Sociology of Emotions

Question 1

Emotion

Answer 1

Biological, behavioural, cultural and social states of arousal.

Chemical releases caused by individual and/or social factors.

Question 2

Elias

Answer 2

Embarrassment and shame are social emotions
Embarrassment occurs when social norms are broken.
Shame occurs when we fail to meet expectations.

• Private & public: Socially produced emotions likely to be stronger in public than in private*
• Social interaction: Requires a social interaction to feel the socially produced emotions*
• Social order: What is considered embarrassing/shameful is dependent on cultural patterns*

Question 3

Hochschild

Answer 3

Emotional labour
Workers exchange emotional labour for money e.g. air hostesses, escorts.

Emotional labour = face-to-face interaction with the public, evoking emotional responses in others (e.g. comfort)

• Unintended consequences:
  1) Emotional burnout.
  2) Alienation: modern social relationships lead to emotional estrangement (due to acting all day)
  3) Commodification: emotions become commodities*

Question 4

Surface acting

Answer 4

Fake it till you make it

We act as we should feel

Question 5

Deep acting

Answer 5

We embody & become the emotion

Question 6

Luhmann

Answer 6

LOVE
Intensely personal emotion and experience
Individual over the community.

Love is not a feeling but a private medium of communication between two people within modern society.

Question 7

Luhmann & Love in the Past

Answer 7

1) Love in the past was political or religious, e.g. platonic love between an educated man and a young boy.
2) Love was reserved for privileged groups.

Question 8

Luhmann & Love in Medieval times

Answer 8

1) People learned what romantic love is through romance literature

2) This changed the perception of the love
eg. the character of Madame bovary returning from a monastery and believing in love a different way than her husband can give her.

Question 9

Love in postmodern society

Answer 9

Transition from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity
(communal to chosen)

Love is passionate and individualised.

Love is for all irrespective of class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

BUT this is only valid in the West, persecution & exile in other countries for homosexuals.

Social systems: Love is developing the power to overrule legalities and government (social systems) in postmodern (Western) society

Question 10

Katz

Answer 10

Driving in LA
Asymmetrical awareness = when other drivers don’t acknowledge us as much as we acknowledge them
→ Leads to embarrassment because we feel unrecognized and marginalized.
We see this as a crime against social order.

Front/ back seat driving = The driver experiences the car as an extension of the self (McLuhan) but the passenger lacks control and likely to feel fear.

Question 11

Why do sociologists study driving?

Answer 11

1) Driving is a mass social interaction
2) Allows study of both private & public (private in the car, yet public on the road)
3) Driving involves practical consciousness (doing and not thinking, autopilot). Emotions whilst driving force us out of this practical consciousness and into an conscious, emotional state.

Question 12

Cohen

Answer 12

Moral panics → a reaction to a perceived threat to dominant social norms
A group of people become defined as folk devils
eg. ethnic minorities, immigrants, benefit fraudsters and mods and rockers.

Media play an important role in moral panic (see other card)

• Social order: Moral panics create strong emotional reactions which are used to propagate dominant social norms.*
• Social patterning: People are reduced to categories → behavioural patterns consistent with media-fuelled stereotypes may emerge.*

Question 13

The Media & Moral Panics

Answer 13

Media play an important role in moral panic → exaggeration, prediction and symbolisation.

The media end up dictating the social emotional response.