Emotions have many faces: Inuit lessons.

Abstract

This paper was originally delivered at Memorial Uni versity in a distinguished lecture series. The author describes how her lifelong study of Inuit emotional life grew out of her attempt to understand the experience of being ostracized, as a novice anthro pologist in an Inuit camp, for inappropriate expression of emotion. After outlining several emotion concepts that are composed differ ently in Inuktitut and in English, and describing the role played by these concepts in the social relationships of Inuit, the paper describes some important socialization experiences that Inuit chil dren have, which help them to become actors in the emotional plots of Inuit life. In playful mode, adults ask children questions that the child being questioned perceives as personally threaten ing, and then dramatize the consequences of various answers. In this way, adults create, or raise to consciousness, issues that will be of great consequence for the child's life; and emotions acquire meaning and power through experiential webs of association. Ana lyzing these phenomena led the author to a growing appreciation of the essential role of emotional dilemmas in Inuit social life; and on the broader plane, it led to a deeper understanding of the con structive power of emotions in social life generally.