The Anthropology of Personhood

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In this course, students will familiarize themselves with the anthropology of personhood. The course describes different ethnographic perspectives on the construction of personality and the often-fractious relationship between anthropology and psychology.

This course analyzes the creation of personhood cross-culturally, focusing on themes like the body, childhood and education, initiation rituals, modern individualism, marriage, play, and power relations. It describes the importance of the works of Melville Herskovits, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson in their pioneering work on Culture and Personality, and how it continues to have an influence today. The course familiarizes students with the current debates on the anthropology of personhood with an emphasis on ethnographic contemporary data.

Bateson, Gregory. 1936. Naven: A survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter XIII. Ethological contrast, competition and Schismogenesis”. Pp171-197.

Csordas, Thomas. 2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 2 “Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology”, pp. 58-88.

Dumont Louis. 1999, “A Modified View of our Origins: The Christian Beginnings of

modern Individualism”, in in M. Carrithers, S. Collin, and S. Lukes (eds) The Category of the Person; Anthropology, Philosophy, History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp.93-122.

Gottlieb, Alma. 1998, “Do Infants Have Religion? The Spiritual Lives of Beng babies” in American Anthropologist, 100(1), pages 122-135.

Herskovits, Melville. J. 1941, “The significance of Africanism” in The Myth of the Negro Past, New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Pp.1-32.

Iturriaga, Eugenia. 2024. “Key Aspects of Mexican ‘Blanquitud’, Nationalism, and Mestizaje”, in Beyond Mestizaje: Contemporary Debates on Race in Mexico. Edited by Tania Islas Weinstein and Milena Ang, The United States: Amherst College Press, pp. 43-64.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. “The Sorcerer and His Magic”. Pp. 167-85.

Luhrmann, Tanya. 2020. How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. “A God Who Responds”, pp. 136-155.

Mauss, Marcel. 2001. Socjologia I antropologia. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Kr. Część piąta i Część szósta. Pp.361-390 and 391-424.

Mead, Margaret. 1970. Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap. New York: The American Museum of Natural History. “Chapter 1. The Past: Posfigurative Cultures and Well-Known Forebears”, pp. 1-24.

Orbach, Susie. 1993. Hunger Strike: The Anorectic´s Struggle as a Metaphor of our Age. London: Routledge. Chapter 5. “Hunger Strike”. Pp. 78-95.

Strathern, Marilyn. 2016. Before and after Gender: Sexual Mythologies of Everyday Life. Chicago: HAU Books. Chapter 7. “Sex and the Concept of the Person”, pp. 175-245.

Wagner, Roy. 1991. “The Fractal Person.” In Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia, edited by Maurice Godelier and Marilyn Strathern, 159– 73. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Weber, Max. 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Illinois: The Falcon Wing Press. Charismatic Authority” and “The Routinization of Charisma”. Pp. 341-385.

At the end of the course, students will identify the main anthropological approaches to studying personhood. They will learn how to address the problem of the person ethnographically and will know the different methodologies to do so. Students will assess the importance of personhood in the construction of the body, illness, power, gender, and aesthetics.

Osoby, które ukończą przedmiot, potrafią posługiwać się wybranym językiem obcym na poziomie B2+ Europejskiego Systemu Opisu Kształcenia Językowego.

A final exam about one of the course topics, with a value of 90%. Participation in class and exposition of a relevant theme: 10%. Attendance is mandatory.