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    The Self and The Person in Contemporary Anthropology

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    Elijah Montefalco
    The document discusses definitions of self and person from an anthropological perspective. It begins by discussing the subfields of anthropology and how they study human adaptation and cultural diversity. It then examines definitions of self, discussing it as the totality of what makes up a person physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. The self is also described as having implicit and explicit aspects. Culture is discussed as influencing how individuals view relationships, personality traits, achievement, and emotions. The self is seen as embedded within culture and influenced by both independent and interdependent cultural constructs.

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    The Self and The Person in Contemporary Anthropology

    Uploaded by

    Elijah Montefalco
    3K views4 pages
    The document discusses definitions of self and person from an anthropological perspective. It begins by discussing the subfields of anthropology and how they study human adaptation and cultural diversity. It then examines definitions of self, discussing it as the totality of what makes up a person physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. The self is also described as having implicit and explicit aspects. Culture is discussed as influencing how individuals view relationships, personality traits, achievement, and emotions. The self is seen as embedded within culture and influenced by both independent and interdependent cultural constructs.

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    The Self and the Person in Contemporary Anthropology

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    The document discusses definitions of self and person from an anthropological perspective. It begins by discussing the subfields of anthropology and how they study human adaptation and cultural diversity. It then examines definitions of self, discussing it as the totality of what makes up a person physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. The self is also described as having implicit and explicit aspects. Culture is discussed as influencing how individuals view relationships, personality traits, achievement, and emotions. The self is seen as embedded within culture and influenced by both independent and interdependent cultural constructs.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    3K views4 pages

    The Self and The Person in Contemporary Anthropology

    Uploaded by

    Elijah Montefalco
    The document discusses definitions of self and person from an anthropological perspective. It begins by discussing the subfields of anthropology and how they study human adaptation and cultural diversity. It then examines definitions of self, discussing it as the totality of what makes up a person physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. The self is also described as having implicit and explicit aspects. Culture is discussed as influencing how individuals view relationships, personality traits, achievement, and emotions. The self is seen as embedded within culture and influenced by both independent and interdependent cultural constructs.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 4

    The Self and the Person in Contemporary Anthropology

    “Culture is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means


    of which people communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and
    attitudes toward life”. -Clifford Geertz, American Anthropologist

    Anthropology stemmed from the words Anthropos (human) and Logos (study) which
    means the study of people, past, and present. In a general sense, anthropology is
    concerned with understanding how

    COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Bayombong Campus

    DEGREE

    PROGRAM GE COURSE NO. GE SELF

    SPECIALIZATION COURSE TITLE UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

    YEAR LEVEL FIRST YEAR TIME FRAME 6 HRS WK NO. 6 IM NO. 1

    humans evolved and how they differ from one another in relation to culture.
    Anthropology is a very dynamic field, and anthropological literature offers several
    different definitions of “self”.

    I. Anthropology and Its Subdisciplines

    The academic discipline of anthropology, or “four-field” anthropology, studies human


    species and its immediate ancestors includes four main sub disciplines or subfields -
    sociocultural, archeological, biological and linguistic anthropology. Each sub
    discipline studies adaptation, the process which organisms cope with the
    environmental. Anthropology is a systematic exploration of human biological and
    cultural diversity.

    I.The Subdisciplines of Anthropology

    1.Cultural Anthropology

    Cultural anthropology is the study of human society and culture which describes,
    analyzes, interprets and explains social and cultural similarities and differences. It
    explores the diversity of the present and the past. Ethnography and ethnology are two
    different activities which can study and interpret cultural diversity.
    Ethnography requires fieldwork to collect data, often descriptive and specific to
    group. On the other hand, ethnology uses data collected by a series of researches,
    usually synthetic and comparative.

    2.Archeological Anthropology

    Archeological anthropology reconstructs, describes and interprets human behavior


    and cultural patterns through material remains. These materials remain such as plant,
    animal and ancient garbage provides stories about utilization and actions.

    3.Biological, or Physical Anthropology

    Biological, or Physical Anthropology focuses on these special interest, human


    evolution as revealed by the fossil, human genetics, human growth and development,
    human biological plasticity and the biology, evolution, behavior and social life of
    monkeys, apes and other nonhuman primates.

    4.Linguistic Anthropology

    Linguistic anthropology studies language in its social and cultural context across
    space and over time. Universal features of language are analyzed and association
    between language and culture are evaluated.. It also studies how speech changes in
    social situations and over time.

    Following the subdisciplines, since Anthropology is a very dynamic field which offers
    several definitions of the self, this section will tackle the widely acceptable definitions
    of “self” in modern anthropology. In the modern anthropological perspective, the self
    is characterized in its most general, ordinary and everyday use. According to
    Anthropologist and professor, Katherine Ewing(1990), she described the self as the
    totality of what an organism is physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and
    culturally.

    II.Two Aspects of the “Self”

    The definition of Ewing (1990) portrays the “self” as implicitly and explicitly existing
    in the mind and is comprised of psychological, biological, and cultural processes. One
    of the Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux (2002) then goes on to conceptualize the implicit
    aspect as the one that is not immediately available to the consciousness while the
    explicit is the aspect of the self that you are consciously aware

    of. This concept followed the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud’s “level of
    consciousness. As LaDoux’s concept of the self developed, he then goes to define the
    self as “ not static; it is added to and subtracted from by genetic maturation, learning,
    forgetting, stress, ageing, and disease.” This is true of both the implicit and explicit
    aspects of the self.

    This definition of Ewing departs from the narrower definition of self as self-
    representation – as culturally shaped constructs of the self that one applies to oneself –
    that is current in cultural anthropology today. She asserted that a “self” is illusory
    where people construct a series of self-representations that are based on selected
    cultural concepts of person and selected ‘chains’ of personal memories. By self-
    representation, Ewing meant culturally shaped “self” concepts that one applies to
    oneself (Quinn, 2014); “it is the mental entities that are supposed to represent the self”
    (Schlichtet,2009). According to Ewing (1990), people from all cultures have been
    observed to be able to rapidly project different self-representations, depending on the
    context of the situation. The person is unaware of these shifts; however, he/she will
    still experience wholeness and continuity despite these shifts.

    II.The Self Embedded in Culture

    Does culture has something to do with the self? Culture is a customary behavior and
    beliefs that are passed on through enculturation (Kottak, 2008). It defines how
    individuals see themselves, how they relate to other people, and how they relate to the
    environment. Following the sociology’s concept that the self is a product of society, it
    means that self-development is bound to cultural differences.

    Csordas (1999) elaborated that the human body is not essential for anthropological
    study but the paradigm of embodiment can be explored in the understanding culture
    and the self. The body is not an object to be studied in relation to culture, but is to be
    considered as the subject of culture, or in other words as the existential ground of
    culture. On the other hand, Geertz (1973) described culture as "a system of inherited
    conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate,
    perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life"

    Two Self Construals

    Construal is an interpretation of the meaning of something (the self). In this sense,


    cultural psychologists distinguished two ways of how the self is constructed which are
    embedded in culture: independent and interdependent constructs. The independent
    construct is characteristic of individualistic culture, such as in North America and
    Europe. It is also called egocentric in the sense that each person is seen to be a
    separate entity with inherent characteristics. Individualistic/egocentric culture
    represents the self as separate, distinct, with emphasis on internal attributes or traits,
    skills and values. On the other hand, the interdependent construct, also called
    sociocentric is typical of the collectivist culture in East Asia stressing the essential
    connection between the individual to other people. That personal identity is not
    autonomous but relative part of a social matrix.

    Developmental psychologist Catherine Raeff (2010), believed that culture can


    influence how you view : relationship, personality traits, achievement, and expressing
    emotions.

    Relationships- Culture influences how you enter into and maintain relationships. For
    example, relationships may be seen as voluntary or as duty-based. In Western
    societies, it is essential for a person to choose whom to marry while some Eastern
    societies still practice arranged marriage.

    Personality traits- Culture influences whether (and how) you value traits, like
    humility, self-esteem, politeness, assertiveness, and so on, as well as how you
    perceive hardship or how you feel about relying on others.

    Achievement- Culture influences how you define success and whether you value
    certain types of individual and group achievements.

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