If emotions are not biologically based or genetically programmed, then they must be cultural, or at least deeply influenced by culture. If emotions operate like overlearned cognitive habits, as many psychologists would now agree, then they must be shaped, to a significant degree, by the environment in which the individual lives. What is culture, for the individual, if not a set of overlearned cognitive habits?

As psychology has experienced a “revolution” in the study of emotions, anthropologists, aware of developments in the other discipline (see, e.g., Lutz & White 1986:405), have been quick to fashion new definitions of emotion and new research methods suitable to exploring emotions in the special kind of evidence they use. Over the last quarter century, as a result, the anthropology of emotions – virtually unknown in 1970 (Levy 1984:214) – has become one of the discipline's most vital new subfields. Anthropologists' fieldwork has uncovered a fascinating array of different conceptions of emotion, different emotion lexicons, and varying emotional practices from around the globe. But the anthropology of emotions has not been free of controversy. Just as psychologists have disagreed over the relation between emotion and cognition, anthropologists have disagreed over precisely how, and to what extent, emotions are influenced, shaped, or “constructed” by culture.

However, these disagreements have gained complexity from their resonance with larger currents of debate in the field of anthropology.