Social personhood and disability among the Mixe of San Marcos Moctum and Totontepec Villa de Morelos in Oaxaca, Mexico

This dissertation seeks to answer two questions. First, how is the core of social personhood drawn for Mixe individuals? Second, how is the core of social personhood drawn (or redrawn) for Mixe individuals with disabilities? The answers to these questions are anchored in library research and ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2003 among the Mixe of Oaxaca, Mexico, in three sites: Oaxaca City, Totontepec Villa de Morelos, and San Marcos Moctum.;The data in this dissertation will demonstrate that the key to attaining full adult personhood among the Mixe is to give service (dar servicio ) to one's family and community. With this in mind, the hypothesis guiding this dissertation is that Mixe individuals give service and therefore achieve full adult personhood by participating in five societal activities: (1) family; (2) political life of the community; (3) religious life of the community; (4) land husbandry; and (5) migration.;Social personhood is defined as society's understandings, norms, and laws regarding how individuals will be represented and treated as well as the degrees of autonomy or dependence they will possess throughout life. Personhood is not an intrinsic property of the individual. It is provided and legitimated by society. I approach the analysis of Mixe social personhood from the theoretical perspectives provided by Foucault's poststructuralism (Foucault 1979, 1980) and Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology.