Defining Human Identity Through Culture and Anthropology

Introduction: Anthropology and the Question of Human Identity

Anthropology, in the broadest sense of the term, is concerned with the whole history of mankind — with man in the context of evolution. Yet this is a difficult position to take, because being concerned with man as he occurs and as he has occurred means that the body and the soul must be taken into consideration together, and the differences in man associated with time and location must be investigated. Still, there is a fundamental difference between the work of an anthropologist and that of an anatomist or a psychologist, who deal primarily with the common functioning of the human mind and body. Accordingly, "Minor differences such as appear in any series of individuals are either disregarded or considered as peculiarities without particular significance for the type, although sometimes suggestive of its rise from lower forms."^[1] To the anthropologist, on the other hand, each individual human must be seen through the lens of his particular cultural and social group. The consequence of this position is that a human being cannot simply be categorized with a blanket definition, but must be regarded on a case-by-case basis.

It is significant that anthropology is concerned with the human being throughout history, up to the present. This means that anthropology, in its aim to tell the entire story of mankind, must centrally rely upon primary sources in history. As one authority notes, "History, in the narrower sense of the word, depends on written records."^[2] Certainly history and anthropology must converge at some points, but it is valuable to understand anthropology as something analogous to history: since historians must extract the past from individual sources, the ultimate stories they tell are fundamentally unique to the individual. Anthropology is similar in this way — individual cases are the sources, and of utmost importance is understanding them in their unique situations. Whereas historians must be concerned with the written record to tell their tale, anthropologists must be concerned with human bones, animal bones, and human handiwork. All of these sources are specific cases of humans and human activities; the human, understood through anthropology, must be a specific human, and not a general subject.

However, there remains a problem with regarding humans on a case-by-case basis while simultaneously attempting to formulate an overall history of man: where should any story of man begin? In other words, some set of boundaries between the human being and other animals is needed in order to generate an appropriate account. After all, the geological record tells the same case-by-case story of all plants and animals, so it is unclear exactly where and why humans should be singled out for discussion. Essentially, it is important that we define who is human and who is not.

Biological and Rational Definitions and Their Limits

To define who is human, one could begin with the biological definition of a species: "a set of individuals who are potentially or actually interbreeding to produce fertile offspring."^[3] This definition leaves the door open for many grey areas in nature — instances where it is impossible to determine whether animals are members of the same species or not. Lions and tigers, for example: when they do interbreed they produce fertile offspring, but it is unclear whether they would interbreed freely in nature. They no longer coexist in the same habitats — because of human actions — so they are not clearly different species. Similarly, based upon the biological definition of species, one could claim that an individual born with a genetic defect who is unable to have children is not a Homo sapiens. Biologically, one might be right; but few people would argue that we should therefore perform medical experiments upon this individual, or that they should not be afforded the same rights as any other human being in society. It is in this regard that anthropological definitions of human beings must separate themselves from the purely biological definition.

Many people have tried to use our status as moral individuals as the basis for separating ourselves from other animals. Damon Linker, associate editor of First Things magazine, writes, "Western civilization has tended to regard animals as resembling things more than human beings precisely because . . . animals have no perception of morality."^[4] Accordingly, our notions of right and wrong, our capacities as deductive thinkers, and in short our rationality, are what make us human and grant us rights above other animals. Historically, this has been a powerful motivation for human rights; however, it is also subject to arbitrary consequences. Are we to claim that mentally disabled people should not be granted equal rights because they cannot rationally choose between right and wrong, and therefore are not human? Once again, we must concede that by this definition they may not qualify, but that denying them the rights of society is clearly immoral. Designations based upon mental capacity thus run into the same problems as those based strictly upon biological grounds.

Alfred Korzybski, an early anthropologist, distinguished between the classes of life in an interesting manner: "Since plants captured one kind of energy, converted it into another, and stored it up, he defined the plant class of life as the chemistry-binding class of life. Since animals were characterized by the freedom and faculty to move about in space he defined animals as the space-binding class of life."^[5] By these two definitions, animals are fairly effectively separated from plants; but the separation between other animals and humans must fundamentally rely upon some appeal to a specific characteristic of human beings in order to be useful in the field of anthropology.