Chapter published in:
Consensus and Dissent: Negotiating Emotion in the Public Space
Edited by Anne Storch
[Culture and Language Use 19] 2017
► pp. 9–34

Towards an integrative anthropology of emotion

A case study from Yogyakarta

| Free University of Berlin
I argue that an increased theoretical literacy on emotion-related phenomena increases the authority and scientific evidence of ethnographic narratives. Solid emotion theory assists anthropologists in their translation of ethnographic data on emotion-related phenomena from the field into comprehensible anthropological language that speaks to those who do not share the ethnographer’s privileged and involved perspective. A case study from my longitudinal research with street-related young men in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, illustrates that theories from sociology, psychology and social psychology that transgress the particularity of ethno-local emotion words and semantic landscapes enhance the understanding and representation of our research protagonists’ experiences, behavior and talk.
Keywords: anthropology, emotion theory, emotives, ethnography, street youth, Java, Indonesia
Published online: 10 March 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.19.02sto
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