Introduction: getting emotional

Resumen

Over the last years, and encompassing the trend of the “emotional turn” in Anthropology (Lutz and White 1986; Leavitt 1996; Wulff 2007; Beatty 2013), research and publication on culture, heritage and emotions have multiplied (Thrift 2004; Crang and Tolia-Kelly 2010; De Nardi 2014; Waterton 2014; Crouch 2015; Tolia-Kelly, Waterton and Watson, 2016; Brenboim 2016; Smith, Wetherell and Campbell 2018, among many others).

In fact, the field of heritage studies pioneered this approach in many ways, especially with its forays into critical museography, and since the moment when authors like Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998, 2004, 2005) – and later on many others – began to consider the performative dimensions of heritage and ascribed agency to objects and, therefore, their ability to act also upon emotions. Actually we could say that, from this point of view, heritage studies were also in the front line of current perspectives on more-than-human anthropology, and thus interfere in social life.