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The crisscrossed agency of a toast: Personhood, individuation and de‐individuation in Luzhou, China
Author(s) -
Harmon Brian
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/taja.12073
Subject(s) - personhood , individuation , subjectivity , agency (philosophy) , sociology , the imaginary , epistemology , power (physics) , china , transformative learning , self , social science , political science , psychoanalysis , law , psychology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , pedagogy
This article addresses debates over individuation in China through consideration of guanxi ‐relational feasting in Luzhou, Sichuan. I draw on Ortner's theorisation of subjectivity and agency to probe the often taken‐for‐granted question of cultural personhood which informs social action. Although the social imaginary in Luzhou is increasingly colonised by symbolic individualism, I propose that dominant local notions of personhood and agency, operating within feast practice, continue to define this process. By attending to three aspects of Yan's ‘individualisation thesis’, I demonstrate how local models of person and agency are indispensible to a fuller understanding of social life. Considering the important role ritual speech habits (largely trained in de‐individuating feasting) continue to play in socialising actors to economic institutions and power relationships more generally, individuation in China today remains a largely nominal and aspirational, if symbolically potent and potentially transformative, project.