Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion

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.

Author: Andrew Beatty
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/28/2019
Pages: 314
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 9.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781107605374

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2019

About the Author
Beatty, Andrew: - Andrew Beatty teaches anthropology at Brunel University. He has carried out five years' fieldwork in Indonesia and is the author of four other books, including After the Ancestors: An Anthropologist's Story (Cambridge, 2015).