© Roger M Tagg 2011
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
This is another book recommended to me by Peter Armitage, who has been keeping me busy recently! I found some interesting ideas here, but felt that most of the writers belonged to a culture unfamiliar to me, where certain ideas are not mentioned and certain stances are 'socially' required! However see also the review by Muriel Egerton.
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Editors' | xv | This is all relatively recent stuff (or was, at the time of publication - typical late 1980s). |
| Intro | A theme for the editors is that they feel that we don't want "irrational passion for dispassionate rationality". [RT: I'd say there was a horror of being suspected of anything approaching 'dispassionate rationality'!] | |
| xvi | We need to transcend all the traditional dualisms. | |
| Part 1 | 'Critical Perspectives on Emotions' | |
| 1 - | 'The sociology of emotion as a way of seeing' by Arlie Russell Hochschild (ARH). She earned fame by inventing the idea of 'emotional labour', i.e. the work one does to control one's own emotions to suit the need of the moment, and also to engineer the emotions of others. | |
| 4 | ARH presents a 'nervous bride' case study. The bride was depressed to begin with when her expectations weren't fulfilled. Then she recovered, realizing that "it's my day" and seeing her bridegroom. | |
| A Durkheim analysis (i.e., that the ritual makes things sacred) didn't work for her - she did better when she thought of herself. | ||
| 4-5 | A psychoanalytic analysis would suggest she started too narcissistic, but overcame that through "Oedipal triumph". [RT: the best bullshit I have heard for a while!] | |
| 5-6 | A sociologist of emotion might say that emotion emerges through a "newly grasped reality" clashing with "the template of prior expectations". | |
| 6 | A person draws from "a prior notion of what feelings are 'on the emotional shelf'". [RT: isn't that a shelf of acceptable expressed emotions?] | |
| 7 | We live in a "culture of emotion". [RT: again, of expressions of emotion?] | |
| Byron: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence". This was the cultural norm at the time. | ||
| In India, "romantic love is considered dangerous". | ||
| 8-9 | There are lots of context factors. | |
| The Western paradox about love is that we are encouraged to 'aim high' (e.g. for 'true love'), but expect 'low', with a divorce rate of 50% and rising in the USA. | ||
| 9 | This leads us to adopt "emotion management" strategies. | |
| 10 | ARH believes the strongest cause is "the runaway horse of capitalism" [RT: isn't it just materialism?] | |
| It's "the adaptation of the metaphors of abstract institutions to the local, intimate, more traditional sphere of private life". [RT: hasn't that been so for some time, e.g. with organized religion and 'groups' of all sorts?] | ||
| Do we "invest in," and "divest from, emotional capital", related to some notion of "emotional profit"? [RT: i.e., do we treat emotion like we do material assets, thinking how we might manage things to be 'better off'?] | ||
| 11 | One strategy may be to limit "emotional connection", as an "emotional insurance policy" - by "deep acting". | |
| "... Culture impinges at many points: at the point of recognizing a feeling; at labelling a feeling; at appraising a feeling; at managing a feeling; and at expressing a feeling." [RT: true, but we can get the feeling before any conscious rationalization - and we may get that feeling partly from our cultural background.] | ||
| ARH sums up the bride's story by saying "The bride seeks to enter a private emotional bubble", by "weaving together the tatters of a waning tradition" against "the culture of capitalism" which "insinuates its way into the very core of our being". [RT: sounds daft to me.] | ||
| 12 | ARH asks "What social contexts produce the 'best' ways of feeling?" [RT: this seems a futile question. What serious chances have we of 'engineering' new social contexts? Surely not a good old Marxist-Leninist revolution, for a start!] | |
| [RT] | In my view, this chapter suffers from having only a single anecdote-type case study, and some rather simplistic Aunt Sally tactics. | |
| 2 - | 'Emotion and Communicative Action' by Nick Crossley. The title refers to links with Habermas's theory. | |
