The allure of restraint: Doing emotionless sociology

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Rethinking Marxism, 1998

2014

This article is a verbatim record of an inaugural lecture, reflecting on twenty years of working at one university. It discusses the ways in which academic inquiry, teaching and community engagement have been linked in specific oral history projects. It considers opportunities for working across disciplinary boundaries. It examines culturalist understandings of emotion and memory and their implications for oral history research.

SOCIOLOGIA, PROBLEMAS E PRÁTICAS, 2017

The overwhelming presence of the emotions both in science and contemporary social life begs for an explanation from the point of view of the same social theory. Even though the works of Hochschild, Scheff or Illouz contain indications that allow for a theoretical link between the contributions of the sociology of emotions and the theories of late modernity advanced by contemporary social theorists, this link has not yet been explicitly developed in the literature. The purpose of this article is to call attention on this link by highlighting the role of emotions as sites of social reflexivity. Resumo A presença massiva das emoções tanto na ciência como na vida social contemporâneas exige uma explicação do ponto de vista da mesma teoria social. Embora as obras de Hochschild, Scheff ou Illouz contenham indicações que permitem um enlace teórico entre as contribuições da sociologia das emoções e as teorias da modernidade tardia avançadas por teóricos sociais contemporâneos, tal ligação não se tem desenvolvido ainda de forma explícita. O objeto deste artigo é chamar a atenção sobre esta conexão, destacando o papel das emoções como lugares de reflexividade social. Résumé La présence massive des émotions tant dans la science que dans la vie sociale contemporaine exige une explication du point de vue de la même théorie sociale. Bien que les travaux de Hochschild, Scheff et Illouz contiennent des indications qui permettent d'établir un lien théorique entre les contributions de la sociologie des émotions et les théories de la modernité tardive avancées par des théoriciens sociaux contemporains, ce lien n'a pas encore été développé de façon explicite. Cet article attire l'attention sur cette connexion, en mettant en avant le rôle des émotions comme lieux de réflexivité sociale.

Polish Sociological Review, 2020

Modernization discourses which penetrated into Poland after the systemic transitions of 1989 brought meanings that were in opposition to those embedded in the traditional models of interpersonal relations. Although the emergence of new meanings pertaining to asymmetrical social relations is typical for societies undergoing structural and cultural transformation, in the case of Poland these shifts have advanced rapidly, especially in comparison with the Western societies. This resulted in the fragmentation of the doxa—the set of taken-forgranted assumptions about the ‘natural’ shape of interpersonal relations. Due to this ‘responsible actors’ whose social roles have been so far based on authority have been affected by a loss of the sense of control over their basic social relations, i.e. the relations through which they define their identity and/or appoint life goals. Using qualitative evidence from Poland we analyze interpersonal relations in two domains of social life, i.e. work an...

International Journal of Critical Psychology, 2001

Emotionalism, the centring of social and political as well as personal judgements on individual feeling, seems to many to be an increasingly prevalent frame for thought and action. A variety of historical and cultural explanations are advanced to account for this situation, ranging from the conceptual contradictions of Enlightenment thinking through the power of popular media to the aftereffects of postmodernism. For some, emotionalism signifies cultural degeneration, depoliticisation and emotional impoverishment, while others view the change as psychologically and socially empowering and potentially democratising. This paper urges a limited acceptance of emotionalism as a historical shift, and a qualified optimism about it. The paper argues that emotionalism can act at times as a kind of pragmatic strategy for theorising areas of cultures that are otherwise ignored or repressed, while at other times emotionalism simply points to insufficiencies within mainstream cultural discourses. The paper also suggests that critical psychology is a particularly apt field in which to consider the reconfigurations of emotion being achieved by its increasingly public performance.

Journal of Sociology, 2017

In What Use is Sociology? Michael-Hviid Jacobsen and Keith Tester (Bauman, 2014) pose a series of double-edged questions to the (now deceased) prolific sociologist Zygmunt Bauman : Does your productivity reflect an attempt to keep the conversation going or, by contrast, is it an attempt to make the conversation happen? Put another way, is your productivity a sign of the presence or absence of dialogue? Or is it a more simple case that the sociological vocation makes us all Puritans, working hard in our calling, without ever knowing if we are destined for the secular salvation of being heard? (2014: 62) Bauman, impressed, responds that perhaps we are now indeed all Puritans, but by 'decree of history rather than by choice'. In an age of intellectual super abundance and high turnover, 'messages, however loud and bright, nowadays come with a "use by" date printed or presumed, and vanish as fast as they appear'. For this reason, he says, '"to keep the conversation going" you have "to make it happen"-repeatedly, untiringly' (2014: 62-3). Bauman's call to keep the sociological discourse going, particularly at a time when the world appears to require a continuous reorientation, has been taken up by the outgoing

2021

In this cross-post, Shamser Sinha discusses the limitations of traditional forms of qualitative analysis and suggests social researchers have much to learn from creative professions, where are wider range of sensory and temporal inputs contribute to new understandings of social phenomena

Symbolic Interaction, 1991

Although social constructionists now study emotions, they neglect what emotion feels like and how it is experi-Carolyn Ellis" enced. This paper argues that social constructionists can and should study how private and social experience are fused in felt emotions. Resurrecting introspection (conscious awareness of awareness or self-examination) as a systematic sociological technique will allow social constructionists to examine emotion as a product of the individual processing of meaning as well as socially shared cognitions. Examining introspection as a socio-Symbollc Interaction, 14( I ):23-50 ISSN 0 195-6086