested
hills near the eastern coast of India in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Here,
speaking with the dead is a daily occurrence and a regular feature of every-
day life. The dead are spoken with via Sora shamans who are in a state of
trance. Vitebsky explains that such dialogues with the dead take place for
a variety of reasons, including to discover the reason for illness episodes,
during healing practices, at some seasonal harvest rites, and also during
stages of funeral rites, but that all of these are connected to exploring with
the dead their “motivation and operation of these attempts to eat the liv-
ing” (1993, 7). That is because illness and death are understood by Sora
to be caused by the dead for “in attacking the living, the dead seek to
transfer to them certain experiences which they themselves underwent at
the moment of their deaths. They do this by ‘eating the soul’ (puradan
jum-) of the living victim in order to absorb him”, but the dead can also
nourish and protect the living (1993, 5) when the dead move from the
Experience mode into Ancestor mode, as described above in the chapter
Introduction.
As Vitebsky carefully demonstrates in this thickly crafted ethnography,
death in Sora belief “is only a phase of a person’s total conscious exis-
tence” (1993, 9) and the dialogues between living and dead via shamanis-
tic trance is at its heart “being about relationships between persons over
time” (1993, 9). That is to say, “the Sora person…is not the same kind of
being as the sharply bounded entity commonly imagined in the West,
which as it grows in maturity reaches a height of individuation and is then
subject to sudden annihilation (or transportation to an inaccessible, tran-
scendent realm)” (1993, 9). Instead, and reminiscent here of the net of
māyā described by Lamb (2000) that I discuss in Chap. 6, “the longer the
Sora person lives the more he becomes involved with other persons”
(Vitebsky 1993, 9). Rather than being understood as a bounded entity,
the Sora person can instead be interpreted “as having a core, or focus of
concentration, which at its outer edges diffuses into other persons. Persons
partake of each other’s destiny and are understood, even defined, largely
in terms of each other”, including persons both living and dead, in what
Vitebsky terms a complex web of mutual agency (1993, 9). Vitebsky
underscores how death for Sora is not the destruction or erasure of
the person, but rather that people alive and people dead “remain attached
to each other” but “are pulled apart into separate realms of existence”
(1993, 9). Dialogues with the dead are usually with one’s circle of relatives
and take very intimate forms, with “family conversations, jokes and quar-
rels” continuing “after some of their participants have crossed the dividing
line between life and death” (1993, 7). As such, this material “force[s] us to
230 C. DEGNEN
ask what it is that dies and what it means to be dead. The interpretation
which I shall offer is that for them, death is not a negation or absence of
life. Rather, ‘life’ and ‘death’ are both phases of a person’s total existence
and close relations between persons are maintained across the line dividing
these two states” (1993, 4).
Complementing these explanations from Bloch and Vitebsky is Rita
Astuti’s work amongst Vezo people of Western Madagascar, explored also
in Chaps. 2 and 3. Astuti (1998) writes eloquently about the delicate bal-
ancing act of, on the one hand, separating the living and dead and, on the
other, simultaneously recognising the continuity between them when she
describes her experiences in Madagascar. She examines notions of person-
hood and of relations that connect the living and the dead, saying that
both the living and the dead are different ways of “being a person” (1998,
31). There is a continuum between the living and the dead, but this in
turn means that a barrier needs to be built between them in order to man-
age their similarity, not their difference:
[It is a] separation that the Vezo endeavour to establish between themselves

and the dead, as they labor to raise a solid barrier between life and death,
between the village and the cemetery….[and yet there is also] continuity
that also exists between the indeterminacy of the living person and the
determinacy of the dead, between the fluidity and malleability of Vezo-ness
and the fixity of descent – a continuity which the Vezo are forced to recog-
nize by the indisputable fact that living people die, that the dead were once
alive, and that the living were generated by those who are now dead. It is by
labouring to establish the discontinuity that the living Vezo also acknowledge
that a continuity exists: the one is achieved dialectically by denying the
other. (1998, 31)
Thus, sharp divisions between persons alive and persons dead, whilst
often taken for granted in the Western view, are not sustainable in multiple
other cultural contexts.
But of course, as much as we can learn from this juxtaposition of “punc-
tual” and “enduring” models of the person, I want to suggest that we also
need to consider counter-narratives to these normative models. For
instance, whilst Western views of death are indeed predicated on the
notion of irreversibility rather than processual modes, many Westerners
also believe in an immortal soul, a component of the person that due to
faith transcends life and continues after death. Further evidence exists that
also renders such assumptions about “Western” relations with the dead
and personhood after death much more complex. Hallam and Hockey
(2001), for instance, explore at length about how the living maintain
ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies, and the critical
importance of material objects in these processes. Recent work on posthu-
mous personhood via digital media has explored how these emerging plat-
forms can extend personhood after death (Meese et al. 2015). And in
another powerful publication, Hallam et al. (1999) write about married
life after biological death, demonstrating how deceased spouses are very
much still part of the social world of some widows and widowers in Britain.
Significantly, these authors argue that too often “social scientists who
address society’s dead members in their work limit themselves to a model
of agency which assumes individual, intentional and embodied action as a
prerequisite for social being”, and that in such a model, the living on of
deceased spouses is too easily dismissed as something pathological and
psychological in the minds of the bereaved (Hallam et al. 1999, 146).
In the place of this, they seek instead to build “an account of society
which incorporates its dead members, using a model of agency not just as
a property of the full-bodied individual but, more broadly, as empower-
ment at a particular site” (1999, 147). They argue that the presence of the
dead spouse in the embodied experiences of the remaining spouse “via
feelings and senses such as sight, sound, smell, touch” (1999, 151) ren-
ders the body of the surviving spouse the site of empowerment for the
socially active agency of the biologically deceased spouse. This includes
experiences recounted by widows in interviews they conducted of seeing
their deceased spouses, of feeling the calming presence or warmth of the
spouse after death, or “‘feeling the bed go down’ with the weight of a
partner’s body, despite their absence in embodied form” (1999, 150).
Reading their description of these experiences recounted by their research
participants resonated strongly for me. It powerfully recalled to my mind
events in my own ethnographic work with older people in South Yorkshire
in the north of England. Whilst I never found the way to write about what
some widows and widowers there told me about the interactions they had
with their deceased spouses, it was clear that for a number of the people I
came to know that their relationships with their loved ones carried on in
spite of death. That is to say, people would tell me of visits from and con-
versations with their spouses, of vibrant dreams of their spouses, of hear-
ing them move around the house, or of feeling them by their side in bed.
232 C. DEGNEN
Although both moved and intrigued by these accounts from my

research participants, making analytic sense of them at the time eluded
me. Hallam et al. tackle this challenge head-on in a provocative but to my
mind highly successful way. They argue that the analytical key to this is the
extent to which the deceased spouse remains socially alive for the surviving
spouse, as the deceased spouse “has a continued presence and…may exert
influence on the nature and direction” of the life of the remaining spouse
(1999, 149) in a variety of ways that may shift over time and over chang-
ing contexts. This continued presence includes companionship, commu-
nication, and advice, experiences which continue intimate connections
and maintain the social presence of the deceased. Hallam et al. state that
such accounts transgress dominant medical and wider social models which
would perceive this an “unhealthy”, pathological attachment to the dead.
They argue eloquently instead for the meaningfulness of these experiences
of ongoing relations between living and dead, a continuity that whilst
rarely acknowledged publically (let alone celebrated), grants significant
pleasure and certitude for many of the people they interviewed.
Similarly, the work of Francis et al. (2005) in their ethnography of the
incorporation of the dead into everyday life in six London cemeteries
attests powerfully to contemporary British practices post-burial that con-
tinue to connect the dead and the living.3 They document what visitors to
those cemeteries do when they are there, what purposes they attribute to
the visits, and how they describe the meanings of those visits. The authors
talked with and observed more than one thousand cemetery visitors at the
graveside, and what becomes abundantly evident is how the social exis-
tence of the dead is maintained via these actions. Through planting gar-
dens, tending graves, and speaking to the deceased, the dead are kept
alive. As such, the cemetery is a physical “place that connects the world of
the living with the world of life after death” (2005, 4), and commemora-
tive mourning practices performed there “enact the bonds that continue
to attach [mourners] to the deceased” (2005, 26). The authors explore
the ways in which “concepts of the person are linked to the corporeal self
and to its material extension through the tomb”, which is made of a wide
range of materials (2005, 25). One example of the many they present is
the gardening of marigolds at the grave of a teenage boy by his mother. As
they write, “the mother’s reconstruction of his personhood and their con-
tinuing, though altered relationship” is facilitated by her planting of mari-
gold plants raised from seeds that he had originally grown earlier that
summer with his science teacher before the accident that had suddenly
killed him (2005, 120).
I have assembled these examples in order to nuance assumptions of
“what happens” to the person at death in Western contexts. In so doing,
I seek to furnish more texture to the surface of normative Western models
of personhood. The primacy of the autonomous individual and the punc-
tual view of death are indeed key pillars in Western thought as Bloch
argues. But there are also intriguing counter-narratives that co-exist with
these pillars as I have explored here. They deserve to be acknowledged, for
in so doing, we enrich our understanding of the complexity of what is at
stake for the person (alive and dead) at death.4 Having now considered
some of the spectrum of more “punctual” views of death in contrast to
more “enduring” models, tricky as these categories may be, I now turn to
three detailed ethnographic accounts of personhood and death that each
in their own way is more along the spectrum of “enduring” views of death
than normative Western punctual views. Each of these three in-depth
examples reveals the complexity of the cultural work entailed in managing
relations with the dead, and whether or not (and to what extent) death is
an ending or dismantling of the person. Also highly pertinent here is the
extent to which the dead require the living to act, what specifically the
dead need who to do, as well as when and for how long.
“Completing” the Centrifugal Person: Mapuche

