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Nostalgia: a conceptual history
Abstract
The term nostalgia was first proposed in 1688 by Johannes Hofer as equivalent to the German term Heimweh. It referred to a state of moral pain associated with the forced separation from family and social environment. Consecutive clinical descriptions from the seventeenth century up to the present day have been subjected to the aetiopathogenic and clinical paradigms of each period. Golden-age descriptions of nostalgia that are of particular interest were derived from the observation of conscript soldiers in Napoleonic campaigns by authors such as Gerbois and Larrey. In 1909 Jaspers devoted his doctoral thesis to this topic (Nostalgia und Verbrechen). From a cultural history point of view, it could be considered today as an example of 'transient illness'. The nosological relay has taken place through clinical pictures such as the pathology associated with exile, forced displacements and psychosis of captivity.
... Hofer had used the word "Nostalgia" to illustrate "the state of moral decay resulting from forced separation, when an individual is being separated from the social and geographical environment of his childhood and youth" (Fuentenebro & Valiente, 2014). ...
... In the period of Romanticism, and mostly thanks to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, there was a change in the meaning of the word Nostalgia. For romantics, Nostalgia became suffering associated with memory, and the clinical meaning attributed to it was replaced by its association with imagination (Bolzinger, 1989;Fuentenebro & Valiente, 2014). ...
The aim of this research was to examine the differences between Personal and Historical Nostalgia when it comes to the four dimensions of emotion expression (intensity, pleasure, complexity, and arousal).
Personal Nostalgia represents the kind of nostalgia that refers to the sense of longing for a particular period of the individual's life, while Historical Nostalgia refers to the sense of longing for the past that the individual did not personally experience (Marchegiani & Phau, 2010).
The research was conducted on a pilot sample consisting of 85 students of psychology. Five audio-visual stimuli were used to induce Personal and Historical Nostalgia. The four dimensions of emotion expression were measured by the self-report (one question on a semantic differential scale by each dimension).
The results showed that statistically significant differences on three out of four dimension are higher in the Personal Nostalgia: intensity (t(78)=10.40; p=0.000), pleasure (t(78)=8.31; p=0.000) and arousal (t(78)=2.33; p=0.023), while on the dimension the complexity, statistically significant differences are higher in the Historical Nostalgia (t(78)=-2.15; p=0.035).
The higher intensity of Personal Nostalgia is in accordance with the theoretical assumption that Personal Nostalgia is more intense than the historical one (Marchegiani & Phau, 2010). Respondents find Personal Nostalgia more pleasant than Historical Nostalgia. On the other hand, the average of reactions of respondents, for the stimuli inducing Historical Nostalgia, indicates a more neutral reaction when it comes to the dimension pleasant/unpleasant. Personal Nostalgia is also characterized by a higher level of arousal. The fact that respondents consider Historical Nostalgia as a more complex emotion than Personal Nostalgia corresponds with the definitions of these two types of nostalgia.
The hypothesis that Personal Nostalgia has higher intensity, higher arousal, higher pleasantness, and lower complexity than Historical Nostalgia, is fully confirmed.
Key words: Personal Nostalgia, Historical Nostalgia, the dimension of emotion
... The Greek nostos, homeland, was taken from Homer's Odyssee[2]. These Swiss soldiers would be painfully reminded of the lush alpine meadows of home whenever they heard the sound of familiar melodies[3,4]suffering from physical sickness with considerable mental anguish, sometimes even dying from grief. The consensus cure was return to the mountains[3,4]. ...
... These Swiss soldiers would be painfully reminded of the lush alpine meadows of home whenever they heard the sound of familiar melodies[3,4]suffering from physical sickness with considerable mental anguish, sometimes even dying from grief. The consensus cure was return to the mountains[3,4]. If Ms. N indeed recovered completely or if she heeded my advice to sojourn in the mountains at home, I do not know, as she never answered our follow up calls.DiscussionLike Ms. N, migrant workers throughout the world travel far, for gainful employment in order to sustain their families and to ensure Copyright@ Jaworowski S | Biomed J Sci & Tech Res | BJSTR. ...
... Another example is 'nostalgia', which Johannes Hofer described in 1688 as a potentially lethal, abnormal state of distress following separation from one's native land (Fuentenebro de Diego and Valiente Ots, 2014). The concept of nostalgia flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the number of reported cases increased in immigrants and conscripted soldiers during the French revolution and Napoleonic Wars. ...
... The concept is now regarded as mere sentimentality. This change is considered either to be related to the cultural atmosphere of the time and the country or socio-geographical context in which the disease appears, or to result from the convergence of the psychiatric term, type of behaviour involved, and the concept as part of newly developed medical knowledge (Fuentenebro de Diego and Valiente Ots, 2014). As shown in these examples, it is difficult to determine whether it is the disorders or concepts that change. ...
The conceptualization of psychiatric disorders changes continuously. This study examined ‘amok’, a culture-bound syndrome related to sudden mass homicide, to elucidate changing and varied concepts. A historical review of 88 English articles revealed that the meanings and assumed causes of amok have changed over time. These changes appear to have been affected by social events, medical discoveries, knowledge of descriptors and occasionally, the benefit to users. In other words, the concept of amok changes depending on the history of society and the knowledge and intention of people at the time. We should consider in detail what we focus on when diagnosing a disorder.
