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Anthropologists use the word ‘subjectivity’ loosely, often to refer to the emotional life of the political subject. In this article I argue that a psychological model of emotion helps us to create a clearer anthropological theory of subjectivity, and in the process helps us to make sense of some of the anthropological quarrels about emotion as well. The article concludes with a discussion of the subjectivity of homeless, often psychotic women, which I call ‘social defeat’.
T. M. Luhrmann (Wed,) studied this question.