Chapter 3 - Emotion, Power and Counterpower: An Anthropological Perspective from the Movement from the Right of Housing in Rome (Italy)

Summary

Introduction

In this chapter, I aim to examine the role of emotions in the context of social movements and collective behaviours that challenge the capitalist social order. This perspective is not new, as numerous works, particularly in sociology, have contributed to a lively debate, starting with Melucci and continuing through Jasper and Goodwin (Melucci 1981; Jasper 2011; Goodwin and Jasper 2006). I would like to approach the debate from a perspective that is chiefly informed by cultural anthropology. I aim to structure my discussion on emotions within a framework that allows for the questioning of how subjectivities are shaped, alongside the theory of false consciousness. This approach enables a deeper exploration of the mechanisms through which values become dominant in the context of wider societal and cultural contradictions.

To start, it is essential to delineate the anthropological discourse on emotions, characterised by unique features that set it apart from the treatment of emotions in sociology, psychology and political science.

For a long time, anthropology paid little to no attention to the topic of emotions, which were considered the domain of psychology. This approach stemmed from a widespread assumption, outlined by Emile Durkheim's differentiation between the social (objective and influenced by external causes) and the psychic (pertaining to subjectivity, internal). Much as for other subjects such as illness and pain, the anthropological approach to emotions has historically been characterised by subordination to other disciplines. In some cases, this has allowed the idea that emotions are pre-social and pre-cultural and therefore pertain to a strictly individual sphere, the object of study for psychology or even biology. While early explorations of emotions can be identified, it was in the 1980s that the theoretical stage was established for their treatment as ‘natural’ and ‘intimate’, and as the fundamental junction between society, body and the individual (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987).

Anthropologists, especially within the realms of medical anthropology and ethnopsychiatry, questioned this approach following the deconstruction of the Cartesian mind-body divide. In this sense, the title of Catherin Lutz's ‘Unnatural emotions’ (1988) unequivocally signals the shift in perspective.