... It was first proposed in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, referring to a physical state of moral pain associated with separation from their native land or a fear that they would never return. After Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that music acts as a memorial sign, the concept of nostalgia was expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries [2]. Nostalgia, as a psychological suffering, was considered to be closely associated with memory. ...
In the context of globalization, the public's demand for nostalgia has increased. Cinema has an advantage in conveying nostalgia by using visual and auditory stimulation and has become the main medium for nostalgia in modern society. In this paper, the first part is about nostalgia and nostalgic cinema. Depending on the subject that triggers the nostalgia, nostalgic cinema is simply divided into three categories. The reasons for the demand for nostalgia are discussed, which are related to the interval between reality and tradition, commercialism, and modernism. The other part is about the storytelling strategies of nostalgic cinema. Storytelling strategies of contemporary, nostalgic cinema are analyzed from the perspectives of color, frame, diegetic sound, and motif, respectively. Specific movies are used for analysis, data study, and cross-subject study are used in this paper. With the constant updating of information technology, views on the future direction of nostalgic cinema research are presented at the end of the paper.
... Specifically, nostalgizing was perceived to be a regressive manifestation of loss, grief and depression (Castelnuovo-Tedesco, 1980). Such a view persists among scholars from an array of disciplines, including history (Velikonja, 2009), comparative literature (Boym, 2001), media studies (Phillipov, 2016), psychoanalysis (Hook, 2012;Peters, 1985), psychiatry (Fuentenebro de Diego & Valiente, 2014) and psychology (Cappeliez et al., 2008;Henkel et al., 2017). Thus, the third and final reason for conducting the current systematic review is to better understand possible contradictions in the literature on nostalgia and health among individuals engaged in unhealthy behaviour. ...
Nostalgic reverie (i.e. sentimental longing) has received increased attention as a predictor of health and well‐being, but only a handful of reviews have summarized this literature. The available reviews (Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice, 19 , 2020, 330; Intimations of nostalgia: Multidisciplinary explorations of an enduring emotion, Bristol University Press, 2022) left a critical gap in explicating the function of nostalgia among people engaged in unhealthy behaviour. In the current systematic review and narrative analysis, we sought to answer whether and under what conditions emotion serves to help or hinder people engaged in unhealthy behaviours in terms of taking action to change. We identified 14 studies and categorized them into two themes. In Theme I, nostalgising about a time in one's life when one was healthier motivated both readiness to change and action to change unhealthy behaviour. In Theme II, nostalgizing about the perceived benefits of engaging in unhealthy behaviour (e.g. social connectedness related to drinking) was associated with the continuance or acceleration of the unhealthy behaviour. This review highlights not only the presence of a link between nostalgia and unhealthy behaviour but also that the content of one's nostalgising matters for understanding whether the unhealthy behaviour is undermined or bolstered.
... Notably, listening to nostalgic music strengthens a person's sense of continuity, meaning, and identity in their life (Sedikides and Wildschut 2018). This contrasts older notions of nostalgia, which are more negative (Batcho 2013;De Diego, Ots et al. 2014). ...
Nostalgia was once considered a medical disease but is now understood as a beneficial, identity-affirming emotion. Yet what induces feelings of nostalgia is not fully understood. Are nostalgic feelings prompted by changes in a person’s life, and do certain events prompt nostalgia across whole populations? In this paper, we analyze when people listen to nostalgic music. We use data from a large, cross-national survey to train a classifier to detect which tracks are nostalgic for individual listeners. We then analyze a comprehensive dataset of listening histories from a 5.5 year period. Despite it being a complex concept, we were able to predict nostalgic listening with relatively high precision. We compare our results across listeners from four countries to understand how consistent behavior toward nostalgic music is. We find people listen to nostalgic music more often as they age. We also find people tend to listen to nostalgic music consistently in their day-to-day lives. We do not find evidence that listening to personally nostalgic music increases in response to particular traditions, seasons, or events. However, we do find traditions and events can affect how much “back catalog” music people listen to. These trends are consistent across the national contexts we studied. Our results advance prior findings about nostalgia and the life course, and demonstrate a novel methodological consideration for studies of nostalgic listening.
... Le rappel nostalgique d'un événement associé au passé personnel est idéalisé, en ce sens que le souvenir est perçu plus favorablement qu'il ne l'est réellement [4]. La nostalgie a été étudiée pendant longtemps sous le seul prisme de la négativité car favorisant la tristesse, l'amertume et le désespoir jusqu'à l'apparition d'une humeur dépressive [5]. Au XX e siècle, les psychanalystes l'ont décrite comme une émotion ambivalente associant plaisir et amertume. ...
Résumé
La nostalgie a longtemps été considérée comme un concept négatif associé à la tristesse, voire à la dépression. Depuis une vingtaine d’années, les apports de la psychologie de la santé ont proposé un nouvel éclairage en la considérant comme une émotion à prédominance positive. Cette nouvelle perspective a permis de souligner le caractère adaptatif de la nostalgie. En effet, elle faciliterait les pensées positives en renforçant le soi et le bien-être. Elle permettrait aussi de réguler les émotions en faisant appel à des souvenirs autobiographiques pour faire face aux menaces existentielles. Les effets protecteurs de la nostalgie associés à une perception positive du passé pourraient améliorer la prise en charge des personnes âgées.
