Temporal dimensions of selfhood: theories of person among the Surui of Rondonia (Brazilian Amazon)

In reply to the cognitivist criticism that claims that selfhood cannot be studied by ethnographical tools, the author argues that the study of indigenous theories of person' should focus on the temporal dimensions of selfhood rather than on notions such as body' or soul', and should pay attention to the contexts in which such concepts and discourses occur. An ethnographical case study of Native Amazonia, in which the conceptions of persons include numerous souls and bodies, shows that this multiplicity corresponds to several fields of social relationships and several scales of temporality as multiple ways of differing from others and becoming different from oneself.