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The Em otionsA Cultural Reader

Edited by Helena Wulff

Oxford New YorkINVtSTIGACIany

SO Cl /44..;11


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English editionFirst published in 2007 by

BergEditorial offices:First Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 lAW, U K

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USAC Helena W ulff 2007

All rights reserved.No pa n of this publication may be reproduced in any form

or by any m ean w ithout the w ritten permission of Berg.Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of C ongress.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication D ataA c atalogue record for this book is av ailable from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84520 367 2 (C loth)ISBN 978 1 84520 368 9 (Pa per)

Typeset by Apex Publishing, LLC, M adison, WI, USAPrinted in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King's Lynn.

www.bergpublishers.com

INVITIGACION ESOCIALE


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nt21 )

'1^ ,Contents INVEST 1GClaly geSoctALts

AcknowledgementsiIntroduction: The Cultural S tudy of M ood and M eaningHelena W ulffPART I: EXPLORING EM OTION S

y 1 Emotion, Thought, and Estrangement: Emotion as a CulturalCategory9Catherine A . Lutz2 Emotion Talk across Cultures1Paul Heelas

3 Emotion, Feelings and Hedonics in the Human Brain7M orten L . K ringelbach4 Emotion (or Life, the Universe, Everything)1K ay M ilton5 Can Happiness Be Taught?7Martin E. P Seligman6 Exploring the Managed Heart3A rlie R ussell Hochschild7 Catholics, Protestants and Office Workers from the Town:The E xperience and Nego tiation of Fear in Northern Ireland3K aren D. Ly saght8 Emotions in Academia0 1B illy Eh n and Orv ar Lf gren9 The Cartesian Divide of the Nation-State: Emotion and

Bureaucratic Logic19Don Handelman vii


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vi Contents

PART II: LOVE AND HATE10Shifting Politics in Bedouin Love Poetry43

L ila A bu-Lughod\/ 11 Perilous Passions: Roma ntic Love and L ove M agic in Russia53

Galina Lindquist12 Know ledge and the Practice of Love and H ate among the Enxet

of Paraguay71Stephen W K idd

13 Relations with the Imagined Child: The E motionality of B ecomingan Adoptive Parent in Norw ay79Signe How ell

PART III: ANGER, SHAME AND GRIEF14 Getting Angry: The Jam esian Theory of Emo tion in An thropology97

R obert C. Solom on15The Sham e of Headhunters and the Autonomy of Self05

M ichelle Z. R osaldo16Grief and a Headhunter's Rage: On the C ultural Force of Em otions19

R enato R osaldo17 Mov ing Corpses: Emotions and Subject-Object Am biguity29

M arusV ca Sv alek

PART IV: DESIRE AND EXPECTATIONS18Tool Play': Emotionality in Dance as a Resource in Senegalese

Urban W omen's Associations51Hlne Nev eu K ringelbach

19The Performance Hypothesis: Practicing Em otions in Protected Frames73W illiam O. Beeman

20 The Em otional Life of Gay Men: O bservations from New York99M oshe Shokeid

INVESTIGACIONES


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Contents ix

21 From R ational Calculation to Sensual Experience: The Ma rketingof Emo tions in Adv ertising21T imothy D. Malefy t

22 Em otional Baggag e: The Mea ning/Feeling Debate am ongst Tourists39Jonathan S k inner

PART V : THE EMOTIONAL S ELF AND IDEN TITY23 Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali57

Cljord Geertz24 Em otions and the Self: A Theory of Personhood and Political Order

Amon g P intupi Aborigines69Fred R . M yers

25 Rachel's Emotional Life: Movement and Identity79Nigel Rapport

Afterword97Robert A . Le V ineContributors01Copyright Permissions07Index09

,,v-rtn> c'el"1 1 ctALES


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Catholics, Protestants and O ffice W orkersfrom the TownThe Experience and Negotiation of Fear

in Northern Ireland

Karen D. Lysaght

IntroductionWhile violence and conflict have been dominant concerns for researchers onN orthern Ireland for several decades, the closely allied theme of fear has rem ainedlargely absent from the academic debate. This chapter attempts to fill this gap bydescribing how residents in N orthern Ireland live w ith and m anage fear in their dailylives.

W hile Belfast is necessarily charac terized by divided territories and regular actsof sectarian/political violence, it is equally a city typified by the dyna mics o f w ork,transpon, schooling, social life and shopping, among other activities. Such m undanetasks take residents of these segregated residential districts over and across the seem -ingly set boundaries of the c ity in furtheranc e of their daily routines. While placingan emphasis upon everyday activities creates a more complex and nuanced pictureof life in the divided city, it is important not to create a false sense of `normality'.wh ich obscures the way in w hich the dividedness of the city proves a crucial aspectof the daily negotiation and ma nagem ent of life in these politicized urban spaces. Itis necessary, therefore, to find the middle groun d betw een a static sense of the c ityas violent and `abnormal' and an equally skewed picture of the city typified by the`normality' of everyday routines and untouched by the violence which necessarilyexists.

This middle ground can be reached through the adoption of an ethnographicperspective to the issue of fear. This chapter presents a case study of the genera-tion and management of fear in the divided city of Belfast. By focusing upon theactual experience of residents, it is possible to discern a highly attuned sense offear w hich bears little relationship to the dualistic juxtaposition of 'real threat' against

9 3


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94 T he Emotionsirrational groundless fear. Instead, fear is shown to be not merely individualized andpersonalized, but a lso intersubjectively sha red, situationally specific, socially con sti-tuted and indee d socially constituting.

Fear and the D ivided City: A Case S tudy of the Generationand Manag ement of FearThe w ay in which the experience of fear shapes the daily dynamic of life in Belfasthas been overlooked, not merely as a result of the emphasis upon quantitative ex-aminations, but also as a result of the relative invisibility of the topic to academieonlookers. The rea son for this myopia is due in part to the rare self-conscious articu-lation of the topic by residents of districts characterized by division and boundaryviolence, where the issue is treated as a tacit unproblematic body of information.As one resident notes, it is the case that `people are so used to living like that, thatit seems norma l to them and it 's only w hen you jerk their mem ories that all of thisstarts coming out ... 'cause it's just your life'. It is precisely the 'normality' andcasual mundanity of the topic which leads it to be overlooked by a cademic observ-ers of N orthern Ireland. In order to provide a context for the na rratives presented inthis chapter, I shall begin by illustrating the nature of the feared violence througha brief vignette which outlines a series of violent incidents which occurred over atwenty-four-hour period in the year 20 00. The timing of these incidents is signifi-cant, occ urring as they did six years after the initial param ilitary cease-fires of 1994,which led to reduce d levels of violence tw inned with a protracted period of politicalnegotiations in search of a poss ible settlemen t to the conflict. Despite the cessationof hostilities, how ever, this period w as not untouche d by acts of v iolence, whetherthe result of sectarian or political attack or indeed internecine feuding between theillegal paramilitary groups.

