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- Convenors:
-
Joanna Cook
(UCL)
Matei Candea (University of Cambridge)
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- Discussant:
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Josh Brahinsky Brahinsky
(University of California, Berkeley)
Short Abstract:
What might an anthropological focus on joy contribute to our understanding of loneliness and human connection in a post-pandemic world?
Long Abstract:
What might an anthropological focus on joy contribute to our understanding of loneliness and human connection in a post-pandemic world? We are social creatures. And for most of us, social connection and belonging are central to our wellbeing. One of the problematic legacies of the pandemic is the contribution that lockdowns, physical distancing, masking, the switch to remote working and school all made to social isolation and loneliness. Recommendations to address this include increasing social support, improving sleep quality and practicing emotional regulation. But such public health solutions feel insufficient for tackling the residual loneliness of the pandemic.
A key contribution that anthropology might make to post-pandemic loneliness is a qualitative inquiry into culturally varied understandings of joy. As far back as 1912, Emile Durkheim argued that social connection is facilitated by the euphoric feelings of joy. For Durkheim, society becomes conscious of itself through what he termed a 'collective effervescence'. And joy is at the core of Victor and Edith Turner's massively influential theory of communitas - a spontaneously arising experience of unity, mutual love and interconnectedness experienced when a group of people relate to one another as fellow human beings undifferentiated by status or distinction.
This panel will explore the efforts that people make to cultivate joy, and the personal and collective effects of those efforts. It asks, is joy an emotion, a trait, the glue of group cohesion, a gift? And it encourages papers that consider the cultural and historical meaning of joy itself.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 April, 2023, -Joanna Cook (UCL)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I argue that cultural practices influence the pattern, interpretation and value of joy and I ask, what might an academic focus on joy contribute to our post-pandemic world?
Paper long abstract:
Is joy an emotion, a trait, the glue of group cohesion, a gift? In this talk, I bring research on the anthropology of religion into dialogue with recent work in medical anthropology to explore the place and meaning of joy cross culturally. I examine joy as both a collective experience and as a practice of self-cultivation. I argue that collective effervescence and the cultivation of joy are profoundly important human experiences that are central to human connection. And that, while there may be commonalities to experiences of joy in diverse settings, joy is strongly shaped by culture. In this paper, I bring together narratives of religious faith, theories of group cohesion and practices of self-cultivation to expand our understanding of joy. I argue that cultural practices influence the pattern, interpretation and value of joy and I ask, what might an academic focus on joy contribute to our post-pandemic world?
Iza Kavedzija (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Complementing anthropological perspectives that highlight the joy of sociality and connection, this paper explores the joy to be found in moments of withdrawal and immersion in creative practice among contemporary artists in Japan.
Paper long abstract:
Complementing anthropological perspectives that highlight the joy of sociality and connection, or moments of collective effervescence, this paper explores how joy may be found in moments of withdrawal, through immersion in creative practice. It builds on ethnographic fieldwork with contemporary artists in Kansai region of Japan, working in a variety of visual and performance activities, including painting, contemporary dance and improvised music. Many of these artists participated regularly in art events, which were no doubt at times a source of joy. Yet the creative practices described by many also called for quiet introspection and immersion in the process of making, often by oneself. Being “alone” here does not imply absolute solitude, however, as their practices entailed careful engagement with a range of non-human others, including materials and sounds, as well as close attention to affects and atmospheres. To complement the focus on the senses in much recent ethnographic literature on making, therefore, I draw particular attention here to the role of affect and emotion, asking how affect and creativity are intertwined. While making can involve immersion and intense concentration, akin to what has been described as a feeling of flow, many artists also emphasise a certain compulsion to make, as well as frustration if circumstances impede their creative practice, pointing to an account of joy that is not unambiguous or simple.
Carrie Ryan (University College London)
Paper short abstract:
Loneliness was a prevalent issue amongst residents at Hollenbeck Palms. However, its regular ritual of bingo acted as a salve for resident loneliness, connecting residents to one another. This paper will explore the joy of bingo's electric rhythm as the result of its players' effortful letting go.
