How we become who we are: Interview with Christina Toren

Abstract

Professor Emeritus of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St. Andrews and founding director of the Centre for Pacific Studies, Christina Toren has been instrumental in charting new directions for contemporary anthropology. Her contributions to Fiji/Pacific studies, sociality, kinship and the notions of person, ontogeny as a historical process, and epistemology are remarkable, and have guided profound theoretical reformulations around the world. We met for this interview at her home in Dundee, Scotland, during the period when she was supervising research we were doing at the University of St. Andrews.