In December 2000, a 30-year-old Catholic builder, Gary Moore, from the small markettown of Limavady, 58 m iles north of Belfast, was employed on a building site in a localcorporation housing estate with a n ear-exclusively Protestant population on the n orthernoutskirts of Belfast. In the late afternoon of W ednesday 4 D ecember he was approachedby two m en w ho shot him, wounding him fatally. Within hours of this shooting, anotherCatholic man, in his early twenties, Paul Scullion, was sitting in his taxi outside hisdepot on the O ldpark Road in North B elfast when he w as shot several times by a pillionpassenger on a motorcycle. The two shootings were determined to have been carriedout by the Ulster Defence Association as revenge attacks for the killing the previousevening of a Protestant taxi driver: 35-year-old Trevor Kell was shot dead when he an-swered a bogus call to a house on the Hesketh Road, on the Protestant side of a highlytense interface in the north of the city. Initially the police blamed Republican elementsfor the shooting, but given their adama nt denial, questions we re raised as to wh ether theshootings might instead have been carried out by Loyalist paramilitaries in an attempt


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Catholics, Protestants and Office Workers from the Town 95to provide the justification for a series of revenge attacks. (From an interview in theresearch project)

This series of events raises several pertinent questions about the nature of fea r expe-rienced by individuals resident in com munities where such violence is experienced.The three shootings appear to be merely the result of random, unpredictable andindiscriminate targeting of victims in tit-for-tat violent exchang es carried out duringthe course of the working day on individuals who are clearly noncombatant. Theviolence appe ars to be relatively chao tic and disorganized. Such a pa ttern of violencebegs the question of how ordinary citizens live lives w hich are not entirely disabledand paralysed by fear of violent assault. As already m entioned, how ever, the city ischaracterized by those norma l daily flows of employme nt, schooling, shopping andsocializing which are co mm on to all large urban spa ces. Residents clearly do not livelives which are imm obilized by fear of rand om a cts of violence. Instead, they negoti-ate the city in a myriad of com plex ways w hich are underpinned by a reading of theviolence w hich attempts to find pattern, and by extension order, in the events w hichthreaten to disrupt their lives.

Social Scripts of Fear in BelfastAs n oted earlier, the residente of Belfast's inner-city districts live in residential areascharac terized by high degrees of religious segregation. Movem ent outside of localresidential areas therefore necessitates the navigation of a complex topography ofpoliticized space. The following comments were made by two men who expresssome of the fee lings triggered by eng aging in such daily negotiations.

I honestly think fear is a factor ... there will be a fear factor, who I'm working with,there's a suspicion. Anybody, honestly, I really do think if you're born and bred in Bel-fast, i truly believe there's a suspicion. It 's almost a gene! 'Right, you can't w ork in northBelfast', 'you can't work in west Belfast', 'you can't work in east Belfast'. It automati-cally clicks in and then the fear starts and you're sweating ... I remember going for aninterview in the U pper Springfield, and Jesus, that was the worst day of m y life ... I didn'tfeel safe it was the area I don't know that area, didn't know the people, didn't knowthe geography. Y ou're going into somew here strange, that's my opinion. (Jack, Protestantmale, mid-twenties)[That bus stop] is not that commonly used. A lot of people would walk into town firstto get the bus [rather] than stand there on the road [an interface] [or] you'd find a lot ofpeople they try to time it, so that they are only standing there m aybe two or three minutes.They w ould hang about in [our comm unity], may be in the com er or they wo uld stand onChis side of the road where they feel safe and then move across [the road] when the bus


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96 The Emotionsis due to come around the comer. I mean, you look at w ho is passing. If there's two orthree young men com ing up, then you would feel threatened and your heart would startpumping a bit until they were eventually passed. (Gary, Protestant male, mid-thirties)

In their statements both Jac k an d G ary echo the paramilitary-associated intervieweeaboye, in drawing upon a highly defined understanding of the threat of violence.This reading provides both known categories and known locations which triggerphysical feelings of fear. Echoing the param ilitary script, Ga ry in particular speaksof a distinct social category, young men, as those most likely to trigger a sense offear. As mentioned previously, young me n represent the group who hav e suffered thehighest number of dea ths in the conflict, and, as dem onstrated through this remark,the group who a re seen by mem bers of the local population as those who pose thegreatest threat. The random targeting of young m en from specific politicized districtshas been a com mon fea ture of the conflict, regardless of whether or not these menwere m embers of param ilitary groups. They are viewed by m any in these localitiesas the social ca tegory most likely to be param ilitary members, to sympa thize with theorgan izations or to engage, themse lves, in politicized street violence.

Com ing through in these scripts is a definite spatial locatedn ess of threat and aseries of spatial practices designed to avo id becom ing victims of attack, which de-pend upo n the accu rate interpretation of the situation. The spatial practices outlinedby the young men aboye involve avoiding unknown spaces where the boundariesare unfam iliar and difficult to read, or using know n dang erous spaces in wa ys wh ichare highly defined. These prac tices necessitate the reading of space in highly intri-cate ways, in a situation in which all space is identified as either `ours' or theirsand given a sectarian com plexion.

See that road there, well, the Catholics they walk on the other side of the road, they're theonly ones that use that side, and then us Protestan ts use this side, and the office w orkersfrom the town. (George, Protestant man, mid-thirties)

While this remark illustrates the highly specific detailing of the spatial divisions,wh ich divide streets into `rafe sides' and 'unsafe sides', it also illuminates a n interest-ing feature of fear of sectarian violence. George points to the use of the P rotestant sideof the street by those invisible others whom he refers to as the `office workers from thetown '. These individuals do not com e without their own religious identities, whetherCatholic or Protestant, but for George, and indeed for the many others who ec ho histhoughts, they appear to exist outside the framework o f fear and threat. M ost city resi-dents adopt spatial practices which avoid w hole swathes of the city which they viewas politicized residential territories with established ne gative reputations, but fo r themajority of peo ple there is little reason to visit these residential comm unities.

W arnings, rumo urs and advice are a central part of local comm unication. In thefollowing quotation, Terry outlines the best strategy for w alking into or out of the city


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Catholics, Protestants and Office Workers from the Town 97centre at night, a route which involves passing in the vicinity of a particularly volatileinterface.

The only problems that our people have had in the last while back is people going in orout of town late at night walking when the buses have not been on, and getting badlybeaten going by Slatersville or coming bac k past it. Once the y knew you weren 't a Cath-olic, you'd run for your life. The way it ishat's Slatersville [referring to a mai)),and see here, that brings you on up the Prendergast Road, and once you come past thispoint there's people watching. They see you coming up. Most of them know their owncomm unity down there because it's a very small commun ity. W e've always told our peo-ple, 'Come up Birchill Street', because Birchill Street goes up and brings you round thisway. W e always tell our people, If you're going into town go in that w ay if you want, andwhen you're coming hom e, try and com e home the other way . . . and cut across, becauseit means if you're walking down the far side you have a better chance of running up thebypass even, and round into Freyne Street if you see anything there'. (Terry, Protestantman, late forties)

Terry's rema rks point to a highly intricate spatial detailing w hich is shared by thoseliving in a particular locality, wh ether through direct instruction or merely throug hhearing num erous stories of local incidents of violence. Such stories provide localpeople with the knowledge of what it is that they should learn to fear. Knowingwh at to fear is critical to actually experiencing fea r. While several of the respondentsquoted detail the physical manifestations of fear, of sweating bodies and p ump inghearts, what they relate is necessarily learnt and intersubjectively shaped. Culturalfactors do play a role, and it is only through aw areness that a particular thing repre-sents a threat, that individuals actually experience fe ar.

These spaces h ave a long history of con centrated political and sectarian violence(Feldman 1991). This spatio-temporal em phasis is a comm on feature of the discus-sion of fear in Belfast. It is echoed c learly by Simon, a young C atholic man livingdirectly on a volatile interface associated with recurrent violence and tension. Suchviolence is particularly intense during the sum mer m onths and the most controver-sial points in the marching season, such as the conflict over the right to march atDrum cree each July.' His narrative reveals how his comm unity reads the potentialthreat in any given incident, and chooses either to ignore or to react on the basis ofthis reading.

