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Beginning in the 2010s, rivers have captured the legal imagination of judges, legislators and activists alike, as part of a rapidly growing phenomenon described by UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, David Boyd as 'a legal revolution that could save the world'. Investigating river cases in jurisdictions as diverse as Aotearoa New Zealand, Colombia, India, the United States and Australia, and following Nicole Graham's suggestion that the non‐human world is constantly reconstituted within an all‐encompassing legal cosmology for which any observable 'thing', any 'object', any landscape, is always, inherently, and inevitably a 'lawscape', this paper explores the legal and the ontological nature of 'the river'. By casting traditional riparian doctrines against novel rights of Nature judgments, the paper highlights the interconnected and interdependent legal relationship between artificially construed human and non‐human worlds, and observes a series of perceptible generational shifts in the legal and ontological treatment of rivers, from an abstract near‐neglect, to a rights‐based discourse, and ending (for the moment at least) in a deeply relational re‐conceptualisation. By casting traditional riparian doctrines against novel rights of nature judgments, this paper highlights the interconnected and interdependent legal relationship between artificially construed human and non‐human worlds, and observes a series of perceptible generational shifts in the legal and ontological treatment of rivers, from an abstract near‐neglect, to a rights‐based discourse, and ending (for the moment at least) in a deeply relational re‐conceptualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Papua New Guinea (PNG) more rural people, and especially rural women, earn cash from selling in marketplaces than from any other source. PNG's marketplaces are critical for food security, and for the redistribution of wealth. They are also important meeting places where people gather to see friends, hear the latest news, attend court cases, play cards and be entertained. This introduction to this special issue on 'Marketplaces and Morality in Papua New Guinea' reviews the history of PNG marketplaces and their contemporary forms. It charts their transformation from introduced colonial spaces into dynamic Melanesian places, which, as places to buy, sell and socialise, have become pervasive institutions in the lives of both urban and rural Papua New Guineans, and places where people interact with both known and unknown others. From this, marketplaces emerge as important spaces of moral evaluation and contestation in relation to what constitutes morally acceptable exchange and what practices are acceptable in these places. The paper demonstrates that exchange in the marketplace should not be reduced to commodity transactions, and questions assumptions about the types of people marketplaces create. It argues that the country's marketplaces are productive sites to consider ideas of exchange, social relations and social personhood, and that there is a critical need to understand the concrete details of what takes place in contemporary marketplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) funding rules determine who can access which supports. However, what is less frequently acknowledged, is that those rules produce an assumed model of personhood. Arguably, this becomes most evident when a case for funding reaches the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, where disputes are resolved between the administrators of the scheme (NDIA) and NDIS participants. In 2019, one such significant and controversial case asserted that 'WRMF', a woman living with multiple sclerosis, could use her NDIS funding to pay for the services of a sexual therapist. The basis for this ruling involved complex debates about citizenship and rights, which were embedded in contested notions of the person. In this paper, I use critical discourse analysis to examine these competing claims and the individualised framework in which WRMF's case was debated. The analysis reveals two key social justice issues: first, that there are limits to the citizenship available for people living with a disability (which assumes compulsory able‐bodiedness); second, that broader concepts of the person require explicit attention from the NDIS to embrace more expansive notions of citizenship for people living with a disability, including acknowledgement of sexual identities and needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction contextualises the nine papers that make up the special issue G ender and P erson in O ceania. Gender and personhood represent core orienting concepts within Pacific anthropology, from the pioneering work of Marilyn Strathern's G ender of the G ift to more recent scholarly attention to the impact of Christianity and modernity. The papers in this volume offer a comparative and critical perspective on long-standing ideas of 'relational' and 'individual' personhood across multiple sites in Oceania, highlighting several key insights, including the importance of situated and relational understandings of agency and the centrality of those 'things' typically seen as non-agentive to the formation of personhood. Most importantly, while re-establishing the inseparable articulation of personhood with gendered dynamics, the contributors to this volume also highlight the differential, transforming, and shifting nature of engendered personhood, revealed through close attention to local knowledge, conditions, and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay aims to bring to light the distinctive features of Fichte's construal of cosmopolitan right in the Foundations of Natural Right—in comparison to Kant's—in the light of the current philosophical debate on migration and global justice. The paper is articulated in three steps. First, it analyzes the addressees and content of Fichte's cosmopolitan right by emphasizing its limited scope: by focusing on those individuals who do not come "from any state," Fichte's discussion of cosmopolitan right foreruns Arendt's philosophical theorization of statelessness and the "right to have rights." Second, it considers Fichte's justification of cosmopolitan right—and its compatibility with his justification of private property rights—by stressing its ontological anchoring in the notions of "absolute will," "personhood," and "original right." Finally, the essay considers the systematic position of cosmopolitan right with regard to the "right of nations" and the "right of a state" in Fichte's doctrine of right by giving special attention to the range of reasons that, according to Fichte, can legitimate the rejection of a stranger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of authenticity plays an important role in how people reason about objects, other people, and themselves. However, despite a great deal of academic interest in this concept, to date, the precise meaning of the term, authenticity, has remained somewhat elusive. This paper reviews the various definitions of authenticity that have been proposed in the literature and identifies areas of convergence. We then outline a novel framework that organizes the existing definitions of authenticity along two key dimensions: (i) describing the type of entity that is evaluated and (ii) describing the source of information that is consulted. We argue that this convergence across a number of papers, and more importantly, across a number of domains, reflects significant progress in articulating the meaning(s) of authenticity. We conclude by suggesting new avenues for research in this area, with particular attention toward psychological process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores philosophy in its relation to other disciplines and practices that also seek to understand the distinctive nature of human persons. It begins with a consideration of the nature of philosophy, arguing for a pluralistic conception reflecting different ends, and relating these to art, politics, religion, and science. It illustrates this via connections between the thought and work of Andy Warhol and Arthur Danto, Wagner and Nietzsche, and Roger Scruton and James MacMillan. It then shifts to a fifth methodological conception of philosophy as the discipline of disciplines, specifically in clarifying concepts and presuppositions, and relates this to marking the boundaries of personhood. Finally, it explores a particular example of philosophy in relation to another practice, art, this time giving priority to art itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absorbing insights from secular discourses on personhood, theology can provide added perspectives on human identity. (1) An attributive view of personal dignity based on divine and social recognition encompasses both capacity‐oriented and relation‐centred views of personhood. (2) Gregory of Nyssa shows Patristic resources for multifaceted ecological self in some contrast to the inner‐Trinitarian idea of ecclesial persons in John D. Zizioulas. (3) An economic Trinitarian model of personhood is proposed, in which the indwelling of Christ is balanced by a pneumatological anthropology. (4) Entering contemporary discussions, the paper proposes a "sonar" or "re‐sonant" understanding of the human per‐sona, hereby accommodating and responding to particularistic challenges to the idea of a shared human personhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the case of an Aboriginal woman from Central Australia who has in recent years experienced a radical shift in her life circumstances. It pursues a writerly approach that makes the variety of forces and relationships legible that she now navigates, including that of the anthropologist‐friend. 'Journeying with' is proposed as an ethnographic method as well as an ethical stance well attuned to the turbulent circumstances of the present—in the Warlpiri life sketched here, and globally. Destabilization and displacement are increasingly common features of contemporary experience, and this paper proposes that ethnography anchored at the level of the individual person is well placed to engage unsettling transformations in the world at large, in social relationships, and modes of personhood, as well as in anthropological production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of the relations between emotions and personhood, with a view to advancing a critical realist account of the role of emotions in social life. It is argued that the constitution of persons has to be approached from an ontological perspective, and that this raises questions about how sociology has addressed the meaning and role of emotions. Margaret Archer's critical realist perspective on them as commentaries on human concerns is broadly endorsed, but some significant correctives are proposed, especially with respect to the important distinction between primary and secondary emotions. To this end, it is argued that the affect spectrum theory advanced by Warren TenHouten can be fruitfully appended to a critical realist theory of emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological and societal problems caused by product obsolescence and consumerism in modern economies constitute a "wicked human‐made problem" of significant magnitude. Current (old) ways of thinking cannot address these problems. Accordingly, in this paper, we critically explore the novel idea of integrated personhood and worldviews to theorize research on self‐repairers and their repair behaviours to extend product lifetimes. We conducted a structured and systematic review of published work (n = 183) to identify the conceptual content of the field to inform our theorization. Our findings highlight three key issues. First, constricted theorization undermines understanding of self‐repairers and their product lifetime extension (and spillover) behaviours. Second, the underlying conceptual complexity is typically underestimated. Third, the dominance of voluntarist and deterministic studies impedes new directions in research. From our review, an integrated worldview–personhood framework emerges that can deepen understanding of avant‐garde self‐repairers' engagement with product lifetimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. M. Bernstein argues that to capture the depths of the harm of torture, we need to do away with the idea that we possess intrinsic and inviolable worth. If personhood is inviolable, then torture can inflict only apparent harm on our standing as persons. Bernstein claims that torture is a paradigm of moral injury because it causes what he calls "devastation": The victim experiences an actual degradation of his or her personhood. Bernstein argues that our value is given to us through mutual recognition and hence can be lost. In this paper, I argue that if our human value can be lost, then it first must be built up. If it must be built up, then the question of our status before the building begins must be answered. Bernstein faces a problem of human beings who fall outside relations of mutual recognition and hence are valueless. His best option for answering this problem is to point to the centrality of the body in his account of recognition, but doing so reveals a notion of intrinsic worth implicit in his account. I call for a revision of Bernstein's account that can hold on to devastation without eschewing intrinsic worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we detail our praxis of decoloniality in the context of a community‐based study that employs a quantitative experimental methodology to evaluate an intervention for girls involved in the juvenile legal system. We resist the essentializing of methodology that positions quantitative paradigms as impermeable to reflexivity and decoloniality, and describe a model for training and supervising researchers engaged in an experimental randomized controlled trial of an advocacy program for girls, most of whom are girls of color and about half of whom identify as LGBT. In this way, we consider researcher training as a critical teaching context and describe the ways in which our training, community‐based data collection, and supervision structure are anchored in de/anti/post colonial and indigenous scholarships. Specifically, our praxis is centered on conducting research as a site of resistance to hegemony, and practicing a critical compassion rooted in remembering complex personhoods. We further discuss the boundaries and limitations of our own epistemic power in relation to two central questions: how can researchers influence how knowledge is produced? How can researchers influence how knowledge producers are themselves produced? Highlights: We present a model of researcher training focused on decolonial praxis.Researchers are trained to implement a randomized controlled trial for legal system‐involved girls.Researcher training focuses on conducting research as a site of resistance to hegemony.Researcher training focuses on practicing critical compassion to and remembering complex personhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between finiteness and clause size, taking Romance varieties with an irrealis subordinator as a case study: che/chi in upper southern Italian dialects (USIDs), cu in Salentino, mi/mu/ma in southern Calabrian, and să in Romanian. The last three of these, but not the first, also replace many uses of the infinitive. On a view of finiteness as the result of anchoring of Tense and Person (Groothuis 2020), these irrealis clauses constitute a different degree of finiteness when selected by a functional verb than when selected by a lexical verb. The question thus arises of whether a reduction in finiteness corresponds to a reduction in clause structure. Tests show that these irrealis subordinators form a non‐homogeneous category. Only USID che/chi and Romanian să can be analysed as regular complementisers. Salentino cu and southern Calabrian mu, in contrast, occupy a v‐related position when selected by aspectuals, a T‐related position when selected by modals, and FinP when selected by lexical verbs. The reduced degree of finiteness thus does not correspond to a reduced clause in all varieties. The conclusion is therefore that the same level of finiteness does not necessarily translate into the same amount of functional structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the Zamucoan system of Person markers: personal pronouns, verbal and possessive inflection. Comparing the three documented languages (Ayoreo and Chamacoco, currently spoken, and extinct Old Zamuco), one can reconstruct for a very ancient stage of this language family an agglutinating structure for both personal pronouns and verbal inflection, with Person and Number dealt with by, respectively, prefixes and suffixes. However, possessive inflection could not be accommodated within this system, since the noun suffix can only express possessum Number, while possessor Number has to be expressed by a dedicated prefix. This structural conflict forced the Zamucoan languages to attempt various solutions, departing from the original agglutinating logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In evaluating the contributions to this issue, this chapter questions the predictable co‐occurrence of cities with markets and states, a long‐held position in western social theory. However, an extreme relativism is also flawed, and the projection of anti‐capitalist fantasies on past, other peoples have equally distorted interpretations of the archaeological record and blinded researchers to the reality of market economies in societies including the Maya. Ultimately, the power of the comparative method entails more than the identification of commonalities between different market traditions. It can also serve to illuminate how market economics were embedded in distinct cultural, ideological, and material worlds. Calculating self‐interest, supply‐and‐demand, and impersonal exchange do not operate according to a single behavioral logic but are shaped by ideologies of identity and desire specific to distinct regimes of value. Therefore, attention to the cultural and spatial context of economic transactions—in the original spirit of Polanyi—remains indispensable to interpreting how markets may have shaped historically particular constructions of personhood, community, inequality, place, and the ontological status of commodities. In the end, I argue that archaeologists also need to investigate the political affordances of markets as specific urban places and not simply as epiphenomena to a priori political or economic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, sexuality is valued as a positive expression of relational personhood, registering the efficacy of consensual and pleasurable practice in producing and maintaining social relations. The power of sexuality to demonstrate individual and collective capacity and potential holds particular salience for unmarried young people. This paper draws on my ethnographic research on culture and HIV in the Trobriands to address perduring questions about the locus of individual autonomy in Melanesian sociality, where relational personhood shapes identity and modes of exchange in the moral economy. I focus on the gendered agency of youth sexuality, including the use of kwaiwaga, or love magic, in exercising and controlling desire. The narrative identities of two young women provide the lens through which questions of agency are explored, revealing how the autonomous mind, nanola, is central to understanding the embodiment of social relations, how the power of love magic transfers agency from one individual to another, and how individual assertions and acts are ultimately expressions of situated relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ethnographic account of sorcery accusation, violence, and subsequent community discussion provides a basis to explore the 'moral economy of agency' that shapes expressions and interpretations of personhood in Vanuatu. Mediated historically by transforming social, political, and economic circumstances, agency is demonstrated to be patterned according to culturally specific ontological and moral schemes. Key local categories of embodied personhood - including man ples (man place), man wan (man one), and jelus (jealousy) - are examined to elucidate two relationally entwined analytic categories, referred to as 'distributive' and 'possessive' agency. Such categories, it is argued, fundamentally shape expressions and interpretations of moral being and doing, including by providing a basis for identifying morally abject expressions of personhood. Taking seriously the important role of spiritual agency within such moral economies, this paper provides new ethnographically grounded insights into the ways in which communities and individuals negotiate moral being within transforming contexts of economic and sacred power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a response to the position paper "Pathways Forward for Indigenous Language Reclamation: Engaging Indigenous Epistemology and Learning by Observing and Pitching in to Family and Community Endeavors," by Henne–Ochoa et al., which appears within the issue. It discusses the revival of the minority language the Yucatec Maya language, including in regard to linguistic identity, indigeneity and personhood. An overview second language acquisition of Yucatec Maya is provided.

In examining affective motivations and meanings associated with kin‐based tattooing, this article proposes a practice of 's/kinship': the tangible inscription of relational personhood on the body. While research on the practice of Western tattooing has long been drawn into discourses of deviance and individual identity, little attention has been paid to the tattooing of social relations. Drawing on surveys and interview data, this article highlights the significance of kinship and other forms of relationality in tattooing, bringing attention to how these are manifested through the skin as expressions of social proximity, permanence, and porosity. In doing so an analytic approach to s/kinship is developed to foreground the practice of tattooing as an expression of relational personhood, one that highlights the permeability of personhood as a salient ontological feature in the social life of tattoos and the tattooed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: In this article, I discuss coastal and oceanic biocultural heritage and its relevance to a transformed perception of the ocean and coast in South Africa. An anthropology of biocultural heritage at the coast reveals the multidimensional nature of personhoods—specifically transspecies, trans‐material forms of personhood—and the rich dialogical engagement of "humans" with nature and marine species. Through sensory ethnography on coastal biocultural heritage in South Africa's Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape provinces, I challenge anthropocentric strategies for ocean management and assert the need to consider sensory/embodied relations with the sea and the sentience of other species in the marine space. By presenting on and discussing coastal biocultural heritage, I hope to advance discussions on identity in Africa as well as marine epistemologies for a rehumanized ocean management in South Africa and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assertion that Christ is truly and fully human supports using Christology as a starting point to frame discussions surrounding humanity. This article focuses on the Christological distinction between personhood and nature that is made in the Chalcedonian Definition and argues that it could reframe current discussions in the science–theology discourse on humanity identity. As discussions of human identity often center around issues such as personhood, consciousness, and the soul, taking this Christological perspective into account means that scholars must consider whether scientific contributions are engaging with characteristics of human nature or personhood, and recognize the theological distinction. To address some of the troubling implications of this reframing, this article proposes a vision of humanity as natural energies expressing an unrepeatable personhood, based largely on the work of the Eastern Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras. This proposal takes traditional Christology seriously in its relevance to discussions on human identity, while possibly enabling even more productive engagement with scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening chapter of Genesis makes a lofty claim about the human condition: that humans are created in the image of God. But why can humans image God? This article examines four different interpretations of humans as interpretive animals. Following Martin Heidegger's account of Dasein, I argue that humans are interpretive animals, and as such, are suitable creatures to bear God's image. Humans as interpretive animals function as the image of God, not because of divine fiat; instead, humans in their capacities are open to being the image. My argument is not that the image of God is identifiable as particular human features. Instead, it is the fact that humans have specific capacities that make them interpretive animals (e.g., radical openness, thrownness, malleability) and that these traits are constitutive for what it means to be human. Alongside Heidegger, I draw on the works of Charles Taylor, Claudia Welz, and Kathryn Tanner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a pro tanto moral reason to create a life merely because it would be good for the person living it? Proponents of the procreation asymmetry claim there is not. Defending this controversial no reason claim, some have suggested that it is well in line with other phenomena in the moral realm: there is no reason to give a promise merely because one would keep it, and there is no reason to procreate merely to increase the extent of justice in the world. Allegedly, some analogs extend so far as to support a unified theory of the no reason claim and the nonidentity thesis, that is, the view that of two persons leading lives of positive wellbeing, there is a reason to create the person with higher wellbeing. I dismantle the proposed analogs and show that they fail to meet various desiderata. Moreover, I refute Johann Frick's argument that the no reason claim follows from the assumption that reasons of beneficence are reasons to act for the sake of people. By criticizing attractive defenses for the no reason claim, I weaken its plausibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of American Anthropologist is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Antipode is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This case report describes the ethical implications of paradoxical lucidity in persons with severe stage dementia. Paradoxical lucidity describes an episode of unexpected communication or connectedness in a person who is believed to be noncommunicative due to a progressive and pathological process that causes dementia. A caregiver who witnesses an event of paradoxical lucidity may experience it as ethically and emotionally transformative. We provide an ethical framework for addressing this event in clinical practice. The framework addresses clinician interactions with the patient, caregiver, and family to improve understanding of paradoxical lucidity and to enhance patient care, caregiver well‐being, and decision‐making. Participants for this case study consented to having the case published. Participant names are changed to protect confidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary analyses of moral injury in war focus on its occurrence in American veterans who commit or witness acts contrary to their deeply held moral beliefs. Moral injuries suffered by noncombatants are largely absent from this discourse. I advocate for greater inclusion of the victim‐centered perspective in studies of moral injury in war. This perspective conceptualizes moral injury as the specific harm suffered when one's moral humanity is not recognized. Given that susceptibility to moral injury is part of moral personhood, failure to acknowledge noncombatants' moral injury represents failure to recognize their full and particular personhood and thus may inflict further moral injury. Centering noncombatants' moral injury strengthens the critical power of moral injury, enabling the identification of specific steps toward establishing just relationships and social trust to repair and prevent moral injury in noncombatants and combatants alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This means that unreasonable people have the same standing as all other citizens in the process of political deliberation and decision-making: they, like all other citizens, have the standing to demand of their fellow citizens that they justify their political decisions in terms that all citizens can reasonably be expected to accept. In a democratic society, political decisions are made by the citizens, and the reciprocity principle places a restriction on how citizens are to make these decisions: I Deliberative Principle i . A principle which simply ascribes to all citizens the authority to demand I valid reasons i for political decisions made by their fellow citizens, for instance, would equally well endow citizens with a distinctive standing as participants in political deliberation and decision-making. Like the justificatory principle, however, the principle does not by itself require any citizens, not even those who are particularly central to political decision-making, to give equal weight to citizens' equally important interests. The authority principle, I claim, describes the authority of citizens of liberal democratic societies to demand justification for political decisions from their fellow citizens, and thereby supports the self-respect of citizens. [Extracted from the article]

An advocate of human rights education, Holcombe wants human rights to be multi-cultural. Such Indigenous agents espouse "good governance", and they are the topic of Holcombe's seventh and final chapter 'International human rights forums and (east coast) Indigenous activism'. Whereas some Indigenous persons have become adept at presenting themselves as bearers of rights (individual and collective), in the Central Australian communities with which Holcombe is familiar, the circulation of human rights discourse has "barely begun" (p. 260). [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A remarkable experiment in assistive technology, known as PODD, draws on and challenges mainstream understandings of communication in the US. To engage disabled people in conversation, caregivers turn to PODD books, which are binders of laminated sheets that display icons. As caregivers use these books, they act as "operating systems," listing directions as they navigate from page to page, then animating the selected utterance in an enthusiastic tone. PODD plays on the language ideology that underlies most communication systems, which are designed to liberate speaking subjects trapped by the limitations of their bodies and minds. But PODD also confronts its users with aspects of communication that set aside the question of meaning. Drawing on interviews and participant observation in trainings with my nonverbal daughter, I show how caregivers struggle to inhabit a community of sign use in which referential meaning is both longed for and beside the point. [disability, communication, language ideology, personhood, ethics, affect, United States] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article draws on ethnographic research conducted in 2015 with Hip Hop dancers in Perth, as well as my own personal engagement as a Breaking practitioner, to examine how membership within the local Perth Hip Hop dance scene is made and negotiated. The focus of this article is on the processual, embodied and locally particular aspects of personhood, alhough specifically my concern is with how Hip Hop dancers themselves make sense of, experience and authenticate persons within their own specific local and social context. My ethnographic observations and discussions of the Perth Hip Hop dance scene contribute to broader anthropological debates on personhood by drawing attention to the importance of being connected and actively involved in Hip Hop dancing practices and local Hip Hop dancing events. This research illustrates how personhood in Hip Hop is something that is continually being remade and renegotiated over time and across different spaces, in addition to the significance of one's body in the negotiation process (An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2017 Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) conference at the University of Adelaide.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of American Anthropologist is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the mid‐twentieth century, theorists began seriously forecasting possibilities for artificial intelligence (AI). As related research gathered momentum and resources, the topic made impressions on public discourse. One effect was increasingly pointed emphasis on AI in popular narratives. Although considerably earlier thematic examples may be located, we can observe swelling and generally pessimistic threads of speculation in science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. This discussion identifies some pertinent science fiction texts from that period, alongside public discussion arising from contemporary research. One consistent theme is human receptiveness to the numinous, and the capacity to ascribe personality and even divinity to sufficiently impressive manifestations, even artificial ones. Science fiction has long contemplated such reactions, prefiguring today's anticipations of AIs that might abruptly develop themselves beyond any possible human comprehension or control. This body of exploratory projections is a useful resource for the engineers and philosophers currently grappling with realistic prospects for Western humanity's shifting conception of itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to renewed ambitions of developing artificial general intelligence. Alongside this has been a resurgence in the development of virtual and augmented reality (V/AR) technologies, which are viewed as "disruptive" technologies and the computing platforms of the future. V/AR effectively bring the digital world of machines, robots, and artificial agents to our senses while entailing the transposition of human activity and presence into the digital world of artificial agents and machine forms of intelligence. The intersection of humans and machines in this shared space brings humans and machines into ontological continuity as informational entities in a totalizing informational environment, which subsumes both cyber and physical space in an artificially constructed virtual world. The reconstruction of mind (through AI) and world (through V/AR) thus has significant epistemological, ontological, and anthropological implications, which constitute the underlying features in the artificialization of mind and world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First advanced in a major essay published in 2010, Mark Mosko's 'partible penitent' thesis asserts that Melanesian and Christian cultures are based upon analogous conceptions of dividual personhood. Consequently, conversion in the region has been characterised by continuity rather than rupture, as argued most prominently by Joel Robbins. This essay offers an assessment of Mosko's thesis in terms of his critique of the theoretical and ethnographic literature and his recent application of the model to religious change in the Trobriand Islands. Robbins' work proves more convincing and provocative on both theoretical and methodological grounds. Yet both approaches, which frame their analysis of Christianity in terms of conversion, appear increasingly out of sync with the experience of the vast majority of Melanesians who are more accurately considered active participants in a diverse global religious tradition rather than recipients of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examining the social and processual dimensions of personhood can transform ethnographic and clinical understandings of "person-centered care" in dementia care specifically and in medicine more generally. Ethnographic research among people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease in a day center in Poznań, Poland, shows that practices of remembering involving collective memory can sustain personhood and foster ties of relatedness among people with dementia, defying some expectations about the destructive effects of dementia on personhood. This apparent paradox between people with dementia's loss of memory and their capacity to build social relations based on remembering can be resolved through expanding understandings of personhood to include practices of remembering involving collective pasts-in this case, through shared national frameworks and embodied practices of sociality. Attending to these two dimensions of collective memory reveals unexpected aspects of personhood among people with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This article argues the usefulness of the culturally pervasive and impactful genre of graphic memoir for addressing gaps in the anthropologies of kinship and personhood. It identifies a key figure in some sections of U.S. society: the "adult child." Adult childness emerges from the graphic memoirs discussed here as when a person finds themselves particularly conscious of having (or having had) parents. To the perennially debated question of what connects kin in a U.S. context the article proposes: the past. Key facets of U.S. personhood and kinship are founded on the tenet that what happens in the lives of one's parents and one's childhood go a long way to explaining who an adult is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is quilt‐making both metaphor and pedagogy for early‐career faculty of theology and religion who seek to cultivate critical