... Este término, al igual que la nostalgia, nace de la yuxtaposición entre el dolor (algos) y la necesidad de regresar al hogar (nostos). Según Hoefer, la nostalgia habría sido la causa de muerte de personas que perdieron la vida lejos de casa, poseídos por fiebre, delirio y dolor generalizado, siendo la lontananza del hogar y la ausencia de redes sociales, los ejes estructurantes de su patología (De Diego, 2014). ...
Enfermedades infecciosas emergentes y reemergentes en chilenos e inmigrantes. Lo que propone la evidencia actual
... It referred to what he identified as adverse psychological symptoms presented by Swiss mercenaries who had been absented from home for extended periods. 13 In Hofer's analysis, nostalgia was a type of mental disease which produced a longing for an absent homeland. 14 It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that the presumed neurological basis of nostalgia was displaced by a belief that it was primarily psychological, and manifested itself as a form of melancholy. ...
The New Zealand city of Napier is a major international destination for visitors interested in art deco architecture and the 1930s era. This work explores how nostalgia for this period in Napier’s history has evolved, and subsequently been commodified as part of the city’s heritage. The consequence of this commodification is the increasing standardisation of nostalgic evocations of 1930s Napier, which now serve as prescriptive guidelines for visitors to the city. As a corollary of this, the notion of prosthetic nostalgia is examined. This is a nostalgic longing for a period or place that the individual experiencing it has no personal memory of, yet which has the same effect as nostalgic memories derived from actual experience. Although dismissed as imaginative and inaccurate forms of history, nostalgia generally warrants attention for the extent to which it shapes popular perceptions of the past, and how it interacts both with commercial imperatives and sociological forces.
... The term 'nostalgia' was introduced in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, who entitled his doctoral dissertation at the University of Basle, Dissertatio medica de nostalgia (Fuentenebro de Diego & Valiente Ots, 2014). The word was coined from the Greek nostos (return) and algos (pain) (Prete, 2001). ...
Nostalgia has a solid presence in marketing. Studies have shown that nostalgic marketing strategy could be a powerful tool to market some goods and services. It has been seen that nostalgic marketing campaigns are becoming a preferred way of making the most out of brand equity possessed by old products, logos, and packaging. This study examines the prospects of nostalgia marketing for the music market and probes the level of nostalgia among various sets of personal characteristics. The study has applied a two-stage stratified sampling method. Seven strata have been identified based on respondents’ occupation, then a random sampling technique for final sample selection has been applied. Results suggested that nostalgia proneness varies among different groups of people. The study also found a strong association between nostalgia proneness and some individual and group characteristics. The study is thus telling decision-makers to seriously look into the nostalgia fact so that opportunities could be exploited. As a future research direction, it is advised to conduct multiple rigorous studies to comprehend the issue from varied perspectives.
... The term nostalgia can be defined by looking at its root words: 'nostos' and 'algos, ' constructing its ancient meaning as the suffering caused by the yearning to return to one's provenance (Wildschut et al., 2006, p. 3). Nostalgia was once employed as an equivalent to the German term, Heimweh, described as a state of moral pain resulting from forced separation from one's homeland, and seen as a cerebral disease affecting Swiss mercenaries or a psychiatric condition (Fuentenebro de Diego and Valiente Ots, 2014). There has been now a shift from the way nostalgia was viewed in the past, as some sort of disease of the mind, to its current consideration as a bittersweet emotion. ...
Nostalgic music is defined as that which evokes feelings of nostalgia through reminders of certain periods of life, places or people. Feelings of nostalgia are said to occur during times of hardship and difficult transitionary periods, such as the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom in 2020. Here, the reassurance of the past might have held certainty that could sustain a sense of meaning and purpose in life and influence wellbeing. The aims of the presented study were to explore the nature of music-induced nostalgia during the lockdown, by analysing participants’ narratives conjured by the music and their emotional responses to them, and to determinethe extent that using nostalgic music listening as an emotion regulation strategy had an impact on wellbeing. Data was collected by means of an online questionnaire, which retrospectively investigated nostalgic music during the lockdown. Participants listened to a self-selected piece of music that they had listened to 3 months prior whichinduced feelings of nostalgia, reported their resulting emotion and the content of memories associated with their nostalgia, and completed a questionnaire rating their experienced effect of nostalgia in relation to their piece of music. Following this, we investigated the functions that nostalgic music tends to have in regulating emotions through means of a pre-validated scale. 570 participants (34% identified as male) were recruited (age years M = 44, SD = 16). Concurrent with existing research, the findings suggest that there are significant differences in the affective and narrative content of nostalgicmusic listening in relation to which emotion regulation strategy was used, and that employing nostalgic music listening as a form of approaching difficult emotions can have a positive impact on wellbeing.
... Este término, al igual que la nostalgia, nace de la yuxtaposición entre el dolor (algos) y la necesidad de regresar al hogar (nostos). Según Hoefer, la nostalgia habría sido la causa de muerte de personas que perdieron la vida lejos de casa, poseídos por fiebre, delirio y dolor generalizado, siendo la lontananza del hogar y la ausencia de redes sociales, los ejes estructurantes de su patología (De Diego, 2014). ...
https://repositorio.uautonoma.cl/handle/20.500.12728/8151
Salud y migraciones: relevancia, consideraciones generales y desafíos para el Chile de hoy / Andrea Avaria, Báltica Cabieses, Alexandra Obach, editoras.
