Flexible survivors

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.