| 16 | Crossley's summarization of Habermas's (H's) theory: 1) communicative, intersubjective interaction is the basic unit of social analysis (not as with Talcott Parsons, 'action'); 2) validity of all speech acts can be judged on a) propositional content (i.e.logical), b) social and moral right, and c) sincerity. But H is generally regarded as 'thin' in the "affective dimension" (i.e. emotion, feelings etc). | |
| 17 | Communication can be "more than an exchange of symbols and ideas ... interlocutors make emotional as well as cognitive appeals". | |
| Psychoanalysis [RT: e.g. Freud] doesn't really help us explore emotion. | ||
| 18 | The language game rules for 'emotion' and 'sensation' are different; sensation has a location, emotion does not. [RT: but again, how much of this is about 'expressing' the emotion?] | |
| 19 | "One can't argue someone else out of toothache" [RT: i.e., that's a sensation.] | |
| Jeff Coulter (who wrote 'Social Construction of Mind') sees emotion differently, e.g. he thinks it's OK to say "you shouldn't be angry" (meaning it's public and intersubjective). [RT: but I can still feel angry, even if it may be unjustified and someone can talk me out of it.] | ||
| The connection between emotion (presumed to be expressed) and physiological state is, according to Coulter, "not determinate". | ||
| "There is a conventional preference for particular emotions [RT: again, to be expressed] in particular situations, e.g. grief at funerals, excitement at sporting events and pop concerts" - and for "affective neutrality" [RT: i.e. don't show them] in many other situations. | ||
| 20 | Conventions can vary depending on what role each person is identified with, e.g. "as a man, a woman, a child, a doctor, a teacher" - and these have varied over history. | |
| "There is an 'ought' clause in the language game of emotion." | ||
| Crossley admits that this linguistic viewpoint is inadequate; it only covers "the manner in which emotions are accounted for" and not "the way they are lived and acted out". | ||
| 21 | "Language games can (sometimes should) be played with emotion." | |
| Emotion "provides the necessary conditions for stable personalities" and "variously holds social situations together - or pulls them apart". | ||
| 22 | Existentialists (e.g. Sartre, Merleau-Ponty = M-P) agree that "sensations and physiological processes and changes are usually involved in emotional shifts and states ... but in themselves these processes do not constitute emotions". | |
| Anger and joy correlate with similar physiological changes, but "anger is more extensive than joy". | ||
| "Crying lends itself equally to happiness, sadness and fear." | ||
| 22-3 | M-P: "We must reject the prejudice which makes 'inner realities' out of love, hate or anger ... they are not psychic facts hidden at the bottom of another's consciousness; they are types of behaviour or styles of conduct which are visible from the outside". [RT: but how do we know to what extent the emotion has been 'managed'? I think this view is shaky.] | |
| 23 | "We can perform the same behaviours lovingly, angrily etc" ... context is crucial ... anger might at one time "look like jealousy"; at another it might be "rooted in love". | |
| The body showing emotion is a "communicative agent". | ||
| 23-4 | M-P reinforces Coulter's 'intersubjective' view of emotion. [RT: but I'm not totally convinced.] | |
| 24 | "The form of emotional 'praxes' is culture bound" (e.g. Japanese different from European). | |
| Sartre proposed a 'setback behaviour' view of emotion; things suddenly don't go to plan. The emotion might be mechanical, or it might be "sod it, maybe it doesn't matter so much". | ||
| 25 | Sartre thought the possible 'mechanical' emotions that result are too varied, so he postulated that they were "purposive" [RT: presumably, "managed"]. | |
| Emotions 'qua praxis' [RT: presumably, 'as disclosed through action] "bestows a value or significance on things" (here equated with 'intentionality'). [RT: That's not the only possible meaning of 'intentionality'.] | ||
| 26 | Emotion arises mainly at the pre-reflective stage [RT: see M-P elsewhere]. | |
| Sartre talked about a "magical transformation" from one line of intentionality to another" (e.g. love to hate, anger to joy). [RT: the latter reminds me of the circumstances of my own retirement!] | ||
| 27 | We can't decide when to fall asleep (just prepare ourselves for it by lying down and switching off). | |
| "Subjects can actively and consciously 'put on' emotions [RT: like John McEnroe?] or pretend sleep. | ||
| "Emotions are more than behavioural masks that we can consciously manage; they actually subtend and make possible our conscious grip on the world." | ||
| [RT: on the whole, this page is rather confusing.] | ||
| 28 | "We do not just have emotions; we exist in and by way of them." | |
| "... The existentialists ... do not invoke 'the unconscious' as an explanation of action or as a centre of agency. Emotional shifts are understood as processes of blind but purposive [RT: my italics] adaptation on behalf of the person qua organism." | ||
| Sartre: "The magical (i.e. emotional) attitude is said to be primordial, with instrumental rationality being a secondary achievement." | ||
| "The social world is magical for Sartre; it is emotionally constituted." | ||
| 29 | This last point is similar to Habermas (H) but not quite. H's 'communicative action' is still regulated by rationality, since it needs shared understanding and agreement. | |
| 30 | Crossley suggests both have to be incorporated; emotions "can form part of the communicative order". | |
| "Communicative praxes routinely involve an emotional appeal. Interlocutors often have expectations about the way in which their 'other' should feel about certain issues ... or ... they may try to invoke certain feelings in the other, even taunting them." [RT: don't we just have to recognize when it is an emotional appeal?] | ||
| 31 | It's usually an appeal to the (common) "assumptions of the lifeworld". Emotion may protect 'social integration' "when our fundamental beliefs or our ways of reasoning are under threat". [RT: that's not much help in a pluralistic society like we have in the West today.] | |
| The 'deviance' shown in mental illness similarly provokes emotions. | ||
| 32 | "Anger ... may be a response to the refusal of one's interlocutors to take one's speech acts seriously. For these reasons we can never pronounce on the politics or functioning of emotion in communicative systems in general. Alternatively, like psychoanalysts, we should see emotion as a signal to be interpreted." | |
| "Through marches, dances and songs (rituals) we call up the emotional magic ..." | ||
| 33 | M-P considers the "institution" of personal history, whereas Sartre thinks we are constantly re-inventing ourselves. | |
| "Like Habermas, M-P recognizes that personalities are produced and reproduced by way of communicative action." [RT: but I think Crossley takes this too far.] | ||
| 34 | Existentialism at least overcomes "the tendency to reduce emotion to ... mechanical ... unintelligent sensations" and sees it as "an aspect of the purposive and 'intentional' life of human beings". | |
| The possible limitations of this are: 1) mood-altering drugs and 2) reflective monitoring and management of emotions. [RT: I'd say 2 is a very big limitation - surely we do it all the time?] | ||
| 35 | Habermas laments "colonization of the lifeworld" by "expert systems" [RT: I think he meant things like 'best practice' and 'standard procedures', not necessarily the Artificial Intelligence idea] and the consequent "cultural impoverishment". [RT: I'd say 'tough titties' - we almost certainly can't wind the clock back. It's like the tree of knowledge. So - how do we now act for the best?] | |
| 3 - | 'The Limitations of Cultural Constructionism in the Study of Emotion' by Margot Lyon (ANU) | |
| 39 | At the time of writing, Margot Lyon (ML) claimed "The concept of culture continues to dominate knowledge production in contemporary anthropology" and that it "has considerable importance in sociology as well". [RT: I start off thinking that's anathema. 1) 'Culture' has the connotation of 'age old tribalistic religion and beliefs that don't stand up to what humanity now knows'; 2) such simplistic cultures may be OK for people with relatively straightforward lifestyles; and 3) there's an implied view that any culture is 'just as good' as any other, and especially compared to the way we live now in the capitalist West.] | |
| 39-40 | Culture is "... a complex system of symbols, meanings, categories, models or schemata that structure experience and action". | |
| 40 | So it determines "the very structure and substance of human existence". [RT: I'd say that many humans are well capable of crossing cultural divides.] | |
| "'Symbol' has come to represent the range of 'non-rational ideas'." | ||
| So, culture is deemed to determine "emotion, including feelings, sentiments, motivation, expression" ... and in fact the 'self'. | ||
