Life Begins When They Steal Your Bicycle

Cross-Cultural Practices of Personhood at the Beginnings and Ends of Life

Bibliographic Data

ID5847804
AuthorsLynn M Morgan (0000-0002-7681-9739, Mount Holyoke College, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume34
Issue1
Pages8-15
Publication date2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1073-1105 • E-ISSN: 1748-720X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1748-720x.2006.00003.x
PMID16489979
OpenAlexW2130990609
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited19

A friend once told me I was wasting my time writing about cross-cultural perspectives on the beginnings of life. "Your work is interesting for its curiosity value," he said, "but fundamentally worthless. What happens in other cultures is totally irrelevant to what is happening here." Those were discouraging words, but as I followed the American debates about the beginnings and ends of life, it seemed he was right. Anthropologists have written a great deal about birth and death rites in other societies and about non-western notions of personhood, but to date our findings have had little impact on American policy, ethics, or law. The recognized experts on contentious topics such as abortion and euthanasia tend to come from the fields of philosophy, bioethics, theology, law, and biology, but rarely from the social sciences. I was a bit surprised, therefore, to be invited to address the Thomas A. Pitts Memorial Lectureship on "Defining the Beginning and the End of Human Life

Bioethics · Curiosity · Personhood · Value (mathematics · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues · Reproductive Health and Technologies

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