How Did It Feel for You? Emotion, Narrative, and the Limits of Ethnography

• Published in: American anthropologist Vol. 112; no. 3; pp. 430 - 443
• Main Author: Beatty, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Wiley Periodicals, Inc 01.09.2010; Blackwell Publishing Inc; American Anthropological Association; Wiley; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Anger; Anthropology; Conceptualization; Cultural anthropology; Cultural factors; Cultural studies; emotion; Emotional distress; Emotional expression; Emotions; Ethnographic research; ethnographic writing; Ethnography; Ethnology; Field work; fieldwork; Linguistic anthropology; Literature; Methodology; Methods and techniques; narrative; Narrative history; Narratives; Person; Sources and methods; Written narratives; Fieldwork; Ethnography; Literature; Methodology; Narrative; Ethnographic writing; Emotion
• ISSN: 0002-7294; 1548-1433
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01250.x

In this article, I present the case for a narrative approach to emotion, identifying conceptual and presentational weaknesses in standard ethnographic approaches. First-person and confessional accounts, increasingly offered as a corrective to the distancing and typifying effects of cultural analysis, are shown to be unreliable; shared experience turns out to be an illusion. Instead, I suggest we look to literary examples for lessons in how to capture the full significance of emotion in action. Here, however, we reach the limits of ethnography.