Funeral Oratory
Working in southern Chile with Mapuche people, Magnus Course (2007,
2010) charts the ontological dilemma that death poses for Mapuche per-
sons. Significantly, this dilemma is not because the person requires an
unmaking or disentangling from its previous social relations. It is instead
because the deceased are understood to be unfinished. This is a state of
being that requires the work of friends to rectify, so that the person may
become complete. Mapuche are one of the largest groups of indigenous
peoples in the Americas, and about one million Mapuche live in Chile
(Course 2010, 154). Mapuche society also represents a wide-ranging slice
of Chilean life, “from monolingual Spanish-speaking bureaucrats who live
in major cities, to monolingual Mapudungun-speakers living as subsis-
tence farmers in the rural countryside”, with Course himself working in a
bilingual-speaking rural area with subsistence Mapuche farmers living on
small isolated homesteads (2010, 155).
234 C. DEGNEN
Whilst Mapuche attribute great importance to descent (küpal) and

k inship relations in their understanding of personhood, it is “those rela-
tions which a person creates through their own volition during the course
of their life that allow them to be a person” (Course 2007, 82). Thus, one
of the constitutive aspects for being a “true person”—or che—includes the
relationships a person makes through choice, namely friendships. Indeed,
to be che, “one must go beyond relations with one’s kin” and “it is through
the activation of the capacity to form relationships with unrelated others
that one becomes a true person” (2007, 82). Friendships are thus key to
the Mapuche conceptualisation of personhood, a model of person Course
describes as orientated towards others, or “centrifugal”. The person thus
expands outwards, centrifugally, through establishing and maintaining
friendship relationships.
Course describes in great detail the various aspects of Mapuche funeral
practices (2007, 83–7). These include how the corpse is prepared, dis-
played in the home, and made ready for visitors who bring offerings of
food, tea or alcohol, and their condolences. The norm is that four days
should pass between death and burial. This permits time for guests to
arrive and to view the corpse which is considered essential. On the night
before the burial, the friends and relatives of the deceased attend an uma-
tun (wake) around the corpse. Guests bring wine, cider, tea, and bread to
pass the night with the grieving family and the deceased, toasting one
another and the corpse, and performing abbreviated amulpüllün or funer-
ary oration as described in more detail below. Course says that some drops
of the drinks being consumed are often permitted to fall to the floor by the
side of the coffin as it is believed that “the soul of the deceased lingers
around the coffin until bid farewell in the funeral itself”; many of the
people he spoke to about the umatun stated that in addition to keeping
the family company before the funeral, it was also important for them to
attend as it permits them “to accompany the deceased…for one last time”
(2007, 85).
The next morning, the body is taken to a nearby field and put onto a
raised frame. The family members of the dead and the families of the local
group (lof) of which the deceased was a member begin preparing cooking
areas around the field in order to properly host the guests—“people from
all of the surrounding areas” (2007, 86)—who arrive around lunchtime.
Furnishing sufficient hospitality for the funeral guests is a key point of
concern, and guests are given plates of cooked meat and bread, and bot-
tles of wine. Brief funeral rites are carried out by the local Catholic priest.
Once he has departed, the elements of the funeral which Course’s

participants described to him as mapuche wimtun (Mapuche custom) and
admapu (the way of the land) commence. The guests gather round the
coffin in a crowd to listen to the amulpüllün, the funeral orations. These
are considered to be “the most essential component of the Mapuche
funeral, as it is this which enables the spirit of the deceased to be sent cor-
rectly upon its way” (2007, 87). Course translates amulpüllün as “literally
‘the making go of the spirit’” (2010, 164) and says that they are intended
to ‘finish’ or ‘complete’ the deceased. Comprising of three stages (pentu-
kun, a greeting between the speakers; nutramtun, the biography of the
deceased; and mariepull, a toasting of the deceased), once the amulpüllün
is complete, the body is taken to the cemetery and interred.
On the day following the funeral Course tells us, “there are always two
main topics of conversation: from whom did each person receive wine and
meat; and, how well was the amulpüllün carried out” (2007, 88–89).
Both are significant as the former “refers to the continuation of sociality
among the living, [and] the second refers to the ending of the sociality of
the deceased” (2007, 89). The tripartite structure of greeting, biography,
and toasting of the amulpüllün is highly structured, and is crucial to the
successful “completion” of the deceased person. In the pentukun that
Course describes, the two orators who begin the amulpüllün are not close
kin of the deceased, but they take it in turns to describe their own patrilin-
eal descent relations and then aspect of their own biographies (2007,
89–90). This includes details such as where they have travelled and where
they have worked. One orator nominally represents the matrilineal kin of
the deceased, the other the patrilineal.
The next stage of the amulpüllün, the nutramtun, focuses on the biog-
raphy of the deceased. One orator details aspects of the deceased’s patri-
lineal descent, and the other the matrilineal, with both speakers taking
care to list all significant relatives. The deceased is thus contextualised
within her or his “chain of relations stretching back through time” (2007,
90). The speakers go on to describe the life, abilities, and personal quali-
ties of the deceased; “the aspects selected tend to be those arenas of
Mapuche life in which the sociality of friendship comes to the fore…as it
was through these that the deceased created themselves in life as a true
person, as che” (2007, 90). The two orators add details in an alternating,
competitive dialogue with each other about the life of the person who has
died, ensuring “that no stone remains unturned in the biography of the
deceased” (2007, 91). Such details may include recounting abilities such
236 C. DEGNEN
as being a good horsemen, footballer, or field hockey player for men or,
for women, their talents in gardening or weaving; it may also include bio-
graphical details such as schooling, contributions to local sporting groups,
all the friends they made, the stories they told, the places they visited
(2007, 91).
These details recounted also include both positive and negative aspects
of the person, with Course’s participants emphasising to him the impor-
tance of all characteristics of the deceased being told “with just as much
care and veracity as the positive if the amulpüllün as a whole were to serve
its purpose” of completing the person, including characteristics such as
laziness or drunkenness (2007, 91). Following the formal orators, friends
of the deceased from the assembled crowd will then add their own memo-
ries of events they shared with the deceased during his or her lifetime. It is
in this way that the orators and the funeral attendees “complete” the per-
son. The nutramtun ends when each speaker takes a long drink from the
bottles of wine or cider lined up on the top of the coffin, called the mari-
epull, with this drinking marking the end of the amulpüllün (2007, 88).
What becomes clear from the above is how significant storying and
documenting the life of the deceased is, and how this is a task for family
and friends alike. But, as Course rightly asks, what precisely is it “about the
person that needs to be ‘finished’” for Mapuche, and how does the
amulpüllün ensure this aim (2007, 92)?
The key to answering these questions are the twinned notions of reci-
procity and sociality. That is to say, Mapuche notions of personhood are
based on relations with others; personhood is constituted via networks of
sociality and through enduring, reciprocal ties of friendship (2007, 89).
However, “death inevitably cuts such reciprocity short, and proves an
insurmountable obstacle to the repayment of the inevitable debts every
adult has accrued” (2007, 92). Death renders ongoing relations that con-
stitute the person “in limbo, and by removing the person from the realm
of sociality leaves them in a diffuse and ‘unfinished’ state. The project of
self-creation is brought to an abrupt halt, but still short of its final destina-
tion. The responsibility of ‘finishing’ the deceased necessarily falls to those
still alive” (2007, 93). That is to say, the webs of friendship connection
through which persons have constituted themselves, expanding ever out-
wards centrifugally, remain unfinished at death. Friendship relations dur-
ing life entail exchanges that need to be reciprocated in order to maintain
them in good health. This includes, for instance, highly ritualised forms of
sociality and sharing alcohol, something Course terms “the wine-drinking
friend” (2010, 158–63), but death means that these exchanges cannot be
fulfilled. This inability to reciprocate is what in turn leaves the person in an
“unfinished” state.
Course argues in turn that amulpüllün “creates and presents a mean-
ingful whole out of this life constituted through relations with others …
[by] condensing what is diffuse” and furthermore “it is only this ‘whole’,
cut free of the relations from which it was constituted, that can move on
from the realm of the living into the unknown and unspecified realm of
the dead” (2007, 94). By creating a whole from what was diffuse, by con-
densing these relations that constitute the person, Course says that
amulpüllün transforms the dead from subject into object, a process of
objectifying that “cut[s] free [the deceased] from the relations of reciproc-
ity through which they constituted themselves”, removing the deceased
“from the realm of sociality and thus remov[ing] the possibility of recip-
rocation” (2007, 95). This releases the dead from the obligation to recip-
rocate. As evidence of this, Course points to the mariepull, the toasting of
the deceased. Unlike the great care usually taken in exchanges of alcohol
with friends, “drinkers in the mariepull seize bottles and gulp down wine
themselves…there is no concern with ensuring that all are served, no con-
cern with thanking anybody” (2007, 95). Like the nutramtun which is
“by its very nature impossible to reciprocate”, the mariepull (or gift of
wine from the deceased) “is also destined to never be returned. The whole
point of the mariepull is that it marks the end of reciprocity, and therefore
the end of sociality” (2007, 95). That is to say, “just as it is to friends to
whom one must turn to create oneself in life,” so too it is to friends that
one must rely on to complete them in death by severing the networks of
sociality through which the deceased were constituted (2010, 164).
The centrifugal Mapuche person and the necessity of becoming com-
pleted at death by one’s friends render more complex long-standing con-
cepts in the anthropology of the person about death. As Course
convincingly argues, the literature has largely assumed that “death and its
accompanying social practices reveal something to us about the indige-
nous conception of the person…[an assumption that]…what mortuary
practices do is to undo the complex social ties which once held the living
person together, and to thereby make visible and explicit the parts of
which that person was composed” (2007, 77). He points in particular to
the influential work of Strathern, Mosko, and Bloch where there is a
strong sense of “the role of ritual practice in revealing the component
aspects of the person” (2007, 79). Course counters this, writing that
238 C. DEGNEN
ivision and separation is evident in Mapuche funerals too, but so also are
d
the ways in which the component parts of a person are being brought
together (2007, 79) and not simply separated. As he argues, the point of
the amulpűllűn funeral oration is to “finish” the person (2007, 89), not
divide them back up into their component pieces. As we have seen above,
what needs to be finished is reciprocity and sociality with the dynamism
and centrifugality of life needing to be brought to a close in death via ora-
tion and condensation (2007, 95; 96). So, for instance, Course reminds us
of the nutramtun stage of the amulpüllün. With its pronounced focus on
the genealogy of the deceased, Course argues that the nutramtun stage
could be interpreted as parallel to the “funeral rites described for Melanesia
and elsewhere which ‘disintegrate’ the person into the patri- and matri-
groups from which they were composed” as the nutramtun “unravel(s)
the paternally-derived and maternally-derived elements of the deceased’s
person through making them explicit” (2007, 90). But, as Course goes on
to say, “there is far more to the Mapuche person than the sum of its pater-
nal and maternal parts” (2007, 90) as the role of reciprocity with friends
makes clear. Indeed, Course further argues that amulpüllün is a form of
synthesis—that elements of division do occur upon death for Mapuche
(such as the body becoming separated from the soul), but that processes
of unification and condensation are equally significant here as “it is only
the ‘finished’ person who can be sent away from the community of the
living” (2007, 96) and that the dynamic centrifugal sociality of life needs
to be brought to a close via amulpüllün. He concludes that death in the
Mapuche case should not be interpreted as a process of analysis (namely,
breaking something up into its component pieces), but rather as a process
of synthesis (bringing component parts together) (2007, 79). Such
dynamics of what is assembled and from where reassert themselves in the
next ethnographic setting, but in markedly different ways.
“The Name Doesn’t Die”: Reincarnation

