PhD Course: Sociology of Emotions, Autumn, 2019 (7,5 ECTS), 28 – 30 August, Copenhagen University, 7- 8 November, University of Gothenburg

Registration deadline June 1, 2019! 

Do you research into emotions or emotional matters? Do you consider certain emotions as part of understanding or explaining your research matter? Or, do you consider sociological theory interesting and relevant?  Then consider taking this Autumn course on sociology of emotions.

The course will familiarize students with classical and contemporary perspectives in the sociology of emotions and enable them to critically discuss theoretical assumptions, methodological approaches and empirical results within the sociology of emotions. Moreover, it will contribute to advancing a theoretical framework and methodological approach to a specific research problem in the student’s project. Students may examine the course with (7,5 hec) or without (3,5 hec) a course paper.

 

The course offers a broad overview of theories and research in the sociology of emotions, covering both structural and situational/interactional approaches to the role of emotions in social life. Part of the course deals with the students research projects, through which there is opportunity to discuss project ideas in relation to the perspectives on emotions presented. There will also be opportunity to discuss various methods employed and ways to apply and develop theory in the analysis of empirical data. The course offers both a broad perspective on the state of the art of the sociology of emotions, as well as in-depth specialization in the chosen area. (For further information see attached course program with all details here!)

 

Course teachers

Merete Monrad, Associate Professor, Ålborg University, monrad@socsci.aau.dk

Poul Poder, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, pp@soc.ku.dk

Åsa Wettergren, Professor, Gøteborg University asa.wettergren@socav.gu.se

 

Guest teacher: Jack Barbalet, Professor, Australian Catholic University, Australia

Course language: English.

 

Registration deadline June 1, 2019, to:

Anna-karin.wiberg@gu.se

or Lene El Mongy, phd@soc.ku.dk

#CfP: New Journal_Emotions & Society

DRAFT PROGRAMME: Joint Conference of the European Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Research Network (RN11) and the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Study Group, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, August 28th –30th, 2018

Draft Programme — WILL LIKEY CHANGE AFTER REGISTRATION

Joint Midterm Conference of the European Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Research Network (RN11) and the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Study Group, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, August 28^th –30^th, 2018.

NOTE: PhD Workshop will take place on Monday, August 27^th.

Tuesday, August 28^th

9.00 – 9.50          Registration/Coffee

9.50 – 10.00        Welcome

10.00 – 12.00 Session 1

Session 1.1.  Theorizing Affect & Emotion (1)
Feelings of values and social forms leading to action: How emotions contribute to the structuration of the social world?	Minner, Frédéric
Managing the (in)visibility of emotions: Integrating the dimension of space in Hochschild´s concept of emotion management	Margies, Nina
Emotions by Design? Squaring the Circle from Emotion Management to Emotion Regulation	Patulny, Roger
Public Emotions: Feelings Entangled Between Representation and Persuasion	Verbalyte, Monika
Session 1.2 History,  Memory and Nostalgia
Emotion, memory and politics. Maurice Halbwachs idea of ‘historical memory’ and the current debate on historical nostalgia.	Scherke, Katharina
The JET Programme: Power, Nostalgia and Emotions	Estampador Hughson, Sharleen
Imperial Daydreaming about the Ottoman Past: Turkey as a Case Study in State-Sponsored Nostalgia	Karakaya, Yagmur
Hope and Fear. Concepts of Peace and War in Austria before, during and after the First World War	Haring, Sabine
Session 1.3. Collective emotions, identities and social movements
The Emotional Construction of Identity – A Communication-Theoretical Approach	Kurilla, Robin
Collective Emotion: What was, what is and what could be.	Day, Chris
Emotions and social movements. An analysis proposal from the interaction ritual and the cultural performance.	Giménez, Ferran
How to Measure Emotions at Political Rallies? Empirical Study of Political Demonstrations in Hungary	Kiss, Balázs

 

