ABSTRACT
Emotions have always been intrinsic to the production of anthropological knowledge. As in any field of inquiry, emotions shape fundamental concerns and affect the development and design of research projects. The image of anthropology as a purely rational, and thus a non- or even anti-emotional scientific enterprise, was one of its key defining principles when the academic discipline was established in the late nineteenth century. In the post-Second World War period, some Culture and Personality theorists looked, by contrast, for dominant emotional inclinations of whole nations. The idea of emotions as biologically based, universal inner states was strongly attacked in the 1980s by scholars who defined emotions as cultural constructions. F. M. Cancian examined the changing discourse of love in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, and convincingly showed that the changing discourse reinforced gender inequality. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
