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 non-human 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]

  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.
  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 978-0-07-803492-3.
  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 0-295-97436-2.