An Anthropological Conceptualization of Self: The Self as Embedded in Culture

Vocabulary flashcards focusing on key anthropological terms, theories, and concepts regarding the cultural construction of self and identity.

Nature (in Anthropology)

Refers to genetic inheritance which sets the individual's potentials.

Nurture (in Anthropology)

Refers to the sociocultural environment that interacts with nature to influence self-awareness.

Marcel Mauss

A French Anthropologist who explained that every self has two faces: personne and moi.

Moi

A person's sense of who he is, his body, and his basic identity, representing his biological givenness.

Personne

The face of the self composed of social concepts and expectations regarding what it means to live in a particular institution, family, religion, or nationality.

Culture (Edward Taylor)

That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Culture (Peacock)

The shared understandings that guide behavior and are expressed in behavior, providing patterns or 'ways of life'.

Ethnic Identity

The concept pointing out the sameness of the self with others based on a consciousness of sharing certain characteristics, such as language and culture, within a group.

Identity (Sökenfeld)

A disposition of basic personality features acquired mostly during childhood that, once integrated, becomes more or less fixed.

Cultural Individual

A concept by Peacock (1986) describing an individual who is neither a robot nor an independent self-willed little god, but exists in freedom while embodying the cultural mold of their society.

Egocentric View

A perspective where the self is seen as an autonomous and distinct individual, defined as a replica of all humanity capable of acting independently from others.

Sociocentric View

A perspective where the self is context-dependent and contingent on a situation or social setting, with no intrinsic self possessing enduring qualities.

Culture (Clifford Geertz)

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.

Control Mechanisms

Geertz's term for plans, recipes, rules, instructions, and cultural programs used for governing and ordering human behavior.

Cultural Animals

Robbins' (2012) term for human beings who create meanings for objects, behaviors, emotions, and events, and behave in accordance with those assumed meanings.