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch

13.00 – 15.00 Session 2

Session 2.1. Religion and Emotion
Religion as Emotional Management: the case of sorrow and death	Asma, Stephen
Continuing bonds. Grief and the belief in afterlife	Jakoby, Nina
How megachurches manage emotions	Pruisken, Insa
Between being “wary of religion” to “destiny is everything”: modes of managing emotions in case of first generation entrepreneurs	Bhansali, Kumud
Session 2.2. State and Emotion
The Emotional State and its (Im)Moral Practices	Rungius, Madeleine
Voice, Politics of Shaming and Social Bond: Protests by Schoolteachers and Farmers in Post-Soviet Latvia (1991 – 2000)	Ķešāne, Iveta
The Chosen Emotion: Gratitude, Education, and the Relationships between the State and Its Disadvantaged Citizens	Shoshana, Avihu
Emotion and discourse: The political demise of Metiria Turei	Gray, Claire
Session 2.3. (Un)certainties of Status and Emotions
How Wealth Elites Feel? Deep Stories among the Wealthiest 0.1%	Kantola, Anu
Being Professional and Acting on a Hunch: Epistemic emotions and cybervetting in job recruitments	Hedenus, Anna (with Christel Backman)
Emotional implications of career development: reflections from career histories of female professors of Pakistani universities	Sadaf , Fouzia
Examining the relationship between dimensions of social stratification and individuals’ propensity for emotion regulation	Kuche, Coline

 

15.30 – 17.00 Session 3

Session 3.1.Towards a Digital Sociology of Emotions
Toward a Digital Sociology of Emotions: Emotions-as-practice in the digital space	Eright, Jacob
The ‘Digital Materiality’ of Emotions: The Case of Tracking Technologies	Pritz, Sarah
Small data: sharing emotion on Twitter	Brownlie, Julie
Session 3.2. Theorizing Affect and Emotion (2)
One step further’ – About affects and courage in a Foucauldian ethos	Mejte, Frederik
A theoretical exploration into researching the unspoken emotions of touching	MacLaren, Jessica
Mapping the interactional dynamics of envy. Envy in the (un)making	Dowgiałło, Bogna

 

17.00 – 17.15     Break

17.15 – 18.45     Keynote Ian Burkitt        

18.45 – Sneaky Pints?

 

Wednesday, 29^th August

9.45 – 10.00 Coffee

10.00 – 12.00 Session 4

Session 4.1. Populism and Emotions
Emotions and populist narratives of crisis	Salmela, Mikko
The Politics of Emotion: Class, Gender and Race within the European Far-right	Landberg, Josefine
The role of Emotions as Moderators of Populist and Programmatic Policies	Farkas, Eszter
In the Face of Anger: New Year’s in Cologne and the Politics of Resentment	Holzberg, Billy
Session 4.2. Emotion in Family and Intimate Relations
Family stories: Childhood intimacies in displacement	Holmes, Mary(with David Anderson, Katherine Baxter, Arek Dakessian, Marie-Eve Hamel, Johannes Langer and Liliana Riga)
Separation Talk. Narrated Emotions and emotional Narrations	Bub, Eva-Maria
The role of emotion in mediating perceptions of equality in couple relationships	McQueen, Fiona
Family stories, discursive repression and the construction of inter-generational relationships	Leshem, Rotem
Session 4.3. Emotion, Bodies, Inequalities
Shame, anger and inequalities: emotions in the sociology of suicide	Chandler, Amy
Disability Studies & Ableism. What’s emotion got to do with it?	Wechuli, Yvonna
Learning to Mind Your Own Emotions: A Sociological Analysis of a Primary School Mindfulness Programme	Hailwood, Ellie
Intersections of emotions, power and status in relation to supporting autistic pupils in secondary school	Graham, Elisabeth

 

