Carl Smith From Dividual and Individual Subjects
Carl Smith From Dividual and Individual Subjects
Carl Smith From Dividual and Individual Subjects
INTRODUCTION
One of the more pervasive recurring themes in the anthropological literature is
summed up in the title to Shweder & Bournes 1984 paper: Does the Concept of
the Person Vary Cross-Culturally? From my reading, it appears that by the time of
this papers publication, there was already widespread agreement among anthropo-
logists that the answer is unequivocally yes. Yet the literature dedicated to the
debate continues to grow as participants critique and challenge the myriad of ways
in which different conceptualisations have been represented.
Dumonts comparison of Western and Indian conceptions of personhood
serves as an important landmark in the formulation of this debate (Dumont 1980;
Ram 1994). Dumont initially defined the difference in terms of the hierarchical per-
son of India and the egalitarian Westerner, later reframing it in terms of holism
and individualism (Robbins 2002: 190). Shweder and Bourne discuss the differences
in terms of sociocentric and egocentric persons (1984: 1278; Mageo 1995: 283).
Robbins (2002) argues that in the Melanesian context, at least, it is useful to think
of the contrast between relationalism and individualism. In other contexts, the
Japanese have been characterised as groupist in contradistinction to the Western
individual (see, e.g. Ram 1994: 150; Sugimoto 2003)with this characterisation
later extended to others of the so-called Asian Tigers. Busby (1997) observes that a
recurring problem in this debate is that in most cases (as in all of the cases cited
1998; Hess 2006)and accepting Englund and Leachs claim that all persons are
both dividual and individual to some degreemy aim is to attempt to further
clarify these issues by introducing and developing an idea recently formulated by
Charles Taylor in A Secular Age (2007)specifically, his distinction between porous
and buffered selves. Indeed, there are very strong parallels between the philosophy
of the self that Taylor outlines in his earlier workmost systematically in Sources of
the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)and, for example, LiPumas
discussion of the problematic distinction between modern and Melanesian persons.
We must note, though, that LiPuma (and others) focuses on the conceptualisa-
tion of personhood, while Taylors is a theory of the self. As Ruth Abbey observes,
Taylor does not explicitly differentiate between terms such as person, self, subject or
selfhood, identity and personhood (2000: 57). And, as Sokefeld observes, these
terms are frequently mixed up in the debate with some authors attempting to keep
them strictly apart (1999: 4278). Despite his doubts about the feasibility of any
strict distinction (p. 428), though, Sokefeld attempts to sustain a distinction
between self and identity. Identities, he argues, are plural (p. 419), conflicting
(p. 420), context dependent, competing, antagonistic and intersecting (p. 423). The
self, in this framework, is a narrative construct that manages these plural identities,
lending coherence and continuity to the persons experiences (p. 424). Sokefelds
self is a product of agency, which is an integral ability of human beings (p. 424;
cf. Taylor 1985: 263). This self is thus also dynamic and changeable, although
relatively more stable than the contextual identities (p. 426). In contrast, Taylor
defines the self as the narrative identity that lends coherence and consistency to the
diversity of ones lived experience (1989: 47).
As I am attempting to further develop the concept of porosity in order to shed
light on the debate within the anthropological literature, I will maintain Taylors
terminology of self and selfhood and leave the issue of its relationship to person
and personhood for others. Hence, when LiPuma argues that In all cultures there
exist both individual and dividual modalities or aspects of personhood (1998:
56), these can be reformulated as modalities of self-identity without, I think, chang-
ing LiPumas meaning. In any case, suffice to say that the terms person and self are
interchangeable for the purposes of the present argument.
The central thrust of Busbys criticism (mentioned above) of the ethnographers
tendency to differentiate between Western and Other modes of personhood is
also widespread (e.g. Ram 1994; LiPuma 1998). From a broader perspective, Spiro
critiques the ethnographic assumption that there is something rather peculiar about
the Western conception of the self in the context of world cultures (1993: 107). In
a similar vein, Sokefeld suggests that there is an ethnocentric othering in the con-
tention that Westerners are selves, while others are not and argues that the self
should be taken as a universal like culture, without thereby predicating much about
the contents of the self (or culture) (1999: 429).
