Emotion: Cultural Aspects

Jack BARBALET*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingEntry for encyclopedia/dictionarypeer-review

    Abstract

    The relationship between emotions and culture has been discussed ever since there was interest in what it means to be human, and since then that relationship has been contrastingly characterized as either inimical or reconcilable. Culture can be understood as the defining values, meanings, and thoughts of a local, national, or supranational community. When emotions are conceived in terms of psychological feelings and physical sensations, then they appear inimical to culture. This is because such a perspective suggests the involuntary nature and disorganizing consequence of emotions. The opposition between cognition as reason and emotion, implicit in this representation, is classically defended in Plato's critique of dramatic poetry in the Republic . Plato's supposition that emotion is pleasure or pain dissociated from thought or knowledge was corrected, however, by Aristotle's more comprehensive appreciation of emotion as not merely physical but also cognitive, in which culture and emotions are reconciled.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
    EditorsGeorge Ritzer
    PublisherWiley-Blackwell
    Number of pages4
    ISBN (Electronic)9781405165518
    ISBN (Print)9781405124331
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 26 Oct 2015

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