we have noted. Hence, the very term that invites us to consider it as
equivalent to continuity acquires a very different aspect of discontinuity
when we place it in historical contexts. But this is also not the end of the
matter, because discontinuity itself may conceal, or even deliberately
reveal, aspects of continuity: a theme that we have explored in relation
to the adoption of Christianity as an introduced religion among indigen-
ous people around the world (e.g., Stewart and Strathern 2009 ).
At every point, then, when we inspect the categories of binary opposites
such as custom versus change wefind that the closer our look isfixed on
processes as they actually occur the supposed dichotomy disappears.
Ultimately, we willfind that this observation applies to a series of such
dichotomies, specifically custom/change, stability/innovation, indivi-
dual/social, and nature/culture. In so far as these dichotomies have
formed implicit or explicit frames for analysis, transcending them becomes
important as a part of our‘breaking the frames’theme. Equally every
breaking of a frame must imply the creation of a new frame, otherwise our
exercise would simply be deconstructive rather than reconstructive.
At all stages of enquiry, also, it is necessary to remember that there is a
long history of the application of concepts to social processes, and that to
some extent we entrap ourselves in language in trying to rethink such
concepts. The concepts are ideological in their reference and as such
become objects of debate and rhetorical tools in conflicts. This applies to
a related complex of terms that we are involved with here, such as‘self’and
‘person’. Self is often opposed to person as individual is to society. Senses
of self may be said to get to the heart of individual experience, yet they too
may be said to be culturally inflected – as indeed they must be.
Personhood is often, in turn, defined as a social and relational concept,
yet if we think of‘personality’as an idea and what a‘person’is really like
we inevitablyfind that persons vary and morph back into the individuals
that as human complexes of identity and history they actually are.
Normative statements about ideal personhood remain important but
they are not the same as persons, or what Fredrik Barth, replying to a
critique that pigeon-holed him under methodological individualism
(Barth 2007 ) called,‘whole persons’, the actual professed object of his
analytical interest (see also his essays on person and society among the
Swat Pathans, Barth 1981 ).
We will proceed now by considering some very thoughtful contribu-
tions to these classic debates, reminding ourselves at once about the
innovative use of terms by Margaret Lock and Nancy Scheper-Hughes in
4 INDIVIDUALS 35