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Dr. Dorothy D. Wills ANT 405 Anthropology of Gender

The Individual in Society

A vast network of categories defines everyone, including the dead and the unborn, based on significant distinctions and resultant groups (significant memberships). People's identities are derived from these, as well as from their own psychological states, characteristics, and life choices.

- so we have differentiated individuals, individual in society, groups in relation to other groups in society; society in relation to other societies; humans in relation to other beings (spirits, aliens, animals, gods ... )

"special categories" of people often includes the following list: twins, children in general, elderly, psychotics, criminals, suicides, low caste, prophets, deformed or biologically different, slaves, ill, extremely rich, monarchs, senior wife, senior son or child, male offspring, adoptees, witches and sorcerers, priests ...

"special relations" may include: in-laws (marked by joking and avoidance), grandkin, 'blood brother' and other special friendships (bond friends), lovers, age-mates, sometimes cousins, co-wife, full siblings, guru ...

"special events, experiences, states of the individual" may include pregnancy, menstruation, menarche, initiation, virginity, nursing mother; firsts and lasts of anything; rituals; life cycle transitions such as marriage; illness; dreaming or unconscious; trance state; giving birth; encounters with supernatural; sexual congress ...