and the Name Soul in Kangersuatsiaq, Northwest
Greenland
During my stay in Kangersuatsiaq I was associated with a family headed by
a man named Josepi…Sadly, towards the end of my fieldwork, Josepi died
quite suddenly…The day following the funeral, the news came through to
Josepi’s family that a baby boy had been born in Upernavik Kujalleq, the
village immediately south of Kangersuatsiaq. The news created intense

excitement and a fervour of activity followed as presents were bought for the
child. To everyone in the village it was clear that the child would receive
Josepi’s name and would become his ateqqaataa…Over the next few days
the family’s talk revolved around plans to visit Upernavik Kujalleq for the
baby’s baptism. A week or two later, the news came through the Upernavik
town that Josepi’s sister’s son’s wife had given birth to a baby boy. Again,
the family was overjoyed for, although it had not been formally announced
what name the child was to receive, it was known that he would be called
Josepi. Josepi’s family travelled through to both Upernavik Kujalleq and to
Upernavik town for two baptisms, and there was much celebrating after-
wards. (1994, 130)
Kangersuatsiaq is an Inuit community in the Upernavik district of

northwest Greenland. At the time of Mark Nuttall’s fieldwork in the late
1980s, seal hunting was a mainstay of local subsistence, “underpin(ning)
the cultural fabric of Kangersuatsiaq”, providing “the foundation for both
a secure kin-based network and a sense of community” with the “sharing
and ritual distribution of seal meat remain(ing) central to the ideology of
subsistence, expressing the relationships people share with each other”
(1994, 124–5). In two publications (1992, 1994), Nuttall explores a
series of interrelated themes of this including social identity, cultural con-
tinuity, the compatibility of subsistence sealing with economic develop-
ment, the local importance of sense of place, and contemporary Inuit
notions of personhood. Of particular interest for this chapter however is
the depth and richness of analysis that Nuttall brings to the role of names
in how Kangersuatsiarmiit5 understand the relationship between the living
and the dead.
Names are “a social and spiritual component of the person” (1994,
123) and for Kangersuatsiarmiit, the person is understood as being com-
prised of three souls: tarneq, the personal soul, anersaaq, the breath soul
and ateq, the name soul (1992, 65). Nuttall tells us that tarneq is effec-
tively synonymous with the Christian “soul”, “a person’s life force” that
upon death “leaves the body and goes to God” whereas anersaaq is more
translatable as “‘spirit’ or ghost…contain[ing] aspects of mind…shadowy
and independent, able to leave a person’s body during life… but upon
death it remains in the land of the living as a spirit or ghost, as a reflection
or memory of the dead” (1992, 65–6). Ateq, however, is the word for
both the name and the name soul, entities that are not the domain of only
one individual.
240 C. DEGNEN
That is to say, when a person dies, their ateq leaves their body and
“remains homeless until it is recalled to reside in the body of a newborn
child” (1992, 67). As such, Nuttall argues that this “means that people
never simply die; they continue because the name remains on earth”
(1992, 7) and that their identities continue with their name: “identities
continue when children are given the name of a deceased person, or the
names of several dead people” (1992, 66). Nuttall explains that ateq “is a
form of active, dynamic and continuing social reincarnation”, but not one
that is “concerned with achieving merit…or moral progression” as with
some cultural models of reincarnation (1992, 67) such as Hinduism or
Buddhism.
Instead, for Kangersuatsiarmiit, ateq hold “properties of the deceased
which are ineradicable and, to some extent, naming determines a child’s
developmental path. Once named, a new born child is both him/herself
and the person(s) whose names s/he receives” (1992, 67). That is to say,
there is firstly a continuity of the person after death via the ateq (name
soul). The ateq “allows for the continuity of personal relationships, social
life, and sense of community” (1994, 124) in that relatives of the deceased
continue their relationships with the deceased in their reincarnated form,
as we will see below. Secondly, the ateq “confers a social identity on the
person who, while being him or herself, is nonetheless regarded as a
returned deceased relative” (1994, 124). An individual is thus simultane-
ously both a newborn and also a returning deceased kin with a pre-existing
membership of the community. This is a process Nuttall describes as ren-
dering “the social landscape of Kangersuatsiaq a memoryscape of persons”
(1992, 59).
Additionally, there is a richness and multiplicity in the ways in which
name souls attach to newborns. That is to say, a person often has the ateq
of more than one deceased person and consequently combines aspects of
several identities in one. Additionally, “one dead person’s name soul is
shared between several children who, despite being themselves, are also
one person” (1992, 60). This in turn locates the individual “in a complex
web of social relationships that encompass both the living and the dead…
For the Kangersuatsiamiit, the person is an expression of the continuity of
social life” (1992, 60), with that memoryscape of personhood that Nutall
describes above holding a temporal register and depth that entirely exceeds
the bounds of more linear models of personhood and of life course.
When a deceased person’s ateq is recalled to the body of a newborn,
that newborn becomes known by the name of the dead person. A person
named after a dead person is in turn called an atsiaq (pl. atsiat), and “as
this includes all people, then Greenlandic communities are made up
entirely of atsiat” (1992, 67). Additionally, there is usually a particular
significance granted to the first baby to be born after a death, and this
baby is known as the ateqqaataa of that deceased person, with the deceased
person being called the atsiaq’s aqqa (1992, 67). These relationships
between dead and living are gender specific in the area of Greenland where
Nuttall worked, with the first child born of the same sex as the recently
deceased becoming named as the ateqqaataa, “but the ateqqaataa does
not necessarily have to be born into the deceased’s community” with the
entirety of the Upernavik district having extensive and close kinship and
social relationships including name souls (1992, 68).
But what does the name soul “carry” of the reincarnated person? As
Nuttall explains, name souls are “strictly speaking…not [a] reincarnation
of a fully differentiated individual, but of whatever qualities and aspects are
held to be contained in the name soul…a dead person can have several
atsiat and several dead people can share the same atsiaq…one person can
have three or more name souls” (1992, 68). Also, there is no limit to
“how many people can be reincarnated in a newborn child” and a three-
year-old child Nuttall knew had the names of five deceased people: “Jonas
(his mother’s brother), Pele (another of his mother’s brothers), Tobias
(the brother of a man named Knud), Robert (his mother’s uncle) and
Abel (his mother’s grandfather)” with his first name in this case being
Jonas (1992, 88).
With the name soul comes a series of pre-existing social relations. That
is to say, as
an atsiaq, the child enters into various relationships with the surviving rela-
tives of its aqqa, who all address the atsiaq by the kin term applied to the
dead relative. Corresponding terms of address are reciprocated by the
atsiaq…a dead man’s atsiaq will be called ‘father’ by that man’s children,
and ‘husband’ by his wife. In addition to his aqqa’s father calling him ‘son’,
he will be called son by his genitor. (1992, 68)
In the case of Jonas, the three-year-old boy, he was addressed accord-