After dark ... any serious things that have happened within the district have happenedthree or four in the moming. I live beside one of the interfaces and I mean you getwoke up and ... you're astonished at what time you hear people coming home drunkand wants to shout for his cause down the street. From both sides now you can hearpeople shouting, whether it's, `you dirty Fenian B' or whatever, `you dirty Orange B',you know, that type of thing. Whether they're standing in the street shouting 'Kifi thePope!', `God save the Queen!' I've heard some mad obscenities being shouted, like.


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98 T he Em otionsMostly it's down to drunkenness most of the time it's drunks and they're standing atthe top of the street shouting, and a crowd comes out and off they go back up the roadand it's all forgot about. Most of the times it's an individual just drunk ... no audiencewhatsoever and probably that's what the problem is ... once they get an audience ... Butit's different when somebody is drunkean it's not as harmful as when it's the sum-mer period w hereby people only use alcohol to fire up their emotions. You know , peopledo come down and they're sober and they are fully conscious of what they're doing andthey're causing trouble. Well, you always know ... Sometimes it could be orchestrated... the likes of Drumcree over the summer marching season, things like that tend to bemore orchestrated.e want to do something we'll go down into the district, we'llgo down into Clarence Road' [the interface], 'we'll do this or we'll do that'. But whenyou're talking drunks coming home, you know there isn't going to be a serious problemmost people know that they are drunk and just let him go on up to where he belongsand it's the same up there. He'll go, he'Il get tired of hearing himself shouting and awayhe'Il go. (Simon, Catholic man, early twenties)

For residents like Simon, there is an interpretation of such situations, and thedecision is made as to whether there is anything to fear, or whether they shouldmerely remain in their beds and ignore the incident. The decision is based on thewider co ntext within w hich the incident occurs, w hether political or seasonal. Giventhe supposed predictability of violence, individuals can judge particular incidents asthey arise. They judge these occurrences, and those which are deem ed unusual aresometimes rejected as `not sounding right', or 'makng no sense', and dismissed asmerely rum our or supp osition. In addition to analyzing particular violent incidents,individuals also judge the spatial decisions of othe rs.

The natural extension to such a judgement is made by the young Catholic man,Simon, who has very clear thoughts on safe spatial practice and on the judgemen t ofthose who do not act in w ays wh ich are fully cognizant of the fear of violence.

Driving and walking, you know, you wouldn't do the same thing at the same time everyday, you know, people do have that mentality and it's because they saw how easy it is ifyou do something in a routine, you'll end up getting yourself shot. People in these arcasdo watch themselves more .. You do get people that say, 'Why would I get shot? I meanI don't do anybody any harm', and they're the ones that end up getting shot, becausethey go wherever they want. Well sorne people say, not that he deserved to be shot buthe should have had more sense not to work in one of these types of places [employer ina Protestant district], or whatever. I know that's harsh to say, but when you go to workin one of these places you're taking a risk, and they're fully conscious of where they'regoing. (Simon, Catholic man, early twe nties)

In his spatial practices, Simon mirrors the safety strategy of the leading Loyalistsreferred to in the interview extract ab o ye, in avoiding the formation of routine inhis daily activities. For Sitnon, those who ignore the shared understanding that


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Catholics, Protestants and Office Workers from the Town 99spatial freedoms nee d to be limited for the sake of safe ty, are foolish in the extreme.Thus, while negative assessments are m ade of those wh o are ove rly fearful, equallydisapproving comm ents are directed at those who fail to live their everyday lives inways that are fully cognizant of the very real dangers which exist.

ConclusionFrom the com parison of the combata nt and noncom batant scripts, it is clear that bothare echoing the same overriding themes. From the ethnographic detail presented,it is possible to see that both categ ories hav e very def inite patterns to their readingof the violence of the Northern Irish conflict. Order and predictability are creditedto the violence in terms of victim-choice, spatial, temporal, seasonal and politicalinfluences. Tacit agreem ent exists on the nature of the violence and on the relativethreat posed by various situations. Just as violence and threat are real intersubjec-tively, so too a va riety of spatial strategies are shared , which of fset potential danger.These strategies involve com plex mapping processes, whereby space is carved intosafe and unsafe zones, where both macro- and micro-territorial considerations exist,involving resp ectively the other side of tow n' or the `other side of the street'.

Predictability ensures that palpable fear levels are reduced, and events are ca ta-logued under m erely 'normal' for this time of yea r, as no cause for un due conc ern orindeed as just cause for w orry, distress and action. Just as specific violent incidentsare interpreted by local onlookers, so too the spatial choices of others are exam inedand judged by community members, who view unsafe movements negatively, andoften cred it the individual with naivety, stupidity or foolishness. Fear is shown to benorma lized and routinized in a rang e of d aily practices. This is not an articulation offear as neurotic, paranoid or imm obilized. It is rather the com plex appreciation of thevery real dangers in the local environment and the dev elopment and sharing of a rang eof practices designed to offset the possibility of victimization.

This case study directly challenges an overly personalized and individualizedreading of fear. Th e categories of 'real' as opposed to `unrear or irrational fears areshown to have little use within a case study w hich examines the practical impact offear of violent assault in the daily negotiation of the mundane a cts of shopping, work-ing or socializing. Ultimately, fear is show n to be highly spatialized, with the senseof both threat and fear related to the occupation and use of space. In fact, in bothcombatant and noncombatant scripts there is a clear spatialization of identity, wherethere is an acute blurring of the individual into place. The quan titative appreciation ofdistinct social catego ries and the mea suremen t of their respective level of risk wo uldbe difficult to ground in the realities of there blurred politicized readings, where pres-ence in space an d place can c ome to be a more important factor than an individual'spolitical affiliation or sympa thies. There is a blurring of the c ategories of the politicaland the n onpolitical, and space c omes to define the person m oving through it.


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100 The Emotions

ReferenceFeldman, A. (1991), Form ations of V iolente: T he N arrative of the B ody and Political

T error in N orthern Ireland, Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago Press.

Note1. March es by Loyalist organizations take place regularly throughout the summ er;

one, at Drumcree in Portadown (thirty miles southwest of Belfast), became par-ticularly controversia) during the 1990s.


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-8-Emotions in Academia

Billy Ehn and Orvar Lfgren

An old building belonging to the Royal N etherlands Ac ademy of Arts and Sciences,situated on the bank ofA msterdam's Kaisergracht canal, formed the home of a smallresearch depa rtment specializing in the study of dialects and D utch folk culture upuntil 1988. Excerpts, records, photos and drawings were collected here in theserun-down premises. It was a relatively closed setting, not highly ranked by neigh-bouring disciplines or within the other departments of European ethnology. Whenone of the resea rchers, J. J. Vo skuil, retired after thirty years of wo rking in the verysame place, he energetically and secretly set his hand to writing a 'toman clef'of seven volumes of more than five thousand pages in the space of five years. Hiswritings were based on an infinitesimal number of diary notes. Neither he nor thepublishing company ever imagined that this would be a marketable product, andcertainly never a be st-seller.

W hen the first volume of Het B ureau, translated a s The Of fice, carne out in 1996,the book proved to be a sensation. Circulation quickly reached 35,000 copies andreaders impatiently waited for the follow-up. Critics praised it to the skies as 'thebrilliant Dutch novel' and made comparisons with Kafka's portrayals of hell. Theseventh and final part reach ed the book shops in 2000. In total, several hundreds ofthousands of volumes have been sold (see Rooijakkers and M eurkens 2000).

