Mágoas de amizade: um ensaio em antropologia das emoções

Neste ensaio, analiso a recorrência das categorias grosseria (rudeness) e ofensa (offence) no discurso sobre a amizade de um grupo de ingleses de camadas médias em Londres. Mais do que outros sentimentos ditos positivos, a menção freqüente a essas categorias aponta para uma tensão que atravessa o discurso sobre a amizade e que problematiza o espaço das amizades no conjunto mais amplo das relações sociais. Adoto, aqui, uma abordagem pragmática dentro do campo da "antropologia das emoções". Se, em um primeiro momento, os estudos priorizavam a relativização das categorias de emoções entre as culturas, verifica-se, mais recentemente, um movimento no sentido de tomar os discursos emotivos como práticas situadas em jogos de relações sociais e negociações de poder. Com isso, a emoção deixa de ser vista como experiência interna, subjetiva, para ser analisada como prática discursiva com efeitos externos, extrapolando o chamado domínio do privado.<br>In this essay, I discuss the presence of the categories rudeness and offence in the discourse on friendship produced by a group of middle class English people resident in London. The frequent reference to these categories, rather than to the so called positive emotions, reveals the tensions regarding the negotiation of personal space which crosscut this discourse, which in turn highlight the problematic space that friendship occupies within the field of social relations. This essay draws on the analytical tools of a pragmatic approach within the area known as "anthropology of emotions", developed in the last decade in the Unites States. If at first emotion concepts were mainly studied cross-culturally, nowadays they are seen as discursive practices situated within the wider field of social relations and negotiations of power. As such, emotions cease to be treated as an internal, purely subjective experience, in order to be analysed as a discursive practice with external effects on both private and public spheres

Magical Flight and Monstrous Stress: Technologies of Absorption and Mental Wellness in Azeroth

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-011-9204-4Videogame players commonly report reaching deeply ‘immersive’ states of consciousness, in some cases growing to feel like they actually are their characters and really in the game, with such fantastic characters and places potentially only loosely connected to offline selves and realities. In the current investigation, we use interview and survey data to examine the effects of such ‘dissociative’ experiences on players of the popular online videogame, World of Warcraft (WoW). Of particular interest are ways in which WoW players’ emotional identification with in-game second selves can lead either to better mental well-being, through relaxation and satisfying positive stress, or, alternatively, to risky addiction-like experiences. Combining universalizing and context-dependent perspectives, we suggest that WoW and similar games can be thought of as new ‘technologies of absorption’—contemporary practices that can induce dissociative states in which players attribute dimensions of self and experience to in-game characters, with potential psychological benefit or harm. We present our research as an empirically grounded exploration of the mental health benefits and risks associated with dissociation in common everyday contexts. We believe studies such as ours may enrich existing theories of the health dynamics of dissociation, relying as they often do on data drawn either from Western clinical contexts involving pathological disintegrated personality disorders or non-Western ethnographic contexts involving spiritual trance