ingly by different individuals: for instance, his mother called him aqqaluk
(female ego’s younger brother) and Knud called him Nuka (male ego’s
younger brother); Jonas reciprocally addresses his mother as aleqa (older
sister) and Knud as angaju (older brother) (1992, 88).
242 C. DEGNEN
In the excerpt above that I opened this sub-section of the chapter with,
it is evident just how critical the baptisms of the two newborns are for
Josepi’s family. Manifesting and continuing these name soul relationships
are an important aspect of everyday life. In a separate example of a recently
deceased family member’s ateqqaataa being born and that ateqqaataa’s
baptism, Nuttall writes how
On the day of the baptism, the family of the child gathered together with
the godmother for photographs, coffee and cake following the church ser-
vice. During the afternoon and throughout the evening the whole commu-
nity visited for coffee and cake. All people in Kangersuatsiaq normally visit
on such occasions, to congratulate the parents and to see the child. The
community celebrates the birth of a child, a new person. But at the same
time there is an awareness that the child is also a recently deceased person’s
atsiaq. The community is thus celebrating the return of that deceased per-
son. In doing so, the community is celebrating itself, however unconsciously.
The celebration is, in a sense, a celebration of the continuity of both person
and community. But what must not be forgotten is that the deceased’s
family is also celebrating its own continuity. The inclusion of an atsiaq in
private celebrations has an important function. (1992, 124)
In this second example, the deceased family member was Marie, the
mother of the family Nuttall lived with and Josepi’s wife. Nuttall goes on
to detail how the same family had cause to celebrate three months later
when Jonas,6 aged seven and Marie’s grandson, caught his first seal. Whilst
Jonas required his father’s help to set the net and monitor it, this was still
a significant event that merited marking within the privacy of the immedi-
ate family. Grandparents in a neighbouring village were telephoned with
the news; Jonas’ mother Aninnguaq prepared the seal meat, and the family
living in Kangersuatsiaq were assembled to help eat it. This included the
now three-month-old baby Marie, Jonas’ grandmother’s ateqqaataa, who
was brought by Jonas’ aunt, Naja, for the meal from Marie’s parent’s
home. As Nuttall describes, “Naja returned carrying Marie, her mother’s
three month old ateqqaataa. Naja said ‘Here’s mother’ and Aninnguaq,
addressing the baby, said ‘Come in, sit down and have some coffee. It’s
cold outside and we have some fresh meat from Jonas’” (1992, 125). The
baby was offered symbolic tastes of the seal meat and coffee being eaten
by the other family members. “Marie’s ateqqaataa had been in the house
for about forty minutes before she was taken back to her parents. During
this time she had been spoken to and treated as an adult. As a family cel-
ebration of Jonas having his first catch, the family gathering had been
complete due to the inclusion of the atsiaq” (1992, 125).
Ultimately, Nuttall argues that “with the rebirth of names, various
types of relationship are continued as well as new ones made. A person’s
self-perception is influenced by the image and memory others have of the
dead person after whom s/he is named, and by the position s/he occupies
in the social and spiritual order” (1992, 67). The examples of the baptisms
and celebrating the first seal catch above are examples of how relationships
are established and maintained between the ateqqaataa and the family.
But Nuttall also argues that name souls are a profoundly significant “re-
establishment of a bond between deceased and bereaved. The dead person
is said to have ‘come home’ (angerlarpoq) to the bereaved” (1992, 68),
and this is recognised in naming and baptising. Birth does not signal an
entirely new person arriving, but rather a family and community member
who is being welcomed back (1992, 69). That is to say, a child “re-enters
an existing order of being, of which his name at least is already a part”
(1992, 69), and “having been named, children learn the identities of the
people they are named after and begin to acquire a knowledge of the vari-
ous relationships that link them” to a wider social network (1992, 89).
What this means for the relations between living and dead is that the
recently deceased can be again interacted with. In Kangersuatsiaq, people
remain part of the community after death through their name souls, and
“a recently deceased person will continue existing relationships through
an atsiaq and will be linked to the name-sharers and kin of that atsiaq”
(1994, 134). Naming thus for Kangersuatsiarmiit attests not to the finality
of death, but rather to a profound continuity of personhood.
Feeding the Dead: Rice and Sasak Relatedness

