The History of Emotions
An Introduction
Published on 6. July 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-0-19-874464-1 (ISBN)
Description
The history of emotions is one of the fastest growing fields in current historical debate, and this is the first book-length introduction to the field, synthesizing the current research, and offering direction for future study. The History of Emotions is organized around the debate between social constructivist and universalist theories of emotion that has shaped most emotions research in a variety of disciplines for more than a hundred years: social constructivists believe that emotions are largely learned and subject to historical change, while universalists insist on the timelessness and pan-culturalism of emotions. In historicizing and problematizing this binary, Jan Plamper opens emotions research beyond constructivism and universalism; he also maps a vast terrain of thought about feelings in anthropology, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, art history, political science, the life sciences-from nineteenth-century experimental psychology to the latest affective neuroscience-and history, from ancient times to the present day.
Reviews / Votes
this introductory volume will be difficult to surpass * Times Literary Supplement * This book throws a lifeline to anyone trying to navigate the present high tide of multidisciplinary material on the emotions ... both scholarly and enjoyable. * Jane O'Grady, Times Higher Education, 'What Are You Reading?' * Plamper clears the way for others to approach the history of emotions by mapping the multidisciplinary intellectual architecture that has supplied us with a nature/culture dualism in contemporary understandings of what emotions are and where they come from ... Plamper is at his best, cutting a swathe through disciplines where other historians might fear to tread. * Rob Boddice, Reviews in History * excellent and thought-provoking ... This is an indispensible text for anyone interested in this fast developing new subdiscipline of cultural history, and provides a refreshing perspective on emotions which are the everyday focus of so much work in mental health. As clinicians we are often less aware of the sociocultural aspects of this work than we might be, and perhaps also take the assertions of our neuroscience colleagues on faith rather too readily. That a historian can provide such an informed and thought-provoking account of contemporary approaches to emotions is salutary. * Stirling Moorey, Journal of Mental Health * dazzling ... [Plamper] is a natural storyteller, and has a beautifully smooth writing style (thanks must also go to his translator) that makes the book accessible to readers at all levels ... his book will prompt intellectual exchanges for years to come. * Joanna Bourke, Social History * the book as a whole provides an admirable introduction to the virtues of thinking historically about emotions -- not just thinking about emotions in history ... the book serves as a splendid guide to further reading. * Professor William M. Reddy, The History of Emotions Blog * Plamper offers a road map for bridging the gap between and potentially reconciling social constructivists and essentialists working on human emotions ... Essential. * T. L. Loos, CHOICE * a most welcome history and genealogy of an extremely diverse field * Stephanie Trigg, Australian Book Review * For readers interested in the mid-nineteenth- and twentieth-century origins of the study of emotion in the emerging academic fields of anthropology, psychology, biology, and history, the book provides detailed summaries and commentaries on 150 years of research. * Nicole Eustace, American Historical Review * Plamper's book sets out to provide an introduction to past and current research in the field. This is an ambitious aim, but one in which Plamper succeeds admirably, providing lucid and stimulating distillations of key work and debates ... anyone looking for a readable and engaging introduction to this fascinating field would do well to read Plamper's stimulating survey. * Catriona Kennedy, History Today * The History of Emotions is a wonderfully learned work that ranges gracefully from classical examples to considerations of mood, advertising and emotions. It will be valuable to anyone embarking upon a psychologically-inflected study, and it offers an important and timely guide to a number of fascinating and complex debates. * Grace Moore, Social History of Medicine * Plamper gave himself the task of developing a theory that would overcome the dichotomy between universalist and social constructionist models of emotion ... And by critiquing the various forms of reductionism to which emotion studies have been subject, he has done something even more important: He has reopened these questions. * Jon Frederickson, Psychiatry * Plamper takes readers on a whirlwind tour of emotion studies from Aristotle to mirror neurons and across the disciplines ... History students interested in joining the gold rush but unsure of where to dig or which pioneers to follow will find a mine of information here (not least in a useful glossary and bibliography that has been updated from the original German edition). This book will also challenge skeptical historians wondrous at what the fuss is all about, and it will tickle the curiosity of the general reader befuddled by how history could be such (dead serious) fun. * Journal of Modern History *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
38 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
574 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-874464-1 (9780198744641)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2015
Oxford University Press
€43.33
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E-Book
01/2015
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€20.99
Available for download
Person
Jan Plamper obtained a BA from Brandeis University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, after which he taught at the University of Tuebingen and from 2008 to 2012 was a Dilthey Fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, in Berlin. He is co-editor, with Benjamin Lazier, of Fear: Across the Disciplines (2012); and co-editor, with Marc Elie and Schamma Schahadat, of Rossiiskaia imperiia chuvstv: Podkhody k kul'turnoi istorii emotsii [In the Realm of Russian Feelings: Approaches to the Cultural History of Emotions] (2010). He has also recently authored The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power (2012).
Content
History and Emotions: An Introduction
What Is Emotion?
Who Has Emotion?
Where Is Emotion?
Do Emotions Have a History?
What Sources Might We Use in Writing the History of Emotions?
