The Origins of Self explores the role that selfhood plays in defining human society, and each human individual in that society. It considers the genetic and cultural origins of self, the role that self plays in socialisation and language, and the types of self we generate in our individual journeys to and through adulthood. Edwardes argues that other awareness is a relatively early evolutionary development, present throughout the primate clade and perhaps beyond, but self-awareness is a product of the sharing of social models, something only humans appear to do. The self of which we are aware is not something innate within us, it is a model of our self produced as a response to the models of us offered to us by other people. Edwardes proposes that human construction of selfhood involves seven different types of self. All but one of them are internally generated models, and the only non-model, the actual self, is completely hidden from conscious awareness. We rely on others to tell us about our self, and even to let us know we are a self.

Exploring the origins, doctrines and conceptions of the self.

Psychological Anthropology: A Reader in Self in Culture presents a selection of readings from recent and classical literature with a rich diversity of insights into the individual and society. Presents the latest psychological research from a variety of global cultures Sheds new light on historical continuities in psychological anthropology Explores the cultural relativity of emotional experience and moral concepts among diverse peoples, the Freudian influence and recent psychoanalytic trends in anthropology Addresses childhood and the acquisition of culture, an ethnographic focus on the self as portrayed in ritual and healing, and how psychological anthropology illuminates social change

Gerald Erchak's engaging book stakes out a position in the field of psychological anthropology. He addresses himself primarily to students in the field, and also to specialists who want a clearly presented approach. He argues that culture shapes the human self and behavior, and that the self and behavior are in turn adapted to culture. After defining basic concepts and debates in the field, Erchak takes up the topics of socialization, gender, sexuality, collective behavior, national character, deviance, behavioral disorder, cognition, and emotion (This new textbook contains more material about sexuality and gender than any other such text). For Erhcak, psychocultural adaptation is basic to human life. Culture plays a central role in our behavior and survival. Each chapter reviews the literature, not as a scholar would, but rather to provide an overview of central issues in the field. Each chapter also provides case material, some of which is drawn from Erchak's own work on West African socialization, Micronesian social change, family violence, initiation rites, and alcoholism. His examples are drawn from the U.S. as well as non-Western cultures. This book will be of particular interest to teachers looking for new texts for undergraduate courses in anthropology, psychology, and sociology.

Cohen establishes the importance of the self and argues that in order to appreciate the complexity of social formations, one must first take note of individuals awareness of themselves and as authors of social contexts and formations.

Western society is individualised; we feel at ease talking about individuals and we study individual behaviour through psychology and psychoanalysis. Yet anthropology teaches us that an individual approach is only one of many ways of looking at ourselves.In this wide-ranging text Morris explores the origins, doctrines and conceptions of the self in Western, Asian and African societies passing though Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confuscism, Tao and African philosophy and ending with contemporary feminism.Scholarly and written in a lucid style, free of jargon, this work is written from an anthropological perspective with an interdisciplinary approach. Morris emphasises the varying conceptions of the self found cross-culturally and contrasts these with the conceptions found in the Western intellectual traditions.