In the material above, the emphasis is on the continuity of personhood in
the face of death, and how the relations between living and dead persist via
name souls. I turn now to a final ethnographic example of how kin relate
to (and manage the expectations of) the dead via a very different channel,
namely that of food. Writing of Sasak people living on the island of
Lombok, located on the Indonesian archipelago just east of Bali, Kari
Telle begins by describing rice bundles and a recently widowed woman.7
The bundles had initially been stored in the family granary by the married
couple, but upon the death of the husband, a first batch of rice had been
brought down from storage; a second batch was brought down a few days
244 C. DEGNEN
later to be prepared for the “upcoming nine-day feast” to mark his death,
and more bundles would be taken down “for Nyatus, the final mortuary
feast to be held one hundred days after death” (2007, 121). Telle was told
by the widow preparing the rice that as a couple she and her husband had
put this rice aside together so that “‘some rice from their own house
would follow along’” after death, and that the rice was being prepared for
the nine-day feast so that her husband would not “‘die in a state of
neglect’” (2007, 121). As Telle elaborates, food plays a central role in this
series of mortuary rituals, a ritual cycle of eight different ceremonial meals
over a period of more than three years (2007, 135), a process for Sasak
that transforms the deceased into ancestors.
More generally, food and feeding is understood in the Sasak worldview
as a key element in forging relatedness, as holding significant generative
potential (2007, 122) and as being “at the very centre of Sasak social
reproduction” (2007, 126). Rice is the most highly esteemed comestible
in Sasak life whereby “the daily sharing of rice meals cooked on the hearth
constructs and maintains ties between the different generations” of Sasak
kin, namely the hearth group; “the value attached to feeding within the
hearth group is grounded in the assumption that durable and affective
bonds are powerfully constituted through the medium of food” (2007,
146). Rice is a highly significant substance imbricated in the making and
remaking of persons and of connections between them, as has been docu-
mented more widely in Southeast Asia and which I explored in Chap. 3 via
the work of Carsten (1995). Relatedness forged through feeding and rice
however is not something that ends with death. Instead, Telle describes
how the processes of making people and the ties between them “continues
after death through quotidian acts of feeding and flows of substance”
(2007, 147) from the living to the dead in Sasak mortuary rituals.
Telle describes the stages of Sasak mortuary rituals as being motivated
by a wish of the bereaved to provide nurturance and care for the deceased.
But she says there are also strong motivations at work to bring about a
separation between the living and the dead, to influence and control the
spirits of the dead who might otherwise become troublesome, and to pro-
vide a channel for blessings to flow (2007, 122–3). Food, and particularly
rice, is “used to cultivate a desirable relationship to the dead” (2007, 126)
in a number of ways, starting with how physical death is itself bound inex-
tricably to food. This is because death itself occurs when the spirit leaves
the body and “is known as ajal, which denotes the end of a person’s
divinely allotted lifespan” (2007, 127). The Sasak people Telle came to
know further describe ajal as “the moment when a person has exhausted
her share of rice (beras), the preferred staple and main source of suste-
nance” (2007, 127). Consequently, “when death seems imminent, family
members may thus try to ease the pain and hasten death by feeding the
person some steamed rice (mi), as it is only when the last grain of rice
allotted for earthly consumption has been eaten that the person can die”
(2007, 127).
Upon death, Telle describes how “transforming the deceased into an
ancestor (papuq baloq) requires much work on the part of the living…the
deceased is utterly dependent on close kin, neighbours and ritual special-
ists in order to become ‘complete’”, a requirement that “underscores how
humans are social beings whose life-courses are inextricably enmeshed
with those of others” (2007, 122). So, for instance, the widow Telle intro-
duces us to who had been bringing rice bundles down from storage to
prepare for her husband’s nine-day feast also continued to prepare regular
daily meals for the spirit of her husband. This was something she did as he
moved through the various stages of becoming an ancestor, “a process
that is complete when only ‘bones’ (tolang) are left in the grave” (2007,
128) and through putrefaction which changes “the ‘wet’ corpse…into
‘dry’ and durable bones” (2007, 136). Sasak draw a correlation between
the gradual decomposition of the corpse in the grave with the incremental
separation of the deceased’s spirit from the living as it transitions over time
from the “worldly realm” to that of the “invisible realm” of the spirits
(2007, 127). This transition is understood as a difficult one for the
deceased as well as for the bereaved since the dead long for their former
lives in the worldly realm. The living seek to help ease this transition, such
as by providing meals of rice for the deceased until the stage of mortuary
rituals called Nyatus has been completed, at which point the successful
outcome is a spirit who no longer seeks to return (2007, 130). Telle
explains death “in no way implies a complete severance of ties between the
living and the dead” in Sasak understanding, but that the living do recog-
nise “a degree of separation must be established” with the dead (2007,
127), which is gradually extended. Providing food for the funeral and for
the spirit of the deceased “are said to comfort the forlorn spirit” and
looked upon positively, whereas sustained displays of grief by the bereaved
are discouraged since they draw the deceased’s spirit to the living, render-
ing it more difficult for the spirit to leave (2007, 127). This is a transition
that needs to be successfully managed over time so that the transformation
to ancestor can become complete.
246 C. DEGNEN
Rice is prepared in two main ways upon death. The first is the daily
preparation of rice meals for the spirit of the deceased which is understood
as “an act of nurturing relatedness”, a “flow of sustenance between the
living and the recently deceased” (2007, 130). Such practices need to be
understood within the context of more generalised Sasak processes of con-
stituting kinship whereby sharing substance (rice) forges relatedness
(2007, 131) as described above. These daily meals for the dead have a
twofold purpose: firstly they demonstrate the ongoing love and care of the
living for the deceased, and secondly it is via these “repeated acts of
nurture” that the living assist the spirit to eventually be able to leave (2007,
131) and to willingly depart the worldly realm for the invisible realm.
The second way is the cycle of mortuary feasts. In addition to the rice
the family has stored in preparation for this, condolence gifts of rice from
neighbours and friends are also used to prepare each meal in the mortuary
sequence of celebrations. These mortuary meals vary in size and scale, and
occur at different points in the commemorative cycle; the first begins as
soon as the death has been confirmed; the last is nominally 1000 days after
death (2007, 135) but rice is prepared for all of these feasts, mixing some
of the household rice with the gifted rice (2007, 139). Telle argues that
the feasting rice “become[s] a replacement of the social person, who is
remembered and symbolically reconstituted as the staple food” (2007,
139) during the series of memorial feasts to commemorate the deceased.
By consuming the rice that is associated with the dead person in these
feasts, Telle further argues that the mourners “bring to conclusion the
existence of a social person” and “effect a gradual separation of the living
from the deceased” (2007, 140). Great care is taken to achieve this separa-
tion successfully and to satisfy the needs of the deceased through the feast-
ing and related prayers, all so that the dead do not feel slighted and are
content to rest in their graves (2007, 140). But connections with the dead
do not end once the successful transition to ancestor is complete. As with
relatedness in life, relations with ancestors require ongoing work and cul-
tivation. Spirits of the dead can come to feel neglected if their descendants
fail to visit their graves, omit to tell them of important events, or do not
invite them to feasts; this results in spirits roaming and can put the living
in danger (2007, 141). Consequently, maintaining good relations with
the dead after they have transformed into ancestors is also a concern for
Sasak people. Once again, food becomes a significant channel for achiev-
ing this: families will gather to visit the graves of the deceased and share
with the spirits cooked meals that have been prepared to be eaten together
at the grave site, pleasing the spirits by remembering them properly and
also facilitating the granting of ancestral “blessings” for the living (2007,
143–4; 146). Thus whilst the nature of personhood shifts after death from
living person to ancestor, Sasak dead continue to be imbricated in rela-
tions with the living, and food continues—as in life—to be a key substance
for managing and maintaining healthy relations amongst kin.
Conclusions
In many contemporary Western societies, like Britain, death is something
largely sequestered and hidden away from view.8 Some commentators
have argued that this is connected to a rise in highly sophisticated and
specialist technologies, resulting in an increased medicalisation of birth
and death throughout the developed world (and increasingly in the devel-
oping world); both birth and death have over many decades become the
domain of professionals in these settings including midwives, undertakers,
and physicians and no longer managed in the domestic domain or under
the purview of the family (Barrett 2011, 483). There has been debate over
the extent to which the distance from everyday experiences and knowl-
edge of death has rendered death unfamiliar and more fearsome in con-
temporary Western society (Seale 1998). I contemplate this every year
when the undergraduates I teach in an advanced course on personhood
report feeling deeply apprehensive and as though they are trespassing
when I take them on a fieldtrip to a local cemetery to explore public mark-
ers of commemoration of the person (Degnen 2013). The contrast
between my students and Astuti’s example from her work with Vezo peo-
ple discussed above is instructive. In Astuti’s example, there is a noticeable
emphasis on connections and continuity between the living and the dead
and a recognition of the similarities between living and dead that need to
be managed. In telling me of their fears and their feelings of being deeply
out of place in the cemetery, my students are engaging instead in culturally
appropriate expressions of the dead as a very different category to the
living, a category to which connection and continuity is actively discour-
aged, and the dead certainly no longer count as “persons”.
And yet, as I have explored in this chapter, ample evidence exists that
renders such assumptions about “Western” relations with the dead argu-
ably much more nuanced than this. Hallam et al.’s (1999) work in Britain
on married life after biological death, demonstrating how deceased spouses
remain very much socially alive for some widows and widowers, is one
248 C. DEGNEN
powerful example of this. It speaks to a continuity of relations between

living and dead that are ongoing in the most intimate of realms of every-
day life. It also serves as a reminder that whilst death is often perceived as
a punctual moment in time in normative Western understandings, sharply
demarcating the living as persons from the dead who are not, there are
also more processual elements that can co-exist in these understandings.
Such perspectives are perhaps much more evident in other worldviews
where death is more explicitly understood as a long process of transition.
In such worldviews, the relations between living and dead are not usually
quickly severed, and nor is the personhood of the dead instantly revoked.
Indeed, in returning to this theme in light of the material I have pre-
sented in this chapter, I am reminded of the important parallels with eth-
nographic examples from Chaps. 2 and 3 on conception, pregnancy, and
birth. That is to say, just as we saw in those examples how coming into life
is rarely an easily discernible binary of either/or, on/off, so too with
death. Foetuses in Ecuador can be malleable and unripe, premature babies
can have tentative and reversible characteristics in an Israeli neonatal ICU,
and newly born Vezo babies are incomplete and thus vulnerable to threat-
ening spirits who might reshape their face if left alone. Such fluidity and
reversibility in early life is evocative of “non-punctual” understandings of
death. Observations like this continue to challenge the certitude of those
linear models of development of the person promoted by life course mod-
els. They point away from neat and tidy lines and instead point towards
ebbs and flows, and to more indeterminacy than normative Western mod-
els can comfortably accommodate.
In the material I present here in Chap. 8, many of the threads winding
through this book resurface: place, rites of passage, emotion, material cul-
ture, agency, relationality, transmission of substance, beginnings of life,
and kinship all appear. So too does the significance of narrativity and the
storying of the person by others, such as in Mapuche amulpüllün described
by Course, the biographies recounted to Kangersuatsiaq children about
their former selves, and Sora dialogues with the dead. I have also been
struck when writing this chapter by an overarching concern that runs
through the material presented here about not just managing the relations
between the living and the dead—relations which as we have seen can
continue for quite some time—but also the ways in which personhood is
so often made on the basis of ongoing relations, and what death then does
to those connections.
I suggest that it is no coincidence that many of the ethnographers

