1st Edition
Nostalgia Now Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on the Past in the Present
This volume explores the nature of nostalgia as an important emotion in contemporary society and social theory. Situated between the ‘sociology of emotions’ and ‘nostalgia studies’, it considers the reasons for which nostalgia appears to be becoming an increasingly significant and debated emotion in late-modern culture. With chapters offering studies of nostalgia at micro-, meso- and macro-levels of society, it offers insights into the rise to prominence of nostalgia and the attendant consequences. Thematically organised and examining the role of nostalgia on an individual level – in the lives of concrete individuals – as well as analysing its function on a more historical social level as a collective and culturally shared emotion, Nostalgia Now brings together the latest empirical and theoretical work on an important contemporary emotion and proposes new agendas for research. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, psychology and cultural studies with interests in the emotions.
Introduction: in times of nostalgia: the brave new world of a grand old emotion
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Part 1: Conceptual and theoretical perspectives on nostalgia
1. Nostalgia: the paradoxical bittersweet emotion
Krystine Irene Batcho
2. The psychology of nostalgia: delineating the emotion’s nature and functions
Tim Wildschut and Constantine Sedikides
3. Future imaginings: nostalgia for unrealized possible selves
Janelle L. Wilson
4. Retrotopia rising: the topics of utopia, retrotopia and nostalgia in the sociology of Zygmunt Bauman
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Part 2: Memory, politics and social critique in a mediatised era
5. Dangerous memories: nostalgia and the historical sublime
Steven T. Ostovich
6. The dilemmas of radical nostalgia: acknowledging the power of the past in the politics of the Left
Alastair Bonnett
7. The political staging of nostalgia: neo-Ottomanism in contemporary Turkey
Yagmur Karakaya
8. The future of nostalgia is inevitable: reflections on mediated nostalgia
Ryan Lizardi
Part 3: Consumerism, migration and everyday life
9. The darkside of nostalgic bonds: moral motivators of consumer identities, decisions and behaviours
Stacey Menzel Baker and Courtney Nations Azzari
10. Transmigratory nostalgia: sentimentality and everyday life on the Japan Exchange and Teaching programme
Sharleen Estampador-Hughson
11. Living in nostalgia: exploring expatriate experiences of everyday nostalgia in Pattaya
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Biography
Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the editor of The Contemporary Goffman, The Poetics of Crime, Postmortal Society and Critical and Cultural Interactionism, and co-editor of The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman, Encountering the Everyday, The Transformation of Modernity, Utopia: Social Theory and the Future, Liquid Criminology, Imaginative Methodologies: The Poetic Imagination in the Social Sciences, Emotions and Crime: Towards a Criminology of Emotions, Exploring Grief: Towards a Sociology of Sorrow and Death in Contemporary Popular Culture.
