introduction 29
It would be wrong to draw an overly neat distinction between an
egocentric West and a sociocentric India. Th ere are ways in which individu-
alism co- exists with interpersonal connections in South Asia and situations
that reveal sociocentric behavior among North Americans.^23 However, the
notion that a person is not only connected to but embedded in her social
relationships, the diffi culty in abstracting the self from its social context, is
crucial to comprehending behavior, action and desire in South Asia. Basic
practices of daily life underscore this: people who were ill went for therapy,
and for interviews with my assistants and myself, accompanied by one or
several family members who did most of the speaking; people who bring
a newspaper on a train will expect it to be shared by their fellow travel-
ers; everyday discourse in Malayalam features many ways of aggregating the
speaker and listener through subjectless sentences or by use of the inclusive
form of “we” (which includes the speaker and listener) in situations where
English speakers would use “you” or “I.”
Th e term “sociocentrism” used by many researchers is not ideal for this
orientation as what it involves is not quite a “centrism,” a convergence on
a single point. Th is metaphor is more appropriate when one speaks of ego-
centrism where the individual self constitutes the primary focus. With the
“sociocentric” self, it is the variety of social relationships and the constantly
changing social context that are signifi cant. One imagines a network of rela-
tions with other selves rather than a central subject. Th e orientation to self in
India might thereby be better characterized as a socially dispersed or socially
embedded self.
Patients arrive at treatment centers with one or more family members who
usually consult the doctor along with the patient, and this is how patients
presented themselves to me and my assistants for interviews. At fi rst I thought
I should try to speak to the patient alone to get a more accurate idea of their
concerns, and I did so on occasion. Th is may have brought out issues that
would otherwise not have emerged, but it also amounted to editing out culture
to some degree, imagining the internal, private self to be more authentic. Th e
manner in which people I spoke with presented themselves made me real-
ize that my interlocutor was not just the person suff ering the problem but a
“therapy managing group” of family, friends and others who are connected to
the patient.^24
Th e socially dispersed self also appears inpatient narratives. In translating
interviews, my assistants and I often had to invent a subject to render a sen-
tence intelligible in English. Th e subject of the sentence is often omitted in
everyday spoken Malayalam, but the situation is distinct from, for example,
colloquial Bengali or Spanish, where the subject is omitted but can be inferred