and creative imagination for teaching, and to probe the challenges and promises of complex identities and vocations within 21st‐century landscapes of theological education? This forum presents essays (with explanatory introduction) by five members of the 2016–2017 Workshop for Early Career Theological School Faculty, who were impelled to story their experience of being "handed over to themselves" by an "arts and craft" project which forced them to think with their hands, speak with found objects, and re‐present themselves in the form of 12 × 12‐inch quilt squares. In self‐reflexive prose, these scholar‐teachers offer through this medium a glimpse of their unexpected moments of revelatory learning, as each was pulled into deeper contemplation of their personhood, experience, know‐how, and practical wisdom, each uncovering valuable hidden sources for more expansive theological query, and each re‐thinking the possibilities for theological education and its pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the debate about the ethics of abortion has centered on whether the fetus is a person. In an attempt to sidestep this complex issue, I argue that, even if the fetus is not a person, abortion is immoral. To arrive at this conclusion, I argue that giving a fetus fetal alcohol syndrome is immoral, and that if this is so, then killing the fetus is immoral. Roughly, this is because killing the fetus impairs it more than giving it fetal alcohol syndrome. Since abortion (in most cases) amounts to killing the fetus, this means that abortion (in most cases) is immoral. I defend the premises of this argument against a plethora of objections, concluding that they either do not work, or commit their proponent to a controversial position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article presents Hannah Arendt's novel conception of evil, arguing that what animates and undergirds this conception is an understanding of human agency, of what it means to be a person at all. The banality of evil that Arendt theorizes is exactly the failure to become a person in the first place—it is, in short, the evil of being a nobody. For Arendt, this evil becomes extreme when a mass of such nobodies becomes organized by totalitarianism. This article focuses on the connection between Arendt's understanding of personhood and her conception of evil, showing how Arendt falls into a Kantian tradition of prioritizing apperception—thinking—as central for human agency. In this way, the article shows that thinking—being a person—is central to Arendt's work, thereby prioritizing and making sense of her claim in The Human Condition that one is never “more active” than when thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I give an account how the principle of 'respect for autonomy' dominates the field of bioethics, and how it came to triumph over its competitors, 'respect for persons' and 'respect for free power of choice'. I argue that 'respect for autonomy' is unsatisfactory as a basic principle of bioethics because it is grounded in too individualistic a worldview, citing concerns of African theorists and other communitarians who claim that the principle fails to acknowledge the fundamental importance of understanding persons within the nexus of their communal relationships. I defend the claim that 'respect for persons' is a more appropriate principle, as it is able to acknowledge both individual decision making and the essential relationality of persons. I acknowledge that my preference for 'respect for persons' is problematic because of the important debate around the definition of 'personhood' in bioethics discourse. Relying on Thaddeus Metz's conception of moral status, I propose a relational definition of personhood that distinguishes between persons with agency and persons without agency, arguing that we have different moral obligations to these distinct categories of persons. I claim that this conception of personhood is better able to accommodate our moral intuitions than conventional approaches, and that it is able to do so without being speciesist or question-begging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: It is often said that to love someone we must love her for her own sake. But what does this mean? Various answers have been offered up by philosophers. Alan Soble's ‘aggregate’ view of identity focuses on properties of the beloved as key to understanding love's basis and, in a less direct way, its object. This view does not give us a clear distinction between persons and properties. David Velleman's view makes this distinction more clearly but creates a gap between properties and personhood. Jean‐Paul Sartre's view which emphasizes embodiment, addresses the main deficiencies of both of these former views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of American Ethnologist is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the article uses discourse analysis to examine the social dynamics involved in the construction of personhood in Japan. While the gap between powerful discourse and lived reality is a well-documented phenomenon, there is little systematic empirical research on how to integrate individual and social levels of analysis in this process. By contrasting discourse from above and from below, the article illuminates power asymmetry and the resulting tension between discursive freedom and social exclusion among disadvantaged groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]