Doing Emotions History

Chapter 1. Modern Patterns in Emotions History

CHaPtEr 1 moDErn Pat tErns in Emotions History PE tEr n. stE a rns After thirty to forty years of serious, informative work on emotions history, scholars have not clearly answered what would seem a vital and timely question : do emotions and emotional standards change when a society moves toward modernity? This essay seeks to explore the current status of the issue, to indicate promising lines for renewed attention, and to urge greater priority for analysis and discussion. Current indecision (at best) or neglect results from three factors. First, modernity itself is a contested notion. Most would agree that industrial, urbansocieties differ from agricultural ones, but how widely this spills over onto areas likepoliticsandcultureishardlyasettleditem.Second,emotionshistoryraises some particular challenges for inquiries into change, because emotions have somebiologicalandpsychologicalbasisthatresistevenpowerfultransforming forces, and because all societies, premodern or modern, need some regulatory effortsinsomenegativeemotionalareas.Modernchangemay,aswewillargue, be real, but it is not going to involve sweeping contrasts. But it’s the third constraint that really invites the most urgent attention: current analysis is deeply shaped by excessive scholarly oscillations over the past thirty years. There is no question that some earlier efforts to characterize modern emotions ,primarilyintheWesterncontext,oversimplifiedtothepointofbeingwell off the mark; this was initially true of efforts to describe premodern families as 18 PE tEr n. s tE a r n s lacking love and affection—the catch phrase was “about as much emotion as one would expect to find in a bird’s nest,” but it extended also to claims about unregulated anger.1 Overgeneralizations about premodern fear or grief have alsostirredrebuttals.Ontheotherhand,thekeyissueshavebeensubsequently undulydisplacedbymedievalistcritiques.Itisworthreopeningquestionsabout emotionalconcomitantstomodernprogresseslikeindustrializationorurbanization . The goal here is to relaunch a discussion, inviting contributions from both premodern and modern sides and with a special plea for work—still unusual —that bridges between the two. We should look at some of the claims that have been offered, a few of which have needlessly fallen from view, and, of course, to remind ourselves of the many problems that have been noted. Aboveall,weneedtoexaminetheemotionalimplicationsofsomekeymodern structuresthemselves—thepiecethat,itseemstome,hasbeennotablyabsent in many of the discussions to date. There is precedent for a relaunch of this sort from work in the history of childhood. Here too, initial claims about the modern were clearly excessive, provoking an (arguably equally excessive) backlash from premodernists; this in turn generated some years of needless confusion or silence but ultimately yielded the opportunity for a more sophisticated discussion of change and continuity. The childhood debate began with claims by Philippe Ariès, sometimes enhanced by subsequent exaggerations from other historians, that premodern Western society had not recognized childhood as a clearly separate stage in life, which might in turn have promoted various forms of inattention orilltreatment.Thehypothesisdidspurimportantresearchinwhathadbeena neglectedfield.Fairlyquickly,however,itledtocounterthrustsbymedievalists and early modernists, bent on showing that people in their cherished periods did value children and (in some extreme counterclaims) should not be differentiated as parents from their modern counterparts. The resultant stalemate actually slowed research for a time—after all, if there were no real distinctions why do history, particularly amid such contested interpretations. It turns out, ofcourse,thatsome validlinescanbe drawnbetweenpremodernandmodern childhoods—forexample,inthemovefrompredominantworktopredominant schooling—withoutclaimingtotaldifferentiationorsomesystematicpremodern severity. And historians working on other regions, such as Japan, actually havefoundsomepremodern-moderndifferencesinchildhoodrecognizability that are not totally different from those posited by Ariès.2 Onabroadlysimilarbasis,thereisnoreasonthatsomecarefulclaimsabout modernity in emotion need rouse premodernists to battle. The claims can be fully compatible with acknowledging emotional complexities and nuances 19 modern Patterns in Emotions History in premodern periods—including recognition of the common humanity involved . They do not have to assume uniformity or stagnation in premodern emotions—all sorts of change and variety are possible within the long framework of agricultural societies. At the same time, a careful assertion of claims aboutmodernchangemustacknowledgeimportantcontinuities,bothbecause the modern-premodern line is never rigid in any area of endeavor and because ofthebiopsychologicalbasicsthatnohistoricalperiodizationwillerase.Invoking care is not the same thing, however, as ignoring modern factors altogether, which (as with childhood earlier) some premodernists have come close to contending. It should not promote emotions history as a series of pointillist inquirieswithoutthepossibilityofsomelargerdynamics—amongotherthings becausetheresultmightessentiallyremovehistoryfromparticipationininterdisciplinaryinquiryongroundsofexcessivedetailandcaution .Again,it’stime for some new approaches to what a modern framework for emotional change might entail.3 Before proposing a partially new tack, however, it’s important to review the current state of play, including modernist assertions that have been made to date and ensuing rebuttals, because the combination establishes a few points that need not be lost, and certainly a number of initial cautions. It...