riting on the topic of death and personhood frequently make reference
w
to “webs” of interpersonal relations. For instance, Nuttall writes of “a
complex web of social relationships that encompass both the living and the
dead” (1992, 60); Course describes “the webs of reciprocity through
which persons have constituted themselves” (2010, 164); and Vitebsky
describes “persons living or dead…a web of mutual agency” (1993, 9) in
analysing Sora dialogues. Indeed, this metaphor is reminiscent of Sarah
Lamb’s work on the “net” of māyā discussed in Chap. 6 and how the
older people she came to know were keen to lessen those ties before they
died so that they could achieve a “good” death.
Death presents complex and formidable challenges to sociality and to
person, ones that demand some form of reckoning. That Western anthro-
pologists should so consistently use the metaphor of the web, the net, to
get to the core of what they experience about other cultures’ answers to
these challenges is perhaps more a reflection of our own cultural struggles
with death than anything else. It is difficult to say. But death certainly
presents the living with many, often excruciatingly wrought, dilemmas,
experiences, and emotions. Death in so many ways upends the order of
things. And yet, as we have seen in this chapter, that is not necessarily
because personhood ends with death. However, whether or not there is a
cultural understanding of continuity of personhood in death, death at the
very minimum does signal profound transformation. The examples I have
traced in this chapter place front and centre the complexity of the cultural
work entailed in managing relations with the dead, and whether or not
(and to what extent) death is an ending or dismantling of the person. As
it turns out, highly pertinent to this has been the needs of the dead: Do
the dead need feeding? Do they need completing? Do they demand regu-
lar dialogues via shamanistic trance? Exploring the extent to which the
dead require the living to act, what sorts of action are necessary, and the
agency of the dead themselves in the lives of the living has been critical to
better understanding the question of personhood.
Notes
1. Note that although Sora are described as a “tribal” group, this kind of tran-
sition from “experience” to “ancestor” has strong parallels with the wider
Hindu transition from unstable and unpredictable “ghost” to stable “ances-
tor” reflected in the lengthy set of Hindu funeral rites; my thanks to Peter
Phillimore for making me aware of this.
250 C. DEGNEN
2. Such observations of how cultural practices around death might be shifting

in the face of profound global socio-cultural change—due to factors such as
post-colonialism, emergent new technologies, and increasing levels of
migration—have recently been explored in an edited volume focused specifi-
cally on this by Boret et al. (2017), offering a number of compelling ethno-
graphic examples.
3. See also the excellent ethnographic film by Martin Gruber set in Kensal
Green Cemetery, London about the workers and visitors at this cemetery:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8c5s3_cultivating-death-by-mar-
tin-gruber_creation Last viewed 31 March 2017.
4. Whilst I have used Western examples of such counter-narratives here, I have
no doubt that similar complexity and texture exists in Vezo and Sora models
of personhood and death, as well as in all the other cross-cultural materials
I present in this volume. I refer to this issue in more detail in Chap. 1.
5. This is the term for all the members of the community of Kangersuatsiaq.
6. My interpretation of Nuttall’s text is that this is not the same Jonas (who is
three years old) described above, but a separate individual.
7. Telle notes that “most Sasak are Muslim but there is considerable variation
in how Islam is practised and how it is understood to relate to adat, a loose
body of customary knowledge and practices associated with the ‘ways of the
old folks’ (cara dengan toaq)” (2007, 126).
8. Although see Renske Visser (2017, 8) on her experiences as a researcher
from the Netherlands conducting work in Britain, and how different public
discourse on end of life and assisted dying is in the Netherlands, where it is
legal, compared to Britain where it is not; she perceived a noticeable lack of
willingness to talk openly about thoughts regarding at what point would
someone no longer to wish to continue living in Britain compared to a rela-
tive ease of discussion on the same topic in the Netherlands. Other examples
in Europe that point to a less sequestered relationship with death include
the work of C. Nadia Seremetakis (1991) in rural Greece on women’s role
in the mourning cycle, including practices of bone reading, second burial
and exhumation, and the “traditional” funerals on the Isle of Lewis and
other parts of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, where up until the 1980s most
funerals took place in the family home with the corpse remaining in the
house between the death and the funeral (Caswell 2011) and where still
today some speak of family and friends following the practice of “sitting
with the dead” at home in the interval between death and funeral (Jon
MacLeod, personal communication, January 2017).
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Index1
A Ateq, 239, 240

Abortion debates, 47, 48, 51, 86 Atsiaq, 241–243
Ageing Attachment, 95, 116n1, 142, 147,
active, 156, 157, 159 160–162, 166, 232
anti-, 157 Autonomy, 7–9, 31, 34, 35, 41, 49,
successful, 157, 159, 166, 167 75, 109, 127, 133, 152, 153,
Agency 170, 171, 187, 191, 200, 207,
of the dead, 249 214, 223, 233
loss of, 159
of non-humans, 131
of place, 96 B
Algonquian, 122, 123, 134 Bardi, Western Australia, 83, 93,
Allison, Anne, 83–85 107–110, 114, 116
Alzheimer’s disease, 206, 207, Barker, Judith, 153, 160, 167–170,
209, 211 178, 179n2
Amazonia, 66, 122, 137, 138 Barnman, 107–110
Amulpüllün, 234–238, 248 Basso, Keith, 93, 98–101, 115, 116n1
Ancestor, 2, 64, 65, 73, 100, 102, Beng, Côte d’Ivoire, 2, 64–66, 81
108, 155, 222, 223, 226, 229, Biological determinism, 59, 71, 86
244–247, 249n1 Biology, 20, 29, 30, 34, 60, 81, 84,
Animism, 4, 11, 17, 122, 126–130, 111, 112, 114, 165, 185
135, 140, 147 Bird-David, Nurit, 17, 126, 127, 130,
Astuti, Rita, 31, 66, 230, 247 133, 187, 197, 199–201, 215
1
Note: Page number followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56642-3
256 INDEX
Birth Conklin, Beth, 7, 29, 30, 32–34, 58,

biological, 42, 44, 58–60, 69, 77 66, 67, 78
practices of, 61, 63 Consciousness, 7, 8, 21, 81, 105, 131,
Bloch, Maurice, 5, 63, 64, 66, 81, 140, 183, 185–187, 189,
223, 225–228, 230, 233, 237 191–193, 196–200, 206, 209,
Body, 2, 16–22, 30, 59, 95, 122, 155, 213–215, 217n7
183, 187–192, 224 Consubstantial, 18, 108–110, 116
Brain death, 79, 185–187, 189–191, Course, Magnus, 2, 223, 233–238,
202, 214, 216n3, 216n4 248, 249
Brightman, Robert, 129 Couvade, 63
Britain, 42, 49, 122, 137, 155, 159, Cree
188, 190, 212, 231, 247, 250n8 Mistassini, 122
Buch, Elana, 153, 160, 167, 170–175, Waskaganish, 122, 128, 134
178, 179 Waswanipi, 122, 126, 127
Wemindji, 122, 123, 128
Cresswell, Tim, 18, 95, 96, 115, 117n3
C Cross-cultural comparison, 11, 12, 44,
Calendrical time, 59, 71, 86 179, 225
California, United States, 192 Cuernavaca, Mexico, 153, 176
Canada, 42, 44, 122, 137, 188, 190
Carsten, Janet, 17, 32, 83–85, 244
Cartesian dualism, 202, 214 D
Cemetery, 230, 235, 247 Daniel, E. Valentine, 93, 101–107,
British, 232 116, 116n2, 117n3, 160
Charles, Nickie, 142, 143 Davies, Charlotte, 142, 143
Chicago, United States, 153, 167, Death
170, 174 biological, 204, 231, 247
Child cyclical notions of, 222
notion of, 60, 72 definitions of, 213, 216n4, 226
socialisation of, 75, 76 enduring view of, 226–233
Childhood non-punctual view of, 228
developmental models of, 77–79 processual notions of, 222
disability in, 59, 77 punctual view of, 226–233
Children social, 185, 204
as chattel, 73, 74 Decline, 22, 152, 153, 155–157, 159,
as cherubs, 73 166–176, 211, 212, 214
as divine, 64 Decrepitude, 156, 157, 159, 166–176
Christoffersen-Deb, Astrid, 58, 60, Delaney, Carol, 81, 82
69, 70 Dementia, 21, 185, 186, 204–215, 217n8
Citizenship, 16 Dependency, 157, 166–176
Companion animals, 21, 144, 146 Developmental psychology, 71
Conception Dividual, 8–10, 15, 16, 103, 161,
egg and sperm model of, 20, 31, 162, 171, 179, 228
34, 53n1 The Dreaming, 32, 108
models of, 19, 30, 53n1 Dumont, Louis, 5
INDEX
257
E G
Eating, 17, 33, 36, 59, 81–85, 102, Gammeltoft, Tine, 35, 45, 46
108, 129, 164, 165, 172, 173, Geertz, Cifford, 7, 109
175, 211, 229 Gender, 9, 74, 75, 86, 92, 111,
Ecuador, 44, 48–50, 61, 122, 139, 248 112, 147, 153, 160,
Embodied care, 172 165, 170, 176,
Embodied relationality, 107, 109, 225, 241
110, 116 Georges, Eugenia, 39, 42–45
Embodiment, 22, 30, 51, 107–110, Gerontocracy, 73
179, 186, 202, 203, 210–214 Gestation, see Pregnancy
Embryo, 20, 29, 32, 37, 43, 60, 64 Glaskin, Katie, 83, 93, 107–110, 116,
Epistemology, 17, 112, 122, 126, 222, 225
141, 199 Gottlieb, Alma, 2, 58, 61, 64, 65, 71,
Erectile dysfunction, 176, 177 72, 80
Ethnographic present, 11–16 Greece, rural, 250n8
Grenier, Amanda, 156–158
Guangzhou, China, 212, 213
F Gupta, Akhil,
Feeding, 17, 50, 59, 81–85, 155, 163, 80, 81, 94, 228
200, 244, 245, 249
the dead, 223, 226, 243–247
Feit, Harvey, 123, 126–128 H
Feminist scholarship, 51 Haddow, Gillian, 186, 188, 202–204,
Foetal 215n2, 217n5
development, 30, 34, 35, 38, 40, 52 Hallam, Elizabeth,
personhood, 31, 39–52, 70 222, 231, 232, 247
rights, 31, 38, 49, 52 Hallowell, A. I., 122–125, 130,
subjectivity, 38, 42, 44 133–135, 137
surgery, 41, 42 Hanoi, Vietnam, 35, 45, 46
ultrasound, 31 Harris, Grace, 6, 7
Foetus, 20, 29, 31, 33, 35–38, 40–42, Hertz, Robert, 224–226
44–47, 49–52, 53n3, 70, 77, Hockey, Jenny, 18, 151, 159,
107, 189 222, 231
as ambigious or liminal being, 43 Holbraad, Martin, 125, 127
Food, 17, 31–33, 36, 46, 81, 83–85, Home care workers, 171, 172,
104, 112, 124, 127, 139, 145, 174, 175
155, 161, 164, 165, 171, 198, Howarth, Glennys, 252
234, 243–247 Huaorani, Ecuador, 60, 61, 63, 86
4-D imaging, 21 Human-animal relations, 122, 130,
Fourth age, 153, 156–159, 178 141–146
France, 53n4 Human exceptionalism,
Francis, Doris, 232 122, 126, 147
Friendship, 208, 234–236 Hunting, 32, 122–124, 126–130,
Funeral oratory, 223, 233–238 133, 136, 142, 239
258 INDEX
I Kellaher, Leonie, 251

