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The Self and Culture

Marcel Mauss explains that every person has two identities: moi and personne. Moi refers to a person's basic identity like their body and sense of self. Personne is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be that person within a particular institution, family, religion, or nationality. This explains how someone can remain the same person while adapting to different contexts. For example, a Filipino worker in another country with stricter traffic laws will follow those laws, whereas in the Philippines they may jaywalk. Many Filipinos have observed this change in themselves when visiting countries with different rules.

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John Borge Sayson
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2K views1 page

The Self and Culture

Marcel Mauss explains that every person has two identities: moi and personne. Moi refers to a person's basic identity like their body and sense of self. Personne is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be that person within a particular institution, family, religion, or nationality. This explains how someone can remain the same person while adapting to different contexts. For example, a Filipino worker in another country with stricter traffic laws will follow those laws, whereas in the Philippines they may jaywalk. Many Filipinos have observed this change in themselves when visiting countries with different rules.

Uploaded by

John Borge Sayson
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

John Borge Sayson 24/03/2021

S2MA BSMAR-E
The Self and Culture
Remaining the same person and turning chameleon by adapting to one’s context
seems paradoxical. However, the French Anthropologist Marcel Mauss has an
explanation for this phenomenon. According to Mauss, every self has two faces:
personne and moi. Moi refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body, and his basic
identity, his biological givenness. Moi is a person’s basic identity. Personne, on the
other hand, is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be who he is.
Personne has much to do with what it means to live in a particular institution, a
particular family, a particular religion, a particular nationality, and how to behave
given expectations and influences from [Link] dynamics and capacity for
different personne can be illustrated better cross-culturally. An overseas Filipino
worker (OFW) adjusting to life in another country is a very good case study. In the
Philippines, many people unabashedly violate jaywalking rules. A common Filipino
treats road, even national ones, as basically his and so he just merely crosses
whenever and wherever. When the same Filipino visits another country with strict
traffic rules, say Singapore, you will notice how suddenly law-abiding the said
Filipino becomes. A lot of Filipinos has anecdotally confirmed this observation.

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