Includes bibliographical references and index.

PART I. Initial Arguments -- Chapter 1. The Emergence of Personhood -- Chapter 2. Key Theoretical Resources -- PART II. Critical Engagements -- Chapter 3. The Reality of Social Construction -- Excursus: Getting to Truth -- Chapter 4. Network Structuralism's Missing Persons -- Chapter 5. Persons and Mechanisms (Not) in Variables, Sociology -- PART III. Constructive Development -- Chapter 6. The Personal Sources of Social Structures -- Chapter 7. The Good -- Chapter 8. Human Dignity.

The task of understanding human beings, what we ourselves are, our constitution and condition, is a perennial problem in philosophy and related disciplines. Smith argues here that our understanding of human persons is threatened by technological development and capricious academic theories alike, seeking to deny or relativize the personhood of humanity. Smith's book puts a stake in the ground, in defense of a view of the human that is genuinely humanistic in the traditional sense and capable of sustaining with intellectual coherence things like modern human rights and universal benevolence.