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Scholars such as Lutz (1982), and M. Rosaldo (1983, 1984) following Solomon (1976) have moved away from the analysis of emotions as material things that are influenced by cultural forces, to focus on the notion that emotions are equally or more about ideas. The consequence of this, as noted by Lyon and Barbalet (1994), is that the body is very often ignored or sidelined in these kinds of accounts; this can perhaps be understood as a kind of guard against biological reductionism. Lutz and White noted in their review that, very often, the relationship between body and emotion is taken to be metaphoric, ‘with cultural ramifications’ (see Holland and Kipnis, 1995; Strathern, 1975). The strength of these accounts is in the linkage made in them between emotion, power and social structure. Typically in such accounts, ‘emotional judgments are seen to require social validation or negotiation for their realization’ (Lutz and White, 1986, p. 407). As Lyon and Barbalet (1994) imply, however, the absence of the body in these accounts significantly weakens the connections between power, social structure and emotion:
Feminist theories have also dealt with the notion of power as related to emotion, according to Jenkins and Valiente (1994, p. 163), feminist theorists are typically engaged in: