It is difficult to do justice to the intellectual sophistication of this edited volume. Not all the chapters are equally dazzling and there is some clunky academic writing, but these are outweighed by the truly pioneering arguments and insights that characterize most chapters. The seventeen authors are all intrigued by the relationship between science and emotion in the post-Second World War period, primarily from European and American perspectives.
The editors, Frank Biess and Daniel M. Gross, have exerted a strong editorial hand. They have a very clear idea of what questions this book is addressing. They want to illuminate the role of emotions in the scientific process, explore the changing fortunes of emotions as an object of the scientific gaze, suggest ways in which scientific approaches to emotions echoed wider preoccupations, and reflect on the current state of affairs in emotion studies. Some of the best chapters focus on the last of these four aims. In an astute, uncompromising and sometimes barbed critique, Ruth Leys confronts the neuroscience of empathy, accusing it of being based on shoddy experimental practices. She convincingly argues that the motor-neuron theory of the emotions ignores, rather than confronts, a vast range of research that undermines the noncognitive, categorical approaches to emotions.
William H. Reddy is also dismayed about the lack of scientific rigour in much neuroscience. At a time when everything ‘neuro-’ is lauded (even within neuroeconomics and the neurohumanities), the need for critical engagement is urgent. The dominant position of folk beliefs about the ‘basic emotions’ suggests that they perform an important ideological rather than scientific function. Reddy usefully reminds us that within neuroscience itself, there is a powerful movement against the ‘basic-emotions’ perspective – but one that is rarely heard outside highly esteemed, professional journals. Reddy also makes the shrewd observation that much social-scientific research is ‘grounded on the assumption that individual humans and human societies behave mechanically, operating on the basis of claims of cause and effect that can be uncovered by empirical research’ (p. 47). However, their actual activities are ‘grounded on the assumption that their research is shared among, and evaluated on its merits by, rational persons, that is, their fellow social science experts'. In other words, social scientists act as though they were ‘exceptions to the rule’ (p. 47). For British scholars oppressed by REF accountancy practices, it is a damning critique.
In other chapters, readers are asked to think more carefully about debates within psychiatry, including responses to psychiatric casualties during and immediately after the Second World War, the science of pleasure and pain after the Holocaust, and how governments could prepare for the emotional panics that would arise in the aftermath of nuclear war. Ethics plays a large role in many chapters, most strongly in those exploring bullying and hunger strikers. The idea that emotions were something that required careful management (in dealing with cancer patients, for example, or in laboratories exploring adrenaline) is another preoccupation. Jordanna Bailkin writes about the administration of emotions during decolonization. She asks a simple but important question: why has ‘the history of decolonization … been strangely devoid of inner life’ (p. 278)? Through an analysis of Voluntary Service Overseas, she is able to reveal the multiple ways emotions were understood and, most importantly, how they changed over time. Catherine Lutz is also interested in what has been elided in emotions research. She turns her sharp anthropological eye to the rise of interest in emotion within the academy in the 1980s. Although research into emotions coincided with, and was nurtured by, feminist approaches, the normative approaches eventually dominated, with their psychobiological emphasis and dubious gender assumptions.
Biess and Gross end their introductory chapter with a call for more research into the science of emotions. At a time when academic publishing is in crisis, and edited volumes are being tightly squeezed, they remind us of the value of ‘carefully selected’ essays addressing a coherent theme of academic importance. ‘It would be impossible to do this topic justice from the perspective of any one of our contributing scholars’, they conclude (p. 30). They hope that by bringing together internationally renowned experts from different disciplines and ‘emotional communities’ they can move the field of emotion studies forward. In this they have excelled.
