The present article represents a new attempt to read the first two volumes of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America from the perspective of the sociology of emotions. Reconstructing Thomas and Znaniecki’s approach to emotions entails defining the place of emotions (as emotional habits, feelings, and sentiments) in a theoretical framework of values and attitudes, and presenting how Thomas and Znaniecki took affectivity into account at the analytical level. The authors’ approach seems to correspond to the contemporary understanding of emotions, which avoids a separation between the individual and the social, the emotive and the cognitive.
The cause to write an article was a question how to examine emotions which are of spatial nature. While the colloquial language copes with “spatiality” of feelings – it knows emotions and calls them (mood, atmosphere, climate, colour) – sociology has not developed a category enabling a systematic analysis of this phenomenon so far. In the theory of arts, the situation is different. The leading subject of the text is reflection on possibility of combining the theory of art and sociology of emotions. The proposed link is to be the concept of image treated as “sensitizing concept” (Herbert Blumer). In the article, I refer to the concepts having their roots in philosophy, social psychology and sociology of emotions which touch upon the issue of spatiality of emotions and compare them to the concepts related to the theory of image.
Artykuł stanowi wprowadzenie do socjologii emocji, a w szczególności przybliża marginalizowanezjawisko zawiści. Obraz autorstwa Théodore’a Géricaulta zatytułowany Kobietacierpiąca z powodu obsesyjnej zawiści staje się przyczynkiem do omówienia wybranychkoncepcji socjologicznych dotyczących tego uczucia.
Poczucie winy jest jedną z najczęściej wymienianych emocji o społecznych źródłach, jednakże wciąż jeszcze zbyt mało wiadomo na temat procesów tworzenia osobistego i zbiorowego poczucia winy. Celem tego artykułu jest uporządkowanie sposobów ujęcia tego problemu. W pierwszej części artykułu omówione zostaną problemy, jakie wiążą się z definiowaniem pojęcia „poczucie winy” oraz jego sklasyfikowaniem. Następnie omówione zostaną wybrane teorie socjologiczne, które mogą okazać się szczególnie przydatne do analizy tego zespołu emocji, a szczególnie społecznego procesu wzbudzania, podtrzymywania i zarządzania poczuciem winy. W ostatniej części przedstawione zostaną wyniki analizy wywiadów pogłębionych z młodzieżą niedostosowaną społecznie na temat sposobów przeżywania winy w ich osobistym życiu.
EN
Feeling guilty is said to be one of important emotions with the social origin, but still little is known about the process of its construction in individual and collective life. The aim of the article is to show different possibilities of researching the problem. The first part of the text poses the problem of defining and classifying the feeling of guilt. Then, selected research perspectives are analyzed connected with arousing, maintaining, and managing the feeling. The final part presents the result of interviews (IDI) with socially maladjusted boys about their feelings of guilt in personal life.
This article critically addresses the contemporary study of what is called 'defensive emotions' such as fear and nostalgia among a number of social theorists. While it may be true that the collective emotions of fear and nostalgia (here framed by the phrase of 'retrotopia') may indeed be on the rise in Western liberal democracies, it is also important to be wary of taking the literature on the matter as a sign that fear and nostalgia actually permeate all levels of culture and everyday life. The article starts out with some reflections on the sociology of emotions and shows how the early interest in emotions (theoretical and empirical) among a small group of sociologists is today supplemented with the rise of a critical social theory using collective emotions as a lens for conducting a critical analysis of the times. Then the article in turn deals with the contemporary interest within varuious quarters of the social sciences with describing, analysing and diagnosing the rise of what is here called 'defensive emotions' – emotions that express and symbolize a society under attack and emotions that are mostly interpreted as negative signs of the times. This is followed by some reflections on the collective emotions of fear and nostalgia/retrotopia respectively. The article is concluded with a discussion of how we may understand and assess this relatively new interest in defensive emotions.
