ABSTRACT
When we think of emotions we think of them in the first instance as powerful personal experiences or feelings which arise within the body. This highly internal conception of emotions is also evident in mainstream psychological theories, which construct emotions as ‘natural’ and universal. While it is acknowledged that culture may exert an external influence on the expression of emotions, this influence is usually relegated to a superficial effect. In this model, culture is the ‘thin’ layer concealing the ‘thick’ biological and psychological unity of humankind. Segal (Chapter 2, this volume) explores the recent resurgence of the most biological versions of this model. Cultural psychology, in contrast, argues for a social constructionist theorising of emotions in which the distinction between individual and culture is no longer possible (Shweder, 1991). The social constructionist perspective allows too for the possibility that emotions may work differently in different cultures. This is not to say, however, that culture dictates social and cultural practices, rather that culture on the one hand constructs and gives meaning to individual experience of emotions and on the other is constructed by individual emotional experiences.
