In the Fijian perspective, love transcends what is natural. From the situation provided, the intended image of love or what is expected to be natural appears to be the opposite. Have you ever imagined being beaten by your partner out of love? Perhaps, it is a natural reaction that you eventually answer, “It is not love! If so, what kind of love is that?”. In this essay – Transforming Love, love seems to be something that entitles someone to stay influential or the most powerful explanation for the specific nature of that Fijian hierarchy. However, it is a realm that is very much vague to understand especially if you are someone who is not culturally accustomed with the Fijian concept of love. As the argument presented as well as the examples above, I would also adhere to the analyst’s opinion that “there are no acts that are symbolic of love, for love is constituted out of those acts that are supposed to stand for it. (Toren, p. 19)” To simply elucidate, one cannot signify love in any simple way because any dyadic relationship in which love enters inevitably informs the others and so each new relationship in some sense contains those that precede it and/or coincide (Phylactou in Toren, p. 19). Love across culture varies as diversity is a given variable on how the cultural dimensions of love are qualified. The cultural construction of emotions on the other hand is rooted in the common practices performed or customary to the Fijians. Love intersects through hierarchy in this case by establishing love as a complementing mechanism that enables people to have one direction and expression using a certain innate emotion called love or affection.
On The Notes on Love in a Tamil Family particularly on The Ideology of Love, love is culturally defined within the bounds of the family. Anni’s family do not have exact instead a variety of words to define such. As a matter of act, they either feel or do not feel it but in their minds, such emotion exists. For them, love was the highest form of what is good. One particular and perfect instance was when the author offered some money to a woman and she replied, “Money is not important, people are important.” This alone speaks clearly about the cultural definition of love on this case – love is doing the highest form of good to people as people are more important than money. The cultural construction of emotions on this case is similar to the case above – that is – human emotion is natural yet vocabulary is either extensive or limited to provide the most applicable term to describe one’s emotion. The naturalness in terms of construction is rooted on the daily living of Anni’s family and at the same time how the community in which they live in plays a certain role and creates a distinct effect. The properties of love (ANPU) according to Trawick include: containment (love by nature and by right hidden), habit (a force that is tender, gentle and slow), harshness and cruelty (a characteristic of love acted out more often than spoken of), dirtiness (an obstacle in the quest for purity, which meant the breaking of all bonds), humility (the reversal of the symbols of high and low), poverty and simplicity (an attempt to make a virtue of necessity, a concession to reality), servitude (the state of being controlled by another, of being bound), opposition and reversal (the interchanging of things that had either reasons or not), and mingling and confusion (mixing up). These properties are used in various ways as means of intersecting with hierarchies of gender and ethnicity. How? For example, on the property of humility, love can intersect gender and ethnicity by expression of opposition and reversal as the humble become proud, the servant become master, etc. Also, these properties further qualify if such feeling is categorized as love or not. Natural as it may seem, yet in this case, love is something complex!
On the third essay, love is something that is not recognize by the Fulbe culture as ideal. The cultural definition of love in this case is unnatural. For modernized and civilized societies, love is ideal yet the Fulbe culture sees it on the opposite illumination. Love is rooted on the importance of restraint and self-control in the live of Fulbe. The cultural construction of emotions is manifested in the importance of these two factors – restraint and self-control. The following are some attributes that leads to further understanding of love in Fulbe’s culture:
- The disclosure of reticence that illustrates the display of personhood and the concealment of emotionality – Fulbes are poised reserve.
- Love is no exception.
Using these two attributes, love appears like a defiant emotion. The cultural construction of emotions in general is seen on the ability or tendency of Fulbe culture to disobey. They are not encouraged to fall in love as there is an incentive for people who do not fall in love. Yet, many people fail due to one simple reason – love in this case is natural. It is a human instinct. However, the intersection of love with hierarchies of gender and ethnicity is somewhat absurd. Quoting Regis (p. 149), “any emotion, when taken up obsessively, makes a person unavailable to peers, less than filly respected of elders, contemptuous of convention, and forgetful of death (and of god).” From here, “there is no tyranny of emotion, no passion that is allowed to posses the personality. In this way love is no exception.” Love will remain something that is not ideal given this case.
Lastly, the cultural definition of love on the last essay is quite intriguing as it involves marriage, spouse exchange and infatuation among the Copper Inuit. Love for them is flexible. It is used to adaptation and survival. The cultural construction of emption is based on the need to be flexible in order to survive. For instance, on the case of Inuit marriage wherein traditional Inuit “were willing to accommodate a variety of marriages types in order to adjust to particular environmental and social circumstances, so their descendants modified their marriage practices, first to satisfy the demands of powerful outsiders and, more recently, to cope up with changing economic and social conditions. (Stern and Condon p. 216)” On the aspect of how love intersects with hierarchies of love and ethnicity, the need to live, to adapt, to survive and to change are deemed to be priority. Thus, love is natural and a matter of choice as exemplified with the intriguing manifestations of the Copper Inuit marriage customs.
All in all, love is natural. This is certain. Yet it is very important to consider that the effect of culture in the aspect of love is very influential. Then again, the definition of culture, which is relative, is dependent on how a certain community views a kind of feeling or experience. It may be natural or unnatural; it is acceptable to them – as their culture dictates it. To answer the question above, I will quote it originally – also.
References
Toren, Cristina. Transforming Love: Representing Fijian Hierarchy, pp.19-39.
Trawick, Margaret. “Ideology of Love”. In M. Trawick, Notes on Love in a Tamil Family. Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford: University of California, pp. 89-116.
Regis, Helen A. The Madness of Excess: Love Among the Fulbe of North Cameroun. In W. Jankowiak (Ed.) New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 141-149.
Stern, Pamela R. and Richard G. Condon. A Good Spouse Is Hard to Find: Marriage, Spouse Exchange, and Infatuation Among the Copper Inuit, pp. 89 167-218.
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