How do we become who we are? How is it that people are so similar in the ways they differ from one another, and so different in the ways they are the same?
Christina Toren's theory of mind as not only a physical phenomenon, but an historical one, sets out to answer these questions by examining how the material world of objects and other people informs the constitution of mind in persons over time.
This theory of embodied mind as a microhistorical process is set out in the first chapter, providing a context for the nine papers that follow. Questions explored include the way...

How do we each become who we are? How is it that we are so different from one another in the ways we are the same? And so similar in the ways we are different? The answers to these puzzles lie in the manifold ways that the material world of objects and other people informs the process of our becoming ourselves. A process whereby it becomes clear that mind is THE fundamental historical phenomenon. The outcome of over a decade's work, the underlying concern of these various explorations into how Fijians live their lives and, in so doing, constitute their knowledge of the world, has been to...

an important and very interesting contribution to, first of all, critical and reflexive anthropology...Every chapter offers fresh insights into a key area of critical anthropology. Undoubtedly, the volume is very well organized, thoroughly substantiated, and interestingly written. I believe that the reviewed collection of articles is a distinguished, very useful, and sometimes provocative reading for all scholars concerned with a critical approach to social science and especially to social anthropology. Anthropos

The relationship between anthropologists' ethnographic...