Emotional Worlds (New Departures in Anthropology)
Cambridge University Press, 2/7/2019
EAN 9781107020993, ISBN10: 1107020999
Hardcover, 272 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Are emotions human universals? Is the concept of emotion an invention of Western tradition? If people in other cultures live radically different emotional lives how can we ever understand them? Using vivid, often dramatic, examples from around the world, and in dialogue with current work in psychology and philosophy, Andrew Beatty develops an anthropological perspective on the affective life, showing how emotions colour experience and transform situations; how, in turn, they are shaped by culture and history. In stark contrast with accounts that depend on lab simulations, interviews, and documentary reconstruction, he takes the reader into unfamiliar cultural worlds through a 'narrative' approach to emotions in naturalistic settings, showing how emotions tell a story and belong to larger stories. Combining richly detailed reporting with a careful critique of alternative approaches, he argues for an intimate grasp of local realities that restores the heartbeat to ethnography.
Introduction
Part I. Groundings
1. Emotions in the field
recognition and location
2. Nias
emotions dramatised
3. Java
emotions analysed
Part II. Narrative
4. The case for narrative
5. Persons and particulars
6. The narrative understanding of emotion
7. Writing emotion
Part III. Perspectives
8. Affect
a wrong turn?
9. Concepts, words, feelings
10. The uses of empathy
Conclusion.