300097 Anthropology of Fear (S) (WiSe 2013/2014)

Emotions receive increasing attention in contemporary social anthropological research, especially in the sub-disciplines of linguistic anthropology, anthropology of violence, feminist anthropology and anthropology of social movements. Nonetheless, studies that put emotions at the center of inquiry are still considered exotic departures by many who prefer to describe humans mainly as rational and instrumental actors. This reflects the long lasting conviction that emotions are personal inner states located in the natural body and thus less accessible to sociocultural analysis, a remnant of the Cartesian separation of body and mind, but also a legacy of Weber’s association of emotions with irrationality.

In contrast to these convictions the revival of emotions in social anthropological research reflects that academics increasingly reject the Cartesian dualism and recognize that “emotion(s) (are) not merely placed in the mind but also in socio-cultural context” (Blom & Jaoul 2008), hence emotions can’t be taken for granted. Moreover, they are increasingly recognized “as a form of social action that create effects” (Abu-Lughod & Lutz 1990), as important resources in political action, as “modalities through which people recall the sensorium of violence” (Feldman 1995), but also crucial in helping actors to “negotiate the world around them” (Jasper 2010).

This seminar aims to investigate one particular emotion, fear, arguably one of the most powerful and elementary feelings in human history, linked to the uncertainties of life itself. This renders fear not just universal but indeed the most democratic emotion (Bourke 2003) – even though its specific form is contingent upon historical and spatial context. The seminar thus departs from the conventional understanding of fear as merely a response to danger and focuses instead on narratives, practices, discourses and technologies of fear in diverse sociocultural settings. We will ask how fear as a personally felt emotion connects the individual to the social, mediating between the ‘bodily space’ and ‘social space’. What kind of historical and socio-political processes is fear linked to? How does a ‘language of fear’ emerge in particular sociocultural settings? How is fear routinized, and through which technologies? How and in which situations is fear instrumentalized? What kind of other emotions and social phenomena does fear interact with? In which way and through which social categories does fear cut across?

Literature:

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Barker, Joshua (2009): Introduction: Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Fear. In: Anthropologica 51 (2), pp. 267–272.
Bourke, Joanna (2006): Fear. A cultural history. CA: Shoemaker Hoard; Distributed by Publishers Group West.
Carbonella, August (2009): Structures of Fear, Spaces of Hope. In: Anthropologica 51 (2), pp. 353–361.
Goodwin, Jeff; Jasper, James M.; Polletta, Francesca (Ed.) (2001): Passionate politics. Emotions and social movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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