when the headhunting stops

Sometimes i think i like the anthropology of emotions more than the history of emotions. Perhaps this is just because within anthropology it is possibly easier to come across examples of exotic emotions, of responses that challenge perceptions and provide a thrill of the possibilities that we humans are capable of.

One such example comes from 'The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions', by William M. Reddy though in this case he is describing the work of an anthropologist.

Michelle Rosaldo wrote of the Ilongot people of the Philippines, formerly a tribe of headhunters (the headhunting was only done by the men) whose emotional lives prized the concept of liget which is a sense of anger, heat, energy and envy. This liget provided the motivation to do things like hunt, garden or protect the tribe from attack.

It also was central to young men becoming possessed of the desire to headhunt. This was then harnessed by the elders (also men) and they all went on raiding parties. If successful, the whole tribe (men and women) would break out in joyful celebration, not least in seeing liget fulfilled.

However when Rosaldo went back to the tribe for more fieldwork several years later, she discovered the headhunting had stopped, through a crackdown by the Philippino authorities. In that time, many of the tribe had converted to Christianity and the tribe's emotional norms were becoming much more placid in the absence of liget which could no longer be expressed or fulfilled. Ultimately they hoped the new religion would take away the pain of unrealised liget.

On the surface the tribe had made this massive emotional shift away from one of their core emotional states in a very short period of years. However, when she played a recording back to them of their celebrations of liget (at their request), the tribe became utterly disconsolate and asked her to stop as it grieved them too painfully to hear the joy of their old way of life.

In another incident, Rosaldo spoke of a group of Ilongot Christians playing volleyball during a child's funeral, saying they had no reason to feel grief.

As Reddy points out, the activity of the build up and release of liget was not just a ritual, it was something the Ilongot were fully emotionally engaged in.

These people were not monsters, but they genuinely felt decapitating neighbouring tribespeople's heads was a good thing. they felt good when that liget was fulfilled and released. And yet this was the same feeling they got when they tended their gardens.

That Christianity had helped them move on from headhunting which is a good thing but the loss of their liget had clearly left them bereft.

In their Christian states, they felt no grief, and yet nothing in Christianity tells them not to feel grief. And was their lack of grief unnatural? How could it be, it was what they felt.

But think of the reactions we have to an apparent lack of grief, for example with the Queen's apparent aloofness after the death of Princess Diana.

I am not arguing that Christianity or the authorities did wrong in moving the Ilongot away from headhunting, or that they should have been denied the choice to engage with aspects of the outside world to keep them in some prelapsarian noble savage role for us to study.

Truly the well of human emotions is deep and diverse, and sometimes sits rather uncomfortably beside our notions of morality.

I do think it is worth remembering that our emotions are not always good and true guides in formulating any moral code, as they are capable of making the moral equivalent of black,white and white, black.

Assynt

Two of Assynt in the far northwest today, courtesy of Colin Prior, who runs holiday tours teaching people how to make photographs like these.

the loneliness of the long distance writer....

"All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?"
The Beatles, Eleanor Rigby

It's not often I quote approvingly from the Daily Mail, but there was an interesting article on loneliness here.

The writer, Lorna Martin, spoke of loneliness as a taboo made all the more poignant by the endemic nature of the condition of Western women. Whilst I would disagree with her overly feminine characterisation of the emotion - it was however an article written for the femail section of the paper so that should come as no surprise - it contained several elements which were pertinent for women and men.

This isn't to deny or denigrate her descriptions of its effect on women, merely to highlight that men have their own issues relating to loneliness that may differ slightly in causes in some cases but are largely similar in outcome.

I sympathise with her, having felt that unbearably intense sense of loneliness of many occasions throughout my life, and noted that they increased massively when I was either working from home or not working at all. Such are the travails of being a freelancer in the world we live in.

Martin points out rightly that we are ill equipped to deal with loneliness. This was something I mentioned in my first post on this blog when speaking about the old Indian tradition (quoted by Theodore Zeldin) of sending young men on retreat for 3 months to cope with a deadened form on loneliness that helps them face up to the condition.

As she notes, it is associated with failure and weakness. However, she stops short of asking why our society seems so talented at creating so many lonely people. It does not take a socialist to recognise that a system that requires values like individualism, mobility over community, and consumption as a signifier of success, is a system that will create endemic loneliness.

The dark side of individualism is the sense of isolation it breeds as we see ourselves as entirely distinct, with distinct needs from the group. I am not arguing for a return to some kind of prelapsarian community, merely an acknowledgement of the true cost of our philosophical stance in the world.

It is a terrible irony that Norman Tebbit who once exhorted Britain to get on its bike, later lamented the loss of community and family values that once bound together these Isles. The very mobility of modern society and employment that he helped to herald will inherently diminish familial and community bonds. I am not arguing for a return to some kind of Empire capitalism, merely an acknowledgement of the true cost of our economic stance in the world.

And at the root of these things is consumption. We produce and consume goods and services to trade in a global system. And in order to maintain this we much constantly strive for greater efficiency and competitiveness, making us work longer hours, committing more sacrifices on the altar of consumption.

And this is a system that the Daily Mail promotes, despite making noises in favour of family values and so on. But it does not recognise that the capitalism that it suggests its readers vote for at elections, that it promotes in its choice of news, features and its business pages pushes us further towards the treadmill of consumption and it's consequent ailments.

Martin notes the health problems that loneliness generates, both physical and psychological, and she is right to do so. She quotes psychologist James Lynch in his book 'Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences Of Loneliness', and how dialogue is key to escaping the vicious spiral of loneliness.

Not to undermine the value of Lynch or Martin's suggestions I fear it will take an awful lot more to deal with the endemic state of our societies. Communication will play a part, rituals to bind and bond us will too. And I think if we are prepared to be truly honest, we may have to change the way we do business with the world and the way the world does business...

the value of anger

I have written a few times before on the value of anger, so was interested to come across a recent piece in the Guardian by the philospher Julian Baggini in the Guardian which examined the role the emotion plays in our western psyches.

In it he noted the value of anger in communicating the importance of an issue and the dangers in repression of feeling to the self and the community.

To my mind he hit the nail of the head when he said the emotion was not bad in itself but that it was the appropriateness of the emotion to the situation that mattered. Not all anger expressed is wise, nor is bottling it all up. The wisdom lies is when and how it's expressed.

We have a danger of only thinking of anger in perjorative terms because it is not seen or described in our vocabulary as a positive emotion... Of course it is neither positive or negative!

He also sounded a very interesting note:

"Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality. As the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued in the 18th century, intellect alone is insufficient to motivate any caring for ourselves and others. As he colourfully put it, "Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." Cold-hearted ethics is an oxymoron."

I think it is true to a point but again it is a concept of morality that is trapped in the idea that emotion is a passion which contains no reason and that both are needed. But emotion already has reason in it. Cognitive scientists have shown emotion contains judgement and reason, so whilst the categories he starts with are in a sense wrong, his conclusion is right.

Our emotions are key to our morality, though the emotions themselves cannot be described as morally good or bad.

Torridon sentinels

Another gem from Steve Carter, this time of the Torridon Hills. Is it just me or is there a Mt Rushmore thing going on here...?

the history emotion in the history of emotions

The history of emotions is a field that spans several disciplines, not least the psychology, anthropology and history. However only a fool would begrudge a poet and writer space to offer insight.

And so it is here. Re-reading Alistair Moffat's "the Sea Kingdoms', a rich evocation of Celtic Britain and Ireland where the history flows from the sea and not from the land, gives an interesting understanding of a history that deserves a wider telling.

Thoughts loomed on my mind like icebergs in a fog. What is it about the oceans, and their emotional pull, the quasi mystic sense of emotion generated by the wine dark sea... how has it influenced us throughout history?

These thoughts took me to the poet in question and the title of this piece. Alan Gould is a London born Australian who has written keenly of the sea. In this case he wrote a thought provoking essay called 'Bolero and the sea' which raises the idea of a history emotion. Gould was writing about a character from the story, Sarah, who felt compelled to search out more about an old seafaring ancestor so captivated was she by the past, the sea, and the connection to her present.

For Gould this sense of history as an emotion was given a deeper tinge with his character's love of the sea being the love of an immense object that is indifferent in return. Perhaps this too could be said of the history emotion. Indeed he suggests this feeling also has a pathological tendency with the desire to search and find answers leaving Sarah blind to feelings in the present.

Could this sense of history be a distinct emotion? Is it not perhaps an alluring mixture of yearning and curiousity? Certainly in the absence of being able to prove irrefutably and objectively (which is often a misnomer when it comes to emotions) that it is a distinct sensation, I would fall back on the notion that cultures can often have emotional states that other cultures do not. This certainly means it is not impossible to have such a thing.

I am drawn to the notion, not least as I think it opens up new forms of expression and understanding of our complex selves in ways allow the poetic into our existence in a way that we all can understand.

As Gould writes:
"I locate the pathos and necessity of Sarah’s character in her recognition that, as humans, we will continue to recover lost lives, lost time, because to do so makes our own living more complete.
That is the force of ‘the History Emotion’ and the sea and history come together in this, for both make us aware of being in one place beside an immensity that is around us and, in the end, entire."

This to me sounds distinct to yearning and curiousity, though I am open to argument (indeed would relish any thoughts on it from others).

One final thought - what other emotions might we miss by leaving them nameless? Is our current palette of emotions an almost Orwellian limiter of feeling when we are in fact capable of seeing the emotional equivalent of colours beyond the rainbow?

The novel is a mirror to my heart.

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion”

Robert Burns, 'To a Louse'

To you precious few who care to read, and care, i apologise for taking so long to write.

Watching a BBC4 documentary the other day has set me thinking. The piece was called 'How reading made us modern' and laid claim to the idea that the liberalisation of printing through the ending of the Licensing Act in 1695 created the foundation for mass literacy and a mass social transformation both public and private. Within a few years Britain went from having but a handful of books available and only at Royal discretion, to a cacophony of script, from book to journal to journalism and newspaper.

From the literary torrent came a rising tide of literacy and a new form of literature that spoke to a people keen to listen. The novel gained prominence as a style, and helped create a whole new wider group of readers, particularly in women.

Presenter John Mullan noted the link between the novel and the rise of the female 'bluestocking' salon (with examples like Elizabeth Montague), and its role in finding a voice for women - through the empowerment of literacy and the opportunity to meet and discuss the themes contained within the stories.

It also made me wonder about the role of the novel in our emotional development.

Peter and Carol Stearns amongst others have already highlighted how angry and unrestrained emotions were in the UK and Britain around this time. They also showed how during the 18th and 19th century these feelings began to become more controlled and 'civilised'.

Of course I couldn't claim the novel was the sole key to this, not least as the Stearns have shown plenty of other factors.

However, as Mullan pointed out the novel told people about themselves by writing about others. It held a mirror up to society and allowed it to see itself as others saw it. And in seeing themselves might not it have given them an empathy previously lacking, bestowed some greater compassion that recognised the impact of those brute emotions and realised the need for more control in various public and private spheres?

If the novel is accepted as transforming our private intellectual life, it cannot fail to have done something similar to our emotional life.

Is the novel still that same transformer, a redeemer to reflect our current iniquities? if the novel withers, or grows stale, what then shall take its place?

Surely not blogs?

Five sisters

On the south Kintail ridge, a panorama from the east shoulder of Creag Mhaim (947m). from the left, Loch Cluanie, mist filled Glen Loyne then to the snow covered Glen Quoich hills; Spidean Mialach (996m), Creag Coire na Fiar Bhealaich (1006m) and Gleouraich (1035m). This is the Glasgow Uni medical faculty's mountaineering page.

Expressions of love

You'd think I'd be posting more whilst not working but it's amazing how everything slows down. Anyway...

The mainstream of emotion history suggests that in the pre-industrial period life was much more angry, with less love in everyday relationships, despite some wonderful art describing passion in many different amorous flowers. Rarely though is affection described for one's husband or wife and often violence seemed ubiquitous throughout Western European and American society.

However perhaps there was more love out there in the medieval air than early studies suggest. John Gillis has written eloquently on the subject in an essay entitled from 'Ritual to Romance: Toward an Alternative History of Love'. (from the book 'Emotion: Toward a New Psychohistory', edited by Carol and Peter Stearns).

His point is that love as it's defined now is about love as internal feeling and intimacy, when this is something from the beginnings of the 19th century. Francesca Cancian described it as the 'feminisation' of love, where emotion became to be associated with women in the domestic sphere and men lacked such things in their quest for rationality in the world of work and power.

It is a standard that exists today and is still recognisable though Gillis feels it inappropriate for judging emotions before the 19th Century. He suggests that love had many definitions and forms across cultures, classes and time we find a range of expressions of love that can surprise us.

In a sense it should come as no surprise. Psychologists viewed emotion as a private, internal matter and historians sought out historical examples of expressions of this through diaries and letters and the like. Yet anthropologists have for decades been studying emotion as a social construct designed to deal with the relationship between group and individual behaviour. Whilst both yield insight and have weaknesses, it is only recently that viewing emotion in the latter form has been applied to our own Western History.

The visible behaviours tell us much about love back then. For example kissing was not so private as it is now, and kissing as an expression of love was apparently more public, and more painful with a likelihood of blood being drawn. These were public marks and intended as such, as declarations of emotion felt. Bodily fluids were also key to this, as the body was not just expressing emotion but was the emotion.

Two examples, both astonishing to the modern heart and mind:

"In Wales, a young man proved his love to a girl by urinating on her dress, a practice known locally as rhythu." (p92)

And even in the 19th Century, courting in the French countryside was a violent affair.
"First they exchange glances, then casual remarks, then heavy witticisms. The young man shoves at the girl, thumps her hard on the back, takes her hand and squeezes it in a bone cracking grip. She responds to this tender gesture by punching him in the back." (p92)

As a physical and not psychic condition, love was treated to the same controls as other physical urges and love magic became immensely popular despite its pagan roots. And the major rituals of love were far more public affairs than they are now. These days we give lovers privacy to nurture private feeling. Then, love through courtship, betrothal and marriage was a far more social experience that the whole community engaged in and this was necessary to establish legitimacy in the absence of written contracts. Indeed the couple themselves were at the centre of a virtual festival of action that centred on them only partly.

Perhaps our assumption that certain things are constant and unchanging is the only constant in a world that has changed so much...

Romantic love below the desert...

saw this today, and must go...

The British Academy
10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1
Thursday 26 February 2009

The history of romantic love in sub-Saharan Africa: between interest and emotion
Raleigh Lecture on History
Professor Megan Vaughan, FBA

The societies of sub-Saharan Africa do not feature prominently in the growing literature on the comparative history of the emotions, and when they do it is often to confirm the fundamental difference between African emotional regimes and those of the 'West'. Though many pre-colonial African societies recognised the existence of powerful feelings of passionate love, most of them did not idealise this emotion. Romantic love was not simply a colonial import, however: love, money and intimacy combined in complex ways in the changing economic and political conditions of twentieth-century Africa. This exploration of the history of romantic love in Africa is also a critical exercise in the history of the emotions.
About the speaker

Megan Vaughan is Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002. Her research covers the social, economic and cultural history of Africa, including the history of medicine and psychiatry, slavery in the periphery of the Indian Ocean, history and anthropology. One of her latest publications is: Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius (2004).

5.30–6.30pm, followed by a drinks reception.
Registration is not required for this event. Seats will be allocated on arrival.