Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-20T22:15:23.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Emotion and Affect

from Part II - Aspects of Ethical Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

By
Teresa Kuan
Edited by
James Laidlaw
James Laidlaw
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

This chapter argues for the relevance of emotion and affect to the anthropology of ethics. It begins with a discussion of philosophers who take emotion seriously as an area of human life that exposes the limits of ethical inquiry, so as to establish emotion as a relation in which something is at stake in a first-person way. With this understanding, the chapter goes on to highlight how classic studies in the anthropology of emotion depicted local moral worlds, relating emotion to the pragmatics of social life and its many problems. A certain strand of affect theory is then brought to bear to make the key formulation more robust by accommodating a broader multiplicity of relations of interest and passion. This discussion highlights the way ethnography – as a genre of writing – can capture a pile-up of affects in unique historical circumstances, revealing how moral agency and states of depression may be found together. Vitalist in spirit, the chapter aims to show how a focus on emotion and affect illuminates a moral agent defined by her vulnerability and responsiveness to matters at stake in the web of relations that constitutes her world.

Keywords

emotionaffectmoral experiencefirst-person perspectiveattachment
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics , pp. 309 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2010. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory. 2000 [1972]. ‘The Cybernetics of “Self”: A Theory of Alcoholism’, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press: 309–37.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bowen, Murray. 1978. Family Therapy in Clinical Practice. New York: Jason Aronson.Google Scholar
Brown, Steven D. and Tucker., Ian 2010. ‘Eff the Ineffable: Affect, Somatic Management, and Mental Health Service Users’, in Gregg, Melissa and Seigworth, Gregory J. (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bruya, Brian J. 2010. ‘The Rehabilitation of Spontaneity: A New Approach in Philosophy of Action’. Philosophy East & West, 60(2): 207–50.Google Scholar
Candea, Matei, Cook, Joanna, Trundle, Catherine, and Yarrow., Thomas 2015. ‘Introduction: Reconsidering Detachment’, in Candea, Matei, Cook, Joanna, Trundle, Catherine, and Yarrow, Thomas (eds.), Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 1–31.Google Scholar
Cassaniti, Julia. 2015. Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Clough, Patricia Ticineto. 2007. ‘Introduction’, in Clough, Patricia Ticineto with Halley, Jean (eds.), The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 1–33.Google Scholar
Collu, Samuele. 2019. ‘Refracting Affects: Affect, Psychotherapy, and Spirit Dis-Possession’. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 43: 290–314.Google Scholar
Cook, Joanna. 2016. ‘Mindful in Westminster: The Politics of Meditation and the Limits of Neoliberal Critique’. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(1): 141–61.Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Das, Veena. 2012. ‘Ordinary Ethics’, in Fassin, Didier (ed.), A Companion to Moral Anthropology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell: 133–49.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. 1988 [1970]. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Robert Hurley, trans. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari., Felix 1987 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Massumi, Brian, trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. 1966 [1951]. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Spalding, John A. and Simpson, George, trans. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Dyring, Rasmus, Mattingly, Cheryl, and Louw., Maria 2018. ‘The Question of “Moral Engines”: Introducing a Philosophical Anthropological Dialogue’, in Mattingly, Cheryl, Dyring, Rasmus, Louw, Maria, and Wentzer, Thomas Schwarz (eds.), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life. New York: Berghahn: 9–36.Google Scholar
Frankfurt, Harry G. 2006 [2004]. The Reasons of Love. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, Angela. 2010. The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Good, Byron. 2019a. ‘On the Concept of “Evil” in Anthropological Analyses of Political Violence’, in Olsen, William C. and Csordas, Thomas J. (eds.), Engaging Evil: A Moral Anthropology. New York: Berghahn: 51–67.Google Scholar
Good, Byron. 2019b. ‘Hauntology: Theorizing the Spectral in Psychological Anthropology’. Good, Byron and Rahimi, Sadeq, eds. Ethos. Special issue: Hauntology in Psychological Anthropology, 47(4): 411–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guenther, Lisa. 2013. Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Han, Clara. 2012. Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hardt, Michael. 1999. ‘Affective Labor’. boundary 2, 26(2): 89–100.Google Scholar
Hurley, Robert. 1988. ‘Preface’, in Deleuze, G, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.Google Scholar
Illouz, Eva. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Illouz, Eva. 2018. ‘Introduction: Emodities or the Making of Emotional Commodities’, in Illouz, Eva (ed.), Emotions as Commodities: Capitalism, Consumption and Authenticity. Abingdon: Routledge: 1–22.Google Scholar
Ingold, Tim. 2018. Anthropology: Why It Matters. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ivanhoe, Philip J. 2015. ‘Senses and Values of Oneness’, in Bruya, Brian (ed.), The Philosophical Challenge from China. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 231–51.Google Scholar
James, William. 1981 [1890]. The Principles of Psychology, Volume I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jarrín, Alvaro. 2017. The Biopolitics of Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2007. ‘Neoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourse and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the People’s Republic of China’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(2): 383–400.Google Scholar
Kleinman, Arthur. 2014. ‘The Search for Wisdom: Why William James Still Matters’, in Das, Veena, Jackson, Michael, Kleinman, Arthur, and Singh, Brighupati (eds.), The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 119–37.Google Scholar
Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman., Jean 1991. ‘Suffering and Its Professional Transformation: Toward an Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience’. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 15(3): 275–301.Google Scholar
Knox, Hannah and Harvey., Penny 2015. ‘Virtuous Detachments in Engineering Practice: On the Ethics of (Not) Making a Difference’, in Candea, Matei, Cook, Joanna, Trundle, Catherine, and Yarrow, Thomas (eds.), Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 58–78.Google Scholar
Kuan, Teresa. 2014. ‘Banking in Affects: The Child, a Landscape, and the Performance of a Canonical View’, in Yang, J (ed.), The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia. New York: Routledge: 65–81.Google Scholar
Kuan, Teresa. 2015. Love’s Uncertainty: The Politics and Ethics of Child Rearing in Contemporary China. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kuan, Teresa. 2017. ‘The Problem of Moral Luck, Anthropologically Speaking’. Anthropological Theory, 17(1): 30–59.Google Scholar
Kuan, Teresa. 2020. ‘Feelings Run in the Family: Kin Therapeutics and the Configuration of Cause in China’. Lotte Meinert and Lone Grøn, eds. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. Special issue: ‘“It Runs in the Family”: Exploring Contagious Kinship Connections’. 85(4): 696–716.Google Scholar
Kuan, Teresa. 2021. ‘Vicarious Responsibility and the Problem of “Too Much”: Moral Luck from the Perspective of Ordinary Ethics’. The Monist. Special issue: ‘Vicarious Responsibility and Circumstantial Luck’,eds. Ben Colburn and Hallvard Lillehammer. 104: 168–81.Google Scholar
Laidlaw, James. 2015. ‘Detachment and Ethical Regard’, in Candea, Matei, Cook, Joanna, Trundle, Catherine, and Yarrow, Thomas (eds.), Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 130–46.Google Scholar
Levy, Robert I. 1973. Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Island. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levy, Robert I. 1984. ‘Emotion, Knowing, and Culture’, in Shweder, Richard A. and LeVine, Robert A. (eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 214–37.Google Scholar
Louw, Maria. 2018. ‘Haunting as Moral Engine: Ethical Striving and Moral Aporias among Sufis in Uzbekistan’, in Mattingly, Cheryl, Dyring, Rasmus, Louw, Maria, and Wentzer, Thomas Schwartz (eds.), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life. New York: Berghahn: 61–82.Google Scholar
Lukács, Gabriella. 2010. Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lutz, Catherine. 1988. Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lutz, Catherine. 2017. ‘What Matters’. Daniel White, ed. Cultural Anthropology. ‘Retrospectives: Affect’. 32(2): 181–91.Google Scholar
Lutz, Catherine and White., Geoffrey M. 1986. ‘The Anthropology of Emotions’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15: 405–36.Google Scholar
Martin, Emily. 2013. ‘The Potentiality of Ethnography and the Limits of Affect Theory’. Current Anthropology, 54(7): S149–58.Google Scholar
Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2012. ‘Two Virtue Ethics and the Anthropology of Morality’. Anthropological Theory, 12(2): 161–84.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2014. Moral Laboratories: Family Peril and the Struggle for a Good Life. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2018. ‘Ethics, Immanent Transcendence and the Experimental Narrative Self’, in Mattingly, Cheryl, Dyring, Rasmus, Louw, Maria, and Wentzer, Thomas Schwarz (eds.), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life. New York: Berghahn: 39–60.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Cheryl. 2019. ‘Defrosting Concepts, Destabilizing Doxa: Critical Phenomenology and the Perplexing Particular’. Anthropological Theory, 19(4): 415–39.Google Scholar
Matza, Tomas. 2012. ‘“Good Individualism”? Psychology, Ethics, and Neoliberalism in Postsocialist Russia’. American Ethnologist, 39(4): 804–818.Google Scholar
Matza, Tomas. 2018. Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-Being in Postsocialist Russia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mazzarella, William. 2017a. ‘Sense Out of Sense: Notes on the Affect/Ethics Impasse’. White, Daniel, ed. Cultural Anthropology. ‘Retrospectives: Affect’, 32(2): 199–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazzarella, William. 2017b. The Mana of Mass Society. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meinert, Lotte. 2018. ‘Every Day: Forgiving after War in Northern Uganda’, in Mattingly, Cheryl, Dyring, Rasmus, Louw, Maria, and Wentzer, Thomas Schwarz (eds.), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life. New York: Berghahn: 100–15.Google Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael. 2009. ‘Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15: 1–18.Google Scholar
Negri, Antonio. 1999. ‘Value and Affect’. Michael Hardt, trans. boundary 2, 26(2): 77–88.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2001 [1986]. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2006 [2001]. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pritzker, Sonya E. 2016. ‘New Age with Chinese Characteristics? Translating Inner Child Emotion Pedagogies in Contemporary China’. Wilce, James M. and Fenigsen, Janina, eds. Ethos. Special Issue: ‘Emotion Pedagogies’, 44(2): 150–70.Google Scholar
Pritzker, Sonya E. and Duncan., Whitney L. 2019. ‘Technologies of the Social: Family Constellation Therapy and the Remodeling of Relational Selfhood in China and Mexico’. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 43: 468–95.Google Scholar
Richard, Analiese and Rudnyckyj., Daromir 2009. ‘Economies of Affect’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15: 57–77.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1980. Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self and Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1984. ‘Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling’, in Shweder, Richard A. and LeVine, Robert A. (eds.), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 137–57.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Danilyn. 2016. ‘Affect Theory and the Empirical’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 45: 285–300.Google Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. ‘The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology’. Current Anthropology, 36(3): 409–20.Google Scholar
Seigworth, Gregory J. and Gregg., Melissa 2010. ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’, in Gregg, Melissa and Seigworth, Gregory J. (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 1–25.Google Scholar
Shouse, Eric. 2005. ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’. M/C Journal, 8.6. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php.Google Scholar
Stewart, Kathleen. 2017. ‘In the World That Affect Proposed’. White, Daniel, ed. Cultural Anthropology. ‘Retrospectives: Affect’, 32(2): 192–8.Google Scholar
Shweder, Richard A. 2003. Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Throop, C. Jason. 2014. ‘Moral Moods’. Ethos 42(1): 65–83.Google Scholar
Throop, C. Jason. 2018. ‘Being Otherwise: On Regret, Morality and Mood’, in Mattingly, Cheryl, Dyring, Rasmus, Louw, Maria, and Wentzer, Thomas Schwarz (eds.), Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life. New York: Berghahn: 61–82.Google Scholar
Tran, Allen L. 2015. ‘Rich Sentiment and the Cultural Politics of Emotion in Postreform Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’. American Anthropologist, 117(3): 480–92.Google Scholar
Trnka, Susanna and Trundle., Catherine 2017. ‘Introduction. Competing Responsibilities: Reckoning Personal Responsibility, Care for the Other, and the Social Contract in Contemporary Life’, in Trnka, Susanna and Trundle, Catherine (eds.), Competing Responsibilities: The Ethics and Politics of Contemporary Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 1–24.Google Scholar
Urban Walker, Margaret. 1991. ‘Moral Luck and the Virtues of Impure Agency’. Metaphilosophy, 22 (1–2): 14–27.Google Scholar
Whyte, Susan Reynolds. 1997. Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wikan, Unni. 1990. Managing Turbulent Hearts: A Balinese Formula for Living. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wilce, James M. and Fenigsen., Janina 2016. ‘Emotion Pedagogies: What Are They, and Why Do They Matter?’ Wilce, James M. and Fenigsen, Janina, eds. Ethos, Special Issue: ‘Emotion Pedagogies’, 44(2): 81–95.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1981. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1993. ‘Postscript’, in Statman, Daniel (ed.), Moral Luck. Albany: State University of New York Press: 251–8.Google Scholar
Wissinger, Elizabeth. 2007. ‘Always on Display: Affective Production in the Modeling Industry’, in Clough, Patricia Ticineto with Halley, Jean (eds.), The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 231–60.Google Scholar
Yang, Jie. 2015. Unknotting the Heart: Unemployment and Therapeutic Governance in China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zigon, Jarrett. 2010. ‘“A Disease of Frozen Feelings”: Ethically Working on Emotional Worlds in a Russian Orthodox Church Drug Rehabilitation Program’. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 24(3): 326–43.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Emotion and Affect
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Emotion and Affect
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Emotion and Affect
  • Edited by James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics
  • Online publication: 11 May 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108591249.012
Available formats
×