There Will Be Weeping, and Gnashing of Teeth...

Mood, better today. Not 100%, but better. Tired though.

I'm taking a qualitative research class over at the Ed School. Very, very different world. My teacher is an anthropologist. I've never taken an anthropology class. Anthropology basically invented qualitative methods (ethnography, interviews, participant observation). It's a very rich academic field, both substantively and methodologically, that I know virtually nothing about.

We read an interesting piece this week that was sort of an overview of cultural differences the expression of emotion, and I really liked it. Fascinating stuff. Everything from grief, to anger, to love...the variation across cultures of how these things are expressed and the values underlying those norms is huge. In a recent post, I mentioned how romantic love in the U.S. is elevated to some quasi-mystical nirvahna state, while in many cultures, love is much more utilitarian; it just doesn't have the priority that it has here. The author (Nussbaum) discussed that difference quite eloquently in the article.

Grief is another interesting one. In the article, she talks about one culture, where the norm when someone dies is to stay up all night wailing and weeping. Then, she talks about a Balinese woman, casually mentioning that her fiance just died. In the first culture, not crying is seen as, like, bad mojo; it can get you sick. In the other culture, being negative and complaining is seen as bad mojo; it can get you sick too.

I feel like, in the U.S., we get a lot of mixed messages about how we ought to deal with emotion. In rough neighborhoods, boys are taught to stand up for themselves...and then they grow up and get into the working world, and they're told that fighting is barbaric and childish. We're told to be honest and true and expressive, but we're also told to be stoic and optimistic and rational. We're kind of a schizophrenic culture, don't you think?