A quick flyer for an interesting evening which I am deeply hoping to get to, work permitting.
PUBLIC LECTURE AND WINE RECEPTION.
5 October 2009. 6-8pm Arts Lecture Theatre. Queen Mary, Mile End Campus.
Professor Barbara Rosenwein
‘Towards a New History of Western Emotions’
With a response by
Professor Miri Rubin
Professor Rosenwein’s lecture – ‘Towards a New History of Western Emotions’ – takes up the question of why we need a new history of Western emotions, that is, a new general narrative. Much of the lecture will be concerned with surveying the general narratives that currently exist. The lecture will then sketch what a new narrative history might look like.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London. Her two most recent books are Emotion and Devotion: The Meaning of Mary in Medieval Religious Cultures (2009) and Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (2009).
The lecture, response, and discussion will be followed by a wine reception.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Sunday, 27 September 2009
a kiss and a cuddle...
I came across this, by George Weber, recently about the Andamanese in the 1850's. They are a tribal society in the south eastern Indian Ocean:
"The Andamanese did not and still do not lightly show their social emotions. There were no special words for ordinary greetings like the English "hello" or "how-do-you-do." When two Andamanese met who had not seen each other for a while, they first stared wordlessly at each other for minutes. So long could this initial silent staring last that some outside observers who saw the beginning of the ceremony but not its continuation came away with the impression that the Andamanese had no speech."
Can one imagine? i know some socially awkward people but it runs gloriously counter to our sense of constant chatter.
"The deadlock was broken when the younger of the two made a casual remark. This opened the doors to an excited exchange of news and gossip. If the two were related, the older would sit down and the younger sit on his lap, then the two would cuddle and huddle while weeping profusely. If they had not seen each other for a long time, the weeping could go on for hours. In the eyes of outside observers, the embracing and caressing could seem amorous but in fact the ceremony had no erotic significance whatsoever. Kisses were not part of the repertoire of caresses; only children received kisses as a sign of affection."
From the gentle tactility of men to the lack of erotic kissing, how different!
"Greater Andamanese greeting ceremonies were loudly demonstrative, their weeping often turning into howls that could be heard, as was intended, far and wide. The Onge were less exuberant and were satisfied with the of a few quiet tears and with caressing each other. If there were many people, greeting returning hunters that had been absent longer than expected or meeting unusual visitors, etiquette required that the large mass of people should not cry until several hours after the arrival. When the howling started, it could go on all night. When more than a few people met, the initial staring was dispensed with. "
"The Andamanese did not and still do not lightly show their social emotions. There were no special words for ordinary greetings like the English "hello" or "how-do-you-do." When two Andamanese met who had not seen each other for a while, they first stared wordlessly at each other for minutes. So long could this initial silent staring last that some outside observers who saw the beginning of the ceremony but not its continuation came away with the impression that the Andamanese had no speech."
Can one imagine? i know some socially awkward people but it runs gloriously counter to our sense of constant chatter.
"The deadlock was broken when the younger of the two made a casual remark. This opened the doors to an excited exchange of news and gossip. If the two were related, the older would sit down and the younger sit on his lap, then the two would cuddle and huddle while weeping profusely. If they had not seen each other for a long time, the weeping could go on for hours. In the eyes of outside observers, the embracing and caressing could seem amorous but in fact the ceremony had no erotic significance whatsoever. Kisses were not part of the repertoire of caresses; only children received kisses as a sign of affection."
From the gentle tactility of men to the lack of erotic kissing, how different!
"Greater Andamanese greeting ceremonies were loudly demonstrative, their weeping often turning into howls that could be heard, as was intended, far and wide. The Onge were less exuberant and were satisfied with the of a few quiet tears and with caressing each other. If there were many people, greeting returning hunters that had been absent longer than expected or meeting unusual visitors, etiquette required that the large mass of people should not cry until several hours after the arrival. When the howling started, it could go on all night. When more than a few people met, the initial staring was dispensed with. "
Sunday, 6 September 2009
assynt again
Assynt is a place that looms large in my imagination for a range of reasons. Once again Colin Prior does the place justice with a wonderful photograph.
Friday, 4 September 2009
Emotional event
Something I received from Dr Thomas Dixon from Queen Mary University, London. It looks pretty interesting... Would that I had a day off to go down.
Towards a Historical Semantics of Emotions
Special Panel at the 12th Annual Conference of the History of Political and Social Concepts Group
London, September 18th 2009
At the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 16 Taviston Street
Emotions are shaped in multiple ways by different cultures and languages. Rather than innate and universal, they are socially constructed to a large extent, embedded in their political and historical contexts and learnt by the individual. This panel will deal with concepts of emotions as objects of a new direction of study in the History of Concepts to which the conference is dedicated.