The nam es of the 400 scholars and colleagues that feature under alias in the novelcan be deciphered via a popular Internet homepage. Many have searched the sitewith trepidation to check whether their names are included in the cast, and underwhich name they appear. The books do not give a particularly flattering picture ofthe world of academ ic research, as we repeatedly encoun ter never-ending intrigueand power struggles over the m ost futile things. The portraits are often maliciouslyrevealing. One critic described it as a com pelling academic soap opera.

Yo u get the sam e feeling of unreality as in the BBC 's successful TV series, 'TheOffice' of 2002, where folk sit and stare at computer screens, rummage in files,w ander in and out of the hopeless and self-important ma nager's office, and enga gein surrealistic conversations w ith colleagues without the view er having the faintest

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102 T he Em otionsnotion of what is actually being produced. Everybody seems to be fully occupiedbut with what?

Hidden EmotionsIt is striking that workplaces are not well-frequented ethnographic sites in studiesof emotions, although it is obvious that work is emotionally driven and that everyworkplace produces a lot of emotional energies (see for example Fineman , 2000 andBarbalet, 2002). Both Het Bureau and 'The O ffice' seethe w ith emotions, althoughthey are often concealed in the seemingly trivial routines and reactions of a nervousgiggle, a bored look, an unconscious body mo vement or a sudden ya wn.

W hile 'The Office' and Het B ureau look rather similar on the surfac e, they aren't.Het B ureau belongs to the world of academ ia, a world that is defined by another setof priorities, emotions and practices. It is not only populated by clerks, but also byscholars. That makes a difference.

Life at Het B ureau was one of our starting points for a book on the ev eryday cultureof Academia (Ehn & Lfgren, 2004). Using a wide variety of sources--everythingfrom autobiographies, academic reports and the rich interdisciplinary literature onuniversity life, to interviews and observations--we set out to capture some of thebasic themes encapsulated in university life. During the past year we have usedthe book as a platform for discussions with different groups of university people,exchanges that have given us further insights.

At a m eeting with fifty administrative assistants, the open ing question carne froma w oman who had spent all her working life in the private sector but who now expe-rienced a c ultural shock as a university department secretary: 'How come professorsare so emotional?' she asked. That same question also struck us when we startedcollecting our material. The importanc e of emotions in university everyda y life sur-prised us. Here was a w orld in which feelings are either denied or denigrated. In theacademie mode of producing knowledge, emphasis is put on rationality, scientificobjectivity and a constata rhetoric about keeping `person and thing' separate. Emo-tionality, it would appea r, should not be allowed to inha bit this world.

At the same time as matter-of-factness and emotional control are revered, uni-versity life is steered by strong feelings that often are ca mouflaged. In o rder to un-derstand what it is that happens in university life it is important to analyze howresearchers and teachers talk about an d in d ifferent w ays express their feelings, bothin each other's presence and in the workplace.

In this essay we w ould like to discuss how the specific world of acade mie emo-tions can contribute to an understanding of the cultural organization and express ionof com plex feelings. The fact that this field is defined as em otionally neutral makes itan especially interesting study. Here the expressions of feelings are often organizedand transformed in unexpected ways, given complicated forms or coloured with


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Emotions in Academia 103seemingly insignificant detail. The taboo of certain feelings at the same time resultsin a tendency to indirectness, the appearance of emotions in disguised forms or insurprising contexts. The way in which the sensitive and impassioned interact withthe intellectual leads us to ask the question of how it might be possible to understandthe university as an emotion-controlled and contradictory organization.

In researching emotions, a lot of energy has b een put finto trying to define them.No t only have polarities such as com mon sense a nd feelings been discussed, but alsocontrasts such as body a nd m ind, interior and exterior, or individual and collective(see for example Dixon, 2004, and Hillman, 1991). Our starting point as culturalresearchers is a different one in that w e view fe elings as a dimension that constantlycolour our ideas, actions and social existence. They can focus, strengthen or formbarriers. Emotions create a special form of presence in that they can sensitize ordesensitize situations and impressions.

We see emotions as a cultural dimension of everyday life that cannot be sepa-rated from thought, cognition and bodily reactions. They are physical as well ascomplicated. Feelings aren't only conjured up by the eye or the m ind but also by thewhole body in some situations. In our ana lysis, feelings therefore appear m ore as ananalytical tool rather than as a specific phenom enon (for a further discussion of thisapproach see Frykman and L fgren, 2005). It 's not just a question of understandinghow moods and sensations colour situations, but also the problem of interpretingelusive and complex m anifestations of feelings. Some situations and arenas becom emore like seismographic surfaces that make it possible to interpret different ten-sions. We are looking to capture some of those evasive overtones that form part ofwha t Raym ond W illiams once ca lled Structures of feeling' (W illiams, 1977) a nd, indoing this, we will talk of 'acade mia' rather than the ma ny subcultures hidden in thisgeneralizing concept.

M ixed FeelingsThe em otional life of academ ia is full of contradictions. M emoirs and investigationsrevea] that researchers and teac hers react strongly to each other, their work assign-men ts and the organ ization itself. Som e thrive and others don 't, some idolize the uni-versity, while others--and here w e are talking about extremesre affected by whatBourdieu (1984/1996:57) calls 'academie hatred'. Scholars are, as Charlotte Bloch(2002a, 2002b, 2003) show s in her research, fully occupied in dealing w ith feelingsof pride and joy, anger and shame.

The emotional charging of this milieu contrasts with intellectual aspirations to-wards logic and analytical distance. Scholars often talk about their pleasurable la-bours, the delight of form ulating problems a nd the discovery of new ideas. But theyalso describe anxiety, envy and bitterness in 'the narrow-minded v alley'som ethingthat also applies to the most successful in 'the intellectual paradise'. (Academics


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104 The Emotions

love to use colourful metaphors, such as w hen they d escribe university life in termsof backw aters, ivory towers an d tribal customs, see for exam ple Becher, 1989.)

Strong criticism, as well as idolization, is incorporated into the descriptions ofacademia. Such ambivalence seems to be a general feature. Many scholars andteachers obviously love their jobs and are con vinced that they ha ve landed feet firstin the best of all worlds. They identify themselves with both the freedom and thehunger for knowledge they find there and, in the main, are loyal to the systematleast as long as they are successful and acknow ledged by their colleagues.

Others are less enthusiastic; they either find it difficult to adapt, don't assert them-selves in competitive struggles, or collapse under the heavy weight of the teachingload. The experience of university shifts according to what you want to get out ofit and what you are prepared to contribute. In this sense it resembles a very ordi-nary workplace, with a varying proportion of heaven and hell stirred into the mix.One thing that differentiates the Swedish university, however, is a relatively lowermobility, in that people often remain faithful to the same department for the wholeof their working life. Many see themselves as unlikely candidates for other work-places, or 'out there in reality', as is sometimes expressed with an ironic shrug ofthe shoulders.

W hen you analyze the rich autobiographical literature of academ ia, you find thatit is often affectionate, humorous and perhaps somewhat (self-)ironic, although italso contains a fair am ount of pain an d discom fort. Not surprisingly success storiesforro the clear m ajority. It is mostly professors w ho w rite their mem oirs. A sense o fpride in one's own achievem ents glares through a d esire to appear hum ble, wh ile atthe sam e time, stories about jealously guarding on e's own interests, a sharp needlingof elbow s and scientific battles are recounted w ith some distaste.

