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Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?

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Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy

Part of the book series: Culture, Illness, and Healing ((CIHE,volume 4))

Abstract

Our concern in this essay is with other people’s conceptions of the person and ideas about the self. Our aim is to interpret a widespread mode of social thought often referred to as concrete, undifferentiated, context-specific, or occasion- bound thinking, a mode of social thought culminating in the view that specific situations determine the moral character of a particular action, that the individual person per se is neither an object of importance nor inherently worthy of respect, that the individual as moral agent ought not be distinguished from the social status s(he) occupies; a view that, indeed, the individual as an abstract ethical and normative category is not to be acknowledged.

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Authors
  1. Richard A. Shweder
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  2. Edmund J. Bourne
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA

    Anthony J. Marsella

  2. East-West Center, Honolulu, USA

    Geoffrey M. White

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© 1982 D. Reidel Publishing Company

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Shweder, R.A., Bourne, E.J. (1982). Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?. In: Marsella, A.J., White, G.M. (eds) Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy. Culture, Illness, and Healing, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9220-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9220-3_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1757-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-010-9220-3

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