Sense and Sensibility - Ethnology of Affect : 10th Ethnology Days in Pori, Finland, 15–16 March 2018

Abstract

With the so-called “affective turn” in the humanities and social sciences, affect has become a popular theoretical frame in the research of human practice and sociality. The notion of affect places feelings, emotions, embodied experiences, and the feel of things at the front and center of academic interest. Researchers differ in their definitions of affect – some see affect as a potential to affect and an openness to being affected, while others approach it as an intensity, a sensation, or a bodily process. Whether and how affect is distinct from emotion is a subject of ongoing scholarly debate.