THE CULTURE OF GRIEF: The affective logic and grief (SORGENS KULTUR: SORGENS AFFEKTIVE LOGIK)

The third sub-project works in the intersection between personal experience of grief and its cultural history (Valsiner,
2014). The process of grief comprises a certain relation with the world, which in cultural psychological terms is
referred to as “affective logic” (Ciompi, 1997, Lennon, 2010). Through rituals and practices, cultural contexts invite
people into certain affective contexts while simultaneously inhibiting others. The individual path through these
affective contexts is rich on ambivalence, and on the one side being particular while on the other side drawing on
general cultural repertoires on ways of thinking, feeling and taking acting in the form of discourses on grief as well as
typical narrative scripts on the course of grief. These repertoires are normative and indicate culturally accepted ways
one “should” grieve and express grief. But from which “affective logic” is the normativity of grief organized? The
objective of this project is to answer that question. In the first phase by developing a qualitative research method to
detect the affective logic. The method will be tested on approximately 100 students. In the second phase, the
method will be utilized on two groups of adolescents of whom they respectively imply both normal and problematic
reactions from grief based on valid diagnostic criteria. The second phase will comprise repeating in-depth interviews
(in collaboration with a research assistant) with 6-10 participants with regard to obtaining an in-depth understanding
of the affective logic