– – Santiago : RIL editores • Universidad Autónoma
de Chile, 2021.
282 p. ; 23 cm.
ISBN: 978-956-01-0841-8
... Este término, al igual que la nostalgia, nace de la yuxtaposición entre el dolor (algos) y la necesidad de regresar al hogar (nostos). Según Hoefer, la nostalgia habría sido la causa de muerte de personas que perdieron la vida lejos de casa, poseídos por fiebre, delirio y dolor generalizado, siendo la lontananza del hogar y la ausencia de redes sociales, los ejes estructurantes de su patología (De Diego, 2014). ...
Esta obra, que nos acerca a experiencias de personas migrantes internacionales y reflexiona sobre políticas e intervenciones en salud, aborda la migración internacional y la salud desde la mirada del sistema de salud, políticas de salud, acceso, uso del sistema y de la figura de facilitadores/mediadores interculturales en salud. Luego, refiere a resultados y experiencias de salud en diversas etapas del ciclo vital, recogiendo evidencia original para Chile, y cierra con abordajes específicos territoriales, de salud mental y de enfermedades infecciosas.
... Nostalgia, "a sentimental longing … for the past" (Pearsall, 1998(Pearsall, , p. 1266, is an ambivalent, albeit predominantly positive, and social emotion (Hepper et al., 2012a;; for historical overviews, see Batcho, 2013;De Diego and Ots, 2014). When people nostalgize, they feel connected with others in a way that enhances their perceptions of belongingness and acceptance Abakoumkin et al., 2019). ...
In two studies, we examined the association between nostalgia proneness (i.e., trait-level nostalgia) and importance of the collective self. In Study 1, we tested and supported the hypothesis that nostalgia proneness is positively correlated with relational collectivism, which entails an emphasis on one’s connections with close others and small social networks. In Study 2, we demonstrated that nostalgia proneness is also positively correlated with group collectivism, which emphasizes one’s membership in more abstract, larger social groups or categories, and was reflected in increased identification with a national ingroup. These findings offer insight into the nature of nostalgia proneness—a consequential and stable personality trait.
... scholarship on the construct. The view has persisted for 330 years (for reviews, see: Batcho, 2013a;Dodman, 2018;Sedikides, Wildschut, & Baden, 2004), and still echoes in such diverse areas of inquiry as history (Velikonja, 2009), comparative literature (Boym, 2001), media studies (Phillipov, 2016), tourism (George, Mair, & Reid, 2009), city planning (Ellin, 2001), psychoanalysis (Hook, 2012;Peters, 1985), psychiatry (Fuentenebro de Diego & Valiente Ots, 2014), and psychology (Beiser, 2004;Cappeliez, Guindon, & Robitaille, 2008;Henkel, Kris, Birney, & Krauss, 2017;Laubscher, 2012;Zinchenko, 2011). ...
Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is an ambivalent—albeit more positive than negative—emotion. Nostalgia is infused with sociality, as it refers to important figures from one’s past or to momentous life events that include those figures. Dispositional nostalgia is related to prejudice reduction via increases in a form of sociality, empathy. Experimentally induced nostalgia fosters sociality, operationalised as social connectedness (sense of acceptance). Social connectedness, in turn, has downstream consequences for (1) inspiration and goal-pursuit, (2) self-continuity and wellbeing, as well as (3) inclusion of an outgroup member in the self or outgroup trust and intergroup contact intentions. At the collective level, nostalgia confers sociality benefits to the ingroup (favourable attitudes, support, loyalty, collective action, barrier to collective guilt), but is also associated with negative sides of sociality such as outgroup rejection and exclusion. Collective nostalgia’s sociality is amenable to exploitation and can have controversial ramifications.
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... For the first time the phenomenon of nostalgia was defined by Swiss physician Hofer as a state of moral pain associated with the forced separation from family and social environment (Fuentenebro & Valiente, 2014). Afterwards, the notion of nostalgia was used to refer to experiences of time and as a personal and cultural practice (Meyers, 2009;Wildschut et al., 2006). ...
The implementation of the phenomenon of nostalgia in brand management can create the emotions associated with sensations and experiences important for buyers. Nostalgic brand is a brand which is associated with close or far, own or historical past. The aim of this article is to compare the level of purchase intention in case of nostalgic and non-nostalgic brands operating in the food sector of the Polish market. The results of own empirical research conducted in 2017 on a group of 1000 Polish consumers are presented. The research results confirm higher level of purchase intention in case of studied transgenerational nostalgic brands. The research results vary depending on the demographic characteristics of the respondents.
... 2 | A R EV I EW ON R E M EM BE RE D CON SU M P TI ON EXP E R IE N CES AN D N OSTA LG IA A Swiss physician Johannes Hofer first defined the phenomenon of nostalgia (from Greek: nostos-return, algos-suffering or grief) as a medical condition or homesickness he found amongst the Swiss mercenaries sent to the foreign lands (Fuentenebro & Valiente, 2014;Hofer, 1688Hofer, [1934). Later, the term nostalgia was used to refer to experiences of time and as a personal and cultural practice (Meyers, 2009;Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006). ...
Studies of nostalgia are one of the research subfields of recalled consumption experiences. In addition to the nostalgic recall, the consumers' remembered experiences situate in other temporal frames, a theme rarely touched in the extant research. The aim of this research was to examine the differences between nostalgic and other recalled consumption experiences by identifying and analysing the characteristics of the temporal frames. The data set for this task comprised 480 descriptions of consumers' experiences involving an everyday consumer object. An interpretive approach was utilised to analyse the temporal frames. The results of the study indicate that the consumers described their memories in four temporal structures. These are the strong nostalgia from childhood, light nostalgia from youth, descriptions of recent past, and memories linked to consumption practices and traditions that will be fostered in the future. The article proposes a conceptual framework describing the temporal frames of consumers' remembered consumption experiences that opens further avenues for research alongside of nostalgic recall. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
While some Jewish immigrant autobiographies have received broad critical attention, a few important autobiographical endeavours have been underrepresented or almost forgotten. Autobiographies written by Jewish female writers who immigrated to America from Russia, Poland, or Galicia often draw a bifurcated picture of their struggles in callous New York sweatshops, or, on the contrary, they exalt the Jews’ notable success while blending in the American melting pot. Scarce studies, however, have been devoted to the dislocation and uprootedness of female immigrants and to the nostalgic feelings they have experienced during their absorption into American reality. This paper intends to resuscitate the forgotten voice of a Jewish immigrant female writer, Rose Gollup-Cohen. Moreover, using primarily psychoanalytical methodology and a feminist theory, the paper focuses on the nostalgic feelings that immigrants reverted to. Finally, it deals with both the therapeutic and the destructive powers of compulsive writing and shows how the writing process assists an immigrant writer when coping with distress experienced in her new homeland, but, on the other hand, it also demonstrates how compulsive writing may lead to obsessive behaviours, resulting in losing awareness of one’s surroundings, neglecting one’s family, and even to depression and suicide.
The starting point for this article was a chance encounter with an episode of the BBC’s Call the Midwife (‘Episode 12.7’ 2023) whilst visiting my elderly mother on a Sunday evening. The brutal and graphic portrayal of women’s health issues and abject poverty in Poplar, East London during the latter part of the 1960s elicited feelings of warmth and nostalgia in my mother, not anger or frustration at the lack of progress for working-class women like her with regard to some of the issues represented, this was difficult for me to understand. Indeed, as recently as August 2022, the UK government published data that confirmed that there remains a gender gap in healthcare; the 51 per cent of the UK population that is female will spend a significant portion of their life in poor health compared to men, and this is further compounded for those women that live in poverty. What is it about this text that produces a form of soporific nostalgia that seems to dissolve feminist recognition that women’s health is still an issue, thereby nullifying the drive for change? This article suggests that the reasons for such reactions are symbolized through and within the costuming. The language of clothing employed, particularly the use of print and colour saturation work to render the clothing items as meaningless within the text, actually negating the power of the narrative in relation to the intersection of gender and social class. The costumes do however produce a different type of meaning at the margins of the text that articulate not only the production team’s creativity but also their subjective understanding about class dressing that, it is argued, is in part responsible for producing the gendered form of alienation embodied by my mother and others like her. This article employs critical theory across cultural studies, sociology, film studies and the philosophy of language as a useful and emerging cross disciplinary framework to examine costume and costume drama. Applying theories that may appear disconnected to costuming is a means by which to suggest that the shift in perceptions of working class sexuality and relationships experienced by the working class during the 1950s and 1960s and represented within Call the Midwife via the costuming has had far reaching effects on gendered class identity and consequently on contesting the negative material effects of the current UK class system including the issue of women’s health.
Visible language is widespread and familiar in everyday life. We find it in shop signs, advertising billboards, street and place name signs, commercial logos and slogans, and visual arts. The field of linguistic landscapes draws on insights from sociolinguistics, language policy and semiotics to show how these public forms of language relate to multiple issues in language policy, language rights, language and education, language and culture, and globalization. Stretching from the earliest stone inscriptions, to posters and street signs, and to today's electronic media, linguistic landscapes sit at the crossroads of language, society, geography, and visual communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book-length synthesis of this exciting, rapidly-developing field. Using photographic evidence from across three continents, it demonstrates the methodology and approaches used, and summarises its findings and developments so far. It also seeks to answer common questions from its critics, and to suggest new directions for further study.
This dissertation outlines a mythological framework for understanding how games produce meaning. The central question is: how does a mythological approach help to understand the way games make meaning? I first theorise mythology as it applies to games and play. This is expressed through a cycle showing how mythology is embedded into the production of games as well as how it impacts the playing and interpretation of games. This is then operationalised as a method for the analysis of games. I call my theorisation and analytical approach mytholudics. With this established, I apply mytholudics in ten analyses of individual games or game series, split into two lenses: heroism and monstrosity. Finally, I reflect on these analyses and on mytholudics as an approach.
