Nostalgia: An Essentially Contested Emotion

Central to quality of life, emotions have garnered much attention among theorists, researchers and clinicians. Empirical studies of happiness, for example, have been so prolific that they have inspired publications such as the Journal of Happiness Studies devoted to their scholarly reports. While researchers have debated issues of definition, methodology, triggers and impacts, they have shared a prevailing assumption that happiness is inherently desirable and helpful. Similarly, underlying the complexity of depression or hate is the assumption that they are fundamentally undesirable. By contrast, nostalgia, longing for aspects of the past, has attracted substantial discourse questioning its adaptive or maladaptive nature. The study of nostalgia, however, has so far not spawned the establishment of a Journal of Nostalgia Studies similar to journals of happiness, depression or stress studies. Beyond attention to definitions and methods, decades of scholarly exploration have focused on the extent to which nostalgia is primarily positive and beneficial or negative and detrimental. In sharp contrast to a long history of unfavourable conceptualisations, a substantial body of contemporary research has generated a largely favourable view of nostalgia. However, recent conflicting findings have revived questions about the adaptive or maladaptive value of nostalgia. What accounts for the unresolved status of nostalgia’s distinctive character as positive or negative and the contradiction between the unfavourable historical and favourable contemporary views? This chapter – by drawing on insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology as well as historical and political studies – examines such discrepancies in light of nostalgia as a dynamic cognitive-emotional experience and the social-historical context within which nostalgia has been addressed.