Psychological anthropology

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

5 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

09/23/2009

Category :

Social studies

Sub category :

Psychology

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Summary :

Introduction
Goals of 'Unnatural Emotions'
Love in the communities
Set of expressions for romantic love
The Western influence
The idea of love 'befalling' lovers
Reinforcing gender identities
1. Women's performance of gender identities
2. Female coworkers in the pastry shop
Maturity
1. Cultural conceptions of maturity
2. Kuro's different forms
3. The Japanese concept of maturity
4. Comparison of Ifaluk and Junigau conceptions of love
Conclusion

Abstract

Quoting Williams, Ahearn defines "structures of feeling" as "'meanings and values as they are actively lived and felt' by real individuals [Ahearn, p. 53]."'. The structures in this phrase are not static, but are always growing and changing in discernible patterns. Both Lutz and Ahearn are interested in connecting these structures to other aspects of society and culture, both within the culture being studied and in other cultures, but each author takes a somewhat different approach according to the aims of their respective ethnographies.

Unnatural Emotions has two main goals: to deconstruct Western emotion as a cultural category and challenge assumptions about it, and to describe emotional life on an atoll in Micronesia. Lutz says that "the ethnographic understanding of the emotional worlds of other people is accomplished primarily by comparison with the emotional world into which the ethnographer is socialized [Lutz p. 144]," so it makes sense that her data is largely comprised of comparisons between American and Ifaluk interpretations of emotion gathered through interviews. Invitations to Love, on the other hand, is more concerned with tracing change over time: the way that the conceptions of self, love, and agency among residents of Junigau began to shift dramatically in the 1990's. To get a sense of the chronology of this change, she uses data like census information and new textbooks that advocate development to illustrate a population-wide shift in thinking.