“Life Begins When They Steal Your Bicycle”: Cross-Cultural Practices of Personhood at the Beginnings and Ends of Life

Abstract

This paper examines two reasons anthropological expertise has recently come to be considered relevant to American debates about the beginnings and ends of life. First, bioethicists and clinicians working to accommodate diverse perspectives into clinical decision‐making have come to appreciate the importance of culture. Second, anthropologists are the recognized authorities on the cultural logic and behaviors of the “Other.” Yet the definitions of culture with which bioethicists and clinicians operate may differ from those used by contemporary anthropologists, who view culture as a contingent, contested set of social practices that are continually formulated and re‐negotiated in daily interactions. Using ethnographic examples, the author argues that the qualities that constitute “personhood” should be sought in social practices rather than in cognitive capacities or moral attributes.

Racial Politics of Frozen Embryo Personhood in the US Antiabortion Movement

“…“It is both the site and source of ongoing cultural contests and always under construction as a self‐evident fact of nature” (Hartouni , 300). While the idea of embryos as persons has become a central concern for some US antiabortion activists, this notion is not universally agreed upon cross‐culturally (Conklin and Morgan ; Gammeltoft ; Howes‐Mischel ; LaFleur ; Morgan ; Morgan and Michaels ) nor is the ontological status of embryos a concern for all people (Morgan ; Roberts ; Strathern ). Given this variance within different sociohistorical and cultural contexts, feminist anthropologists recently emphasized the need to “examine the social dramas to which embryos are made to speak today” (Andaya and Mishtal , 51).…”

“…The making of persons, as anthropologist Lynn Morgan reminds, is always political: “All practices of personhood are political gestures, played out in a social matrix in which power is unevenly distributed” (Morgan , 13). In this article, I have argued that the making of frozen embryo persons is not merely a racialized but also a racist, project.…”

Deploying fetal death: “Fetal burial” laws and the necropolitics of reproduction in Indiana

“…“It is both the site and source of ongoing cultural contests and always under construction as a self‐evident fact of nature” (Hartouni, 1999, 300). The making of persons, as anthropologist Morgan reminds, is always political: “All practices of personhood are political gestures, played out in a social matrix in which power is unevenly distributed” (2006, 13).…”

Cultural Determinants of Liminal Lives in Rural Anatolia: Patriarchal Veils Framing Infants’ Destinies

“…"Are babies persons?" Picone (1998) and Morgan (1998Morgan ( , 2006 illustrate the way the notions of fetal and infant "personhood" are informed by particular political and cultural circumstances, examining cases in Ecuador, North America, and Japan. Similarly, in Anatolia, notions of both "personhood" and "parenthood" should be considered a cultural and political issue for both young mothers and their infants.…”