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Volume 3 Number 1
Fall 2008
| Personhood,
Self, Difference, and Dialogue (Commentary on Chaudhary) Susan Rasmussen University of Houston, USA |
pp. 31-54 |
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ABSTRACT.
The
“self,” or “person” is
an intriguing but challenging topic in the social sciences.
Relationships and
interactions among self/person, body, mind, and sociality are universal
cultural preoccupations, although these categories are not delineated
in
identical ways across cultures, or even within the same culture, and
they do
not remain the same over time. Local concepts of personhood or “self”
are
notoriously difficult to detach from the culture-bound analytical
classifications
and a priori assumptions of researchers. Chaudhary’s essay on
self-other
dynamics in India (Chaudhary, 2008) paves the way toward opening up new
theoretical spaces to explore the concept of person contextually and
dynamically, revealing more nuanced aspects of self/other negotiations
in
dialogical constructions. Here, the person or “self” emerges not as a
reified,
static attribute, but as part of a dynamic process. This commentary
takes up
Chaudhary’s article, exploring ways in which it resonates with
anthropological
discussions of personhood/self and more general theorizing on culture. |
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Keywords:
intersubjectivity,
interobjectivity,
family, nucleus
of self, dividual, Africa, Asia, Melanesia, Tuareg healing,
egocentric/sociocentric societies |
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