One: The History of the History of Emotions
Lucien Febvre and the History of Emotions
The History of Emotions Prior to Febvre
The History of Emotions in the Time of Febvre and After
The History of Emotions and 9/11
Barbara H. Rosenwein and Emotional Communities
Two: Social Constructivism: Anthropology
The Varieties of Emotions
Emotions in Travel Writings and Early Anthropology
Emotions in the Anthropological Classics
Early Anthropology of Emotions in the 1970s
The Linguistic Turn and Social Constructivism
Social Constructivism alongside Rosaldo, Abu-Lughod, and Lutz
The Social Constructivist Anthropology of Emotions: Some Preliminary Conclusions
The 1990s I: The Anthropology of Emotions after Social Constructivism
The 1990s II: The Supersession of the Social Constructivism-Universalism Duality?
Recent Universalist Anthropology of Emotions
Three: Universalism: Life Sciences
Paul Ekman and Basic Emotions
Road Map for Chapter Three
Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), or, How One Book Became a Battlefield between Social Constructivists and Universalists
The Beginnings of Psychological Research into Emotions, or, How Feelings, Passions, and Changes of Mood Migrated from Theology to Psychology and in the Process Became 'Emotions'
Emotion Laboratories and Laboratory Emotions, or, on the Birth of Psychological Conceptions of Emotion from the Experimental Spirit
How Ideas of Social Order also Ordered the Interior of the Brain
Research into the Emotional Response of the Brain
Freud's Missing Theory of Feeling
The Boom in the Psychology of Emotion from the 1960s Onwards
A Synthetic Cognitive-Physiological Theory of Emotion: The Schachter-Singer Model
Evaluating Emotions: Cognitive Psychology and Appraisal Models
The Neurosciences, fMRI Scanning and Other Imaging Procedures
Joseph LeDoux and the Two Roads to Fear
Antonio R. Damasio and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis
Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese, Marco Iacoboni, Mirror Neurons, and Social Emotions
On the Shoulders of Dwarves, or, The Neurosciences as a 'Trojan Horse' for the Human and Social Sciences
Affectarians of All Lands, Unite! The Neurosciences as Represented by Hardt, Negri, & Co.
Borrowings from the Neurosciences: An Interim Balance
Beyond all Divides: The Critical Neurosciences and Genuine Possibilities for Co-Operation
Four: Perspectives in the History of Emotions
The Navigation of Feeling: William M. Reddy's Attempt to Move beyond Social Constructivism and Universalism
Emotional Practices
Neurohistory
Perspectives in the History of Emotion
Prospects
Conclusion
What Is Emotion?
Who Has Emotion?
Where Is Emotion?
Do Emotions Have a History?
What Sources Might We Use in Writing the History of Emotions?
One: The History of the History of Emotions
Lucien Febvre and the History of Emotions
The History of Emotions Prior to Febvre
The History of Emotions in the Time of Febvre and After
The History of Emotions and 9/11
Barbara H. Rosenwein and Emotional Communities
Two: Social Constructivism: Anthropology
The Varieties of Emotions
Emotions in Travel Writings and Early Anthropology
Emotions in the Anthropological Classics
Early Anthropology of Emotions in the 1970s
The Linguistic Turn and Social Constructivism
Social Constructivism alongside Rosaldo, Abu-Lughod, and Lutz
The Social Constructivist Anthropology of Emotions: Some Preliminary Conclusions
The 1990s I: The Anthropology of Emotions after Social Constructivism
The 1990s II: The Supersession of the Social Constructivism-Universalism Duality?
Recent Universalist Anthropology of Emotions
Three: Universalism: Life Sciences
Paul Ekman and Basic Emotions
Road Map for Chapter Three
Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), or, How One Book Became a Battlefield between Social Constructivists and Universalists
The Beginnings of Psychological Research into Emotions, or, How Feelings, Passions, and Changes of Mood Migrated from Theology to Psychology and in the Process Became 'Emotions'
Emotion Laboratories and Laboratory Emotions, or, on the Birth of Psychological Conceptions of Emotion from the Experimental Spirit
How Ideas of Social Order also Ordered the Interior of the Brain
Research into the Emotional Response of the Brain
Freud's Missing Theory of Feeling
The Boom in the Psychology of Emotion from the 1960s Onwards
A Synthetic Cognitive-Physiological Theory of Emotion: The Schachter-Singer Model
Evaluating Emotions: Cognitive Psychology and Appraisal Models
The Neurosciences, fMRI Scanning and Other Imaging Procedures
Joseph LeDoux and the Two Roads to Fear
Antonio R. Damasio and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis
Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese, Marco Iacoboni, Mirror Neurons, and Social Emotions
On the Shoulders of Dwarves, or, The Neurosciences as a 'Trojan Horse' for the Human and Social Sciences
Affectarians of All Lands, Unite! The Neurosciences as Represented by Hardt, Negri, & Co.
Borrowings from the Neurosciences: An Interim Balance
Beyond all Divides: The Critical Neurosciences and Genuine Possibilities for Co-Operation
Four: Perspectives in the History of Emotions
The Navigation of Feeling: William M. Reddy's Attempt to Move beyond Social Constructivism and Universalism
Emotional Practices
Neurohistory
Perspectives in the History of Emotion
Prospects
Conclusion