Abstract
In every society, beliefs and ideologies circulate about the qualifications necessary to be classified or treated as a full person in the world. Personhood is often (though not always) thought to be constituted throughout the life course and many societies have distinct ontological and ethnopsychological ideas about the constitution of persons, including persons' articulation with others, their interpenetration with the world around them, their moral or jural capacities, and the qualities of their agency. If personhood is socially imputed, anthropologists often understand the term “self” to refer to the subjective and experiential sense that one is or has a locus of awareness—a private consciousness that, while it may be a universal human trait, is also socioculturally mediated. Ethnographic literature often remarks on the contrast between individualistic and sociocentric ideologies in the constitution of personhood and selfhood. The distinction furnishes a useful starting point but requires qualification and complication.