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Emotions have emerged as a topic of interest across the disciplines, yet studies and findings on emotions tend to fall into two camps: body versus brain, nature versus nurture. Emotions as Bio-cultural Processes offers a unique collaboration across the biological/social divide-from psychology and neuroscience to cultural anthropology and sociology-as 15 noted researchers develop a common language, theoretical basis, and methodology for examining this most sociocognitive aspect of our lives. Starting with our evolutionary past and continuing into our modern world of social classes and norms, these multidisciplinary perspectives reveal the complex interplay of biological, social, cultural, and personal factors at work in emotions, with particular emphasis on the nuances involved in pride and shame.
A sampling of the topics: (1) The roles of the brain in emotional processing. (2) Emotional development milestones in childhood. (3) Social feeling rules and the experience of loss. (4) Emotions as commodities? The management of feelings and the self-help industry. (5) Honor and dishonor: societal and gender manifestations of pride and shame. (6) Emotion regulation and youth culture. (7) Pride and shame in the classroom.
A volume of such wide and integrative scope as Emotions as Bio-cultural Processes should attract a large cohort of readers on both sides of the debate, among them emotion researchers, social and developmental psychologists, sociologists, social anthropologists, and others who analyze the links between humans that on the one hand differentiate us as individuals but on the other hand tie us to our socio-cultural worlds.
About the author
Birgitt Röttger-Rössler, Studium der Ethnologie, Anthropologie, Romanistik sowie Malaiologie und Volkskunde an den Universitäten Göttingen, Zürich, Köln und Bonn. 1988 Promotion, Habilitation 2001 an der sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Göttingen, wo sie Ethnologie lehrt. Derzeit Wissenschaftliche Leiterin (gemeinsam mit Hans Markowitsch) der Forschungsgruppe Emotionen als bio-kulturelle Prozesse am Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung der Universität Bielefeld.
Summary
A key text for academics and researchers in a huge variety of disciplines, this book gathers the wisdom of researchers from many of them. Neurobiologists, philosophers, sociologists, developmental, physiological and social psychologists as well as social anthropologists are all represented in this wide-ranging volume, working together to establish an integrative model of emotion research. In the last two decades, interest in the emotions has increased significantly in various disciplines such as psychology, neurobiology, social anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy and linguistics. Although the individual disciplines are studying overlapping issues in relation to emotions, the scientific approaches to these issues have often remained unrelated. This gap is especially obvious between the sciences and the humanities, where cooperative approaches hardly exist. All branches concerned realize that this missing interdisciplinary cooperation is a shortcoming and are thus demanding that the interaction between the disciplines should increase. And here is one text at least that goes a long way to solving the impasse.
