Becoming Moral in Sri Lanka: The Intergenerational Transmission of Emotions in Cultivating Moral Personhood

Asha L. Abeyasekera - Centre for Women’s Studies - Department of Sociology - University of York

Moral philosophers, drawing on Aristotle, have argued that “virtues are not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways […] Moral education is an ‘education sentimentale’” (MacIntyre 1985/1999:49). The anthropology of emotion point out that moral concerns are deeply intertwined with the experience and expression of emotions, while moral anthropology has paid attention to how sentiments and sensibilities shape everyday experiences of morality. Relational sociologists, at the same time, are reviving an interest in socialisation, pointing out that dispositions and subjectivities of individuals are shaped within an interactional process of socialisation wherein morality is embodied, enacted, sustained, and transformed within relationships. Building on these insights on the socialisation of emotions and the role they play in shaping moral personhood, I ask: how are moral sentiments transmitted across generations? More specifically, I ask how are young people taught, and how do they learn, to cultivate moral emotions?

To answer these questions, I draw on fieldwork conducted in urban, middle-class Sri Lanka on laejja-baya – a deep cultural emotion encompassing a complicated, subtly graded vocabulary of shame as foundational to moral becoming among Sinhala-Buddhists.  Drawing on in-depth interviews with secondary school teachers, focus group discussions with young people, and intergenerational interviews with families, I explore how morality is cultivated through emotions by describing the modes and methods used to socialize children in laejja-baya. The aims of the paper are two-fold: to illustrate the ways in which morality is intersubjectively produced; while drawing attention to moral becoming as both an affective and embodied experience.

This seminar will be held ‘in person’.