The Sociology of Emotions

Emotions are both ingredients and instruments for managing life, a management that predominantly consists of subjecting emotions here and now to emotions in the future. One’s pattern of behaviour can therefore be conceived of as the result of a process of checking emotions – the individual civilizing of emotions. In this sense an individual can never be more intelligent that his emotions (and genes) allow him to be. This individual civilizing process is more or less attuned to the dominant code of behaviour and feeling in a society – to its level 27 and pattern of civilization.

The dominant pattern of emotion management contains and sets the boundaries of all social definitions, for instance of what can be validated as being ‘rational’ or ‘moral’. (In this sense a human being can never be more intelligent than social definitions allow him to be.) Not only what can be made operative as rational or moral, but also as truth, beauty, justice and taste depends upon the dominant social definitions, or upon the social habitus of a society – shorthand for its dominant pattern and level of self-regulation and emotion management. The same goes for the social definition of respect, virtue and all other criteria people use in evaluating themselves and each other. The criteria for social ranking are closely related to what appear to be basic or survival functions in a society, that is, to the posture of dangers and chances, emotions (anxieties and passions) and controls – sort of a tries sociologica. In this perspective, changes in peoples likes and dislikes, in their mutual valuation and its resulting social hierarchy are also collective emotional movements, indicating changes in power relationships and in the ‘tries sociologica’.

Reference :

Wouters, C.(n.d.). Hochschild’s Book The Managed Heart. www.academia.edu. [online] Available at: https://www.academia.edu/15670913/Hochschild_s_Book_The_Managed_Heart [Accessed 21 May 2021].