The study of the person, or self, is one of the most exciting areas of anthropological research today. Though it has recendy become a central concern of psychological anthropology and gender studies, the person has been a significant theme in African studies ever since the 1930s; reflection on this theme promises today not only to shed new light on data already collected, but also to stimulate important new research.
It is not my intention to write an intellectual history here, or give an explanation of how and why people have become interested in the issues I will be discussing. If I do write now and then about the historical context of some of these ideas and approaches, it is mainly with the goal of helping the contemporary reader see the relevance for our topic of a wide variety of sources regardless of their context and rhetoric. Thus, though my presentation will be vaguely chronological, my discussion and analysis will generally examine the various works in relation to one another regardless of when they were written.
The reader should bear in mind that in the United States, at least, the field I am surveying in this review essay does not yet exist as a sub-area or sub-speciality of any discipline. It is a goal of this essay to demonstrate that a convergence has been taking place, particularly in recent decades, in the thrust of African research on an apparently wide variety of topics.