As we will see, Taylors theory of the self as a narrated identity satisfies all of
these criteria. However, remaining highly cognisant of the artificiality of any strict
distinctions, I have argued elsewhere (2010: Chapters 2 and 3) that there is heuristic
value in making a clear (albeit not rigid) distinction between self-identity and
human subjectivity, and in treating both as universals like culture, which are
psycho-social constructs: self-forming, self-constituting social institutions. Space
does not allow me to reproduce that argument in its entirety here; for present pur-
poses, it will suffice to say that this distinction creates a place for the unconscious,
which is absent in Taylors account of the self.
Hence, I will begin by roughly summarising the ways in which the divid-
ual individual distinction has been presented in the anthropological literature. I will
then briefly outline Taylors theory of the self before moving on to compare his dis-
tinction between porous and buffered selves to the dividual individual concepts,
focusing on commonalities rather than differences between the pairs. Having done
so, I will then argue that the human subject is essentially porous and that this
porosity is fundamental to the capacity of the human subject to constitute itself as
this or that sort of person and to identify itself as this or that sort of self.
composite nature that renders the self dividual divisible, which by extension means
that we are dealing with both a static characteristicas in ones connection to a
particular placeand a highly dynamic characteristic: the self changes according
to the changing social situation in which the immediate face-to-face relationships
ebb and flow in the normal course of everyday life.
Here, then, arises an interesting and important tension, for the dividual is seen
to be thoroughly embedded, and inextricably engaged, in relationships with particu-
lar places and particular othersand yet in the immediate interactions of changing
situations the person is understood to change in accordance with movements
through places and relationships. To put this in concrete terms, a man is effectively
a different person when performing the culturally inscribed role of son-in-law than
when, for example, performing the role of a father or a brother. On this conceptu-
alisation, we do not have a single coherent person performing different roles as
demanded by a changing context, but rather a different person differently consti-
tuted in each of his or her interactions with others. As Spiro notes, such a condi-
tion (according to modern psychiatry) is a sign of a rather severe psychopathology
(1993: 109). When put like this, it is hardly surprising that Ram is offended when
the Indian person is reduced to this fickle fractal dividual.
Ram (1994: 1305) argues that Dumont went astray when he endeavoured to
criticise the Western conception of the individual by contrasting it in a binary fash-
ion to Indian conceptions of selfhood, despite his careful qualification that he was
analysing conceptions rather than manifestations of selfhood. LiPuma argues that
fundamental to the problematic comparison of Western individuals and Melanesian
persons in the ethnographic literature is that concrete Melanesian persons are con-
trasted to abstract concepts of the Western individual (1998: 57ff.). Sokefeld notes
that the understanding of the Western self involved in such comparisons is mostly
derived from (selected) Western written philosophical traditions and not from
analysis of the experiences of people in the West (1999: 418 n3).
Furthermore, Ram argues that when anthropologists adopt an exclusively com-
parative approach they compound Dumonts initial error by reproducing and
entrenching the dichotomous polarities through which the Indian (and, more gener-
ally, non-Western) subject is rendered more and more radically other to the Wes-
tern subject (Ram 1994). LiPuma concurs, arguing that the defense of the
otherness of the Others led ethnographers to ignore precisely those conditions of
encompassment [or sameness] that made their own enterprise possible (1998: 55).
So we have a compounding methodological problem here: the tendency to compare
concrete persons to idealised conceptions of persons, combined with a tendency to
focus on differences and ignore commonalities.
Although his terminology differs somewhat, and although he conducts philo-
sophical rather than ethnographic research, Taylor formulates such a corrective
through analysis of the lived experience of people in the West (2007: 45). His con-
certed efforts to offer correctives to this problematic are motivated by a desire to
create space for religious interpretations of personhood and to reintegrate them into
the human sciences from which they have been evacuated by the hegemony of
exclusive secular humanism (2007: 22, 29). At the same time, like Dumont, he
traces the origins of this problematic conceptualisation of individualism to particu-
lar Christian theological interpretations (Taylor 1989, 2007; Dumont 1965; cf. Rob-
bins 2002). Tracing the historical origins of the concept of the individual in the
history of Western thought is beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say here
that between Augustine (354430) and Aquinas (12251274) an idea developed that
the individual person is animated by an indivisible and inalienable soul created by
God. This conception of individuality was consolidated in the wake of the Protes-
tant Reformation, as the Churchs mediation between the Christian subject and
God was rejected in favour of a direct unmediated relationship between the individ-
ual and God. Following subsequent social and theological developments, the con-
cept of the individual developed three key aspects: the capitalist notion of
individual ownership, the Christian notion of the soul in individual relationship
with God, and the Western psychological value that every person has a core self
(Hess 2006: 288; see also Taylor 1989, 1991).