The stars' love hate relationship is perhaps no t so illogical w hen a ll is said anddone. There's nothing strange in having conflicting feelings towards an occ upation ifit is perceived as being the only mission in life a kind of calling into which you putyour heart and soul. Research is described as some thing more than just an ordinaryjob. High expec tations increase the risk of disappo intment, particularly in a situationwhe re the fight for positions and research resources has bec ome increasingly tougher.

Envy and Adm irationThere is a constant battle for acknowledgement in a milieu that, to a great extent,puts performance on a par with personal value. The competitive mentality is stronglyma nifested in the eve ryday life of a university. The risk of exclusion make s peoplemore a wa re of their position in the ranking, and thus even m ore prepared to exploitevery opportunity to advanc e their position (and their value). The success of o therscan therefore lead to problems. If the rewards don't stretch to include everyone, itdoesn 't feel right if others are given w hat you yourself are striving for.


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Emotions in Academia 105

In academic autobiographies, envy is named as a special affliction, a kind ofoccupational hazard. The writers themselves do not see themselves as affected byit, however. It is others that are envious and grudgingthose forbidden emotionsthat are both difficult to acknowledge and to disguise. There is always reasonto be envious, both within and outside the university world. However, as it isconsidered an unpleasant emotion, the majority try not to let it show and insteadinvent counter-strategies. A furtive, sideways and secret comparison hides itselfbehind envy and is sometimes accompanied by a desperate desire to be some-body else. Envy results when you compare yourself with others and experiencethat you are less worthy. People suffer when a colleague writes yet another goodbook or is awarded a research grant or a scientific prize. It is not the case thatjust anyone can arouse a sense of envy, however, as for most people it is boundup with the equally good competitor. The abilities and competence of the otherperson threaten one's own sense of worth and diminish the significance of per-sonal achievement.

Is there anything special about academic envy? That em otion exists in every con-text where people are assessed by w hat they achieve. One d istinctive charac teristicis that academ ic life, to an exceptionally high degree, is about people attaining theirworth and rank as a result of achievements that take years to realize. It involvesinvesting in a creative activity where you have to work with people who, in othercontexts, are your com petitors, critics and judges, on a daily basis. Perha ps envy isjust as corrosive in other creative occupations, but it may find a different expression.The question is whether others outshine scholars in finding each other's shortcom-ings, doubting another's competence an d accusing them of being a phoney or evenpointing the same finger at yourself.

Envy and gnashing your teeth are, however, not entirely negative, in that thesefeelings have also led to constructive rivalry and a number of epoch-making studies.A desire to write and publish treatises that might lead to a professorship or enhanc eyour curriculum vitae (CV)the shop-window of capabilityis everyday grist inthe scholar's mili. Arrogance and envy in the face of other people's success can.rather like the desire for revenge, sometimes be underestimated as productive forces.By envying a nother person you actually reveal your own longings.

Sometimes envy bears the disguise of one of its closest relatives in the worldof emotions: admiration. Those of us who can't bear to feel ourselves inferior orless worthy can co nvert the emotion to flattery. Ha ving a generous attitude towardsthose who seem to be m ore competent is a w ay of trying to disarm a destructive re-active pattern. In this con text, the expressionraise someone to death' becomesactualized. Lavishing praise and idealizing the qualities of other people is akin toputting them on a dangerously high pedestal from which they can easily fall. Theidealized person has to live up to those high dema nds that adm iration craves. Exag-gerated adm iration and merciless belittlement are, to some people, as closely relatedas breathing out and breathing in, as many scholars, from Kierkegaard to Freud.


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106 T he Emotionshave po inted out. Envy can be the result of a misplaced idealization or identification(see the discussion in G arber 2001: 53 ff).

Even if envy is not an acceptable reactionone that you would rather not ownup toit can be that colleagues recognize and acknowledge it in each other. 'Youare so talented! You have written precisely the kind of book I would have writtenmyself.' They feel both delight and envy; ap preciation mak es the success of the otherseem less painful. Everybody knows that academia is driven by a craving for suc-cess. They are also very aw are of w hat it is like to succeed and to fa il. The ac ademiecompetitive system leads to people becoming single-minded and isolated in theirdesire to achieve, while at the same time forming a silent community against thecurse of comparison and competition. Praising others to the skies is actually also away of adjusting to the university's domineering scale of values, that which sincetime imm emorial has meant that glory and fame are mostly earned through scholarlyachievement.

In the university world, envy is an inheritance from the past that has been re-produced over and over again in new forms. It is a force that both steals and feedsenergy in those who are preoccupied with a need to prove their worthiness andemerge a s victors in the com petitive struggle. But what k ind of routines, traditionsand thought patterns make env y and adm iration such central emotions in the worldof academia?

Competing ColleaguesOn Christmas Eve 2003, readers of Sweden's most circulated daily newspaper(Dagens Nyheter) w ere surprised by a long polemic article in which a political scienceprofessor demonstrated, with the help of wide-ranging m easuring apparatus, that col-leagues who appea red most often in the press were not those who enjoyed the greatestinternational scholarly prestige. His own name was not to be found among the list ofthe ten most m edia-reported (men), but could be found, however, as the num ber tworating in the more important listing concerning international reputation. Several ofhis colleagues spent their Christmas ho lidays trying to refute his rankings. Anotherprofessor constructed a new list, this time ba sed on the n umber of h its in the Soc ialScience Citation Index. The previously mentioned number two was nowhere to befound, while the new ran ker had himself sailed up the list to assume secon d place.

Academicians are obsessed with ranking, measuring and weighing as energy-creating activities. You meet this right at the beginning of your academie career,as a student, starting with the constant round of exam inations and terminating w ithan obituary published in the professional journals. You can never relax. You areconstantly being evaluated. Do yo u come up to scratch as scholar, teacher and co l-league? 'You are always fair game', a senior professor complained. Even to the bitter


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Em otions in A cadem ia 107end. Following a lengthy baffle between two history professors, one of the an tagonistshad the task of giving a commemorative speech in honour of his deceased colleague.A listener recalls the atmosphere of that occa sion. The decea sed person's entire clanwere on tenterhooks as they listened for a ny undertones in the com petitor's homa ge.W hich insinuations w ere bound up in this ritual extolment?

The constant measuring and weighing up is often internalized as one's own un-certainty, a nagging doubt. How do you know that you are a proper researcher? Howis your position at the university legitimized? Ma ny postgraduates ca rry a constantfeeling of insecurity and sometimes feel themselves to be phoneys pretending tocarry out research work. Is what I'm doing serious scientific work, or am I just acharlatan?

These same painful thoughts affect a surprising number of established schol-ars, whose belief in themselves is easily shaken by something as simple as acritical review or a stray comment in a seminar. In the same way we constantlystruggle with oblivion--both as postgraduates and professors. How do we makean impression, how do we gain attention and repute, how are we read, heard andseen? The academic ego is fragile and swings easily between self-esteem andself-contempt.

The perpetua] ranking--both in formal and informal guisescreates a fertilebreeding ground for envy and admiration, as well as specific patterns of reaction.A special appeals tradition has been created in academic life that seemingly hasno counterpart in other workplaces. Written comp laints are not really alwa ys aboutgetting a ranking changed (which seldom happens) but are rather an institutionalizedform of expressing emotions like disappointment and anger. But there are also otherwa ys of dealing with such feelings.

IronyB etwix t Fun and S arcasmIn a world where vanity, bitterness and insecurity about one's own position gohand in glove with more positive energies, techniques have been created thattransform and conceal emotions. It is no coincidence that irony (includingthe more sophisticated self-irony) and sarcasm take up strong positions in theacademic tradition. Irony becomes the technique used to deal with, as well asdistance oneself from, uncomfortable emotions that form part of an academic`habitus'.

To an outsider, visiting at the time of a departmen tal coffee break, an a cadem icians'dinner or chatting during a pause in the conference, the sarcasm and jokes that flythrough the air can seem very trying. The favo urite target for humorous distancing is' the others', stick-in-the-mud scholars, stupid adm inistrators or the unsophisticatedworld of nonacadem ics.


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108 The Emotions

Why this academic obsession with irony? Stories about the old masters of sarcasmabound in academic folklore. A teacher remembers what it was like to listen to one ofits masters, a literature professor, talking to a group of colleagues during the 1940s:

Tvery intelligent person with ulcers gets duodenal ulcers.' He then pauses and turnsto one of his less bright professor colleagues: 'But I bet you don't have any duodenalulcers.' (Villius 1991: 397)

Sometimes the ironist is regarded as the rational sceptic; someone who is preparedto live with uncertainty and who has the ability to critically relativize most things.Distancing becomes a v irtue and an academic defence strategy. 1f you wish to un-derstand the long tradition of the ironic attitude, and that includes the high-spiritedjesting, you can usefully begin w ith how the university milieu once cultivated abourgeois Bohemianism. Students, teachers and research scholars belonged to theestablishment while at the same time finding themselves outside it. They were aloofin ways tha t could be perilous. Irony, especially towards nonacademics, communi-cated an ambiguous position in the social structure.

When w e look back and see how students have acclimatized to this attitude, werealize that a sense of impotence in the face of formal hierarchy was also involved.The experience was one of being at the mercy of the teacher's whims and wieldingof power. At the same time as representing role mode ls, they also became objectsof ridicule. They had to be parodied and rendered harmless. We come across themin countless diaries filled with anecdotes of absurd examinations, absent-mindeddocents and dotty professors. This high-spirited student tradition has, however, pro-duced a number of great comedians, from Monty Python to Mr Bean.

In the transformation from student to lecturer to professor, this humoristic capitalcan be used as an effective power strategy to both create uncertainty in others andconceal it in yourself. In psychological terms, humour is often a technique of deflec-tion, a w ay of masking problems and emotions. In such cases, irony can becomeindirect aggression's protective casing, indirectness that means putting on a braveface. A history professor, who for many years chaired one of the Sw edish researchcouncils, was feared for his cutting irony. Once at a meeting he said of a researchapplicant: `Professor Andersson is probably the most stupid professor of languagestudies in the whole of Sweden'. He then paused and took a long searching look atthe gathering of other language professors that surrounded him and added: `but, gen-tlemen, in the face of extremely tough competition'. The laughter was nervous, andeverybody left the meeting wondering which position they occupied in this ranking.

It should be added that such academic venom holds its own fascination. In thedepictions of life at Het Bureau, we are confronted with both malice and full frontalattack. Many readers are witness to the relief this brings. That which is forbidden canbe given expression. What others try to mask with contained aggression, can here berecognized as the interest (or need?) to talk badly about people.


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Em otions in A cadem ia 109Irony is certainly not neutral with respect to gender. In her discussion on hum our

and irony in the university, Charlotte Bloch (2003) indicates how, for example,some women can quickly and efficiently be branded as humourless. She showshow ma sculine norms reign w ith regard to expression an d pitch. Class travellers inacade mia also witness the pow er with which irony marginalizes those who ha ven'tgrown up in an academ ic setting and have thus never learnt the art of elegant ironyat home. They have not mastered this verbal balancing act and feel insecure abouthow to react to the sarcasm of others. If they protest instead of laughing, they aretold Tan't you take a simple joke?' Irrespective of the conscious or unconsciousintention of irony, it is based on a co mpetence that dema nds considerable practice.Abo ye all it's a matter of 'fiming', and choosing the right situation and the rightaudience. By going too far, however, irony can suddenly be revealed as perfidy andreflect back on the narrator.

At the same time, the joke and the lavish narration are resources that make it possibleto breathe and ena ble a sense of solidarity to be maintained Pe ople often talk abouthow nice it is to be in one's own department, in an atmosphere w here laughter, parodyand irony are used to com bat the tendency of taking yourself too seriously. CharlotteBloch (2003) has also discussed the importance of self-irony in downplaying yourown achievements to avoid appearing pompous or bragging (a deadly academic sin).Joking about your own work is a w ay of avoiding the forces of envy.

The Deepening of DisappointmentSome time a go, at a university course on leadership, one of us ask ed the participantsabout their best and worst experiences of university life. Positive memo ries were notdifficult to account for. One man mentioned the fascination of launching researchprojects and new courses. Others lit up when they talked a bout job satisfaction, we ll-being, the hungering after knowledge and the feeling of being accepted. When awom an talked about the praise that she had received for an a rticle or a course, manenodded in con firma tion. A new ly appointed pro-vice chanc ellor radiated when shesaid that it wa s flattering to be m ade visible and to be esteeme d for doing a g ood job.Everyone una nimously agreed that recognition was am ong the best things they hadexperienced at university.

When it carne to the other part of the question, the atmosphere became morestrained. How could you tell colleagues about the unpleasant experiences? Somefound it traumatic to recall old injustices or occasions when they had made foolsof themselves or felt isolated. One man recollected the time he received blisteringcriticism of his scientific paper at a seminar. A wom an described in detail how badlyshe w as treated after writing an a rticle that criticized the approach take n w ithin herparticular field and how colleagues had com pletely deserted her as a result. Anotherwoman was close to tears at the memory of how, for a number of years, she had

INSITIIITO DE d. GACIONESSOCIALES


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110 The Emotions

been harassed by her `psychopathic' head of department. All the bitterness over old,half-forgotten injustices suddenly welled up.

One person alter another around the table described the darker sides of a work-place that they otherwise held in high esteem. The atmosphere in the room c hangedwhen they dared to trust and listen to each other without raising any objections ormaking any defences. That didn 't happen very often, they said. Someone said thatthere was a fear of talking about personal defeats at university due to the risk of beingbranded by them; they becom e rather like the signature tune of a failed academic.For those who have already suffered in this way, however, recovery is difficult; anegative judgement sticks fast in the world of academic intrigue.

Despite the job satisfaction and intellectua l appetite, the university sometimessounds like a tearful place. Dissatisfaction is greatest amongst those who,rightly or otherwise, feel themselves to have been trampled on, steamrollered oroverlookedespecially when it comes to those who have applied for, but not beenawarded, a professorship, other positions or a research grant or, even worse, havebeen declared incompetent. That is a fate worse than death. It might also be tied upwith not having been invited to a conference, not having been asked to be one ofthe keynote speakers, receiving negative reviews or no review at all, being wronglyquoted or not even quoted, being robbed of one's ideas and scientific results, havingone's article refused or tha t one's material isn't used as course literature. It might alsobe connected to having one's contribution to seminars and conferences ignored, ornot being acknowledged, seen or recognized. There are a hundred and one w ays ofbeing disappointed. The university is indifferent to those who don't live up to expec-tations and who therefore are destined to suffer from feelings of unrequited love.

One reason for dissatisfaction might be that scholars put a lot of time and energyinto telling colleagues and rivals that their way of doing things is wrong . While itseems to go with the profession, the impersonal scrutinizing of scientific achieve-ments comes dangerously close to an evaluation of personal merits. Sensitive peopletake it to heart when their ideas are questioned. Differentiating between person andthing becomes difficult.

