ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes aspects of Panara personhood as instantiated through key psycho-physical states, as well as the bodily practices of everyday social living. She discusses the notions of suakiin (energetic, sociable) and suangka (lazy, unsociable). The concepts of suakiin and suangka are key to evaluating both one’s own and other’s psycho-physical states. The author also describes how people are made through the everyday, intimate acts of intersubjective exchange and the practices that contribute to the making of Panara people. Such interventions are particularly intensive in the very early stages of life and diminish with time as the separation between parents and child becomes greater. Both parents contribute to the formation of the fetus in the womb—the man through his sperm (siin) and the woman through blood (nampiu). Fathers contribute semen (siin) to the making of the baby, and it this that makes the babies fat.
