Anthropology and Sociology of Emotions

The recent ‘materialist turn’ stresses the fundamental role of nonhumans in the constitution of our social and political life, and argues that our inability to grasp their importance dooms our normative prognoses for ordering society to ethical, political, and practical failure. Our paper combines insights from recent affect theory and indigenous and non-North Atlantic societies in response to this epistemological and theoretical critique. (1.) We argue that affect analyses can give a fuller account of the ways in which nonhuman others participate in the creation and maintenance of human sociability. (2.) We argue that societies such as those organized along totemistic or animist lines have a different ‘affective attunement’ toward nonhuman others, whom they admit as social members (we call these heterological societies). However, our own anthropocentrism renders us insensible to the logic of their modes of social organization. Referring to ethnographic examples, we show how affect analysis can help us translate the insights of heterological societies, so as to eventually dismantle the current anthropocentrism.

Keywords: affect, new materialism, affective attunement, indigenous practice, heterological, becoming-human, becoming-animal

Papua New Guinean nurses work in a sociomedical system in which cultural and linguistic diversity are matters of pressing concern. Using data drawn from ethnographic research with PNG nursing students, I show how nursing education socializes nurses to take stances toward language and communication that impact their care practices. I argue that nurses’ use of language is shaped by their ethical commitments as educated Christians and indigenous concerns about the links between language, emotion, and health. In a resource-poor setting where health workers risk blame for structural inequalities, this “ethical metapragmatics” is an important but neglected facet of care work.

Why and how do norms emerge? Which norms do emerge and why these ones in particular? These questions belong to the “problem of the emergence of norms” that consists of an inquiry on the production of norms in social collectives. It is with the ethnographic study of the emergence of “norms against violence” in the political collective “Occupy Geneva” that I address this problem: first, empirically with the analysis of my field observations; and, second, theoretically by discussing my findings. In consequence of two episodes categorized as sexual assaults that occurred in their camp, the members of Occupy Geneva decided to tackle those issues in a general assembly. Their goal was to amend their first charter of good conduct, in order to reform its norms and complete it with norms aiming to regulate “facts” of “unjustified violence.” During a collective deliberation, new norms were devised, debated, and consensually adopted. The writing of the new charter took place in a second general assembly during which the wording of the written norms was collectively decided. I show that indignation against the sexual assaults was the main motive that led to the collective deliberation, and that the entire process of the making of these norms was characterized by different collective emotions. Indeed, indignation, contempt and fear played major roles in the emergence of norms prohibiting violence, allowing punishing and excluding wrongdoers, and prescribing to intervene collectively against an aggressor to neutralize the threat that he represents. These findings make me hypothesized that social norms emerge from emotions thanks to the latter internal structure; and that emotions provide causal and grounding explanations of this emergence. Thus, emotions allow answering the questions “Why do norms emerge?” and “Why do they have their specific forms?”. In short, I argue that social norms have emotional foundations.

This paper conceptualizes eroticism as emotional experience. I use the Renaissance Faire to illustrate the construction of asexual eroticism along three dimensions: the carnal experience of Faire, its focus on physicality, and intimations of increased interpersonal access. This approach forefronts the complexity of eroticism and situates the erotic squarely in the sociology of emotion, providing a model for understanding a range of emotional, embodied, and nonsexual charges as erotic. More broadly, the analysis seeks to contribute to the study of all emotion as embodied.

Este artigo tem o objetivo de discutir a relação entre o ativismo biossocial e político de HIV/AIDS e a linguagem cultural das emoções. Minha proposta enfoca dois eixos específicos de análise: 1) a formação de sujeitos soropositivos, isto é, a sua auto- modelação como pessoas “vivendo com HIV” e, em razão disso, 2) a sua inserção e formação como ativista no movimento biossocial de HIV/AIDS. Por um lado, a testagem anti-HIV é um evento central de um longo processo de auto-modelação e construção identitária que evidencia a importância das emoções. Por outro lado, a participação de pessoas de diversos status sorológicos em atividades das ONGs, grupos de ajuda mútua, redes ativistas possibilita entender a micropolítica das emoções, dos corpos e das performances culturais que estão diretamente associadas

The paper presents an analysis of a set of discourses and practices that constitute what we have called “sensitive modes of child-rearing”, and that form part of a broader psychologization process of urban middle classes in Brazil in the last decades. These are discursive practices that highlight the senses, and exalt experiences, perceptions, affections, emotions, intuition and empathy. We start with a brief presentation of the most relevant aspects of these discourses. In the second section, based on ethnographic research, we discuss the notions of the "individual" and the “natural”, which are important parts of these discourses. Finally, we argue that parents - women and men – seek to become “individuals” in everyday attempts at self-recreation, which are carried out along with their children’s upbringing. Their attempts to live up to these discourses also consist in making “conscious choices” and in consuming certain goods and services.
KEYWORDS. Children's upbringing. Body. Emotions. Individualism.

This paper discusses the murder of one young man by another, a childhood friend and neighbor, for a banal motive. It analyzes the trajectory of the victim and his family up to the moment of the crime, his death and the subsequent developments so as to understand the moral frames of reference and accountability of the actors in the recomposition of the victim's family, the aggressor and his family in order to maintain and improve neighborly ties and friendship. This trajectory confers meaning to the practices, lends support to intentions and justifications, and is significant in terms of understanding the act that led to the crime and the efforts of the families to support the aggressor. It explores friendship, violent actions among friends, remorse, family and neighborhood bonds, and the emotional and moral codes that allowed the aggressor to reassemble the episode that led to the death of his 'best' friend. How does crime, through its unique and extraordinary aspects, transmute social and individual relations? What emotional aspects are in play and how does normal daily life resume, including the processes of mourning, repentance and the reconstruction of personal and social bonds between the affected families and the aggressor? How do moral practices and perceptions influence mourning, remorse and forgiveness?

Die Lebenssoziologie hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten ohne Zweifel zu einer veritablen Wissenschaft des Sozialen formiert. Dabei handelt es sich jedoch nicht um eine Wissenschaft im klassischen Sinn, nicht um eine ›Königswissenschaft‹, die mit etablierten Theore-men, kanonisiertem Lektüren und festen Wissensbeständen operieren würde. Vielmehr hat sich die lebenssoziologische Wissenschaft nicht nur als exzentrische, sondern auch als intensive Wissenschaft erwiesen. Um deren Darstellung soll es in diesem Kapitel gehen. Im Anschluss an die im Band bis hier dargestellten theoriehistorischen Arbeiten, theoretischen Konzepte, empirischen Einzelfallstudien und kritischen Auseinandersetzungen soll in diesem abschließenden Kapitel die Lebenssoziologie als eigenständige Wissenschaft vorgestellt werden. Das umfasst die Diskussion eines Theorieprogramms, einer Methode und die Durchführung einer exemplarischen Fallstudie. Die Theorie setzt sich aus zentralen Schlüsselbegriffen zusammen. Diese beziehen sich auf Begriffe, die in diesem Band bereits Erwähnung gefunden haben: auf die Begriffe des Werdens, der Intensität und des Mehr-als-Lebens, darüber hinaus aber auch auf eine spezifische Differenztheorie – die nicht von einem konstitutiven Außen, sondern von einem konstitutiven Zwischen ausgeht –; und auf die Konzepte der Affektivität, Suspension und Interpassivität. Am Anschluss daran entwickelt der Aufsatz auch eine spezifisch lebenssoziologische Methode, die Intensitätsanalyse, die illustrativ an einer empirischen Fallstudie zu algorithmischen Praktiken im ›automati-schen‹ Börsenhandel durchgeführt wird.

Resumo O presente artigo busca discutir o fenômeno social e esportivo conhecido como MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), a partir de uma reflexão sobre os usos dos corpos e as práticas de consumo dos espectadores e praticantes desse esporte na cidade de Maceió/AL. A pesquisa etnográfica foi realizada em três espaços distintos: um bar que reunia fãs e/ou adeptos do esporte, uma academia de musculação que oferecia treinos de MMA e um evento com lutadores profissionais chamado Coliseu Extreme Fight. Por intermédio da observação participante e entrevistas realizadas com espectadores e praticantes do MMA em Maceió, foi possível compreender os diferentes sentidos elaborados pelos consumidores desse esporte-entretenimento. Palavras-chave: Corpo. Consumo. Êxtase. MMA. Abstract This article aims to discuss the social and sportive phenomenon known as MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), from reflections on uses the bodies and consumption practices of spectators and practitioners of this sport in the city of Maceió / AL. The ethnographic research was realized in three distinct spaces: a bar that broughted together fans and / or sports adepts, a bodybuilding gym that offer MMA training and an event with professional fighters called the Extreme Fight Coliseum. Through participant observation and interviews with spectators and MMA practitioners in Maceió, it was possible to understand the different senses elaborated by the consumers of this sport-entertainment.

The chapter ‘From Housing to Home: Buying Housing to Build a Home’ focuses specifically on an analysis of statements from people buying their first housing. The statements of respondents reveal buying a home to be a dynamic process that comprises a whole range of steps and decisions. Behind the decision to buy housing we found a normatively set preference for homeownership. The chapter describes in detail the structure and content of this normative idea and shows that the preference for homeownership, as articulated by individual first-time buyers, relates not just to the material side of housing but also and above all to its emotional side, to the emotional experience and the experience more generally of being ‘at home’. An in-depth content analysis of statements shows that the ideas that shape the process of buying housing are ideas about (one’s future) home and these are shaped not just by what kind of housing a person has experienced in the past, one’s personal history and current circumstances, but also by ideas about what constitutes ideal housing. The purchase of a flat or house, if it comes about, is the result of a process of negotiation between financial (and other) constraints and notion about ideal housing. A purchase essentially represents and is perceived by respondents as a compromise between ideas and wishes on the one hand and possibilities and constraints on the other hand.
An analysis of the narratives about the process of purchasing a home shows a home as a central place of human existence. For the respondents in the study, buying a flat represented the first and a fundamental step towards having their own home. They felt that only when they owned their flat, which they feel they have control over, would they be able to start the process of establishing a home, a process that is long term and that on top of a material component also has a significant emotional one, the sense of setting down roots. The spaces of the place a person lives in represent places with which people tend to form emotional relationships and ties that then grow deeper over time. At the same time they are places that the respondents in the study – first-time home-buyers – have a need to shape and reshape according to their ideas about themselves and their future. Owning one’s home thus (in the framework of people’s ideas and their statements) opens up greater opportunities for gradually creating and reaffirming one’s own identity as they adapt and reshape the spaces they live in. Buying a dwelling is thus understood not as an investment but as the first step in creating a home for oneself.

Resumen
Desde hace unos años venimos explorando el modo en que la dimensión emocional de la experiencia escolar interviene en los procesos de inclusión-exclusión educativa en el nivel secundario. Aquí analizamos en pro- fundidad las entrevistas realizadas a 16 jóvenes de sectores populares que han egresado de las llamadas “Escuelas de Reingreso” en las que se indagaron las formas en que ellos enunciaban su experiencia emo- cional, explorando las fuentes de dicha emocionalidad. Respeto, entusiasmo y tranquilidad fueron las formas enunciativas utilizadas para describir sus experiencias. Nuestra hipótesis es que el tipo de vínculos cons- truidos con los docentes en el marco de un formato escolar particular genera una emocionalidad positiva, que permite resignificar la trayectoria escolar personal, reposicionarse frente a la institución escolar y po- tenciar su sensación de agencia, en términos de sentirse con mayores márgenes de control acerca de su propia vida, permitiéndole de este modo desplegar diferentes tipos de estrategias personales para su inte- gración laboral, educativa y familiar.
Palabras clave: emociones; jóvenes; escuela secundaria; inclusión educativa; agencia.

Abstract
For several years we have been exploring how the emotional dimension of school experience influences the processes of inclusion and exclusion in High School education. In this paper we analyze in-depth in- terviews with 16 young people from poor social sectors that have graduated from the "Reentry School". In these interviews we explore not only the ways they signify theirs emotional experience but also the sources of such emotionality. Respect, enthusiasm and calmness were the enunciative forms used to des- cribe their experiences. Our hypothesis is that the type of bond built with teachers in this particular school format generates a positive emotionality, allowing the arising of new meanings about their personal school career and an enhanced sense of agency, as well as different ways of facing the school, thus being able them to deploy different types of personal strategies for labor, educational and family integration.
Keywords: emotions; young people; high school; educational inclusion; agency.