Ikels, Charlotte, 212, 213 Kinship
India, 8, 9, 14, 93, 101–107, 117n3, genealogical model, 111, 113
130, 155, 160–166, 217n8, regenerative model, 111, 113
222, 228 Kontos, Pia, 209, 211, 215
Individual, 4–10, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22n1, Kuṇam, 101, 104–106
31–35, 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 71, 72,
75, 78, 80, 81, 86, 92, 94, 95,
102, 104, 105, 108, 109, 142, L
153, 157–160, 162–164, 167–170, LaFontaine, Jean, 4–6, 22n1
178, 185, 189, 191, 192, 197, Lahu, southwest China, 72, 80
199, 201, 202, 205, 209, 210, Lamb, Sarah, 151, 153, 155, 157,
213–215, 223, 225, 227, 228, 160–167, 170, 176, 178, 179,
231, 233, 239–241, 250n6 179n3, 228, 229, 249
Individualism, 5, 22n1, 34 Lancy, David, 58, 73, 74, 87n1
Infant, 2, 15, 20, 29, 57, 58, 64–67, Landsman, Gail, 71, 77–80, 86
69–71, 77–82 Later life, see Older age
Ingold, Tim, 12, 13, 17, 94, 127, Leach, James, 10, 93, 110–114, 116
130–132, 134, 137–139, 146 Life course
Israel, 31, 35–38, 52, 122, 143 biological explanatory models of, 30
Israeli, Tal, 187, 197, 199–201, 215 linear development, 20, 29
Ivry, Tsipy, 12, 30, 35–38, 53n3 perspective, 18
Lock, Margaret, 21, 186–192, 198,
199, 207
J Losing the self, 214
Japan, 31, 35–38, 44, 52, 83, 84, 86,
186–192, 215n2, 216n3, 216n4
Jāti, 101–107, 116n2 M
Jawi, Western Australia, 83, 93, Malay, Langkawi, 32, 83, 84, 86
107–110, 114, 116 Malaysia, 83, 102
Jivaroan Achuar, Ecuador, 122, 139 Mangaldihi, West Bengal, 155,
Jordan, Bridgette, 57, 61–63 160–167, 170, 179, 179n3
Mapuche, Chile, 2, 223, 233–238, 248
Masculinity, 176–178
K Mate, 169, 178
Kaapu, 112, 113 Maternal responsibility, 37, 45, 77
Kaberry, Phyllis, 32 Maternal rights, 49
Kangersuatsiaq Inuit, Northwest Mauss, Marcel, 4, 5
Greenland, 223, 238–243, 250n5 Māyā, 160–166, 170, 178, 179,
Kaufman, Sharon, 21, 51, 70, 185, 179n3, 229, 249
187, 189, 192–198, 201, 206, Maya, Yucatan, 61
207, 215 Melanesia, 32, 112, 238
INDEX
259
Metamorphosis, 22, 81, 87, 134 O

Mind-body dualism, 127 Obentō s, 83, 84
Mitchell, Lisa, 39, 42–45 Ojibwa, Berens River, Canada,
Morgan, Lynn, 7, 12, 13, 20, 29, 30, 122–125, 130, 133–135
32–34, 42, 44, 47–51, 58, 66–70, Older age, 3, 22, 151–179
78, 82, 187, 189 definitions of, 152, 154–156, 179
Mortuary rituals, 4, 224, 225, Ontology, 20, 110, 122–126,
244, 245 130–132, 134–136, 139, 141,
Motherhood, 44, 77, 78, 86 146, 147, 199
Muamba, Fabrice, 183–185 Organ donation, 22, 188, 190–192,
Multispecies ethnography, 202, 214
122, 141–147 of eyes, 203, 215n2
Musharbash, Yasmine, 75 Organ transplantation, 185, 187–192,
213, 214, 216n3, 216n4
N
Name soul, 223, 226, 238–243 P
Naming, 59, 67, 81–85, 108, 228, Persistent or permanent vegetative
240, 243 state (PVS), 185, 192, 193,
Narrativity, 186, 201, 215, 248 196–201, 214
Nature-culture divide, 122 Person, 1, 29, 57, 92, 121, 153, 184,
Neonate, 57, 58, 63, 64, 67–69, 71, 221–249
77, 85, 86 Personhood
Neontocracy, 73, 74, 87n1 ambiguous, 34, 46, 48, 50
Neophytou, Georgina, 251 attribution of, 17, 21, 42, 57, 59,
Netherlands, 61, 62, 250n8 63, 64, 82, 86, 121, 132, 197
Newborn, 2, 20, 21, 50, 57, 59, centrifugal, 233–238
60, 62, 64, 66–70, 81, 82, delayed, 57, 86, 87
240–242 diminished, 77, 78, 172, 186
New kinship studies, 17, 53n1 endangered, 185, 187, 192, 193,
New York State, United States, 77 196, 202, 210, 213, 215
Niue, South Pacific, 153, 160, 167–170 flexible, 146
Non-human people, 20, 92, 123, loss of, 206
128, 136 moral significance, 4, 100
Non-Western, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 21, 32, moral value, 7, 99, 175, 176
74, 109, 117n3 non-linear model of, 30, 44
North American, 6, 13, 33, 34, 39, permanent, 157, 178
45, 50, 76, 78, 79, 167, 170, posthumous, 231
179, 189, 191, 208, 228 precarious, 77–79
North of England, 3, 153, 154, 159, provisional, 46, 52, 78
204, 231 relational model of, 162, 214, 215
Nuttall, Mark, 4, 5, 223, 228, uncommon, 59, 192–196, 213
239–243, 249, 250n6 unfinished, 20, 48, 50, 86, 236
260 INDEX
Perspectivism, 67, 122, 138–141 S

