From anxiety to method in anthropological fieldwork
an appraisal of George Devereux’s enduring ideas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21665/2318-3888.v13n25p227Keywords:
Anxiety. Anthropology of emotions. Reflexivity.Abstract
This chapter is informed by three assumptions. First, I take the view that there are no emotions that are unique to anthropological fieldwork, which means that our task is one of identifying situations both in and out of the field that may be usefully compared and that shed light on one another. Second, I contend that emotions are but one aspect of any human experience and that we do violence to the complexity of lived experience when we make analytical cuts between emotion and thought, or emotion, the senses, thought, and action. Third, I repudiate the prevailing view that the most significant thing that anthropologists have to say about emotions is that they are socially constructed and performed, for the brute reality is that many overwhelming feelings simply cannot be reduced to either culture or phylogeny.
Submission: Jan 16, 2025 ⊶ Accepted: Apr 05, 2025
Downloads
References
BOWLBY, J. Attachment and Loss. Separation: Anxiety and Anger. v. 2. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
DELUZ, A. George Devereux: A Portrait. In: HOOK, R. H.; DEVEREUX, G. (Ed.). Fantasy and Symbol: Studies In Anthropological Interpretation. London: Academic Press, 1979. p. 11-18.
DEVEREUX, G. From Anxiety to Method In the Behavioural Sciences. Mouton: The Hague, 1967.
DEVEREUX, G. The Works of George Devereux. In: SPINDLER, G. D. (Ed.). The Making of Psychological Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
DEVEREUX, G. Fantasy and Symbol as Dimensions of Reality. In: HOOK, R. H.; DEVEREUX, G. (Ed.). Fantasy and Symbol: Studies In Anthropological Interpretation. London: Academic Press, 1979.
FERME, M. The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday In Sierra Leone. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
FREUD, S. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1961.
FRIEDMAN, H. S; SILVER. R. C. Foundations of Health Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
JACKSON, M. An Approach to Kuranko Divination. Human Relations, v.31, p. 117-138, 1978.
JACKSON, M. Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
JACKSON, M. The Accidental Anthropologist: A Memoir.Dunedin: Longacre, 2006.
JAMES, W. Pragmatism.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.
JANE, B. Primate Behavior and the Emergence of Human Culture. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1975.
LA BARRE, W. The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion. New York: Dell, 1972.
ROSE, G. The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno. London: Macmillan, 1978.
SHAW, R. Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination In Sierra Leone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Ambivalências
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors grant Ambivalências magazine all copyrights relating to the published works. The concepts expressed in signed articles are the absolute and exclusive responsibility of their authors.
