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Persuasive Technology and Personhood on Social Media

Returning to Marcel Mauss’s classic work on the person, this essay explores Mauss’s distinction between personne and personnage and the distinction used in contemporary anthropology between dividual and individual. Using these terms of analysis, I use the insights gained from recent ethnographic research in laboratories of experimental psychology to show how some parts of the practices used in these settings have become the foundation of social media. I consider whether social media has created a world focused almost entirely on the autonomous and socially isolated individual or whether the socially embedded “dividual” can be equally present/recognized in these settings.