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch

13.00 – 14.30 Session 5

Session 5.1. Emotions in the Digital Change
Sociology of emotions in digital leadership and communication	Stana, Raluca
Routinization in Digital Practices: The Case of Viral Fear	Cottingham,  Marci
Affects, social media, and the re-imagination of human-animal boundaries	Policarpo, Verónica
Session 5.2. Law and Emotion
Emotion and judicial independence – moving targets in the sociology of law	Bahl, Friederike
How Swedish prosecutors and judges are deliberating decision making in cases of fraud	Bladini, Moa
Performing the repentant lover in the court-room:An analysis of Oscar Pistorius’ recreation of hegemonic masculinity through emotions	Macht, Alexandra
Session 5.3. Feeling Rules in Health and Care
Emotional labour in the ED: Feeling rules, gender stereotypes and emotional stoicism.	Kirk, Kate
Feeling rules within secure units for adolescents – a staff perspective/ Handling fear among staff – violence and emotion in secure units for adolescents	Andersson, Peter
Feeling the way: reviewing discourses of impact and evidence-based practice in the context of looked after children.	Roszynski, Katrina

 

14.30 – 15.00     Coffee

15.00 – 16.30 Session 6

Session 6.1. Emotions, State and Power
Emotion as Power: Capital and Strategy in the Field of Power	Heaney, Jonathan
Positive emotions as general resources in power to – theorizing a basic constitutive nexus of power and emotion	Poder, Paul
States of Morbidity: The Politics of Contrived Collective Effervescence	Coleman, Roy
Session 6.2. Emotion Construction in Media, Literature and Film
Taming Emotions in The Walking Dead / Moral Emotions in wild, wild Westworld	Seebach, Swen  (with Natália Canto-Mila)
The Historical Development of an Emotionalized Culture – Evidence from a German Youth Magazine	Beyer, Manuela
A Story of Grief. Dismantling feeling rules based on online literary reviews	Jakoby, Nina (with Fiona A. Anderau)
Session 6.3. Emotions in Academia: Research, Practice, Culture
The role of emotions in changing university culture	North, Gemma
Emotional Fatigue of Conducting Research on Domestic Violence: Impact on Family and Intimate Relations	Tayyab, Faiza
(Un)becoming researcher: ‘multimodal participatory journaling’ as a tool for capturing emotion in researcher development within and outside academia	Fransman, Jude

 

16.30 – 16.45     Break

16.45 – 18.15 Keynote Karin Wahl-Jorgensen      

20.00     Conference Dinner

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, 30^th August

9.45 – 10.00        Coffee

10.00 – 12.00     Session 7

Session 7.1. Migration, Asylum and Emotion
Global citizens, emotions and social inclusion	Pratesi, Alessandro
Emotional transnationality in processes of migration	Albrecht, Yvonne
Integration measures and the subjective well-being of refugees: Evidence from a representative German refugee panel	von Scheve, Christian (with Lena Walther, Lukas M. Fuchs, and Jürgen Schupp)
Forced Mobility in Immigration Detention: Emotional Violence as Governmental Technique	Peterie, Michelle
Session 7.2. Morality and Emotions
Taxes and Emotions	Terpe, Sylvia
A thousand sorrows cannot pay a debt: Debt as an emotionful social relation	Karakaya, M. Faith
Recipes for happiness: results from a web survey on morally binding feeling rules	Martín Pérez, Alberto (with Aitor D. Aguayo, José A. Rodríguez Díaz, José Luis Condom Bosch)
Moral emotions and social imageries among volunteers helping refugees in 2015, Hungary	Zakariás, Ildikó  (with Margit Feischmidt)
Session 7.3. Political identity and emotions
Collective emotion as a shared product of group agency and national-level engagement: A case study of South African pride, euphoria and unity in relation to the 2010 FIFA World Cup	Sullivan, Gavin Brent
The emotional management of the migration crisis in Hungary	Kiss, Balázs
‘Turkishness’ at the Stage in Eurovision Song Contest: Gendered Discourses of Affective Nationalism in Turkey	Ural, Haktan
A Union without heart? The role of emotions in European Union (EU) parliamentary debates	Sanchez Salgado, Rosa

 

12.00 – 12.30     Coffee/Snacks

12.30 – 14.30     Business Meeting

14.30 Conference Ends

On the Emotional State: Workshop 2 Friday, November 2nd, 2017, Queen’s University Belfast

If any of you are around Belfast/Queen’s University on Friday feel free to drop in to this!