Error detecting has an inherent polemic force that can give rise to new ways ofthinking and interesting debates. But it can also cause a fair amount of grief to beharboured in the optimistic world of university. Even professors and others whooutwardly seem to have been successful in their careers (still) bear the stars result-ing from the critique of colleagues. The lack of recompense also poisons the mostbrilliant of minds. The occasions of being left out in the cold, or being a ffected bynegative opinions, become distressingly pockmarked into the soul. The desire forrevenge is therefore not an unusual source of motivation.

Bitterness is a special form of emotion that can undergo a number of transforma-tions. Its starting point is often contained anger that either has a long or a short shelf-life. That which for some was just a fleeting word, a shrug of the shoulders, a few


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liases in a review (a nd imm ediately forgotten), are etched into the minds and heartsof others. Cultural organization and manifestations of bittemess remind us of howwe talk of emotions in terms of intensity, using metaphors of depth and longevity,levels like conscious and un conscious as w ell as the gliding process through w hichan emotion can turn into a moo d.

An irritation can be a continuous chafing, while a sudden disappointment mayturn into 'a deep disappointment'. It can get stuck in one's memory in the form ofa cultural cicatrization in a bitterness that is not an emotion as such, but rather aframe of mind that colours everything else. In bitterness anger is not only turnedinwards but also becomes a filter through which the everyday is experienced andinterpreted, expressed as cynicism and sarcasm, or in feelings of worthlessness orinjustice. Many of us ha ve also experienced how injustices that we regarded as beingdead and buried suddenly come to life and are a gain activated.

As with most moods, bittemess can be both protracted and unfocussed. We cangradually find ourselves having a particular frame of mind without really noticingwh at is happening. In linguistics, this is often em phasized in that w e finds ourselves'in' a mood, whereas we 'have' a feeling. Moods act as filters that can colour ourentire surroundings a rosy pink, black a s night or a dull shade of grey.

As a mood, bitterness is one of the driving forces in the narratives of Het B ureau,where this form of sarcasm becomes a weapon of revenge. This becomes all themore evident in another academ ie ethnographic account. In 1993, the book w rittenby Am erican author Melvin D. W illiams, A n A cademie V illage. T he Ethnography ofan A nthropologv D epartm ent 1959--1979, was published. Here he gives a detailedand critical account of the institutional milieu where he took his doctoral degree andlater worked a s a teache r. His ethnography is filtered through h is persona] bitterness;an em otion that also ma kes him very observant of how seemingly trivial situationsare charged w ith elemen ts of power and hierarchy. He cha rts the sociometry of inclu-sion and exclusion in the movements of people gathering to talk in the corridor orpopping in for a chat with the chairman. He shows how the allotment of offices isseen by some a s a ranking device. If you are out of favour, you can find yourself atthe end of a corridor or occupying a room w ithout window s.

Williams describes the atmosphere of the post-room, where emotions werechoreographed in many different ways. The post arrived twice a day and gave theworking day a special rhythm of anticipation. Collecting the post developed into adaily ritual and cha rged the depa rtment with nervous energy, as h e puts it. Althoughthe casual meetings in front of the postal pigeon holes seemed relaxed, tension wasalways in the air. Receiving letters was a confirmation of your position, and gettinglots of letters was even better. A ceremonial waste-paper basket was placed in thecomer, wh ere people could throw a way unimportant post with a nonch alant gesture.People kept an eye on the volume of post in the pigeon holes of their colleagues,some even leaving their post for days to make the collection look thicker. Some


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112 T he Emotionssecretly leafed through the envelopes of c olleagues to try to get a n overview of theiracadem ic network. D id they get books for review, invitations to conferences or let-ters from Important Academics?In many departments, the fact that you are assigned a pigeon hole is an importantritual of recognition for students. A young gra duate student can ne ver forget whe nshe w as refused such a pige on hole. For the director of graduate studies it wa s just aformality, but for her it was a definite sign of exclusion and another exam ple of beingthe lowe st in the hierarchy. H er bitterness still lives on.

S eminar EmotionsEmotions act like feelers and orientation tools in academic life, where movingbetween different departments and arenas can m ean encountering quite diverse emo-tional microclimates. How do you read the mood o f a m eeting, a lecture or a coffeebreak? Who dec ides the tone of the gathering and how ca n one and the same situationbe given completely different emotional perspectives by the participants?

A research seminar is one of the most highly charged academic events. It's anintellectual high-water mark, brimming with conflicting feelings and emotions-especially a sense of nervousness and thrill at the discussion itself. Five femalepolitical science postgradua tes (Henriksson, Jansson, Thom sson, Wen dt Hjer andAse, 2000) hav e described their seminar experiences of com petition and hierarchies,and of male dom inance and achievement demand s that t ie their stomach s in knots.There is a distinct boundary betw een the abstract scho larly w orld of university andexistence beyond the academic walls, they write. The periods before and after aseminar are experienced as sensual. In those moments, say the postgraduates, weeat some thing, drink coffee an d perhaps feel a strand of hair brush across our face.Things seem to have a kind of sensuality about them their dresses, the coffee cupsand the sunshine.

In the actual seminar, how ever, this sensual dimension is absent. During the semi-nar you ca n 'lose your body' and bec ome v ictim to a feeling of emptiness, or of notbeing there. This fits with the fema le body being pe rceived as `unscientific'. Thereis an antagonism betw een being both scholar and female, say the postgraduates, andthey refer to the way in which science is developed around a masculine norm. Inorder to be acknowledged as a scholar you have to avoid being regarded as a w oman,and in that way, connected to your body.

They are not alone in experiencing this strong feeling of lack of clarity in theseminar situation. The idea that it is connected to an understanding of others, andgetting them to understand you, ca n dissolve into feelings of uncertainty. Seminarshave a different set of mies in that they follow their own course of events that arecharacterized by something other than scholarly acumen. Rules and values are indi-rectly commun icated via irony, parody, smiles, a shaking of the head and significant


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Em otions in A cademia 113glances. (Seminars are important arenas for the constant negotiation of positionswithin the department and the discipline as a whole).

In a study of different seminar cultures, Lena Gerholm and Tomas Gerholm(1992) show how the order and structure of a seminar can be implicit to some andover-explicit to others. 'Here we try to be more informal and open', the professormight say, without observing that there is a definite pecking order in which p eopleare allowed to speaknd as to who can say what. In a study into the workingsituation of postgraduate students, Fredrik Schoug (2004) highlights that, for manypostgraduates, the seminar is not the arena for intellectual exchange that they hadexpected, but is instead a continuous rivalry for prestige and acknowledgement. Ama n who had recently gained his PhD d egree called his own departmental seminar'a closed discussion where the Society for Mutual Admiration met once a week',whereas a female postgraduate student from the same depa rtment felt that her ques-tions seemed silly in an atmosphere that is `so incredibly pretentious'. It begs thequestion of what exactly can be said at a seminarhow and by whom ?

Different kinds of laughter can be a n attempt to conceal the system of rules whenit manifests itself. Over-explicit norm dec larations a re experienced a s an embarrass-ment by some and have to be laughed off, whereas those who openly attack thesystem are regarded as deviants. Some find it hard to keep a straight poker face andthus unconsciously affect the climate of discussion with their mannerisms, whileothers manage to communicate their feelings and thoughts with the minimum ofgestures. In the sem inar room, a giggle, the clearing of o ne's throat, or a glazed lookcan be terrible weapons to use aga inst those w ho are terrified of w hat others mightthink. Postgraduates described how such things affected both their bodies and theirthoughts. But what sort of kind of emotional field is this?

