ARCHIVES: The fundamental issue at stake in abortion debates is personhood, which is viewed differently around the world, an anthropologist writes.
– if an individual ever achieves full personhood, it is only after death, when they become an ancestor, fully involved in the lives of their descendants.communities where I have done research, every clan is associated with a “ntana,” a large and dangerous wild animal species: lions, leopards, elephants, crocodiles or pythons, for example. Members of the species are considered persons, but only for individuals in the associated clan.
Each one has a story about the origins of their relationship with their ntana – typically of how the ancestor of the species rescued the ancestor of the clan, such as by pulling him out of a pit into which he had fallen. Members of the clan must not kill or eat their ntana, and contact with or even sight of the remains of the dead animal is considered dangerous.
Two aspects of personhood stand out in particular when we compare how paradigms vary from culture to culture. First, personhood is sometimes viewed as a process, not a steady state, and is not something each individual automatically possessed. Second, personhood is not a purely individual phenomenon, but intrinsically
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