In everyday life, emotions like rage, anger or frustration are not, generally, condoned. Indeed, a good part of the work of enculturation is devoted to managing social conduct so as to avoid or suppress emotions considered negative or unproductive. In the ethnographic literature, scrutiny of these kinds of emotional states and their expression is rare, not least because they reside somewhere between the individual and his or her cultural surrounds and are hard to pinpoint.
The authors of the present issue - Rage, Anger and other Don'ts: Cultural Expression and Suppression of the Undesirable and Unbearable in Everyday Life - invite readers to explore practices and discourses within which these kinds of emotions or, more prominently, their disciplining can be grasped ethnologically. Alongside four scholarly articles, four essays encircle the theme in a more literary vein, albeit grounded in careful observation and recollection. The introduction and two final comments seek to frame topics ranging from road rage and the controlling of prisoners' anger to a menopausal kitchen outburst, and to point the way toward further possible research in this largely unexplored realm of culturally shaped practice.
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