Pets, see Companion animals Sasak, Lombok, Indonesia,
Phillipson, Chris, 156–158 223, 243–247
Place Scotland, 203, 217n5, 250n8
agentive qualities of, 97 Scott, Colin, 123–125, 128, 132, 135,
embodied qualities of, 92, 97, 116 136, 147
Placenames, 98–100 Self, 5–9, 43, 81, 109, 152, 157,
Potentiality, 17, 30, 45, 51, 69, 97, 160, 170, 195, 202, 204–207,
135, 142 209, 211–213, 215, 228,
Power, 16, 41, 51, 68, 70, 91, 95, 232, 248
100, 113, 129, 131, 133, 134, Self-determination, 171
136, 158, 164, 167 Sexuality, 47, 153, 154, 165, 176–178
Pregnancy Shir-Vertesh, Dafna,
cultural scripts, 35, 152 21, 143–146, 148
environmental model of, 36 Sociocentric, 5, 9, 109
genetic fatalism model of, 36, 38 Sonographers, 39, 40, 42, 43
lived experience, 34 Sora, eastern India, 14, 15, 222, 223,
Premature babies, 248 228, 229, 248, 249, 249n1
Prenatal testing, 36, 40 Soul, 2, 48, 64, 68, 126, 129, 138,
Preston, Richard, 123, 128, 134 139, 161, 163, 191, 225,
Processual, 16, 30, 51, 64, 85, 221, 227–230, 234, 238–243
226, 230, 248 South Yorkshire, north of England,
Putti, 101, 105, 106 153, 204, 231
PVS, see Persistent or permanent Spirit possession, 228
vegetative state Spouses, 99, 134, 152, 173, 210, 231,
232, 247
Strathern, Marilyn, 8, 9
R Sub-Arctic, 122, 123, 128, 137, 151
Rasmussen, Susan, 20, 153, 155, 178 Subjectivity, 38, 42–45, 67, 69, 70,
Recognition, politics of, 206–210, 214 96, 140–142, 186, 187, 193,
Regeneration, 113, 116, 222, 228 194, 200, 202
Reincarnation, 21, 59, 64, 80–81, 86, Substance
87, 222, 223, 228, 238–243 acquiring, 84
Reite, Papua New Guinea, 93, blood, 17, 33, 83, 109
111–114, 116 bones, 17, 109
Relatedness, 9, 17, 18, 20, 59, 75, 83, breastmilk, 17, 33
84, 92, 109, 147, 243–247 compatibility, 104–106
Relationality, 16–22, 47, 116, 122, exchange of; eating, 17, 33, 83;
179, 248 feeding, 17, 83, 162, 244; sexual
Relations, 7, 31, 64, 91, 122, intercourse, 33; sleeping, 33
126–130, 141, 158, 186, 222 food, 17
Rights, 21, 31, 38, 39, 42, 49–52, 60, genes, 17
70, 73, 81, 92, 98, 99, 116, 125, hair, 109
136, 144, 188 menstrual blood, 31
Rival, Laura, 61, 63 rice, 83, 244, 246
INDEX
261
semen, 33 U
soil, 22, 46, 101, 104–106 Unborn, 30, 34–36, 40–45, 47–52,
sweat, 33, 110 57, 70, 108
vaginal fluid, 33 Unconsciousness, 169, 194, 197
Sweden, 61, 62 Ur, 101–106
T V
Tamil Nadu, south India, Vezo, Madagascar, 31, 66, 68, 230,
101–107, 160 247, 248, 250n4
Taylor, Anne Christine, 139, 148n2 Viability, 58, 60, 69, 70
Taylor, Janelle, 21, 185, 207–210, Vilaça, Aparecida, 67, 68, 138,
212, 215 140, 148n2
Technologies, 21, 29, 31, 39–46, Vitebsky, Piers, 14, 15, 19, 20, 222,
50–52, 58, 60, 61, 73, 77, 184, 223, 228–230, 249
189, 193, 196, 199, 250n2 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 138–141
Telle, Kari, 223, 243–246, 250n7
Temporality, 51, 79, 80, 86
Third age, 153, 156, 157, 159 W
Time, 3, 4, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20–22, Wari’, Bolivia, 30, 32–34, 58, 59, 66, 67
29, 30, 32–34, 40–42, 44, 47, Warlpiri, Yuendumu, Australia, 75, 76
49, 51, 52, 57–61, 64–66, 69, Warungka, 75, 76
71, 72, 75, 78–81, 84–87, 93, Weiner, Noga, 58, 69, 77, 86
95, 98, 101, 102, 104, 107, Wentzell, Emily, 153, 176–178
110, 111, 116n1, 121, 123, Western, 2, 11–16, 29, 57, 93,
128, 129, 144, 147, 151, 98–101, 121, 130–136, 152,
154–159, 163, 165, 168–171, 186, 222
174, 175, 183, 185, 190, 191, Western Apache, Arizona, 93, 98–101,
196, 197, 200, 205, 212, 213, 114, 115, 116n1
216n4, 217n6, 222, 224, 226, Willerslev, Rane, 126, 127, 129, 130,
227, 229, 232, 234, 235, 239, 134, 135
242, 245, 248 Wrugbe, 2, 64–66, 81
Transience, 157, 167
Transition, 19–21, 40, 42, 95,
145, 152, 153, 155, 166–176, Y
178, 179, 222, 245, 246, Yukaghir, Siberia, 122, 129, 130,
248, 249n1 134, 135
Tuan, Yi-Fu, 95
Tuareg, Niger,
153, 155, 156 Z
Turkey, rural, 81 Zafimaniry, Madagascar, 63, 64

Cathrine Degnen - Cross-Cultural Perspectives On Personhood and The Life Course-Palgrave Macmillan (2018)

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CROSS-CULTURAL

ISBN 978-1-137-56641-6 ISBN 978-1-137-56642-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935927

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover Image © David May / EyeEm

Printed on acid-free paper

As I write in Chaps. 1 and 6, it was my doctoral research in Dodworth,

1 The Making of Personhood 1

2 Making Babies and Being Pregnant: The Debated

3 Personhood, Birth, Babies, and Children 57

Disabled Infants, Precarious Personhood, and Developmental

4 Place and Personhood 91

5 Human People and Other-Than-Human People 121

6 Older Age and Personhood 151

7 Endangered Forms of Personhood 183

8 Dismantling the Person?: Death and Personhood 221

The Making of Personhood

Introduction: Personhood as a Question

© The Author(s) 2018 1

To what extent does place shape personhood? Can personhood be “lost”? Is

when personhood is attributed, certainty of what the essential characteris-

Personhood and Anthropology

also LaFontaine 1985, 125) and thus worthy of anthropological attention

The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less

Evident in these accounts then is the extent to which Western notions

Smith (2012) argues that a commitment to this distinction in the

Three Dilemmas: Comparison, the Notion

By drawing extensively from the anthropological literature, this book tells

Rodney Needham that “There is only one method in social anthropology,

“Western” and “non-Western” are indeed highly problematic terms,

For those of us who call ourselves academics and intellectuals, however,

I am entirely aligned in this regard with Ingold. I am discomforted by

strips away internal differentiation and presents instead a narrative that is

Indeed, Vitebsky’s reflections from 1992 were highly prescient. Just as

tion of the relationship between citizenship and personhood, for instance,

Personhood and Perspectives on Relationality,

In the chapters that follow, I examine the ways in which personhood is

of ethnographic work to reflect on how personhood is firstly not an enti-

broader transformations in socio-cultural contexts. Indeed, sociologists

This is a description which I think is equally applicable to the notion of the

reincarnation, explored in both Chaps. 3 and 8, and to what extent new-

Johnson-Hanks, Jennifer. 2002. On the Limits of Life Stages in Ethnography:

Mauss, Marcel. 1985(1938). A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of

Taylor, Janelle. 2008. On Recognition, Caring, and Dementia. Medical

Making Babies and Being Pregnant:

© The Author(s) 2018 29

divide what could be otherwise organised as one topic. Where possible, I

pregnancy for women in Japan and Israel is particularly insightful in this

Cultural Variation in Ideas About Conception

Conception—by which I mean the generation of potential new human

The significance of maternal blood is mirrored in Janet Carsten’s (1992)

maintained through exchanges of substance between individual bodies”,

In the Wari’ view, “gestation is a social process that involves multiple

“the relative value ascribed, respectively, to social ties and autonomous

Pregnancy and Personhood

the idea of effort (gambaru) as a key to achievement and self-cultivation

The gestating Japanese foetus is usually described as a “baby”, and

fetus remains an ambiguous being throughout gestation. Only after the

“Seeing the Baby”: The Emergence of Ultrasound

The Canadian scene described above is one familiar to millions of

personality characteristics were revealed by the ultrasound, and they “do

the women themselves (something that rarely comes up in the literature

Can Beginnings of Life Be Relationships Instead

1 The Making of Personhood 1

2 Making Babies and Being Pregnant: The Debated

3 Personhood, Birth, Babies, and Children 57

4 Place and Personhood 91

5 Human People and Other-Than-Human People 121

6 Older Age and Personhood 151

7 Endangered Forms of Personhood 183

8 Dismantling the Person?: Death and Personhood 221