Cultural Models, Social Interaction, and Individual Experience. Towards a Social Anthropological Theory of Emotions

In the last several years a number of disciplines have turned to the study of emotions. A result of this ‘emotional turn’ is the emergence of theoretical approaches - formulated mainly by neuroscientists and physiological psychologists as well as by sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists – that conceptualise emotions as the ‘missing link’ between cognition and action. These approaches ascribe emotions a central role in processes of human decision-making, generating an idea of human kind as an ‘emotional actor’.

The project intends to rethink these new concepts from a social anthropological point of view and translate them into an anthropological paradigm. The central objective is to interconnect these different theoretical bits and pieces to form the basis for the development of a social anthropological theory of emotions.