Flexible survivors

Abstract

There are signs that mental conditions involving constant shifting in time and space, emotionally or cognitively namely manic depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been undergoing a dramatic revision in American middle-class culture, from being simply dreaded liabilities, to being especially valuable assets that can potentially enhance one's life in the particular social and cultural world now inhabited by many middle-class Americans. To understand this change, I turn to the social concept of the 'person', long a mainstay of anthropological analysis, a concept that is central to the earth-shaking changes many middle-class Americans are now undergoing. As Marcel Mauss (1985) made clear, what it means to be a person is deeply embedded in its social context, and highly various over time and space. A particular kind of person, the 'individual', seen as owner of himself and his capacities, rather than as part of a social whole, has been prominent in Euro-American culture since 17th century liberal democratic theory.