Critical Perspectives on Personality and Subjectivity 201individual experience and action in the world with significance and
provides a phenomenal sense of being present” (p. 78). Martin and
Sugarman thus envision a form of personhood grounded in physical
embodiment that is informed and inflected by cultural discourses providing
the possibility of meaning, and by extension purposive action, via their
specific languages and categories of understanding. In this
conceptualization of personhood, psychological phenomena such as
reasons and intentions are not mere epiphenomena when compared with
something supposedly more fundamental such as biology or culture, but
considered real “not by virtue of being mind-independent, but by virtue of
the influence they exert on actions in the world that may affect self and
others” (Martin & Sugarman, 2003, p. 79).
In addition, Martin and Sugarman (2003) emphasize that no one level
of reality, be it biological or sociocultural, should be privileged as being on
more ontologically firm ground. Rather, psychological phenomenon must
be acknowledged to involve “levels of reality that are nested within each
other in accordance with a general historical unfolding” (p. 79). Martin and
Sugarman’s theory of personhood thus arguably constitutes a meta-theory
of human agency and motivation that is applicable cross-culturally and
historically, while avoiding the reification of culturally specific categories
such as the notion of an ontologically prior self, as inherited through
Western cultural discourse via Hobbes and Locke.
Culture and Subjectivity
Martin and Sugarman’s theory of personhood anticipates and sets the
stage for the more recent approaches of theorists who propose studying
human subjectivity as an alternative to the study of personality. The
theoretical construct of subjectivity implies a focus on the pervasive
influence of language and culture that shape both explicit and implicit
categories of understanding as well as providing the structural incentives
and rationales for motivation and action within a given cultural framework.
The theoretical psychologist Thomas Teo (2018) suggests that the present