Personhood

Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a legal person (either a natural or a juridical person) has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability.^[1]

Personhood continues to be a topic of international debate and has been questioned critically during the abolition of human and nonhuman slavery, in debates about abortion and in fetal rights and/or reproductive rights, in animal rights activism, in theology and ontology, in ethical theory, and in debates about corporate personhood, and the beginning of human personhood.^[2] In the 21st century, corporate personhood is an existing Western concept; granting non-human entities personhood, which has also been referred to a "personhood movement", can bridge Western and Indigenous legal systems.^[3]

Processes through which personhood is recognized socially and legally vary cross-culturally, demonstrating that notions of personhood are not universal. Anthropologist Beth Conklin has shown how personhood is tied to social relations among the Wari' people of Rondônia, Brazil.^[4] Bruce Knauft's studies of the Gebusi people of Papua New Guinea depict a context in which individuals become persons incrementally, again through social relations.^[5] Likewise, Jane C. Goodale has also examined the construction of personhood in Papua New Guinea.^[6]

^ "Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse. A person is a being with a certain moral status, or a bearer of rights. But underlying the moral status, as its condition, are certain capacities. A person is a being who has a sense of self, has a notion of the future and the past, can hold values, make choices; in short, can adopt life-plans. At least, a person must be the kind of any who is in principle capable of all this, however damaged these capacities may be in practice." Charles Taylor, "The Concept of a Person", Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 97.
^ Liptak, Adam (January 21, 2010). "Justices, 5–4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 January 2010.
^ Cite error: The named reference ng was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Coklin, Beth A.; Morgan, Lynn M. (1996). "Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian Society" (PDF). Ethos. 24 (4). American Anthropological Association, Wiley: 657–694. doi:10.1525/eth.1996.24.4.02a00040. eISSN 1548-1352. ISSN 0091-2131. JSTOR 640518.
^ Knauft, Bruce (2012). The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World (3 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0078034923.
^ Goodale, Jane C. (1995). To Sing With Pigs Is Human: The Concept of Person in Papua New Guinea. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295974362.

[1] "Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse. A person is a being with a certain moral status, or a bearer of rights. But underlying the moral status, as its condition, are certain capacities. A person is a being who has a sense of self, has a notion of the future and the past, can hold values, make choices; in short, can adopt life-plans. At least, a person must be the kind of any who is in principle capable of all this, however damaged these capacities may be in practice." Charles Taylor, "The Concept of a Person", Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 97.

[2] Liptak, Adam (January 21, 2010). "Justices, 5–4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 January 2010.

[ng-3] Cite error: The named reference ng was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[4] Coklin, Beth A.; Morgan, Lynn M. (1996). "Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North America and a Native Amazonian Society" (PDF). Ethos. 24 (4). American Anthropological Association, Wiley: 657–694. doi:10.1525/eth.1996.24.4.02a00040. eISSN 1548-1352. ISSN 0091-2131. JSTOR 640518.

[5] Knauft, Bruce (2012). The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World (3 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0078034923.

[6] Goodale, Jane C. (1995). To Sing With Pigs Is Human: The Concept of Person in Papua New Guinea. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN 0295974362.

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