| 41 | Marcus and Fischer (1986) thought they could cut through "the apparent homogenization of contemporary institutional forms of social life, particularly now that there seems to be a withering away of publicly enacted traditions". | |
| There's a problem between "private meaning and public symbol". | ||
| 42 | Geertz insisted "that meaning is a public fact". [RT: I disagree.] | |
| Michelle Rosaldo: "Affects are always culturally informed". [RT: but might not psychology be much more significant?] | ||
| 43 | Rosaldo wanted to take "the consideration of emotion out of a psychobiological realm". [RT: seems like a bad idea. Was this suggested because anthropological analysis couldn't hack it?] ML agrees, that's not good enough. | |
| To treat self, person and emotion as domains of cultural inquiry is "a form of chasing one's tail" and "circular". In any case, culture is subject to change. | ||
| 45 | There are "difficulties in specifying the relationship between cognitive and affective components". | |
| Cultural analysis doesn't "deal directly and explicitly with the human embodiment of emotion - the 'guts' of feeling ..." | ||
| 46 | The native 'inchoateness' of 'culture' "acts to hinder transcendence of the distinction between the rational and irrational". It gets stuck with 'dualisms'. This is particularly relevant with emotions. [RT: Help!!] | |
| 47-8 | Is emotion in "culturally constituted phenomena" or in "individual psyches"? What about the bodily aspects of emotion? ML thinks these are 'under-acknowledged". | |
| 48-9 | Rosaldo still claims that even embodied emotion is culture based, but this is getting difficult to maintain. | |
| 49 | Renato Ronaldo, however, says that this is not enough "to account for the power of (bodily) feelings. | |
| 50 | Ronaldo: "... An enduring intensity in human conduct which can occur with or without (culture). | |
| Emotion may show through, "like the passions, somewhere in between ... 'substances in the blood' and 'social practices'. | ||
| Rosaldo tries to maintain "the boundaries between biologic being and the cultural world". [RT: possibly a forlorn hope - maybe it's 'heart' anti-positivism, like Michael Polanyi, or some postmodernists.] | ||
| 51 | There has been a fight back, based on Merleau-Ponty's concept of the 'lived body'. | |
| Michael Jackson (1983 article in 'Man'): "Culture, through the notion of the superorganic, has served as a token to demarcate, separate, exclude and deny" (e.g. roles like peasants, barbarians, workers, primitive people, women, children, animals and material artefacts); "a persistent theme is the denial of the somatic". | ||
| George Lakoff: "Our concept of anger is embodied via the autonomic nervous system and ... the conceptual metaphors and metonymies used in understanding anger are by no means arbitrary". | ||
| 52 | Biologies may still be 'socialized'. | |
| (Human) "movements are never simply individual ones; they are always associative and therefore communicative". [RT: what about working out in a private gym, or swimming laps?] | ||
| 53 | Even with the phenomenological view, "the felt sense, the 'guts', is still not fully represented. ML (and Jack Barbalet) want to tie these to social relations. | |
| "The activation (as a result of emotions) always occurs in a socio-relational context." | ||
| "The neocortex and the limbic system ... are also centrally associated with social behaviour." | ||
| Social relations (e.g. power, status) are productive of particular emotions. | ||
| 55 | "We (sociologists!) must overcome our fear of biology." | |
| [RT] | I found this chapter really tough. I had to read it an extra time back to front. It seemed like 'stream of consciousness'. | |
| 4 - | 'The Sociogenesis of Emotion - a Historical Sociology' by Tim Newton | |
| 61 | History isn't a 'linear development' - it's "punctuated by breaks, by non-linearity, by unpredictability" (Jorge Arditi). | |
| But these aren't like Foucault's 'accidents', which F says "accompany every beginning". | ||
| 62-3 | According to Norbert Elias's 'metanarrative', "individual fiefdoms" were replaced by "stable monarchies" through "monopolization of the means of violence", resulting in "aristocratic classes" becoming servants of the centralized power, and hence we got "courtly society ... enforcing constraints on the affects, self-discipline and self-control ..." [RT: I think this was meant to explain how we came to inherit the 'polite society' we sort of still have today.] | |
