Recently, there has been an intense discussion among anthropologists about the concept of “dark anthropologies” and their contrast with “positive anthropologies”. This debate has attracted significant attention, especially in the Russian academic community, as evidenced by the two-volume publication “Logos” (2022), which is dedicated to “dark anthropology”. Sherry Ortner's introductory article, published in “Logos”, provides a critical review of contemporary anthropological thought (Ortner, 2022). Ortner suggests that neoliberalism has had a significant impact on social processes worldwide, leading to a transformation in even the disciplines that study it. As a result, social anthropology underwent significant transformations beginning in the late 1980s. The interest in the “obscene aspects” of social life — injustice and violence — has been growing among scholars. This trend has not significantly changed over time, and it has resulted in a fundamental shift in anthropological inquiry. Instead of focusing on the figure of “the Other”, anthropologists are now turning their attention to the “suffering subject” (Robbins, 2013). This development has led to the emergence of critical theories such as postcolonialism, feminism, and critical race studies. However, a paradoxical consequence of this effort to unravel and criticize systems of economic and moral oppression is the proliferation of what Sherry Ortner calls “pornography of suffering” in social science. Authors of these researches seem to be driven by a fascination with the brutality and injustice of the social cases they examine.
Alternative theoretical traditions to “dark anthropology” developed into self-sufficient research fields around the 2000s–2010s. The set of these research fields is commonly known as “positive anthropology”, often also called the “anthropology of happiness” or the “anthropology of wellness/well-being”. Research within this paradigm is united not so much by themes as by a shared way of interpreting material. The common ethos of these works can be reduced to the maxim: positive social experience is a significant part of human life and valid material for anthropological analysis. Moreover, happiness, joy, pleasure, delight, and other positive emotions and states are culturally specific phenomena (Mathews, G., & Izquierdo. C. (Eds.), 2009) just like hatred, poverty, suffering, or grief, yet the positive experience receives significantly less attention in anthropological texts.
Nevertheless, the ways and mechanisms of expressing positive emotions are diverse. For instance, Edward Fischer, a professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, proposes distinguishing between hedonic and eudaimonic forms of happiness (Fischer, 2014). Some of these expressions are manifested in daily pleasures, such as the sense of satisfaction derived from delicious food, sexual experiences, financial success, or the wit of a well-timed joke. Others are tied to moral and ethical frameworks and thus extend beyond everyday practices to encompass questions of personal meaning and human flourishing.
We invite social researchers, drawing on their own empirical materials to reflect on what brings people pleasure. How do different cultures, communities, and social groups define happiness and how it is experienced physically and emotionally? Why do people engage in particular forms of leisure, relaxation, and merriment — and can pleasure itself be understood as a matter of choice?
As we understand it, the anthropology of pleasure studies those aspects of human social life associated with positive experience: states of happiness, joy, delight, contentment. Within these phenomena, we propose seeing a spectrum: why is something pleasurable to some people but disgusting to others? Can conventionally negative experiences also produce pleasure — and if so, why?
Due to the diverse nature of pleasure, we encourage you to approach this topic from various perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds.