Emotions as Transformational Structures

I appreciate Parkinson’s (2012) point that social processes influence emotional behavior at several different levels. However, emotional behavior is different from emotional structure, and I had hoped that the article would elucidate how social processes are involved in the construction of different sorts of emotions and the relation between nature and culture. Hence, rather than commenting on any of Parkinson’s valuable points, I want to mention an aspect of social construction that may be ignored by these points; for if we solely concentrate on how social influences are interwoven with genetic and physiological processes, we may fail to ask some important questions about the relationship between culture and nature.

Ideas such as circle, ellipse, and bear are certainly cultural constructions. There are cultures without these words, and abstract circles constituted by a locus of points equidistant from a center only exist in the minds of students of geometry. However, circles and ellipses may also be said to exist in nature and may be usefully contrasted, and bears exist in the habitats frequented by some but not all cultures. Similarly, ideas such as anger, affection, and emotion in general, are cultural constructions whose references may exist in nature the way bears, circles, and ellipses do, or simply refer to cultural objects such as sombreros, top hats, or pie pans, or to behaviors peculiar to particular cultures such as monogamy or headhunting. Hence, it makes sense to ask whether emotion terms refer to something that exists in nature apart from culture. If, as Parkinson (2012) suggests, they refer to something that involves both culture and nature, we must still specify how these constructions are formed. Personally, I think that there are particular emotional relationships, such as aggression, constriction, affection, and expansion that exist in nature (i.e., may be observed in animal behavior and are not artifacts constructed by persons) and that may or may not be observed in, or coded by, particular cultures. Further, I presume that there are other emotional relations that may exist in numerous cultures but only exist in “human nature,” emotions such as awe and despair.

Certainly there are many patterns of behavior, such as the passing back and forth of bits of food by courting birds, that might be characterized as “affection” yet are not “constructed” or influenced by culture (though our seeing or not seeing the behavior as “affectionate” involves culture). Further, it may be argued that these patterns or relational structures involve the transformations of relationships that are involved in emotions, and constitute emotional processes (de Rivera, 1985). Hence, it seems worthwhile to ask about how we might construct an account of the interplay between cultural signs and a natural history that deals with a biological substrate.

There are at least two ways such accounts may be constructed. First, we may attempt to specify how biologically based processes are codified by the signs used in different cultures. Operating from the perspective of cultural (rather than cross-cultural) psychology, Branco and Valsiner (2010) suggest that affect may be viewed as a biologically based dynamic field of feeling that acquires cultural meaning through signs (emotion names) that articulate emotional points. The zone of feeling can be reflected upon, but is not yet named or clearly articulated. However, it is a field of something about to happen and has a somewhat differentiated quality, a feeling tone of dangerousness, safety, attraction, etcetera. It would seem fruitful to examine how different cultures manage, express, or inhibit these dynamic fields of feelings—solidified and universalized by the semiotic mediation of words such as fear, joy, and sorrow.

Second, we may encourage the search for the sort of abstract essentialism that has proved so useful in mathematics and in Kurt Lewin’s early work. The argument here depends on how we conceptualize particular emotions and emotion in general. Rather than viewing anger, for example, as a particular set of empirical responses or action tendencies, we may conceptualize anger as an abstract, idealized, form of experience. The English language has names for many types of “anger” ranging from exasperation, through anger and indignation, to rage and fury. These all refer to relationships that are quite different from the constriction from danger referenced by “fear.” Rather, they refer to relationships that appear similar to the warning growl of a dog or the attack of a mother bear, relationships that may be felt before they are constituted as a specific emotion. Just as a circle may be conceived as at the locus of points equidistant from a center, we may conceive of anger as an attempt to remove a challenge to what ought to exist (de Rivera, 2006) and the experience of anger as involving the removal of a challenge to what a person wills ought to exist. Such a way of behavior need not exist in the same way in all animals nor all cultures. For example, Lutz (1988) describes the Ifaluk as lacking anger in the sense of being willfully insistent, but as engaging in nguch (exasperation) and song (completely justifiable anger). I believe that if we construct essential forms for different emotions we can create abstract structures that will allow us to examine how different societies cope with the “natural” problems posed by frustration, danger, relief, loss, and other emotional occasions.