Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research on climate change and energy politics in Manchester, UK to consider the analytical usefulness of the anthropological concept of the person for understanding the means by which science and technology attempt to effect social change.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I revisit the anthropological concept of the person in light of recent writings in science and technology studies (STS) which have worked hard to deconstruct the human-centred nature of agency. Building on ethnographic research on climate change and energy politics in Manchester, UK, I explore how ambivalence about how best to tackle the causes of anthropogenic climate change have come to involve the mobilisation and creation of different kinds of socially active entities, from buildings, to energy meters, to consumer behaviours. Science and technology studies has provided us with a range of theoretical resources to understand the social dimensions of technical and material practices such as these, one of the most useful of which has been the concept of the 'actant'. Yet as human capacities like 'energy behaviour' increasingly come to be identified through the same techniques which have been shown to render non-human entities active participants in processes of social change, the concept of the actant appears to clash with the anthropological concept of the person. With the apparent closure of the gap between the actant and the person in the notion of energy behaviour, I return to some anthropological theories of personhood in order to reconsider the reasons for the appearance of the actor-like qualities of objects and the object-like actions of persons in contemporary environmental politics.

Paper short abstract:

Civil engineers working in the Andes extend a notion of personhood to non-human matter. Alternative approaches to living being in the Andes are less categorical about the distinctions between the human and the non-human. The paper asks how anthropology might fold a comparative understanding of living matter into its understanding of personhood.

Paper long abstract:

A road construction engineer commented to me once that "a road is like a person - it is not static, it is dynamic - it grows - everyday you learn more about its problems". This paper considers notions of personhood that recognise the living force of non-human presence, and engage such force via the attribution of human-like capacities. My question concerns the ways in which such recognition compares with notions of living being where distinctions between the human and the non-human are less categorical and are either subject to attentive concern, or assumed as only ever provisional. Theoretically such questions involve a return to existing anthropological literatures on animism, agency and the fetish - to ask again, via the lived experience of contemporary engineering practice,. At a time when the Bolivian constitution has assigned rights to the Earth it is perhaps timely for these debates to be revisited.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnography from Peru, this paper explores understandings of the kharisiris, or those who ‘speak with the devil’, who steal body substances and can convert into an animal. It discusses notions of the kharisiris in relation to personhood and a non-categorical distinction between human and non-human.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on the ethnographic and theoretical significance of the so-called devil contracts in the Andes for understandings of personhood. People who 'speak with the devil' are referred to as kharisiris, and suspected of attacking people by stealing body substances in order to exchange it for money, e.g. with the devil. In contrast to the general importance in the Andes of making offerings to the powerful surroundings in people's attempts to secure well-being and prosperity, the exchanges that the kharisiris make are understood as fundamentally anti-social and harmful. The illnesses caused by kharisiri attacks are often treated with tablets - and thus through a mimicry of biomedical treatment. In some communities, people have also mobilized against the kharisiris to claim justice, demanding that the khariseris should not go unpunished. The kharisiri's status as a person is highly ambiguous, however, being seen as essentially human but with the ability to convert into a dog or snake. While the kharisiris are associated primarily with strangers or mythical characters, there are also cases where kin are suspected. Not only do the cures for kharisiri attacks differ from more traditional forms of healing, but the kharisiris can also escape punishment by converting into an animal. The paper will explore the question of the kharisiris in relation to personhood and a non-categorical distinction between human and non-human, and discuss the understandings of kharisiris in light of the ways in which people respond to the harm they cause.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on research conducted on Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, which provides citizens with a right to access information held by the Scottish Government, this paper offers an alternative description of the person of the public sector organization.

Paper long abstract:

A shift in the orientation of government in the UK, towards the 'publics', made evident in recent measures to make government more 'open', has led to a debate concerning what kind person this change produces within government. Can we write of the detached, rational, and rule-bound Weberian style 'bureaucrat' or do we need to write of a different kind of government employee - one is who personable, innovative, and self-managing? Du Gay (2000) notes a particular ethic of personhood 'which stresses autonomy, responsibility, and the freedom/obligation of individuals to actively make choices for themselves' (Rose and Miller 1992) underpins the reformulation of government and displaces the old-style Weberian bureaucrat. Drawing on research conducted on the reception, implementation and use of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, which provides citizens with a right to access information held by various levels of Scottish government, this paper examines the kind of person the Act produces, and in so doing, offers an alternative description of the person of the public sector organization.

Paper short abstract:

Medical science normatively defines an author as “someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study.” (ICMJE 2010) This conception carries important academic, social, financial, and legal aspects. The paper uses ethnographic data and the works of Mark Rose to interrogate this definition.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years various institutions and media in the UK and internationally have characterized scientific integrity as unsatisfactory. A major point of contention in the regulatory debates on scientific integrity relates to how scientists define themselves and others as authors in multi-author work. What makes a person an author? is often what we ask.

But more intriguingly: what makes an author a person?

Alongside the romantic view of the individual author identified by Foucault, an alternative socio-legal conception admits that "to be an author or inventor is to be a repository of a felicitous mix of inspiration, labor, money, cleverness, and luck" (Fisk 2010). Mark Rose has characterized as effectively mythical the view that "certain extraordinary beings called authors conjure works out of thin air" (1993, 142).

I use the debates on the regulation of science as my point of entry to interrogate the definition of authors and persons. To do this, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork with the Committee on Publication Ethics, and on STS, anthropological and legal work on authorship in science. Instead of tracing how academic definitions of authorship provide a model for personhood, I try to do the reverse and show how a certain model of authorship informs our understandings of persons as well as their generative activities (Rose 1996, Biagioli and Galison 2002, Strathern 2002).

Paper short abstract:

I reflect on the everyday practice of talk to consider how persons are made and unmade in the city of Buenos Aires. I ask what kinds of persons can be produced in the fluid exchange of words and what ways of imagining persons develop in a culture that is steeped in psychoanalytic imaginary.

Paper long abstract:

While conducting fieldwork among middle class residence of Buenos Aires I began reflecting on the role that talk plays in the production of personhood. Wherever one goes in this urban surrounding, coffee houses abound and groups of two, three or more people are gather around tables chatting, drinking and until very recent smoking for hours on end. On sunny days parks are filled with sunbathers who share a maté over a long afternoon and at night groups of friends gather in local parillas to collectively consume a good beef portion and chat away.

But talk among members of the middle class was not limited to social settings, in fact as I soon discovered the majority of the people I had worked with had undergone or were undergoing psychoanalytic therapy. While mostly sessions are individual they prompt many meta-reflections over coffee between friends. Moreover, and many more significantly middle class porteños' talk was saturated with psychoanalytic terminology and images.

But what does talk have to do with becoming a person? In this paper I reflect on the everyday practice of talk (along with shared eating and drinking) to consider how persons are made and unmade in this vibrant city. I ask what kinds of persons can be produced in the fluid exchange of words and what ways of imagining persons develop in a culture that is steeped in psychoanalytic imaginary. In the second part of the paper I offer a set of short reflections on the ethics of writing about persons in this context.

Paper short abstract:

What should persons be like in contemporary neoliberal Britain? This paper draws on research with a gap year provider, a UK based charity that claims its programmes facilitate the personal development of its volunteers. I describe and analyse the practices and processes of this organisation to explore how it works to produce a particular kind of person.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses research from an organisational ethnography and presents an iterative interrogation of neoliberalism and personhood. Endeavour is a British charity that runs gap year programmes to take young people abroad to work on international development and conservation projects. It deploys a range of techniques to help its volunteers develop themselves into positive, dynamic and flexible persons. How does this help them to become successful employees, citizens and community members? This paper connects these traits to contemporary British society, using Endeavour as a lens to explore the expectations and demands on persons and who they should become.

Taking neoliberalism as simultaneously an ideology and a means of describing particular practices I consider how market principles are coming to shape what and how persons are. I explore both pervasive aspects of neoliberal ideology and the ways in which my participants creatively adapt and negotiate ideas to achieve their own goals. Rather than treating neoliberalism as an implicit, taken-for-granted package of policies, practices and discourse, this paper seeks to "examine the actual configurations" of neoliberalism within a specific ethnographic context (Hoffman et al. 2006: 10) and how this concept can reveal underlying assumptions about personhood. The analysis of personhood therefore describes both the ideas and ideologies that contribute to participants understanding of what persons should be like and details the practices by which persons are brought into being.