Codes and Rituals of Emotions in Asian and African Cultures

The study of emotions can hardly be reduced to the question of individual brain states and bodily responses. In a broader perspective, individuals’ embodied experiences are located in different cultural settings, and, consequently, the notion of ‘emotions’ is interpreted with reference to their cultural heritage. Therefore, it is commonly accepted that the study of human emotions is not separated from cultural prescriptions about emotions. The main source for cultural interpretation of emotions is language. The language data provide names for fragments of the real world, but also give them a symbolic interpretation and evaluate them in terms of cultural properties. Outside of the ‘real’ world, language also reflects an ‘affective’ world that manifests itself in social, economic and political life.