Historicizing Emotional Development

Abstract

This chapter argues that emotions are biocultural and historically contingent phenomena. Our emotional experience is inextricably linked to the words we use to describe our emotions, to the values we attach to them, and to the embodied cultural codes of comportment and expression. The chapter challenges the idea that we can meaningfully speak of “emotional development” in historical contexts in which “emotions” were not yet invented, and introduces the concept of “formation” as a historically sensitive alternative. This concept helps us grasp the historicity of growth and change in collectives, as well as in individuals’ affective lives. Emotional formation is the process through which codes of emotions are learned and imparted, often unwittingly, through discourse and practice. In order to demonstrate the methodological utility of the concept, the chapter then exemplifies processes of emotional formation in children and youth in two different historical and geographical contexts.