Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Davison, Kate
• Jalava, Marja
• Morosini, Giulia
• Scheer, Monique
• Steenbergh, Kristine
• van der Zande, Iris
• Zwicker, Lisa Fetheringill

Titel

Emotions as a Kind of Practice: Six Case Studies Utilizing Monique Scheer's Practice-Based Approach to Emotions in History

Ist Teil von

• Cultural History, 2018-10, Vol.7 (2), p.226

Ort / Verlag

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Sociological Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In her groundbreaking 2012 article, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is That What Makes Them Have a History)?’, Monique Scheer outlines a theoretical and methodological framework for the history of emotions. We six authors present short descriptions of our research drawing on this theory of emotions as practices, following an overview of Scheer's framework. Encompassing research on groups ranging from early modern Italian military captains, to fin-de-siècle middle-class German mothers, to post-1945 Finnish historians, these cases allow us to consider how examining embodied emotional experiences can enrich our understanding of gender roles, individual choices and historical contexts. To close the essay, Scheer offers her own comments on these projects in progress. Anchored in Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, Scheer's model views historical changes in emotion as occurring not only because of alterations in words, norms and expectations attached to or associated with emotion but also because of changes in the practices in which emotions are embodied. For Bourdieu, the body is a knowing, mindful entity that stores past experiences in habituated, practical processes. A yogi's body is engrained with a certain composure, just as a pianist's fingers may seem to guide themselves across the keyboard. Emotions, likewise, are not learned conceptually, or ‘conjured out of thin air’, but are embedded in the body in specific, situated practices.1 Emotions, and the body itself, are not timeless but are shaped by their historical contexts.