Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

495

Emotion and Inequalities. Part I

RC42 Social Psychology (host committee)

Language: English

This session centers on the relationship between forms of social inequality and the sociology of emotion. Hochschild connects emotion to social inequalities through the term “feeling rules,” which she sees as “the underside of ideology” (1979). New scholarship on “emotional regimes” and “emotional capital” attempt to further connect emotion with forms of inequality. 
Following this line of thought, this session welcomes scholarship that builds on established as well as emerging concepts within the sociology of emotion in order to illuminate the emotional dimensions of new and existing forms of social inequality. Emotion is conceptualized broadly to include the experience, expression, management of, as well as collective patterns of emotional norms across time and cultures. Inequalities based on gender, race/ethnicity, social class, nationality, and sexuality are shifting, yet durable features of societies in developed and developing nations. Increasingly, research on social inequalities conceptualizes these categories as interlocking structures that shape individual experiences and interactions. 
How do current configurations of emotion norms and “feeling rules” perpetuate the inequality of some over others? How might emotions themselves (quantitatively and qualitatively) be unequally distributed in societies and what might this signify in terms of distributions of power, status, and capital?
Furthermore, research that examines the relationship between emotion and inequality might also focus on emotion within social movements and the forms of social change needed to create a better world for all. Scholarship that advances the cross-section of emotion and inequalities theoretically, empirically, and/or methodologically, as well as interdisciplinary will be welcomed. Posters: