Emotion, Space and Society xxx (2010) 1

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Emotion, Space and Society

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Book review
Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies on Feeling, Kay Milton, Maruka Svaek (Eds.). Berg, Oxford (2005). p. 232 Paperback, s s ISBN: 139781845200794 Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies on Feeling is an intriguing book with a wide range of rich ethnographic material from Europe, Melanesia and Japan. The collection engages the reader and provides various insights on the link between anthropology and emotions. The emerging interest in emotions demonstrated in anthropology (see Wulff, 2007) is not just a fad but a necessary effort to showcase it as an existing sub-discipline within anthropology. Reviewing a collection is always a difcult task so I will bring to your notice some key points of the book from various chapters. Milton starts by raking up the issue of how to approach the study of emotions both from a biological and a cultural perspective. She is very much inuenced by the ecological approach which according to her is a genuine alternative to the biological or a cultural approach. She does manage to convince the reader of the merits of the ecological approach but is still very close to socio-biology rather than cultural anthropology, in that she undermines the role of culture in the study of emotions. Along the lines of Milton, Bowler in the next chapter examines Darwins work on emotions and the historical context on why the work was ignored by Darwins contemporaries. Bowler reveals not only the nature of the work but also reects on the aspect of time that may have been required for the work to sink into the mindset of people. Bowler argues that Darwins work was very much ahead of its time. In Chapter 3, Tonkin discusses the anthropological encounters in the background of emotions and imagination. She clearly emphasizes the limits of intersubjectivity and urges every anthropologist to look not only at the research encounter but the context that surrounds it. Tonkin proposes that we need to be attentive to the triad of memory, imagination and emotion to depict the relationships we develop in the eld. In Chapter 4, Josephides tackles the issue of resentment and presents rich ethnographic information from Kewa, a village in Papua New Guinea Highlands. What stands out in this chapter is the core understanding that resentment is such a strong feeling and a cause of much aggression and violence. Though she discusses from the perspective of a tribal village, I think it holds true also to other societies that we live in. In Chapter 5, Whitehouse observes the link between emotion and rituals and specically how rituals are transmitted. He discusses two theories (the frequency of ritual and the form of ritual) and concludes that the transmission of rituals and the knowledge associated with them are both through repetition and emotional arousal. Cassia, next in the collection, explains how popular art can reect emotions of grief, desire, hope and fear. His analysis, though it borders on the periphery of cognitive anthropology, still provides an insight into the existence of common interpretative frameworks which are conditioned by the prevailing politics, in this case, in Cyprus. The book then moves to Northern Ireland and Lysaght analyzes the embodied nature of fear on the streets of Belfast. What strikes me in this chapter is the spatialized aspect of fear and how people on a day-to-day basis negotiate the threat using heuristics of faith and occupation. Moving to Sardinia, Heatherington deals with the political anthropology of emotions and shows how cultural attachments to landscape underlay the opposition to the formation of a National Park. This chapter is along similar lines to Miltons chapter but presents a more cultural approach to understanding humanenvironment relationships. In Chapter 9, Gay Y. Balsco, takes us through a journey of emotions and with rich ethnographic texts describes how the Gitano of Madrid experience grief and how performances of grief are an intrinsic part of the Gitano culture. From grief to maternal feelings, the following chapter sets the scene in Japan where the monkey parks are described as places the Japanese go to witness maternal affection. This chapter raises the question: do humans need to visualize emotions to rekindle their maternal feelings (in this case)? Svaek in the nal chapter takes up the issue of trauma s and terror and examines the cultural part of suffering. Svaek s makes an important point in this chapter by highlighting that trauma is a socio-cultural experience and not just a clinical condition. From the perspective of linking culture and emotions and their expressions, this collection brings forth these multiple realities through rich empirical work. This book is good addition to the reading literature of any graduate program in anthropology and geography.

Reference
Wulff, H., 2007. The Emotions: a Cultural Reader. Berg, Oxford.

Ajay Bailey University of Groningen, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands E-mail address: A.Bailey@rug.nl 24 February 2010

doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2010.10.004