Affect Theory and the Empirical

Abstract

This review article approaches the turn to affect theory as diagnostic of broader currents in cultural anthropology. This is a time of increased curiosity within the subfield. It is also a time of increased anxiety, as researchers feel mounting pressure to make a case for the empirical value of what they do. Affect theory seems to offer cultural anthropologists a way of getting to the bottom of things: to the forces that compel, attract, and provoke. And yet what affect theory is offering cultural anthropologists may be less an account of how the world works than a new awareness of the premises that guide their research. I base these observations on a discussion of recent ethnographies that deploy affect theory in the study of labor, governance, and animal–human relations. I conclude with an assessment of the risks and opportunities associated with the adoption of theoretical models from other fields.

Understanding men, mood, and avoidable deaths from AIDS in Western Kenya

“…Studies of affect explore the intuitive, hard to articulate forces or feelings beneath conscious knowing and actions. They move beyond ideas of individual emotions to think about how feelings are generated in dialogue with the world (Stewart 2007;Rutherford 2016). Within the HIV literature there has been some focus on feeling with discussions of the importance of hope and hopelessness (Bernays, Rhodes, and Barnett 2007;Kylm€ a, Vehvil€ ainen-Julkunen, and L€ ahdevirta 2001).…”

Anthropology, Museums and the Body: Lessons From an Experimental Teaching Environment

“…This included bridging cultural and physical anthropology, introducing social theory, medical material culture theory, visual culture, museum studies, American history, and art. The central concepts we explored included anthropological theories of the body (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987;Haraway 2004;Sen 2009;Lock 2017), social theory (Sekula 1986;Foucault 1994;Mignolo 2009;Weisman and Keenan 2012), embodiment (Feldman 2006;Isaac 2010;McChesney and Charley 2011), as well as examining and evaluating sensory and affect theory (Sedgewick 2002;Edwards et al 2006;Howes 2014;Rutherford 2016). We incorporated critical theory on material culture, performance and the production of field notes and data to facilitate students in their exploration of subjects beyond their textual-based lives within museums and archives (Ingold 2007;Engelke 2008;Pink 2011;Schneider 2014).…”

Affective Scholarship: Doing Anthropology with Epistemic Affects

“…But if something happens and the intellectual project is somehow still afloat at the end of the journey, then ethnography is possible. (2012,443) In the burgeoning multidisciplinary body of scholarly works that have come to be labeled as Affect Studies (Clough and Halley 2007;Blackman and Venn 2010;Gregg and Seigworth 2010;Rutherford 2016), affect is largely understood as "a force of encounter" that involves much more than cognitive modes of attention. This force is entangled in the bodily and sensorial modes of experiencing (e.g., touching, feeling, smelling, and so forth) that significantly influence people's ways and abilities of acting and thinking (Gregg and Seigworth 2010, 2).…”