Hess observes that the Christian notion of the soul strongly influenced the
development of the ideas of individual ownership and the core self and then pro-
ceeds to point out, following Mosko, that the Christian individual is really a divid-
ual. That is, by entering into an exchange relationship with God one becomes part
of Him, and He becomes part of oneself (2006: 294). Extending this analysis, we
might suggest that the individual ownership of property and goods in consumerist
society also implies a fractal type of constitutive relationship, wherein the modern
consumer can constitute him herself through the ownership of particular goods and
propertiesand can reconstitute him herself through disposing of old goods and
replacing them with new ones.3 The modern consumer also frequently compart-
mentalises public and private, professional and family, work and leisure, front and
backstage, to use Goffmans famous dramaturgical analogy. The persona performed,
the roles adopted is are context dependenta contextual self, so to speak (cf. Fou-
cault 1988). In this sense, then, the modern self is every bit as fluid and dynamic as
the (supposedly) traditional dividuals of Melanesia: someone with permeable
boundaries that allow transactions with (Ram 1994: 145) objects, properties and
others to constitute and reconstitute the self in changing relationships and contexts.
As LiPuma puts it: the ideology of the Western person as fully individual only par-
tially conceals the reality that Western persons are interdependent, defined in rela-
tion to others, depend on others for knowledge about themselves, grasp power as
the ability to do and to act, grow as the beneficiary of others actions and so forth
(1998: 60).
This is not sufficient in itself, though, to overturn the psychological notion of
the core self. For instance, Francois Dubet (1994) offers a compelling formulation
in which the social subject is depicted as the backstage director of the performance
of the onstage actorthe stable core from which the social self can take a stance as
it performs various roles in changing contexts and different relationships. This
DIALOGICAL SELF
Taylor argues that the self is constructed through a narrative that answers the question
Who am I? along three axes: temporal, spatial and moral (or social) (1989: 47ff.). On
the first of these axes, drawing on the work of Ricoeur and MacIntyre, he argues that
we need to locate ourselves within our own history and construct a narrative to
explain how we came to be who we are today. In part, the question who am I? raises
the question am I the same being through across time? Am I the same today as I was
twenty years ago? If not, what changed and how did it change? Will I be the same
twenty years from now? (MacIntyre 1984: 201) To understand who I am, I need to
understand how I got here, where I have come from, and what happened along the
way. For Taylor, this is a temporal orientation analogous to the need to locate oneself
in space in order to travel from here to therein order to get to where I want to go in
my life, I need this temporal location, this sense of where I am in time, as well as in
space (the second axis, which is unavoidable for embodied agents).
Along the third axis, Taylor insists that this narrative is always constructed in
dialogue with othersat first with significant others (a la Mead) but later with the
more generalised others of the community and society of which we are a part. In
this sense, the narrative answers the question Who are you? which is invoked by
the fact that we are social beings, being-with-others (1989: 29, 35). This is but
onealbeit a crucial oneof the challenges that Taylor poses to the modern
conception of the atomistic individual: we cannot understand who we are, indeed
cannot be who we are, except in dialogue with others. And again, we need to know
where we stand in relation to others in order to know who we are, where we are at,
and how to get where we want to go.5
This becomes clearer when we add that for Taylor, this self-identity amounts to
an orientation to the good (1989: 32ff.). Importantly, this is not a universal
Goodnot one good that applies for everyone (not a Platonic Good, or an
By contrast, in the enchanted world, the meaning is already there in the object agent, it
is there quite independently of us; it would be there even if we didnt exist.(2007: 33)
And this meaning that exists already outside of us, prior to contact can take
us over, we can fall into its field of force. It comes on us from outside (2007: 34).