Mythology here is understood primarily from two theoretical perspectives: Roland Barthes’ theory outlined in Mythologies (1972/2009) and Frog’s (2015, 2021a) understanding of mythology in cultural practice and discourse from a folklore studies perspective. The Barthesian approach establishes myth as a mode of expression rather than as an object, a mode that is therefore prevalent in all forms of media and meaning-making. This mode of expression has naturalisation as a key feature, by which the arbitrariness of second-order signification is masked. Otherwise arbitrary relations between things are made to seem obvious and natural. Frog’s mythic discourse approach understands mythology as “constituted of signs that are emotionally invested by people within a society as models for knowing the world” (2021a, p. 161). Frog outlines mythic discourse analysis as a method which focuses on the comparison of mythic discourse over time and across cultures.
Barthes and Frog broadly share an understanding of mythology as a particular way of communicating an understanding of the world through discourse. From this perspective, mythology is not limited to any genre, medium or cultural context. It can include phenomena as diverse as systems, rules, customs, behaviours, rituals, stories, characters, events, social roles, motifs, spatial configurations, and so on. What is important is how these elements are placed in relation to one another. This stands in contrast to certain understandings of myth which may position it as a narrative genre or a socioreligious function of ‘primitive’ societies. Games consist of the same diverse elements arranged in comparable configurations, and so this perspective highlights the otherwise hidden parallels between mythology and games. Therefore, a mythological approach can help us to understand the game as an organising structure in which different and diverse elements are put into relation with one another in order to produce meaning.
To develop this framework, I argue for analysing games as and through myth. Games as myth means viewing the game as an organising structure that works analogously to mythology. Elements are constructed and put into relation with one another within a gameworld, which the player then plays in and interprets. Games through myth means seeing games as embedded within cultural contexts. The cultural context of development affects the mythologies that can be seen to influence the construction of the game, while the cultural context of the player affects how they relate to and interact with the game and the mythologies channelled through it.
With the theorisation and methodology laid out, I exemplify the mytholudic approach by applying it to ten analyses of individual games or game series, split into two chapters of five analyses each.
The first considers the games through the lens of heroism, defined as the positive mythologisation of an individual. To help with comparison and understanding, I outline a number of hero-types, broad categories based on different rhetorics of heroism. These include the hero-victim, the hero-sceptic, the preordained hero and the unsung hero. The examples analysed are the Call of Duty series (2003–2022), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios, 2011), the Assassin’s Creed series (2007–2022), Heaven’s Vault (Inkle, 2019) and Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games, 2017).
The second considers the games through the lens of monstrosity, defined broadly as a form of negative mythologisation of an entity. Like with heroes, I outline a number of monster-types based on where their monstrosity is said to come from. These are the monster from within, the monster from without, the artificial monster and the monster of nature. The game examples are Doom (id Software, 1993a), the Pokémon series (Game Freak, 1996–2022), Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2017), Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions, 2020a) and The Witcher series (CD Projekt Red, 2007–2016).
Finally, I synthesise these two lenses in a chapter reflecting on the hero- and monster-types, all ten analyses and the mytholudic approach in general. I argue that a mytholudic approach helps us to understand how games make meaning because it focuses on the naturalised and hidden premises that go into the construction of games as organising structures. By analysing the underpinnings of those organising structures, we can outline the model for understanding the world that is virtually instantiated and how they are influenced by, influence and relate to models for understanding the world—mythologies—in the real world.
The recent acknowledgement of the Anthropocene, resulting from the increasingly visible human-induced effects on the biosphere, has ultimately obliterated the nature/culture division (Latour; Chakrabarty), prompting sociocultural changes (Autin). Hayley Eichenbaum’s photography series The Mother Road (2015–19) serves as a prominent example of a contemporary American cultural text which reinterprets existing aesthetic strategies and shows symptoms of what I propose to identify as Anthropocene nostalgia. This new sentiment is characterized by the awareness that a return to the past is impossible and would be pernicious, given the detrimental effects of reckless capitalism fuelled by twentieth-century American consumer culture. This article aims to analyze this distinctive type of nostalgia and its juxtaposition with the Anthropocene in Eichenbaum’s series. An analysis of The Mother Road identifies why and how this new sentiment corresponds with the aesthetics of previous decades, as well as notions of temporality and time. Building on previously conceptualized traditions as codes of reference, Eichenbaum reinterprets the representation of Route 66 by playing with its iconography, creating images which evoke desolate, quasi-post-apocalyptic landscapes. With the use of synthetic colours, digital manipulation, kitsch imagery, and mindful deconstruction of past aesthetic strategies, the analyzed series demythologizes the past and displays the loss of both nature itself and of pre-Anthropocene perception.
The edited volume Senses of Cities: Anthropology, Art, Sensory Transformations brings some of the latest research and artistic approaches to the sensory experience of contemporary urban landscapes to the Slovenian scholarly space and also highlights past sensory perceptions and memories of them in selected cities (e.g. Ljubljana, Skopje, Turku, Brighton). Scholarly texts from the field of cultural anthropology, its sub-disciplines such as sensory and urban anthropology, and related disciplines, especially cultural history, cultural studies, ethnomusicology and various posthumanist philosophies, are interwoven in an innovative way with experimental and artistic contributions and interdisciplinary interpretations of sensory perceptions. The thematic comprehensiveness of the subject matter, the empirical richness and the methodological diversity make the volume essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary, critical, socially engaged and unconventional theories and practises of urban space and its contradictions through all five human senses.