Jonathan

13th Conference of the European Sociological Association, Athens, 2017: RN11 Session Overview (Sociology of Emotions)

The Board of the ESA RN11 Network (Stina, Monika, and myself) have finalized the schedule of papers for the big ESA Conference in Athens in August. The full programme will be released by the conference organizers soon, but the Sociology of Emotions sessions should look something like this (pdf, including details): ESARN11_Athens_Sessions_FINAL.

We look forward to meeting old and new friends in Athens, so if you are interested in affect and emotion, and are there, do come along and say hello!

 

 

 

Re: blogging: ‘From lens to lens-grinding’, and (the hope of) more to come…

I am eventually getting my mind around the possibility of attempting to begin to consider blogging a bit more and revitalising this old site with some new posts and reflections. At last. And it may not actually happen. Since I last wrote here my partner Fiona and I have had this alien creature crash-land into our lives, with devastating effects on sleep and productivity. It is now over a year old and still alive. We call it Hazel Rose (Hazel Rose Heaney=HRH, does nominative determinism work for initials?).

I am currently working on a load of stuff: theorizing affect and emotion from a process perspective, emotions and party politics, a related, ongoing project on the ’emotional state’ that I hope to get some additional funding toward, and a book, based on a revised version of my PhD, under contract with Routledge, and more. I may write about aspects of these projects here in the future.

Since coming to QUB I have been teaching a lot too, mostly social theory at UG and PG levels, and a bit of political sociology, sociology of emotions, narrative methods, and a few other odds and ends. I have been thinking about this — teaching theory, and ‘theory anxiety’ — a bit too, especially in relation to (my now completed) PGCHET assignments (which should work towards my FHEA qualification). I may add some thoughts here about all that also. This is still primarily a declaration of intent and an attempt to embarrass myself into blogging more, but I did write a blog on teaching and doing theory for Mark Murphy’s excellent site socialtheoryapplied last summer, which I intended to link to here, but didn’t. Here is that link now.

I’ll be in touch. I hope.

Jonathan

 

 

On the Emotional State: Workshop at Queen’s University Belfast, May 27th, 2016

Provisional Programme. More details to follow.

On the Emotional State_poster_final

Deep Stories, Emotional Agendas and Politics By Arlie Hochschild

I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the 12th European Sociological Association Conference in Prague last August, where Prof. Arlie Hochschild (Berkeley) gave one of the plenaries at the opening of the event.

I really enjoyed the paper then, and a video of the plenary has been uploaded to the ESA website here.

The talk reflects, and reflects on, Hochschild’s recent interest in the connections between emotions and politics, and especially political persuasion, which intersect with my own ongoing interest in the linkages between emotions and power, and my new project on (what I am calling) the ’emotional state’. The talk here emerges from her recent work in the American South (especially Louisiana), and the interviews she conducted with members of the right there.

In the presentation, while of course foregrounding emotions and emotion management (to which literature in the sociology of emotions Hochschild has already made substantial, indeed, seminal, contributions to), she introduces a new concept of ‘deep stories’. These are  allegorical, collective and honour-focused stories that, she suggests, lie behind the growth of the right (especially the Tea Party) in the US (and presumably in Europe too). These stories and the emotional logic behind them, will help us to better understand the contemporary political polarization that is emerging in tandem with the increase in social inequality. They will also help us  to understand what it feels like to be a ‘Mary Beth’, and, rather than retreating to our own ideological silos, that we might be able to understand them, and each other, a bit better. It might also help to reaffirm the role of ‘honour’ in social and political processes. The social importance and explanatory value of a political sociology of emotions is here again underlined.  These themes will be explored further in her forthcoming book Strangers in Their Own Land: A Journey into the Heart of the Right. I will suspend judgement until I read that full treatment but the concepts here are certainly interesting. Sitting here in Belfast as I write this, I can, for instance, see some scope for the deployment of ‘deep stories’ in trying to understand the emotional logic of politics here too.

The abstract for the talk is below.

I begin with a paradox. In the United States, as in Europe, the gap between rich and poor has recently widened. At the same time, right-wing groups have risen for whom such a gap poses no problem at all. Based on new fieldwork on the U.S. Tea Party (approved by some 20% -30% of Americans) I ask: what emotional needs does such a movement meet? More basically, how does emotion underlie political belief? In answer I propose the concept of a deep story. It’s an allegorical, collectively shared, honor-focused, “feels-as-if” story. A man is standing in line for a ticket he feels he greatly deserves and which confers honor. At the front of the line is another man behind a dark glass window handing out tickets. In front and in back are others in line. To the side, is an official supervisor of the line. Then some people “cut into” the front of the line, and the story moves from there. Tickets are for the American Dream. The supervisor is the American president, and a rumor is flying that tickets are running out. They – and all of us — see through allegory. And once established, we protect it by pursuing an emotional agenda. This determines what a person wants to feel and know. Liberals have a deep story too. Each story – that of conservative and liberal — implies a strategy of action for addressing global capitalism, and the frightening idea that American –and European –dominance and prosperity may be a “prophecy that fails.” The idea of “deep stories” may help us communicate across a widening political divide and address the issues of difference, inequality –with imagination and compassion

Zygmunt Bauman: ”Liquid Modernity revisited”

In the introduction to my new Global Society class in QUB today I mentioned Bauman’s work on Liquid Modernity in the context of debates on globalization. In this lecture, given in Aarhus in 2012, he gives a useful overview of his approach to some of these issues, which (my own) students especially might find interesting.

 

Living in and coping with world risk society – Ulrich Beck

In this talk (from a few years ago, 2011 I think), sociologist Ulrich Beck outlines and updates his theory of reflexive modernization and the ‘risk society’. He suggests that, to the extent that risk is experienced as omnipresent in the current age, there are only three possible reactions: denial, apathy or transformation. The first, he says, ‘is largely inscribed in modern culture, the second resembles post-modern nihilism, the third is the “cosmopolitan moment” of world risk society’.

In the talk that follows he structures his argument around three key points. In  the first he outlines the distinctive, new features of this world risk society. There is a distinction between risk and catastrophe – they are not the same things. Risk is about the anticipation of catastrophe. This is why, despite the fact that Europe and ‘The West’ are relatively safe, globally speaking, or perhaps even ‘objectively’ so, it is the global anticipation of catastrophe (propagated via symbolic forms in the mass media etc) that is fundamental to the shaping of contemporary societies. These global perceptions of risk have three features: de-localization ( in spatial, temporal and social terms), incalculableness, and non-compensatibility.

His second key point stresses the fundamentally global character of these process, over and against the nation-state as a political level of analysis, and transformative action. Against this methodological nationalism he offers a defence of his cosmopolitan vision for the social sciences, outlined in more detail in his Power and the Global Age (2005). His final point offers some consequences of his position, in general, and a (sympathetic) critique of alternative theoretical conceptions of risk, most notably those of Mary Douglas and Michel Foucault. What is needed is a paradigm shift in the social sciences – the emergence of a cosmopolitan social science – a ‘cosmopolitan turn’.

This defence of cosmopolitanism – his cosmopolitical realpolitik –  is, of course, open to many criticisms and questions, as are his wider arguments about risk, decision-making etc.  There are some questions/discussion after 26 mins or so.