The article presents the results of a study conducted among a group of 55 highly experienced Polish social workers on the management of their emotions in contacts with clients. The research was inspired mainly by Arlie Hochschild’s concept of emotional labour. Using a qualitative approach allowed us to incorporate a wider range of the spontaneity and reflexivity expressed by the subjects of the study. The paper helps illustrate that, similarly to other helping professions, social workers deploy significant emotional labour and use a range of emotional strategies to affect their clients’ actions or behaviour. The effectiveness of such labour depends on experience, individual characteristics and the formal and informal support they have access to. We conclude that with experience such workers not only control their emotions better, but first and foremost become more effective in using their emotions in such a way as to encourage or discourage certain actions and behaviours among their clients. The findings indicate that more attention should be placed on the role of emotions and emotional labour used by social workers in their daily practice. Incorporation of elements of the sociology of emotions might be particularly useful in this regard.
The insights and findings of the neurosciences and cognitive sciences in particular have brought new momentum to emotion research. The hitherto underestimated social contexts of emotions have become the focus of research interest. From this perspective, emotions are understood as the result of sociocultural imprinting. They are subject to the control of culture, which is revealed in sociologically conventional, prototypical emotional behaviour and in a corresponding mode of expression. If one defines emotions as an inner human state, they are assigned to the area of responsibility of psychology in the traditional classification of science. However, it is increasingly being recognized that a purely psychological approach to emotionality is insufficient. Only the inclusion of the basic paradigms of other disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, allows to grasp the complexity of this field of research. The article, which uses the inductive method, aims to identify the emotional schemata encoded in language, regulated in the course of socialization, containing the biological, mimic and behavioral interpretative signals, and to uncover the existing parallels in the manifestation of emotions IRRITATION and FEAR in German and Polish. The focus of the corpus-based analysis is on the semantic possibilities of reaction patterns that are distinctive for the emotions under investigation. In the paper, the phraseological units from the denotative domains IRRITATION and FEAR are discussed in relation to their sociocultural motivation. In doing so, both the supra-singular, in that phraseologisms of an international character are dealt with, and the singular, which is illustrated by means of the singular language-specific phrases, are expressed. The article is intended as a contribution to the discourse on the interdisciplinary approach to emotion research.
This article talks about the concerns and the challenges that I (as sociologist with anthropological verve) was faced with during the early stages of the research of love life among sanatorium visitors and among clubbers. Referring to experiences from qualitative studying of love emotions in intimate and social interactions, I raise the following issues: similarities and differences in the perception of affective sphere of human life between science and art; the boundaries between disciplines and fields of science concerning emotions; definitional and methodological solutions in the study of emotions and love in interpretive sociology.
PL
Artykuł opowiada o wątpliwościach i wyzwaniach, jakie stanęły przede mną – antropologizującym socjologiem – podczas początkowej fazy badań życia uczuciowego w środowiskach kuracjuszy oraz bywalców imprez klubowych. Odwołując się do doświadczeń z jakościowych badań emocji miłosnych w interakcjach intymnych i towarzyskich, podejmuję tematy: podobieństw i różnic w spojrzeniu na afektywną sferę życia człowieka w nauce i sztuce; wyznaczania granic między dyscyplinami i dziedzinami nauki, które zajmują się emocjami; poszukiwania rozwiązań definicyjnych i metodologicznych w badaniu emocji i miłości w socjologii rozumiejącej.
Celem artykułu jest pokazanie zmian użycia metafor „czerwony autobus” i „autobus” w polskiej kulturze popularnej na przestrzeni ostatnich kilkudziesięciu lat. Znaczenie badania leży w powiązaniu ich ze sposobem przedstawiania społeczeństwa polskiego oraz zbiorowym doświadczaniem i wytwarzaniem emocji. Autorzy zastosowali koncepcje teoretyczne i narzędzia analizy dyskursu. Jako materiał badawczy wykorzystali zbiór 20 polskich utworów muzycznych z lat 1952–2014, w których metafora „autobus” pełniła ważną rolę, wykorzystując ją jako domenę źródłową dla obrazowania stanu zbiorowości. W rezultacie syntetycznego zestawienia treści metafory i zbadania jej umieszczenia w tekście oraz bardziej szczegółowej analizy kontekstowej wybranych utworów autorzy wykazali tendencję do ukazywania społeczeństwa jako wspólnoty ludzi obcych, ale jednocześnie bliskich ze względu na podzielanie pozycji relatywnego wykluczenia, braku zbiorowego celu i indywidualnego wpływu, a także doświadczanie różnych emocji negatywnych.