Semantic and conceptual history is an approach to the study of key concepts of culture not as fixed and timeless entities, but rather, as molded by the political and social contexts in which they are created and applied, and within which they change. It investigates the ways in which language functions, is employed, transferred and transformed in cultural, political, social, historical and geographic contexts, and the ways that concepts structure and constitute the extra-linguistic experience and reality to which they refer.
The papers in this panel will apply semantic history to concepts of emotions as they are used, appear in, and disappear from, different languages and discourses over time, place, context and cultures.
Towards a Historical Semantics of Emotions
Special Panel at the 12th Annual Conference of the History of Political and Social Concepts Group
London, September 18th 2009
At the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 16 Taviston Street
Emotions are shaped in multiple ways by different cultures and languages. Rather than innate and universal, they are socially constructed to a large extent, embedded in their political and historical contexts and learnt by the individual. This panel will deal with concepts of emotions as objects of a new direction of study in the History of Concepts to which the conference is dedicated.
Semantic and conceptual history is an approach to the study of key concepts of culture not as fixed and timeless entities, but rather, as molded by the political and social contexts in which they are created and applied, and within which they change. It investigates the ways in which language functions, is employed, transferred and transformed in cultural, political, social, historical and geographic contexts, and the ways that concepts structure and constitute the extra-linguistic experience and reality to which they refer.
The papers in this panel will apply semantic history to concepts of emotions as they are used, appear in, and disappear from, different languages and discourses over time, place, context and cultures.
Monday, 31 August 2009
to live in fear
What was it like in those early houses, those first settlements when man gave up the nomadic life and staked his future on agriculture? Was it easy, and without stress, or fraught with fear from crops failing and threats from others.
Whilst thinking about Dr Susan Tarlow's very good essay, "Emotions in Archaeology", where she outlines some of the challenges for archaeology in trying to consider the emotional lives of people who have left no written record, I came across an interesting diagram in Michael Cook's 'A Brief History of the Human Race.'
The picture is that of a settlement dated back to the 7th Millennium BC in Anatolia, or modern day Turkey. A quick glance reveals no streets and even more strikingly, no doors, the only entrance was through a hole in the roof.
The point Michael Cook made was that this was a claustrophobic and cramped place to live, not least if one's people had recently been hunter gatherers. It does however, as he continues, show a blank wall to the outside world which may have give some kind of rudimentary defence.
I think it does suggest an enormous amount of fear. Why else would one make entrance to one's property so hard and so camouflaged? And to live in such close confines? This is not about materials and architectural skills limiting the design. This is about living in fear of someone attacking one's home and killing. There is no room for much storage and any common storage area could be attacked or defended, but this is about people's houses and a fear of personal attack.
Not quite a golden age of agricultural idyll...
Whilst thinking about Dr Susan Tarlow's very good essay, "Emotions in Archaeology", where she outlines some of the challenges for archaeology in trying to consider the emotional lives of people who have left no written record, I came across an interesting diagram in Michael Cook's 'A Brief History of the Human Race.'
The picture is that of a settlement dated back to the 7th Millennium BC in Anatolia, or modern day Turkey. A quick glance reveals no streets and even more strikingly, no doors, the only entrance was through a hole in the roof.
The point Michael Cook made was that this was a claustrophobic and cramped place to live, not least if one's people had recently been hunter gatherers. It does however, as he continues, show a blank wall to the outside world which may have give some kind of rudimentary defence.
I think it does suggest an enormous amount of fear. Why else would one make entrance to one's property so hard and so camouflaged? And to live in such close confines? This is not about materials and architectural skills limiting the design. This is about living in fear of someone attacking one's home and killing. There is no room for much storage and any common storage area could be attacked or defended, but this is about people's houses and a fear of personal attack.
Not quite a golden age of agricultural idyll...
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
that conversational thing
is on tonight and i'm rather nervous. all these half baked ideas i trot out here may be held to serious scrutiny...
facing up to emotion
Some interesting news on the BBC at the end of last week, which i think lends credence towards theories of emotions being rooted in culture and group dynamics as well as an internal physiological reaction.
A study by Glasgow University suggests that facial expressions of emotion are not global - whilst we may all feel emotions like fear or surprise, we express them in different ways. The study emphasises the difference in interpretations by Western case studies and East Asian ones. Essentially both look for different things in an expression, with East Asians apparently focusing more on the eyes and Westerns more on the the whole face in order to read a reaction from someone.
If something as apparently innate as a supposedly involuntary facial reaction can be different across cultures, what then does it say for the other ways we display and act upon our emotions? I am not saying at the drop of a hat we can all change our emotional responses, but if an involuntary response turns out not to be global and innate, it is subject to change and framing by a culture. And if a culture moves to frame an emotional response in a different way, it shows how we can move to change our responses in ways which might be more beneficial to our culture.
In the littlest differences, glimmers of hope for improving our emotional lives can be shown as they offer the possibility of cultures learning new behaviours that improve all our well being.
A study by Glasgow University suggests that facial expressions of emotion are not global - whilst we may all feel emotions like fear or surprise, we express them in different ways. The study emphasises the difference in interpretations by Western case studies and East Asian ones. Essentially both look for different things in an expression, with East Asians apparently focusing more on the eyes and Westerns more on the the whole face in order to read a reaction from someone.
If something as apparently innate as a supposedly involuntary facial reaction can be different across cultures, what then does it say for the other ways we display and act upon our emotions? I am not saying at the drop of a hat we can all change our emotional responses, but if an involuntary response turns out not to be global and innate, it is subject to change and framing by a culture. And if a culture moves to frame an emotional response in a different way, it shows how we can move to change our responses in ways which might be more beneficial to our culture.
In the littlest differences, glimmers of hope for improving our emotional lives can be shown as they offer the possibility of cultures learning new behaviours that improve all our well being.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
talking about emotion
You don't see a post for ages and then two come along at once...
A very lovely though rather surprising email came my way yesterday inviting me to contribute to a conversation. The Conversational is an attempt to inspire conversation to those things we might often wish, but too often let it languish around idle chatter.
So on August 18th I shall be the guest at their next event - Emotion v Reason. As Michelle from group writes:
"Emotion, Reason, Reason, Emotion – what do they mean and what dictates whether we’ll respond with one or the other in a particular situation? Can one undermine the other? Can logic be used to show that certain emotions are badly founded and therefore not a useful part of any argument? Or do reason and emotion actually co-exist?"
Regular readers will know my opinions on the nature of the emotion/reason dualism and hopefully it may be a chance to speak with other interested people on how to get beyond it, and what examples from elsewhere in time and place can provide useful insight into our current understanding of such things.
The idea of a salon has always appealed though a friend tried to start one at uni and it deeply alienated some folk who weren't invited. And i always wanted to set up a Scots in exile one in London, but as with so much in my life, i never got round to it. But credit to the good people at the conversational for daring and doing.
By the way, if you're in London and fancy it then email the organisers and it would be lovely to see anyone who may read this...
A very lovely though rather surprising email came my way yesterday inviting me to contribute to a conversation. The Conversational is an attempt to inspire conversation to those things we might often wish, but too often let it languish around idle chatter.
So on August 18th I shall be the guest at their next event - Emotion v Reason. As Michelle from group writes:
"Emotion, Reason, Reason, Emotion – what do they mean and what dictates whether we’ll respond with one or the other in a particular situation? Can one undermine the other? Can logic be used to show that certain emotions are badly founded and therefore not a useful part of any argument? Or do reason and emotion actually co-exist?"
Regular readers will know my opinions on the nature of the emotion/reason dualism and hopefully it may be a chance to speak with other interested people on how to get beyond it, and what examples from elsewhere in time and place can provide useful insight into our current understanding of such things.
The idea of a salon has always appealed though a friend tried to start one at uni and it deeply alienated some folk who weren't invited. And i always wanted to set up a Scots in exile one in London, but as with so much in my life, i never got round to it. But credit to the good people at the conversational for daring and doing.
By the way, if you're in London and fancy it then email the organisers and it would be lovely to see anyone who may read this...
if music be the food of stone age love
Apologies for being away, i didn't intend to... oh well!
Anyway, before i stopped posting i had meant to post something about this. It's a story about the world's oldest musical instrument being found in Germany. At 35,000 years old it's well before agriculture came about (about 10,000 years ago) and so a wonderful insight into our nomadic past.
The sound is quite rough, but still clear enough for distinct notes and tunes are possible. I rather liked it. The suggestions as to when it might be used ranged from the sacred, or social situations and that it was key in aiding social dynamics. In others words, much like we use an instrument today.
Obviously there's a strong connection between music and emotion, especially as it's a non-verbal one. But the possibilities of an extremely rich emotional past to stone age man comes so much closer to us through knowing they had music.
What joys were expressed, what sadnessness, what sense of wonder came out of a little bone flute so long ago?
Anyway, before i stopped posting i had meant to post something about this. It's a story about the world's oldest musical instrument being found in Germany. At 35,000 years old it's well before agriculture came about (about 10,000 years ago) and so a wonderful insight into our nomadic past.
The sound is quite rough, but still clear enough for distinct notes and tunes are possible. I rather liked it. The suggestions as to when it might be used ranged from the sacred, or social situations and that it was key in aiding social dynamics. In others words, much like we use an instrument today.
Obviously there's a strong connection between music and emotion, especially as it's a non-verbal one. But the possibilities of an extremely rich emotional past to stone age man comes so much closer to us through knowing they had music.
What joys were expressed, what sadnessness, what sense of wonder came out of a little bone flute so long ago?
Monday, 15 June 2009
some thoughts on thinkers thinking about emotion pt2
A few weeks ago I ran a series of interviews with three academics, (Prof Barbara Rosenwein, Prof Keith Oatley, and Dr Thomas Dixon) talking in broad terms about the history of emotions, with a brief commentary here.
Picking up on that commentary, I wanted to consider their other answers and thoughts.
It's both cheering and intimidating that all of them consider that virtually anything can be a useful historical resource when it comes to understanding how emotions were felt and affected the lives of people throughout history. The optimism comes from a potential wealth of sources, the fear from wondering how each will be recognised and sorted appropriately to give useful information. As Dr Dixon suggests, we may suffer from an excess of sources for today...
For example, what can the architecture of the past tell us about the emotional lives of the societies that built it? It may not be directly obvious, but there may be clues there for the skilled mind to uncover. The same goes for any potential source that does not directly reference something we might recognise in the present as an emotion.
It comes as no surprise that Prof Oatley specifically references fictional literature as being particularly useful - this is his field of expertise after all - and it will almost certainly be one of the richest and clearest seams that we can mine for useful information on the emotional lives of our ancestors. However, as Prof Rosenwein points out about the ecstatic writings of mystics, if one relies over heavily on such writings one might have a very skewed picture of life at the time of writing.
There is no suggestion though that Prof Oatley is over relying on the value of fictional literature here though.
All I think would agree though that any documentation from the relevant period may provide useful information, as would any art and music from the period. One could certainly do a good study of the emotional life of various cultures and subcultures through popular music in the last forty years, so the same should stand for earlier periods.
Prof Rosenwein referenced Dr Sarah Tarlow's essay 'Emotion in Archaeology'. As the subject expands, I think that one of the big challenges will be to see how we can cope with non written sources and archaeology will be key. What will a bejewelled corpse, perhaps preserved in a bog, contorted and with a variety of wounds, say about the emotional live of the society that the corpse came from?
I was heartened by Dr Dixon's suggestion of analysing the emotional lives of the cave painters of Lascaux - I look forward to his analysis!
There is one question which i will write further on in another post - that is the thought about a grand narrative, or a big story to our emotional development in history. It's something I've written about here. It's one of the most challenging questions for anyone interested in the History of Emotions and one which drew an interesting range of answers which deserve a post of their own.
Picking up on that commentary, I wanted to consider their other answers and thoughts.
It's both cheering and intimidating that all of them consider that virtually anything can be a useful historical resource when it comes to understanding how emotions were felt and affected the lives of people throughout history. The optimism comes from a potential wealth of sources, the fear from wondering how each will be recognised and sorted appropriately to give useful information. As Dr Dixon suggests, we may suffer from an excess of sources for today...
For example, what can the architecture of the past tell us about the emotional lives of the societies that built it? It may not be directly obvious, but there may be clues there for the skilled mind to uncover. The same goes for any potential source that does not directly reference something we might recognise in the present as an emotion.
It comes as no surprise that Prof Oatley specifically references fictional literature as being particularly useful - this is his field of expertise after all - and it will almost certainly be one of the richest and clearest seams that we can mine for useful information on the emotional lives of our ancestors. However, as Prof Rosenwein points out about the ecstatic writings of mystics, if one relies over heavily on such writings one might have a very skewed picture of life at the time of writing.
There is no suggestion though that Prof Oatley is over relying on the value of fictional literature here though.
All I think would agree though that any documentation from the relevant period may provide useful information, as would any art and music from the period. One could certainly do a good study of the emotional life of various cultures and subcultures through popular music in the last forty years, so the same should stand for earlier periods.
Prof Rosenwein referenced Dr Sarah Tarlow's essay 'Emotion in Archaeology'. As the subject expands, I think that one of the big challenges will be to see how we can cope with non written sources and archaeology will be key. What will a bejewelled corpse, perhaps preserved in a bog, contorted and with a variety of wounds, say about the emotional live of the society that the corpse came from?
I was heartened by Dr Dixon's suggestion of analysing the emotional lives of the cave painters of Lascaux - I look forward to his analysis!
There is one question which i will write further on in another post - that is the thought about a grand narrative, or a big story to our emotional development in history. It's something I've written about here. It's one of the most challenging questions for anyone interested in the History of Emotions and one which drew an interesting range of answers which deserve a post of their own.
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