What makes us a person over time? How do we feel in our bodies? Are our bodies the way how powerful systems make us into persons? Can we resist incorporation through our bodies? How do bodily images and bodily feelings become circulated in a way that shapes how you or I might feel or become a person? In 1938, Marcel Mauss delivered a lecture "the category of the person" which argued that "the person" was an eminently cultural category. In doing so, he pointed to the fact that we are not born persons but become persons over our life-cycles, often through a set of both sacred and secular rituals. Others have subsequently pointed to the racialized, classed and gendered dimensions of how one becomes a person - social recognition of that personhood is also far from given but can act to keep us in a place we do not wish to be. This class explores three themes: 1) the life-passage and how we become persons through rituals, focusing in on youth, parenting and death; 2) how bodies can become the site of power and resistance and how gendered and racialized bodies are inhabited; 3) how "figures of personhood" are circulated as commoditized goods. Readings and discussions will focus on global contexts rather than only North American ones. Students are encouraged to learn about fundamental concepts without assuming that the how they work in the society, that some have been born in, and that they are all learning within, is universally applicable. The emphasis is instead that every society is produced through histories, cultural concepts, structures of power, and global circulation and movements. No prior knowledge is required. Students will come out of the class equipped with knowledge about multiple communities and structures and analytical skills of comparison and discussion of cultural and historical phenomena. The class is fully a seminar led class (no lectures), and students will learn (facilitated by the instructor) how to close-read social and anthropological theory and ethnographic work, and how to have complex open-ended conversations about this material. Students will learn over the course of the class to be able to distill insights from several different contexts and theories into their own writing.
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP) · GER: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
What makes us a person over time? How do we feel in our bodies? Are our bodies the way how powerful systems make us into persons? Can we resist incorporation through our bodies? How do bodily images and bodily feelings become circulated in a way that shapes how you or I might feel or become a person? In 1938, Marcel Mauss delivered a lecture "the category of the person" which argued that "the person" was an eminently cultural category. In doing so, he pointed to the fact that we are not born persons but become persons over our life-cycles, often through a set of both sacred and secular rituals. Others have subsequently pointed to the racialized, classed and gendered dimensions of how one becomes a person - social recognition of that personhood is also far from given but can act to keep us in a place we do not wish to be. This class explores three themes: 1) the life-passage and how we become persons through rituals, focusing in on youth, parenting and death; 2) how bodies can become the site of power and resistance and how gendered and racialized bodies are inhabited; 3) how "figures of personhood" are circulated as commoditized goods. Readings and discussions will focus on global contexts rather than only North American ones. Students are encouraged to learn about fundamental concepts without assuming that the how they work in the society, that some have been born in, and that they are all learning within, is universally applicable. The emphasis is instead that every society is produced through histories, cultural concepts, structures of power, and global circulation and movements. No prior knowledge is required. Students will come out of the class equipped with knowledge about multiple communities and structures and analytical skills of comparison and discussion of cultural and historical phenomena. The class is fully a seminar led class (no lectures), and students will learn (facilitated by the instructor) how to close-read social and anthropological theory and ethnographic work, and how to have complex open-ended conversations about this material. Students will learn over the course of the class to be able to distill insights from several different contexts and theories into their own writing.
Offered in Autumn 2025 at Stanford University.