Kei society and the person: An approach through childbirth and funerary rituals*

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Abstract
Components of the person in Kei society are analysed through the study of childbirth and funerary rituals. It shows that an analysis of the ideas related to the notion of the person itself cannot be arbitrarily isolated from that of the social structure. A person is constituted through a set of relationships, some of which are established on the level of the house—the smallest social unit—others on the level of the society as a whole. The distinction between various elements of the person is based on the distinction between these relationships, which are ordered at different levels of the ideology. Elements which make up a person are not substances, they are elements of relationships constitutive of the socio‐cosmic universe. A house, as a social unit, appears as a sort of permanent relay between the different levels on which these elements are ordered.

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