Summary
Contents
Subject index
`This addition to a growing number of texts which approach emotions and emotionality from a social constructionist perspective is well written, scholarly, accessible and interesting.... There is both breadth and depth to this work.' - Feminism and Psychology This broad-ranging and accessible book brings together social and cultural theory with original empirical research into the nature of the emotional self in contemporary western societies. The emphasis of the analysis is on the emotional self as a dynamic project that is continually shaped and reshaped via discourse, embodied sensations, memory, personal biography and interactions with others and objects. Using an interdisciplinary approa
Emotions, Bodies, Selves
Emotions, Bodies, Selves
In the previous chapter, a series of recurring discourses and metaphors used by people to conceptualize and describe emotional states and experiences were identified. In this chapter, I seek to contextualize these discourses and metaphors, locating them in their broader sociocultural and historical settings. I begin with a discussion of how the ‘open’ body/ self that was dominant in pre-modern times changed over the centuries into the more ‘closed’ body/self that has become characteristic of the late-modern era. This overview positions contemporary concepts of the body/self, and by extension, those of the emotions, by identifying their antecedents. Then follows an analysis of the two major notions of emotions circulating today, each of which is in tension with, and takes its ...
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