Michael Hviid Jacobsen - Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology

This volume explores the emotions that are intricately woven into the texture of everyday life and experience. A contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions, it focuses on the role of emotions as being integral to daily life, broadening our understanding by examining both core emotions and those that are often overlooked or omitted from more conventional studies. Bringing together theoretical and empirical studies from scholars across a range of subjects, including sociology, psychology, cultural studies,history, politics and cognitive science, this international collection centres on the everyday-ness of emotional experience.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University, Denmark. His research is concerned with topics such as crime, utopia, ethics, death and dying, palliative care, qualitative methods and social theory. His recent publications include Beyond Bauman, Postmortal Society, The Interactionist Imagination and Liquid Criminology.

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both classical and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it.

The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts.

Series Editor

Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Texas A&M University, USA

Titles in this series

Lost in Perfection

Impacts of Optimisation on Culture and Psyche

Edited by Vera King, Benigna Gerisch and Hartmut Rosa

Critical Theory and the Classical World

Martyn Hudson

Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology

Edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1383

Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology

Edited by
Michael Hviid Jacobsen

First published 2019

by Routledge

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2019 selection and editorial matter, Michael Hviid Jacobsen; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Michael Hviid Jacobsen to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jacobsen, Michael Hviid, 1971- editor.

Title: Emotions, everyday life and sociology / edited by Michael Hviid Jacobsen.

Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Classical and contemporary social theory | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018009997| ISBN 9781138633339 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315207728 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Social sciencesPhilosophy. | Emotions.

Classification: LCC H61 .E456 2018 | DDC 302dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009997

ISBN: 978-1-138-63333-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-20772-8 (ebk)

It is sometimes said and a famous song-line even states that love is all around. Love, however, is not the only emotion permeating human life (if this was indeed the case, then the world would probably be a much better place to live than it currently is) all other emotions are also all around: anger, fear, trust, loyalty, envy, jealousy, cynicism, sadness, joy, misery, empathy, laziness, boredom, anger, depression, happiness, embarrassment, shame, guilt, desire, excitement, pride, and so on. The list of emotions is too long even to attempt to exhaust here. This testifies to the fact that human life and with it social life and everyday life is saturated with emotions. This book is a sociological tribute to some of these emotions.

We live in emotional times, and even though some claim that these are in fact post-emotional times (just as they are apparently also post-factual times), emotions in an almost unprecedented manner seem to capture the public imagination not only in politics and everyday life, but also in academia. Today, torrents of literature dealing with, dissecting, describing and analysing emotions are being published within various scientific disciplines and sub-fields, whereas half a century ago hardly anyone wrote about or researched emotions in any detail. We now have the sociology of emotions, the psychology of emotions, the social psychology of emotions, the anthropology of emotions and the history of emotions, just to mention a few of the areas having paid particular attention to studying emotions. This goes to show that from previously being shunned or practiced primarily on the outskirts of the social sciences, the study of emotions is now embraced as a topic worthy of academic attention (either in its own right or as an integral part of other areas of research) even by high-profile researchers.

In my experience, one of the most important yet nevertheless often disregarded emotions in everyday life is thankfulness or gratitude. I would therefore like to extend my gratitude to the books many contributors, who so willingly have shared their research-based knowledge on different emotions. I would also like to take this opportunity, as always, to thank my two partners in crime, Alice Salt and Neil Jordan at Routledge, for a professional collaboration on this volume. It has once again been a pleasure working with you.

Aalborg University, Winter 2017/2018

Michael Hviid Jacobsen

Gordon Clanton has taught Sociology at San Diego State University, United States, since 1975. The author/editor of the book Jealousy (1977/1998), he is a pioneer in the sociological study of emotions and a founding member of the Emotions Section of the American Sociological Association. Other research interests include the sociology of religion and the sociology of knowledge.