Seminars are places w here you can practice techniques of argument and the artof deba te, and the giving and receiving of criticism. This is som ething that studentshave been doing since time immemorial. In the eighteenth century students weretaught the art of opposition and defence, but it is only later that this carne to meanthat you defended your own thesis. The dictionary weaves an association-web offighting, struggling or c ontesting, quarrelling or o verthrowing someon e around thephenomenon, disputation. Walter Ong (1982) has described this baffle training asan important part of traditional masculinity at university. Masculinity is strength-ened by public shows of the disputation battle. For or against! This was a profi-ciency that easily turned into the capacity to shine at someone else's expense. Ineffect, people were sm itten by w hat w as termed `disputation disease', characterizedby a focus on fault finding and self-assertion. It is a disease that still survives inma ny settings.

Yo u only need to read the body language of the participants as they emerge froma seminar. Their eyes sometimes sparkle after these magical m oments. Ideas flowedfreely, people talked eagerly and straight from the heart. A feeling of scholarlyeuphoria permeated the air and the sem inar became a collective journey into some-


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114 T he Em otions

thing new. On o ther occasions, it is the boredom, frustration and sense of w hat hasn'tbeen aired that sit tight in the seminar-bound bodies after two dreary hours. Moreoften than not, the reactions are mixed, depending on whether the participants feltthemselves to be active or passive mem bers. In these cases, a co mbination of feelingsmight be visible: openness and anxiety, laughter and boredom, bubbly talkativenessand obstinate silente.

S tructures of F eeling

Our starting point w as not the traditional juxtaposition of reason and emotion afavourite element in academ ic rhetoric but rather the fact that em otions are alwayspart and parcel of people's thoughts and actions. This made it especially interest-ing to explore academic fields that are often regarded as being emotion-free, fromthe rankings of researchers to seminar discussions. We have not only focused onsome of the stronger emotions, such as envy and bitterness, but also on the waysin which mo re low-key feelings are organized and expressed. What is it that makessome situations and settings so strongly charged w ith emotional energy? Wh o setsthe tone or the emotional mood, and how is an emotional atmosphere created orchallenged?

This reminds us tha t feelings are not just interior processes, but som ething createdin a social context, and som ething that can be m anipulated for certain ends. In somesituations, feelings are internalized and privatized into experiences of personalfailure, while in others they are projected into the social environment and coloursocial relationships.

Another aspect concerns the intensity of emotions. The joy of a scientific discoverymay surface as a surprising euphoria, disappearing almost as quickly as it appeared.or it might remain as a silent feeling of contentment. The anger towards a peerreviewer can be transformed into tears, changed into self-contempt or hardened intoan unfo rgiving bitterness. Such transform ations show that the traditional obsessionof delineating emotions into categories and taxonom ies can lead to a simplificationof more complex processes. This becomes obvious when dealing with the kinds of`mixed feelings' we have explored: the love-hate relationship to the academic insti-tutions, admiration expressed as envy, or the longing for change as a mix of anxietyand desire.The power of ambivalente in scientific settings should not be underestimated.Some em otions are rapidly changed into other moods. In some cases they can resultin pathological blockings, while in other instantes they ma y rapidly fade into some-thing else after having directed the interpretation of the situation. Everyday sensationsof discom fort or invisibility during semina r discussions and coffe e breaks, or in thescrutiny of footno tes, can either lead to bitterness or the relief of laughter. W hat ap-pear to be trivial phenomena are imbued w ith em otional attitudes and evaluations.


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Emotions in Academia 115We have found Raymond Williams's (1977) vague but evocative concept,

`structures of feeling', helpful in this context, because it not only points to theemotional tone of a specific setting, but also to how a certain em otional `habitus' isanch ored in institutions, routines and fram ew orks. In academ ia there is, as we havefound, co ntinuity in the w ays that feelings are structured by the specific political andcultural organization of its everyda y life.

As w e try to point out, a number of dog ged structures are involved in the repro-duction of the university's emotional climate, such as disputation disease, rankingobsession, irony and evasive indirectness. The point is that many of the fundamentalrules and regulations and em otions of university life are em bedded in the tools, theaesthetics and the munda ne practices, in lab w ork, blackboard drawings, the corridorchit-chat or the order in which gratitude is expressed in the preface. All thereoperations and routines are charge d w ith emotions, not least in relationships betweenpeople and things: the unp leasant red-pen c orrections, the expectations resting in thewelcom ing light of the com puter screen every morning, the feeling of inquisitivelyleafing through a new thesis, the tedium of yet another workday, and the pride feltwhen leaving a new ly published essay on the desk of a colleague.

The m icrophysics of the w orking day is connected to feelings of acceptance a ndisolation, of either being a success or a failure, satisfied or dissatisfied. In orderto deepen the study of such phenomena we need to develop ethnographic tools tocapture what George Downing (2000: vii) called `body micropractises'. By that herefers to our capac ity to recognize an emotion, allow it to develop or be conv erted,using it as a lens to investigate the actual situation, and perhaps later being able toput what is happening into words. This competence a kind of social capitalca nnot only vary a ccording to different feelings, but also between individuals and cul-tural contexts. When expectations are vague in an otherwise regulation-controlledorganization, it 's a m atter of being sensitive as to h ow behaviour and situations canbe interpreted. Intuition is not only an underrated a bility, but is also a useful resourcein acc limatizing to university life.

The specific academie structure of feelings also functions as a subtle mechanismof exclusion. The fema le political science P hD students did not feel at hom e with thema le and self-assured style of seminar discussions, but instead felt marginalized andsilenced, in the same wa y as ma ny w orking-class students find it hard to cope withthe power play of irony.

The indirectness of emotions can a lso be especially problematic for m any w omenwho have been socialized into the sharing of emotions as a w ay of creating intimac yand trust in social relations. At university, they are told that `this is not the w ay w edo it here'. Don't be em otional.

W e have argue d that emotions charac terize university life in two major w ays. Thefirst is the connection between person and achievement. Ardent inquisitiveness issublimated in scientific work an d explains much of the enthusiasm tha t is released inresearch. Comm itment promotes job satisfaction but can also lead to vulnerability and


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116 T he Em otions

disappointment when people don't feel that they have been adequately recognized orrecompensed. We were alead)/ aw are of the significance that scholarly achievementhas for an individual's personal sense of w orth, but our study has made this even moreevident. The important role played by prestige and esteem is another case in point, asis the fear of being forgotten.

The second way is that we move in a world where people are constantly beingranked and scrutinized. The longing for public recognition in a system wherecolleagues both compete and judge each other can create dangerous situations in aworkplace that many do not even think about. The idealism and joy of what is beingundertaken m akes research into something other than an ordinary job. The freedomto decide your own working tasks and pace are exceptional, although this samefreedom carnes with it a heavy responsibility to be innovative and creative. Manyhave high a mbitions in an occ upation that demands self-government, and the risk offailure in the face of continuous co mpetitiveness is great. It is not only about science.The slightest routine is govern ed by a variety of diffuse achievem ent dema nds.

To survive and cope in an organization with such a high status in society as auniversity, it is important to understand the role that emotions play in that contextand how the everyday paradoxes are dealt with. The gap between the openness thatshould characterize academic a ctivity and the indirectness and vag ueness that alsoexist in the encoun ter between co lleague s hinders the realization of acad emia's moregrandiose aims. Wrong gender or social background may make you feel ill at easein the world of university and m ay also be an o bstacle in correctly interpreting otherpeople's expectations, or prevent you from being a fully fledged member of thatcommunity. There is therefore every reason to allow emotional life to be a centralaspect in the analysis of how academic culture is both upheld and transformed.

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