Paper long abstract:
Loneliness was a prevalent issue amongst retired older adults at Hollenbeck Palms, a Continuing Care Retirement Community in Los Angeles. Loneliness for these residents was less about the quality and quantity of their relationships and more about lacking a social purpose. Growing older and retiring in the United States, and especially in urban, youth-oriented Los Angeles, had already thrust these residents into the experience of ‘being unneeded,’ living in ‘asocial time,’ and feeling disaggregated from social meaning, but moving into Hollenbeck was the ‘final nail in the coffin’ and was experienced as being ‘dumped into a zone of irrelevance.’ Hollenbeck tried to solve the problem of resident loneliness by creating its own internal world of sociality and conviviality. Though separate from the larger social world, Hollenbeck nevertheless was rich with its own narratives, rituals, and roles. The most successful ritual to connect residents to Hollenbeck’s social world and to one another was the regular game of bingo. The structure of bingo provided ripe conditions for the experience of deep connection and joy, but in order for those to be achieved through its play, bingo had to be played well. In this paper, I will suggest that bingo’s connection and joy, experienced through its shared, electric rhythm, was the result of players’ effortful letting go. I will end by suggesting that bingo at Hollenbeck is not a trivial distraction from residents’ crisis of sociality, but is instead an important practice that addresses the dilemmas of growing old in the United States.
Christina Bosbach (University of Aberdeen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper traces moments of joy during the Covid-19 pandemic ethnographically, based on in-person fieldwork in Scotland. It analyses joy as a feeling of being propelled that is entangled with closeness and care in our relations to others.
Paper long abstract:
Rather than understanding the pandemic as a crisis that only brought about enduring experiences of loneliness and isolation, this paper engages with the ‘microdynamics’ (Biehl and Locke 2017) of life under lockdown. Based on in-person fieldwork on the Isle of Coll (Scotland) in 2020 and 2021, it traces moments of joy from a community gardening day, over stumbles and falls during an Easter walk on the hills, to an afternoon spent waiting for the bin lorry in the island hotel. The first two of these occasions were organised by people who sought to create possibilities for joy and connection in a context of increasing isolation, while the last occurred unexpectedly. In all of them joy emerged from play, often led by the children present, and was entangled with care for each other and for the environment. Through these pieces of ethnography, I analyse joy as an affect – the feeling of being propelled – that mediates closeness and care in our relations to other humans and more-than-humans. While the pandemic increased loneliness and isolation, I argue that, in this cultural context, it also turned once ordinary experiences of closeness into extraordinary ones and in the process amplified joy. The paper reflects on how paying attention to this could help us understand the enduring changes in the dynamics of loneliness and connection and perhaps even contribute to imagining ways of creating joy in a post-pandemic world.
Leanne Williams Green (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
This paper wrestles with the claim that joy does not reside primarily in human sociality. For a group of Baptist Christians in Harare, joy is welcome disruption, given from beyond the realm of human relations. It then demands response in daily life.
Paper long abstract:
This paper wrestles with the claim that joy does not reside primarily in human sociality. A Durkheimian focus on social cohesion might take social life as a key source of joy, or at the very least, the location of its experience. While placing high value on kin and other relations, Baptist Christians in Zimbabwe’s capital city regularly reject the prospect that their human ties are to be the source of their joy. This is not to say that relationships cannot be joyful, but rather to emphasise that joyfulness emerges not from human sociality but from beyond or outside of it. Joy, they reiterate, is God’s gift. The appropriate response is to rejoice.
What, then, is this gift of joy? Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic research, I examine how these middle-class Baptists outline joy: as disruption of the presumed order of everyday life. This is not the more colloquial understanding, they recognise: joy needs “redefinition”, as one interlocutor put it. For these residents of Harare, astronomical hyperinflation and political upheaval persistently stymie everyday efforts to travel to work, obtain medicine for a loved one, or charge one’s cell phone. Disruption, then, is a welcome intervention in the uncertainties that characterise existing patterns and ways of being.
Marilyn Strathern (2020) has argued that Anglophone anthropology sees its central task as identifying relations, presumed to possess a necessarily positive valence. A view of joy as disruptive gift offers an opportunity to consider that which arises as intervention from elsewhere than human relationality.