Este libro nos ofrece cuidadosas revisiones de la literatura, conclusiones claras, y recomendaciones explicitas sobre las migraciones internacionales en Chile en la actualidad. Los y las autores enfatizan, definen, y reconocen dinamismos en las categorías sociales (como etnia, raza, identidad, cultura, asimilación, y muchas otras) más usadas en las discusiones y debates sobre la salud intercultural. Las tres secciones del libro (Propuestas Teóricas, Evidencia Científica y Gris, y Experiencias y Aprendizajes) facilitan comparaciones entre autores, conceptos, y estrategias de intervención. Los autores revelan herramientas útiles para empujar lo que se denomina “diálogos entre epistemologías” para integrar perspectivas locales de las migraciones con las de los servicios de salud. En los diversos capítulos se reconoce la importancia de lo histórico en lo contemporáneo, o sea, como los conflictos y cambios precedentes puedan condicionar posibles caminos (estrategias y políticas) en la actualidad. Junto con esto, los capítulos presentan retratos detallados de estudios e intervenciones que enfatizan la importancia de un enfoque de salud intercultural al abordar a poblaciones migrantes internacionales.
This article explores the various manifestations of analogue video in digital culture. Introducing the framing concept of an aesthetics of remanence, it argues that the “society of the spectacle†(Debord) has entered an age of retrospectacle, a dominant signifier of which is the remediation and/or simulation of analogue videography. The concept of remanence connects the material conditions of magnetic tape with analogue video’s aesthetic expressions, and the cultural situation in which analogue video finds itself today. By looking at three different cases related to retro gaming, contemporary hip hop, and “old skool†rave, the article shows how the aesthetics of remanence remains highly susceptible to subcultural sensibilities—while it also functions as their shared visual variable. The short film Kung Fury (David Sandberg, 2015) is a playfully post-ironic recuperation of failed media technologies. The music video “Fromdatomb$†(David M. Helman, 2012) is a complex exploration of the idea(l) of the historical real. And the work of video art Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999) is a creative treatment of nostalgia which invites us to reconsider the medical origins of the term.
Drawing on the notion that nostalgia enables a continuity of identity, this article explores how the aesthetics of the Disney+ lynchpin property, The Mandalorian (2019–present), facilitate a return to, and continuity of, masculine heteronormativity in the face of rapid and widespread change within the Star Wars cinematic franchise. Focusing on the excess of style, the reduction in scope and scale of the narrative aesthetics, the role of the star as an agent of the past, the conceptualization of hypermasculine fatherhood and the role of the feminine in the articulation of narrative, this article reveals how The Mandalorian constructs a narrative concerned with fatherhood. Moreover, this article demonstrates how, by appropriating nostalgia in the restorative mode to allow a continuity of idealized masculine identity, The Mandalorian is positioned as the would-be masculine heir to the legacy of the original trilogy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of our social lives. Stay-at-home and social distancing orders have resulted in the absence of live musical performances. In this context, our paper examinesTim’s Twitter Listening Party, which constitutes a new form of musicking where musicians do not exist as active performers; rather, musicians and audience members participate together to create a musical experience. The elements of the listening party can be linked to previous research on (1) participation, (2) collective nostalgia, and (3) community-making. Finally, collective nostalgia offers comfort to individuals during a time of uncertainty.
Despite the advancement of event research, which provides necessary foundations on large and mega events that are based on multiple countries joining together to exercise sports competitions, there is a lack of attention paid to nomadic sporting events, such as the Naadam that is joined by nomadic tribes. The study investigates a nomadic sporting event called the Naadam, which is held in the Republic of Mongolia, part of Russia, and several provinces of China. Such an event renders an opportunity for tourists to appreciate a rich culture and history, sacredness, and authentic offerings. The objective of this study aims to examine tourist views of nomadic events through the lens of cultural connection and sacredness with data collected from the Naadam festival in Inner Mongolia, China. A person-administered face-to-face survey was conducted. The tourists were mainly from Inner Mongolia and its neighboring provinces. By modeling differences among tourists with respect to their ethnicity and gender, this study provides a deeper understanding of what tourists appreciate most about these eloquent manifestations of nomadic traditions.
Psychiatry is inherently complex and vast amounts of material have been written on the topic. One of the largest collections of the extant material is archived in German Berrios’ personal library. The synthesis of this material has come to life through his rare powers of intellect, eidetic memory, and decades of early morning reading in a variety of languages. Its expression has taken many forms, including a series of conceptual histories on psychiatric topics. Conceptual history teases out the historical semantics of a concept, what it meant to people using the term in different ages, in different languages, against what contextual background. Accompanying German Berrios on these journeys has for many clinicians, academics, and others been a stimulating, thought-provoking, and mind-opening experience. An early adopter of and advocate for information technology in publishing both old and new, Berrios continues to influence the way we think, and his legacy will shape the minds of many people addressing the mysteries in the mind and brain sciences in years to come. This paper attempts to bring together some of the extraordinary characteristics of German the person and his remarkable contributions to scholarship.
The main purpose of this article is to discuss the emergence of the analytical category Historical Distance and the possibilities of modulation of time from different possibilities of time representation, based on problems of the History of Historiography. We cast our glances towards the end of the nineteenth century in Brazil highlighting literature and historiography as two fundamental genres for identity creation. We seek to understand the plurality of temporal projects for Brazilian modernity, as well as question the pure rationality in the writing of history. We identify the strong brand of sensitivities as aesthetic, ideological, formal and political motivations for representing the national time. We emphasize nostalgia as a significant element that shows a temporal tension that separates two visions about national time: the monarchical past and the republican past.
