Emotion Pedagogies: What Are They, and Why Do They Matter?

This article is based on ethnographic studies of several spiritual groups in Israel. It offers a critical analysis of the discursive practices employed with regard to the link between spirituality and anger. We found that the emotion of anger occupies a singular status in New Age culture. By marking it as an uncontrollable and explosive emotion, anger is constructed as a key emotion that reflects and signifies the subject's proximity to the ideal spiritual personality. Our findings furthermore reveal two main emotion pedagogies employed to construct anger and to cope with it. In the discussion section, we address the affinity between the spiritual ethic and the nonangry subject, and the alliance between the spiritual, the therapeutic and the neo‐liberal discourses that sustains this affinity. This discursive alliance stands in the way of the adoption of critical cultural orientations toward the emotion of anger. [spirituality, emotions, anger, subjectivity, discursive alliance, emotion pedagogies]

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ethic of Spirituality and the Non‐Angry Subject

Simchai¹,

Shoshana²

2018

“…Oaxaca's psychological imaginary—promoted by practitioners, public and private services, initiatives, and self‐help programs—centers on (1) self‐knowledge, including self‐examination and self‐understanding; (2) self‐expression and externalization of feelings and emotions through communication, disclosure, and physical representation; (3) responsibility, including self‐management, self‐control, and problem solving; and (4) empowerment through various forms of self‐care and self‐esteem building (Duncan ) . The psychological imaginary encompasses “emotion pedagogies,” globally circulating sets of discourses and teachings around the valorization of all emotions, the importance of first‐person emotion‐listing and emotion‐naming, and the understanding of emotions as “teachable skill bundles” (Wilce and Fenigsen , 83). Emotion pedagogies, like psychological imaginaries, can be central to certain forms of “subjectivization and the production of neoliberal selfhood” (83).…”

Section: Constelaciones Familiares In Oaxacamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this way, CF tended to reinforce—not replace—local notions around gender relations, hierarchies, and obligations. While CF promotes a type of “self‐managed, self‐responsible neoliberal selfhood” (Wilce and Fenigson , 86), it does so by helping participants see how they are deeply rooted in a transgenerational, sociofamilial moral system…”

Section: Conclusion: Dinámicas Ocultas / Hidden Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dinámicas Ocultas: Culture and Psy‐Sociality in Mexican Family Constellations Therapy

Duncan¹

2017

This article takes the ethnographic case of Family Constellations therapy in Oaxaca, Mexico, to demonstrate how a nonnative therapeutic practice articulates with local cultural frameworks to foster novel forms of therapeutic experience and sociality. Family Constellations in Oaxaca promotes particular forms of what I call “psy‐sociality,” or sociality generated by globalizing psy concepts, diagnoses, and practices, which produce new sites for self‐work and subject‐formation, but also for jointly processing social suffering, familial conflict, and psychological distress in culturally salient ways. First, participants socialize in a structured way that promotes embodied connection to others. Second, participants are socialized into gendered ways of speaking, knowing, interpreting, and acting upon the self and the family. Finally, participants are also given explicit guidance for how to confront current sociofamilial conflicts with which they are grappling. In the process, participants localize this foreign therapy according to the context of present‐day Mexico. [healing, globalization, family, sociality, self, Mexico] Este artículo toma el caso etnográfico de la terapia de Constelaciones Familiares en Oaxaca, México, para demostrar cómo una práctica terapéutica no originaria del lugar se articula con marcos culturales locales para fomentar nuevas formas de sociabilidad y experiencia terapéutica. La terapia de Constelaciones Familiares en Oaxaca promueve formas particulares de lo que yo llamo “psicosocialidad”, o socialidad generada por la globalización de conceptos, diagnósticos y prácticas psicológicas que producen nuevos escenarios para el trabajo con uno mismo y la formación de sujetos, pero también para procesar de manera conjunta el sufrimiento social, los conflictos familiares y la angustia psicológica en formas culturalmente notables. En primer lugar, los participantes socializan en una forma estructurada que promueve la conexión corporal con otros. En segundo lugar, los participantes son socializados a través de maneras de hablar, conocer, interpretar y actuar con respecto a sí mismos y a la familia relacionadas con el género. Por último, los participantes también reciben instrucciones explícitas sobre cómo confrontar conflictos sociofamiliares actuales con los que están lidiando. En el proceso, los participantes adaptan esta terapia extranjera al contexto del México actual.

“…One evening, a young woman in our club gives a speech about how “One should not only count inner beauty, but also outer beauty.” She tells us that “One's appearance conveys her confidence and her attitude towards the life.” Men and women in Toastmasters clubs often speak about exercise, appearance, and attractiveness. Scholars have described how psychological training guides people to reflect on their inner life in new ways, folding novel spaces into the self (Pritzker ; Rose ; Wilce and Fenigsen ). Yet in public speaking and social‐skills training, personal growth appears to be less about discovering one's psychological depths than about feeling one's surface.…”

Section: Staging the Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equal Temperament: Autonomy and Identity in Chinese Public Speaking Clubs

Hampel¹

2017

Young professionals in China are eagerly studying what are called communication skills, particularly public speaking. This article reads technologies of self‐presentation in the context of tentatively liberal social imaginaries, and as therapeutic resources for connecting with others. Entering Toastmasters public speaking clubs in Beijing, we see psychosocial techniques and institutional forms that anchor people otherwise floating in a fragmented urban space. Club members actively seek to be objectified on stage, to become self‐aware under the gaze of an audience. They practice locating themselves within an imagined public, as individuals. However, members also repurpose their clubs into comprehensive social resources, and they construct a critical historical consciousness. While members of public speaking clubs pursue self‐definition, they do so in ways that challenge liberal understandings of autonomy and identity. We can hear these tensions by listening to how Chinese therapists use psychology to articulate social critiques. While both psychotherapists and members of public speaking clubs participate in a modernist cultural politics, club members do not regard personal relationships as antagonistic. Young adults in urban China are getting on stage in order to connect with other people. Like their peers elsewhere, they are learning the power of self‐definition in a world of strangers.