In this sense, Taylor is clearly talking about a self with permeable boundaries in
the sense associated with dividual persons.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to Joel Kahn, Chris Eipper, Raelene Wilding, Tania Lewis, Nicola
Henry and Nesam McMillan for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this
paper. I must also acknowledge that this is a much better paper as a result of hav-
ing addressed the critical commentary provided by TAJAs anonymous reviewers
(although I remain somewhat bewildered by some of their comments).
NOTES
1 It is perhaps necessary to acknowledge that there are, of course, numerous competing
conceptualisations of the so-called Western individual, and thus, Dumonts autonomous
individual appears to be something of a strawman. My defence for continuing to employ
this strawman is twofold: first, my broader research objective is to articulate a better
understanding of the person self subject, and second, the (mis)conceptualisation that
I am arguing against in this particular discussion bears a striking resemblance to the
rationalist and intellectualist conception that phenomenology sets itself against, as well
as to the rationalist patriarchal conceptualisation which animates Western feminism and
the rationalist instrumentalist conceptualisation that fuels Marxist critique. In short, while
I concede that it is a strawman with little basis in empirical evidence, it nevertheless has
accumulated significant discursive substance and thus holds an important place in the
modern social imaginary (Taylor 2004). It must, therefore, be addressed if we are to
formulate a viable corrective.
2 Joel Robbins (2002: 203), however, identifies precisely such a trend of increasing individ-
ualism in the development of Christianity among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea,
based on empirical ethnographic research rather than meta-theory. Interestingly, he does
present it as a somewhat inevitable result of the cultural conflict between the indigenous
relational ontology and the exotic individualistic theology. Importantly, his analysis
reveals something more like hybridity or syncretism (see Stewart 1999), where both the
ontology and the theology are changed through their confrontation rather than a
unilinear cultural displacement in which the relational culture disappears.
3 According to Edelman and Haugerud (2005: 32), Consumers can use commodities to
create their individual and collective identities Much of the expanding ethnographic
analysis of consumption emphasize(s) the agency, subjective experiences, and meanings
attributed by consumers to commodities (cf. Barthel 1992: 138; Lehtonen 2003; Noble
2004; Smart 2010: 5).
4 This holds true equally for both the conception of the self and the conception of the subject,
and in much the same way, which problematises, or at least challenges any effort to sustain a
sharp distinction between self and subject, as should become clear as we proceed.
5 Importantly, while Taylor implicitly embraces the Socratic dictum Know thyself (see
1989: 130ff.; cf. Taylor 1985: 2612)and contends that explicitly articulating such
knowledge is in many ways life enhancing, important to maximising the fullness of
lifehe also recognises that knowledge of where one stands along the three axes outlined
above is not necessarily explicit. It need not be linguistically articulated or conceptually
formulated, but is frequently tacit or implicit knowledge, expressed through practice or
action. In such cases then, the third-person observer (such as the ethnographer) is
frequently in a better position to lucidly formulate the subjects position than is the
subject him or herself.
6 Except, of course, the occasionally documented wild child, raised in seclusion, or in
non-human company. But they do not count as selves or persons precisely for the reason
that they have not been socialised to conduct themselves in accordance with any cultural
conception of self or person-hood.
7 Recognising that there are numerous potential objections to extending this into current
anthropological debates, there may be heuristic value in replacing the modern:tradition
dichotomy with a disenchanted:enchanted continuum. Some objections might be met by
emphasising that the modern world is not (and has never been) entirely disenchanted
(which is Taylors central argument in A Secular Age), and others by recognising that this
reformulation allows that a society can continue to live in an enchanted world even while
adopting many of the structures, institutions and practices associated with modernisation.
At the same time, however, we must recognise that not all (cultural) worlds are enchanted
in the same way, or to the same extent. The enchanted:disenchanted distinction offers
possibilities for better describing the ways in which different cultures experience this
porosity. That is, in some societiesand arguably for some people in all societieslived
experience does include the presence of spirits, gods, etc., as well as the possibility of
being possessed by them. These might be accurately described as enchanted cultures
societies or peoples.
8 We must also be wary of another common trap in comparative research: viewing all
members of a given culture as perfect representatives of that culture, which is of course,
not ever the case. (Lind 2011: 19).
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