A variety of factors shape environmental policy and governance (EPG) processes, from perceptions of physical ecology and profit motives to social justice and concerns with landscape aesthetics. Many scholars have examined the role of values in EPG, and demonstrated that attempts to incorporate (especially) non-market values into EPG are loaded with both practical and conceptual challenges. Nevertheless, it is clear that non-market values of all types play a crucial role in shaping EPG outcomes. In this article we explore the role of nostalgia as a factor in EPG. We examine literatures on environmental values, governance and affect in light of their relationships with environmental policymaking, first as a means to decide whether or not nostalgia can be rightly described as an 'environmental value'. We suggest that, from a philosophical perspective, nostalgia is by itself environmentally neutral, and is not usefully described as a 'value'. However, as an emotional state that longs to preserve or recover something of the past - whether fading or no longer present - that is fondly remembered, nostalgia does represent a potentially strong 'motivator' for EPG decisions. Despite this somewhat ambivalent assessment of nostalgia as an environmental value, we argue that nostalgia and nostalgic longing to return to 'better' or 'cleaner' environments can lead to potentially significant impacts on ecosystems and landscapes, both positive and negative depending on what it is that people want to preserve or restore. Thus we conclude that we neglect understanding the role of nostalgia in EPG at our peril: first, because preservationist goals have always been an important part of environmental responsibility; and second, because many people will be swayed regarding environmental action through a mobilisation of nostalgia by political leaders and interest groups alike. We end our article with suggestion of avenues for further empirical investigation.
We examined the psychological functions of nostalgia (hanin in Arabic) among Syrian refugees residing in Saudi Arabia, who were forcefully displaced during the Syrian civil war. Forced displacement entails disruption, loss, and mourning, creating a salient contrast between one's past and present circumstances, which could attenuate the benefits of nostalgia. Studying this population thus affords a strong test of the boundaries of nostalgia's functionality. We experimentally induced nostalgia via vivid autobiographical recall and then assessed various psychological functions, as well as current affect. A supplemental objective was to examine the role of dispositional resilience. Most established benefits of nostalgia also accrued to Syrian refugees. However, contrary to previous findings, nostalgia decreased optimism, highlighting the limits of its palliative capacity among displaced individuals. As hypothesized, the impact of nostalgia was moderated by dispositional resilience, which acted as a catalyst of the emotion's benefits and as an inhibitor of its costs.
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Psychopathologies of all kinds, vis-à-vis the military, are well-documented in the mental health literature. These illnesses include Acute Stress Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Adjustment Disorders, and more. The authors maintain that there is another type of injury that has heretofore escaped detection because its symptoms are subtler than those exhibited in the more profound psychopathologies. This injury appears to be related to both Depression and Moral Injury. The authors call this phenomenon “Significance Injury.” This presentation serves as a ‘note from the field,’ an attempt to outline nuances in clinical presentation, diagnostics, and possible treatment apropos of Significance Injury phenomena.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the contribution of philosopher of science Ian Hacking to the cultural history of psychiatry. Based on ideas proposed by this author, as "transient mental illness" or "making up people", some reflections on the socio-cultural construction of mental illness are offered. The examination and discussion the two case studies proposed by Hacking, dissociative fugue and multiple personality, allow to identify the weaknesses and strengths of his approaches and its applicability to the history and theory of psychopathology.
Gilt die "Allgemeine Psychopathologie" als das systematische Grundbuch der neuzeitlichen Psychiatrie, mit dem Jaspers diesen damals jüngsten Zweig der medizinischen Forschung aus einer noch überwiegend klinischen Empirie in den Rang einer eigenständigen wissenschaftlichen Forschungspraxis erhob, so kommt den sie vorbereitenden Arbeiten eine grundlegende methodologische Bedeutung zu. In ihnen entwickelte Jaspers die methodischen Grundzüge seiner wissenschaftlichen wie auch - im Ansatz - seiner späteren philosophischen Denkart. Beide in ihren ersten entscheidenden Schritten verfolgen und beurteilen zu können, gehört zum Verständnis des gesamten Lebenswerkes von Jaspers.
The thesis in medicine of Denis Guerbois (1775–1838), presented in Paris in 1803, was the first dissertation in french (and not in latin) that investigated the state of nostalgia and its detrimental effects on young conscripts called up to defend their nation in 1793. The symptoms included moral asthenia, physical depression, and nosocomial fever. It was absolutely necessary to give the patient the hope of seeing his family and friends, and to allow him to go home on leave. After that, he was again good for service. Several observations (semiology, treatment, study of the pathogenesis) illustrate this pathology, which army doctors were fully familiar with.
Nostalgia, a psychopathological condition affecting individuals who are uprooted, whose social contacts are fragmented, who are isolated and who feel totally frustrated and alienated, was first described in the 17th century and was a problem of considerable interest to physicians in the 18th and 19th centuries. By the 20th century it seemed to have disappeared, but reappeared under other labels.
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Hipocondría and hysteria: sensibility and the physicians. The Eighteenth Century
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