This volume presents a broad range of studies on a variety of emotions from social scientific perspectives. Bringing together scholars from disciplines including sociology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, it examines emotions including desire, empathy, freedom, happiness, hate, disgust, humiliation, guilt, unemotionality and despair, exploring the main facets of these emotions and considering the ways in which they are manifested and folded into our cultural and social lives. It will therefore appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in emotion, affect and contemporary culture.
Preface and acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction Emotions, society and the emotionalisation of society
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Chapter 1 Happiness
- Emotion, critique and the future
Jordan McKenzie
Chapter 2 Empathy
- Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes
Natalia Ruiz-Junco
Chapter 3 Freedom
- Feeling free in an (un)free world
Gunnar Colbjørnsen Aakvaag and Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Chapter 4 Desire
- The pursuit of physical, psychological, interpersonal (and sexual) pleasure
Cheryl Harasymchuk, Pamela C. Regan and Susan Sprecher
Chapter 5 Jealousy
- Exploring the ‘green-eyed monster’
Michael Hviid Jacobsen and Inger Glavind Bo
Chapter 6 Insecurity
- An enduring feeling of self-threat
Valérie de Courville Nicol
Chapter 7 Guilt
- Identity management in response to illegitimate social behaviour
Nobuhiko Goto and Mark A. Ferguson
Chapter 8 Disgust
- Reflections on the nauseating feeling of revulsion and repulsion
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Chapter 9 Humiliation
- The forgotten emotion
Bettina Muenster
Chapter 10 Pain
- From physical pain to social suffering
Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Inger Glavind Bo and Vibeke Graven
Chapter 11 Despair
- Contemplating the abyss
Rowena Ann Pecchenino
Chapter 12 Unemotionality
- Absence, emptiness and affective insensitivity
Tom Roberts
Index
Biography
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at 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 Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology, Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life, Postmortal Society, The Interactionist Imagination and The Age of Spectacular Death.
