A proposal for a socio-anthropological typology of nostalgia: From the concept of disease to the symptom of contemporary culture

Abstract

In this article I analyse nostalgia as a socio-anthropological category. Nostalgia is here interpreted as a social and cultural phenomenon which was formed from 17th until 21st century, being transformed from a disease to a product on the contemporary market. Hence, nostalgia appears to be a “meta-concept”: a transtemporal category that allows for variation over time and place while recognising sufficient shared characteristics to talk about the same thing throughout. Dealing with nostalgia as a socio-anthropological issue, I will here elaborate on a certain typology of it, claiming that it can be seen as: 1. a disease, 2. a state, emotion and way of remembering, and 3. an experience. Finally, I will especially point to the importance of the issue of nostalgia in contemporary discourses on society and culture.

Keywords

• nostalgia
• sociology
• antropology
• culture