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123 5 Personhood, Emotions, and Moral Values Since the major concern of this book is suicide, there is a need to look at one section of Palawan ethnography that we have only touched on in the preceding chapters and that has not been fully considered yet: the realm of ideas concerning the structure of the person, the emotional and moral life as conceptualized locally. By discussing this we will then be in a better position to see how suicide and the very notion of killing oneself fits, or does not fit, into the local theory of personhood and moral action, how it agrees with or goes against the grain of sustained values about self. The idea is to start from and examine the vernacular language of personhood in order to understand the indigenous way of looking at the structure of human action. I should repeat that our interest is governed by a desire to better understand the way Palawan people deal with, explain, or account for suicidal behavior. Indeed, to explain or account for suicidal acts, they use ideas and concepts relating to emotional life. Like us (i.e., Westerners), they explain suicide with words for grief, despair, anxiety, anger, jealousy, and so on. Like any other people, the Palawan from Kulbi have concepts regarding the person, its material and nonmaterial components, its emotional life, and, in a more general way, the basic mechanisms of human behavior; they have some clear ideas about reasons and motives that make people do what they do; they possess a theory of action—or an outline of it—embedded in the words they use to describe it. In this section, I shall lay out the foundation of such a theory of action and personhood by first exploring the vocabulary relating to it. This is a simple exercise in ethnopsychology.1 The notion of personhood is also closely related to notions pertaining to social and interpersonal relations, to society and its network of ties linking individuals in mutual bonds of rights and duties, respect and avoidance, closeness and estrangement. Some aspects of the Palawan society and its values will have to be examined. What is a person as an individual agent, to what extent is he/she autonomous and singular? How is he/she identified by others? In order 124 part one: pal awan culture and societ y to answer these queries, I shall examine ways in which individuals are given a social identity and how they should conform to a prevailing system of ethical and social values. Local people do not live in a “culture of suicide.”They lack an all-encompassing explanation for it—one, for instance, that would be based on the workings of supernatural agencies, as perhaps in African sorcery or witchcraft.2 They do not indulge in complex ceremonies or rituals dedicated to placating the souls of suicides or to preventing other such events. What indeed is so startling about this situation is that suicide is, so to speak, outside the reach and concern of Palawan culture. It is also contrary to it. People are generally adverse to the idea of killing oneself under any circumstance, and when it happens they are shocked and helpless and have little recourse in the way of religious or ideological consolation. Basic Components of the Person Like other Palawan people elsewhere on the island, the inhabitants of Kulbi hold that the main component parts of the person are 1) the kurudwa (souls); 2) the ginawa (breath, life); 3) the nakem (awareness, consciousness, mind); and 4) the atej (liver, seat of some of the main emotions, the “heart” in the moral sense of the word), the place whence love, generosity, anger, and so on, originate. There is also the physical body (bilug), with all its functions. Kurudwa The kurudwa are the spiritual components of the person, entities that survive the individual’s demise and make it possible to continue its existence after death. There are several kurudwa, and usually they are located by informants at the top of the head and in various parts of the body, especially the joints. People do not agree on the exact number of kurudwa. One is always located at the top of the head, others are variously described as being in the elbows or other joints. One informant held that there were only two kurudwa, one on top of the head, the other and most important one located under the soles of the feet. As in many other...

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