"Life Begins When They Steal Your Bicycle": Cross-Cultural Practices of Personhood at the Beginnings and Ends of Life

This paper examines two reasons anthropological expertise has recently come to be considered relevant to American debates about the beginnings and ends of life. First, bioethicists and clinicians working to accommodate diverse perspectives into clinical decision-making have come to appreciate the importance of culture. Second, anthropologists are the recognized authorities on the cultural logic and behaviors of the "Other." Yet the definitions of culture with which bioethicists and clinicians operate may differ from those used by contemporary anthropologists, who view culture as a contingent, contested set of social practices that are continually formulated and re-negotiated in daily interactions. Using ethnographic examples, the author argues that the qualities that constitute "personhood" should be sought in social practices rather than in cognitive capacities or moral attributes.