EN
The main purpose of the article is to offer an interpretation of social transformations by means of the analysis of society’s discursive representations. The changes in the use of “red bus” and “bus” metaphors in Polish popular culture after the second world war are an empirical focal point of the article. These metaphors are interpreted as a portrayal of the collective experiences and emotions that have been evolving in Polish society over the last sixty years. Based on the criterion of the metaphors’ presence, a corpus of 20 Polish lyrics from 1952–2014 has been selected for the analysis. The theory and methods of discourse analysis have been applied. By means of the synthetic comparative study of the metaphors’ meanings and their positions in texts as well as through the detailed contextual analysis of the selected lyrics, the authors come to the conclusion that there is a growing tendency of portraying society as a community of people who are alien to each other, yet connected by sharing a position of relative exclusion, lacking collective purpose and agency and experiencing a spectrum of negative emotions.
Artykuł jest kontemplacyjną eksplikacją procesu spacerowania. Jakie są istotne cechy spacerowania i w jaki sposób osoby spacerujące po mieście tego doświadczają? W opracowaniu wykorzystano kontemplacyjne metody badawcze i dokonano eksplikacji fenomenu chodzenia. Badania opierają się na autooobserwacjach i autoopisach myśli, odczuć ciała i emocji, które pojawiały się podczas spacerów u uczestników projektu badawczego. W artykule opisano cechy zjawiska spacerowania. Najpierw przeanalizowano proces myślenia generowany przez chodzenie po mieście. Następnie omówiono patyczny (ang. pathic) wymiar chodzenia (zwłaszcza nastrój), odczucia cielesne, doświadczanie relacji z innymi oraz refleksje nad życiem i sobą, które są konsekwencją chodzenia/spacerowania.
EN
The paper is a contemplative explication of the walking process. What are the essential features of walking, and how do those who stroll around the city experience walking? We used contemplative research methods and explication of the phenomenon of walking. The research is based on self-observation and self-reporting about the thoughts, body feelings, and emotions that emerge during walks. In the paper, we describe the features of the phenomenon of walking. First, we investigate the minding process generated by walking in the city. Then, we elaborate on the pathic dimension of walking (especially the mood), body feelings (lived body), lived relations, and reflections on life and self that are a consequence of walking.
As the theoretical framework of this text serves the concept of S. Gordon’s emotional culture. It includes emotion dictionaries, norms, and beliefs about emotions. I am interested in some aspects of the emotional culture of professionals in the social welfare sector. The results obtained are intended to provide further discussion on the transformations of emotional culture in the sphere of help.
PL
Ramą teoretyczną niniejszego tekstu jest koncepcja kultury emocjonalnej Stevena Gordona. Obejmuje ona słowniki emocji, normy i przekonania wobec emocji. Interesują mnie aspekty kultury emocjonalnej profesjonalistów w sektorze pomocy społecznej. Uzyskane wyniki mają służyć dalszym dyskusjom na temat przemian kultury emocjonalnej w sferze pomocy.
The aim of this article is to analyze Raja Halwani’s concept of “romantic love.” Her main thesis is that romantic love is an emotion. The author of the article tries to look at the concept from the perspective of the social sciences, juxtaposing it with selected notions of romantic love from the border of sociology, social philosophy, and theology. He considers that the approach according to which romantic love is presented as an emotional state may be interesting not only for the psychologist but also for the philosopher or sociologist. He points out that love as an emotion is not subject to moral judgments. Finally, he concludes that when considering romantic love from a sociological point of view, its emotional basis should not be overlooked, but closing the phenomenon in the purely emotional sphere seems to be a methodological error.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.