Abstract
I have two goals in this paper. The first speaks directly to the comparative vision underlying this volume and is relatively clear cut: to delineate several central themes in everyday theories of emotional experience in a rural Fiji Indian conmmnunity. These ethnopsychological views contrast strikingly with conventional western perspectives. Highlighting the interpersonal dimensions of emotional practice, Bhatgaon villagers downplay the role of the individual’s inner life, focusing rather upon those social events in which shared feelings are jointly engendered. While purely personal experience is not denied, it is clearly seen as secondary and in some ways fortuitous. My contribution in this regard will fill the common anthropological role of providing a comparative test case: how might a more general theory of the emotions take account of and respond to a particular and quite different local theory?
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Brenneis, D.L. (1995). “Caught in the Web of Words”. In: Russell, J.A., Fernández-Dols, JM., Manstead, A.S.R., Wellenkamp, J.C. (eds) Everyday Conceptions of Emotion. NATO ASI Series, vol 81. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8484-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8484-5_13
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