| 64 | Hochschild had suggested some "emotional utopia" where "emotion management" was a "private act", compared with what we do post industrialization. | |
| Did Rousseau's 'noble savage' really have "an utter absence of calculation", and so 'felt' spontaneously? | ||
| La Bruyčre (17th century): "An accomplished courtier is master of his gestures, his eyes, his face; he is deep and impenetrable; he can dissemble when he is doing an ill turn, smile on his enemies, restrain his temper, disguise his passions, act contrary to his feelings, speak against his conviction .." and it's all falsehood which might have been better replaced by straightness". | ||
| 65 | So, it's not industrialization that caused the problems with emotion (as Hochschild seemed to suggest). | |
| Why do we have the stereotypes that women 'do' more emotion? Can it be tied in with the historical development of gender roles? | ||
| 66 | Mumby and Putnam (1992 - they wrote about 'Bounded Emotionality') suggested that "with the aid of company training programs, a few centuries of emotional restraint can be conveniently swept aside". [RT: well, it may not get that far, but it might help a bit!] | |
| 67 | "The popular culture of Hollywood and television" might have affected norms regarding emotion (e.g. regarding violence), but it wasn't so long before when there was "widespread acceptance of the open celebration and enjoyment of violence (especially by men)". [RT: e.g. cock fighting, bear baiting etc.] | |
| "Once we assume that the 'delivery' of a blow, a smile, a grimace or a tear is variant across cultures ... we are acknowledging that even the seemingly basic non-verbal aspects of our practical consciousness have been strongly historically conditioned." | ||
| 69 | Elias (1983): "... By the time of the 'bourgeois society', the professional sphere is the primary area in which social constraints and formative tendencies impinge upon people". And prestige is often more in salary than in social rank | |
| 70 | Was "attachment to pre-industrial and aristocratic values in 19th century England (reinforced by the 'Public Schools') ... responsible for English economic and industrial decline through the 20th century? [RT: As Newton suggests, that's a very subjective opinion. I'd say there were many other causes.] | |
| Marjorie Morgan (1994) suggested that 'etiquette' books replaced 'conduct' (i.e. moralistic) ones. | ||
| 71 | Bulwer-Lytton (1840): "The distinguishing trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet ... they eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their money, or even their wife, in quiet". [RT: that seems to have largely gone - it's all noise now.] | |
| Morgan said that etiquette was for "readers ... rising from the humbler ranks ... to be more effective social climbers". | ||
| 72 | Was this part of "the growing commercialization of ... personal identity"? | |
| 73 | Now, there's much more " 'informalization' of social and emotional codes", maybe due to "lessening of power inequalities" - but wealth inequalities have increased. | |
| We now see "the need for an external 'show' of restraint (about one's standing). | ||
| 74 | But there could be other factors, e.g. "universal suffrage, the perception of an open, democratic and meritocratic society ... and the general feeling that skill and talent will be rewarded ..." | |
| Also, " 'welfarism' has critically reduced the threat of destitution". | ||
| So Foucault (his power/knowledge relations) might still be relevant. | ||
| 75 | "Catharsis on the street is not recommended, and individuals are generally encouraged to 'relieve' their feelings in private settings through psychotherapy, stress management, group work and so on." | |
| "Traditional gender asymmetry in emotional expression may be changing." | ||
| 76 | We are still short of good historical analyses of emotion in the 20th century. [RT: maybe Newton has written more since?] | |
| Part 2 | 'The Mediation of Emotional Experience' | |
| 5 - | 'Bored and Blasé: Television, the Emotions and Georg Simmel' by Keith Tester | |
| 83-96 | The general message is that media in general and TV in particular have had a big effect on our emotional profiles. | |
| 83-4 | Alfred Weber found even news and radio 'too much'. [RT: he "ain't seen nothing yet"!] | |
| "The old barriers of practices, emotions, imaginations and property which protected the private individual [RT: really?] from the outside world had been breached by the technology which, on the one hand, made the individual an informed and knowledgeable 'citizen of the world', but which, on the more terrible other hand, made that individual suffer from what amounted to a surfeit of consciousness about the world." | ||
| 84-5 | For Anthony Giddens, it's 'disembedding' - "the individual is pulled out of the relationship of trust, certainty and confidence which local tradition nurtures ... Tradition has 'guardians', and unlike custom, has binding force which has a combined moral and emotional content". [RT: I think I'm glad to be shot of this.] | |
| 86-7 | Kevin Robins opposes "the model of the rational consumer of the TV". We can "escape the emotional and moral consequences of seeing and knowing". | |
| 88 | "The pictures of horror are banal" ... (partly) because the screen is flat and relatively small. Things are also presented as part of a narrative. | |
| 89 | Zygmunt Bauman: "Just as we meet strangers on the city streets, so we meet strangers on the television". But the latter are "sanitized and safe, like sex with condoms". | |
| 90 | "Simmel's conception of the blasé attitude of the modern city dweller ... a general psychological reaction to the surfeit of stimuli and sensations." It's similar with TV. | |
| 91 | Stjepan Meštrović: "In the end, one reacts to the findings of human rights abuse much as ... to the finding that there is too much smog in Los Angeles - with indifference". | |
| Simmel: "Out of this there emerges the craving today for excitement, for extreme impressions, for the greatest speed in its change". | ||
| 92 | Another consequence is 'reserve'. | |
| 93 | People are "unprepared and unwilling to talk with one another about all that we have seen or heard" - except in cases like Jamie Bulger - which are much nearer our everyday concerns. | |
| 94-5 | "The purposeless talk which practically constitutes and maintains sociability is only effective to the extent that it keeps the conversation away from individual intimacy and all purely personal elements ..." | |
| 95 | "Sociability is the game in which one does 'as if' all were equal." | |
| "The ability to change topics easily and quickly is ... part of the nature of social conversation." | ||
| "Pictures of horror, of war and violence ... do not seem to be so readily and easily amenable to the demands of the sociable conversation" - even if they are "prone to create a shiver for the individual". | ||
| 96 | "We come to feel a certain contempt for those who do 'wear their heart on their sleeve'." | |
| TV can only allow for either 'personal existential concern or 'public engagement' at the same time; so it's either "concern without action" or "discussion without engagement". | ||
| 6 - | 'In Search of the Inner Child' by Norman Denzin | |
| 97-119 | This chapter is about experiences (not all positive) with co-dependency sufferers accessing a 'Usenet' newsgroup and receiving advice from other newsgroup members. | |
| 118 | (Footnote) Donald Polkinghorne (a 'narrative inquiry' specialist): "Stories are narratives, tellings with beginnings, middles and ends. Stories begin with an initial situation. A sequence of events leads to the disturbance, or reversal, of this situation. The revelation of character and setting is made possible by this disturbance. A personification of characters (protagonists, antagonists and witnesses) also occurs. The resolution of this predicament leads to stories where there is a regression, a progression, or no change in the main character's situation." | |
| 7 - | 'Emotion, Cyberspace and the "Virtual Body" ' by Simon Williams | |
| 120-32 | Baudrillard talked about 'blunting' of emotional experience by media bringing 'simulations' and enforcing the primacy of 'representation' (over 'reality'). | |
| Tony Walter et al (authors of 'Death in the News' (1955), suggest that "clear appeals are made ... as to the appropriate emotional response". | ||
| Williams touches on 'cybersexuality' and 'cyberporn' - do these "free us from the confines of our physical bodies"? | ||
| A "disembodied virtual future" isn't going to satisfy anyone indefinitely. "Only on the basis of our carnal bonds with others ... can a truly human ethics of trust, emotional intimacy and responsibility emerge." | ||
| Part 3 | 'Emotions and the Body through the Life-course | |
| 8 - | 'Children, Emotions and Daily Life at Home and School' by Berry Mayall | |
| 135-54 | This chapter reports and comments on some child health studies, and includes some transcripts of children describing their emotions in various situations. | |
| "Much depends on how far adults accept the child's 'personhood'." [RT: I agree.] | ||
| 9 - | 'Shorties, Low-lifers, Hardnuts and Kings' by Shirley Prendergast and Simon Forrest | |
| 155-72 | This chapter contains a lot of transcripts and stories from studies in schools, mainly addressing boys' emotions and their de facto pecking orders. | |
| 10 - | 'Ageing and the Emotions' by Mike Hepworth | |
| 173-89 | There can be a "lack of fit" between what older people feel and what the "socially prescribed emotions of ageing" are. Then there's nostalgia [RT: but I've been doing that for decades!]. A lot of the chapter seems to be quotes from novels, rather than any experimental studies. | |
| Part 4 | 'Sexuality, Intimacy and Personal Relations' | |
| 11 - | 'Masculinity, Violence and Emotional Life' by Victor Jeleniewski Seidler | |
| 193-210 | Are typical male emotional characteristics all due to reason being considered above emotion? [RT: or is it the 'dog eat dog' nature of men's existence? This chapter is all about the 'music hall male', a corny stereotype - " no emotion please, we're British". The recommendations seem weak to me.] | |
| 12 - | 'Stepford Wives and Hollow Men' by Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden | |
| 211-27 | Does a woman's 'nurturing' role include managing the emotions of her man and 'the relationship as a whole'? Men compartmentalize their lives more. [RT: I'm not sure this still applies where the woman is the main breadwinner.] | |
| Those who do 'emotion work' are in danger of behaving " inauthentically". | ||
| 13 - | 'Changes in the 'Lust Balance" ' by Cas Wouters | |
| 228-49 | It seems things haven't always changed in one direction (e.g. more and more lust). Various trends and events have triggered both ups and downs. | |
| Part 5 | 'Emotions and Health' | |
| 14 - | 'Emotions, Pain and Gender' by the 2 editors. GB's special topic is 'pain'. | |
| 253-67 | This consists mainly of interview excerpts and comments on them. It's mainly about pain: 1) it's socially modified; and 2) "People in pain need to find meaning for their symptoms". | |
| 15 - | 'Social performances and their Discontents' by Peter Freund | |
| 268-94 | This is about 'stage fright' symptoms in a wide range of situations, whether bodily, mental or social. | |
| 16 - | 'Getting the Job Done' by Liz Meerabeau and Susie Page | |
| 295- 312 | This is about emotions, primarily of nurses, in CPR work, both successful and unsuccessful. | |
| 17 - | 'Emotions in Rationalizing Organizations' by Virginia Olesen and Debora Bone | |
| 313-29 | Conflicts emerge when "the highly dynamic domain of health and healing", with all the emotions that are involved there, "collides with the formalism and rule-bound and cool 'matter of factness' of bureaucratic administration. Fiscal crises in US health care have necessitated more and more 'efficiency'. With the increased variety of less-trained auxiliaries, nurses have had to become yet smarter on the emotional side of their job. Sometimes they have to be more "affectively neutral", but with the change from 'patients' to 'clients', health professionals have to give warmer emotional responses. |
Mainly in the earlier chapters, there seemed to be some implied nostalgia among the writers for older, traditional and simpler cultures and societies. And in some cases, e.g. Hochschild, I read a wish to put all the modern strains down to capitalism (where I think she should have said 'modernism'), but without discussing how any particular alternatives would make the problems less - or go away.
Some of the later chapters were rather stereotyped in their outlook; however I thought the final paper was the best of the lot.
I thought the book as a whole was long on anecdotes, but short of comprehensive surveys and deductions.
There is some more recent literature in this area. One example is 'The
Sociology of Emotions' by Turner & Stets of the Uni. of California at Riverside (Cambridge UP,
2005). The same authors have produced 'Handbook
of the Sociology of Emotions' (Springer, 2008). There is also an American
study group on the Sociology of Emotions - see
http://www2.asanet.org/Emotions/
.
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 10th June 2011
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .