EMOTIONS MATTER:

A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO EMOTIONS

Edited by Dale Spencer, Kevin Walby, and Alan Hunt

The sociology of emotions has recently undergone a renaissance, rais-

ing new questions for the social sciences: How should we define and
study emotions? How are emotions related to perennial sociological
debates about structure, power, and agency? Emotions Matter brings to-
gether leading international scholars to build on and extend sociologi-
cal understandings of emotions.
Moving beyond reductionist approaches that frame emotions as id-
iosyncratic states of mind, the contributors to this collection concep-
tualize emotions within the experience of social relations. Empirical
and theoretical chapters demonstrate how emotions relate to socio-
logical theories of interaction, the body, gender, and communication.
Pushing the boundaries of sociology and stimulating debate for re-
lated fields, Emotions Matter offers diverse relational approaches
that illustrate the crucial importance of emotions to the sociological
imagination.

dale spencer is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of

Sociology at the University of Alberta.

kevin walby is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at

the University of Victoria.

alan hunt is Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Sociology

and Anthropology at Carleton University.
This page intentionally left blank
EDITED BY DALE SPENCER, KEVIN WALBY,
AND ALAN HUNT

Emotions Matter
A Relational Approach to Emotions

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2012
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4426-4413-7 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4426-1253-2 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-

based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Emotions matter : a relational approach to emotions / edited by
Dale Spencer, Kevin Walby, and Alan Hunt.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4413-7 (bound), ISBN 978-1-4426-1253-2 (pbk.)
1. Emotions – Sociological aspects. 2. Emotions – Social aspects.
I. Spencer, Dale, 1979– II. Walby, Kevin, 1981– III. Hunt, Alan
HM1033.E46 2012 302 C2011-906610-6

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its

publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its

publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Canada
Book Fund.
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Contributors ix

Introduction 3
k e v i n w a l b y , d a l e s p e nce r , and a l a n h un t

PART I. CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN THE SOCIOLOGY

OF EMOTIONS 9

2 Emotion’s Crucible 15
j ac k k at z

3 Sociable Happiness 40
sa r a a h m e d
4 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 63
c at h e r i n e t h e od os i u s

5 Illegitimate Pain: Introducing a Concept and

a Research Agenda 86
j . sco t t k e n n e y a nd ai l sa cra i g

6 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone:

Bergson and Kant 102
a l e x a n d r e l e f e b vre a nd me l ani e white
vi Stickhandling through the Margins
Contents

7 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 124

l au r a s u s k i

8 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life: The Intensification

and Hollowing Out of Contemporary Emotions 137
alan hunt

9 Emotions In/and Knowing 161

a n d r e a d o u c e t a nd natas ha s . mau th n er

PART II. EMOTIONS AND EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS 177

10 How Emotions Matter: Objects, Organizations, and the

Emotional Climate of a Mass Spectrometry Laboratory 181
k e v in wa l b y and da l e s p e nce r

11 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 201

p e g g y a . t h o it s
12 Polyamory or Polyagony? Jealousy in Open Relationships 223
jillian deri

13 Feeling Cosmopolitan: Experiential Brands and Urban

Cosmopolitan Sensibilities 240
s o n ia b o o k m a n

14 Autistic Autobiographies and More-than-Human

Emotional Geographies 260
j oyc e dav i d s o n a nd mi c k s mi t h

References 281
Index 321
Acknowledgments

We thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Can-

ada for their funding of the Emotions Matter workshop from which
this volume stems. At Carleton University, we thank the Faculty of Arts
and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, the
Office of the Vice-President (Research), and numerous departments
for their financial support. At the University of Victoria, we thank the
Faculty of Social Sciences. Without such support, we would not have
been able to bring this project together.
Our thanks go to the reviewers at the University of Toronto Press.
Thanks also to Virgil Duff and Doug Hildebrand for helping us navi-
gate the brave new world of academic book publishing.
Our gratitude is to the authors, not only for their chapters, but also
for their energy at the workshop. Thanks to Aimee Campeau for help-
ing organize the workshop. We thank Sean P. Hier and Chris Hurl for
their comments on the introduction and the section summaries.
This page intentionally left blank
Contributors

Sara Ahmed is professor of race and cultural studies at Goldsmiths,

University of London. Her publications include Differences that Matter:
Feminist Theory and Postmodernism (1998); Strange Encounters: Embodied
Others in Post-Coloniality (2000); The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004);
Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (2006); The Promise of
Happiness (2010); and On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institu-
tional Life (forthcoming).

Sonia Bookman is an associate professor in the Department of Sociol-

ogy, University of Manitoba. She obtained her doctoral degree in soci-
ology at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include
branding, consumer culture, and urban life. She is currently working
on a research project that explores the branding of the Exchange Dis-
trict in the city of Winnipeg.

Ailsa Craig is a sociologist interested in questions of art, gender, and

sexuality. She is a Fulbright almunus and assistant professor of soci-
ology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her publications in-
clude a contribution to Practicing Culture (2007), The Journal of Material
Culture, and Poetics.

Joyce Davidson is associate professor of geography at Queen’s Univer-

sity, Kingston, ON. Since Phobic Geographies (Ashgate 2003), she has de-
veloped a research program focused around health, embodiment, and
different or ‘disordered’ emotions. Organizer of the First and Second
Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies (Lancaster
2002, Queen’s 2006), she is founding editor of the Elsevier journal,
x Stickhandling through the Margins
Contributors

Emotion, Space and Society, and has co-edited Emotional Geographies

(Ashgate 2005), and Emotion, Place and Culture (Ashgate 2009).

Jillian Deri is a PhD candidate in sociology at Simon Fraser Univer-

sity, Vancouver, BC, with degrees in women’s studies, social ecol-
ogy, and geography. She has co-published work on transgendered
athletes and queer culture, as well as research on pain within aerial
dance.

Andrea Doucet is professor of sociology and women’s studies at Brock

University. She is the author of Do Men Mother? (University of Toronto
Press 2006), and co-author of Gender Relations: Intersectionality and Be-
yond (with Janet Siltanen, Oxford 2008). She and Natasha Mauthner
have co-written on themes of reflexivity, feminist approaches to meth-
odologies, subjectivity, and the Listening Guide approach to narrative
analysis.

Alan Hunt is chancellor’s professor at Carleton University. He is

the author of Governing Morals (Cambridge University Press 1999)
and Governance of the Consuming Passions (Macmillan 1996). Pre-
vious books include Foucault and Law (with Gary Wickham, 1994),
Explorations in Law and Society (1993), and The Sociological Movement
in Law (1978). He is currently writing a book on governing through
anxiety.

Jack Katz is professor of sociology at UCLA. Currently he is writing

an ethnography of the Hollywood area of Los Angeles covering trans-
formations in the area’s 150-year social history; how meanings of con-
temporary neighborhoods are shaped by how residents make money,
develop household relations, and establish routines in their local area;
and how politics, retail culture, and sociological theories represent, and
misrepresent, the lived realities of urban life.

J. Scott Kenney is an associate professor of sociology at Memorial Uni-

versity. His interests include deviance, victimology, social psychology,
and emotions. His prior research includes studies of coping among
families of homicide victims and analysis of the interactional dynamics
of restorative justice sessions. He is currently involved in studies of ‘il-
legitimate pain,’ as well as conducting research on the construction of
meaning among Freemasons.
 Contributors xi

Alexandre Lefebvre is lecturer in the School of Philosophical and His-

torical Inquiry, and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the
University of Sydney. He is author of The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson,
Spinoza (Stanford University Press 2008), and co-editor of Bergson, Poli-
tics, and Religion (Duke University Press 2012).

Natasha Mauthner is a reader at the University of Aberdeen. She has

published in the areas of health and well-being; gender, work, and fam-
ily; knowledge production in the academy; and methodological and
epistemological issues in qualitative research.

Mick Smith is associate professor of philosophy and environmental

studies at Queen’s University. He is author of An Ethics of Place: Radical
Ecology, Postmodernity, and Social Theory (SUNY 2001) and Against Eco-
logical Sovereigny: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World (Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press 2011).

Dale Spencer is a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Department of

Sociology, University of Alberta. His interests include embodiment,
emotions, violence, and victimization. He is author of Ultimate Fight-
ing and Embodiment: Violence, Gender and Mixed Martial Arts (Routledge
2011) and co-author (with Karen Foster) of Reimagining Intervention in
Young Lives (University of British Columbia Press 2012).

Laura Suski is a University-College Professor in the Department of So-

ciology at Vancouver Island University. She also teaches in the Liberal
Studies Department and the Global Studies Program. She holds a PhD
in social and political thought from York University. Her current re-
search interests include the analyses of political emotions, humanitari-
anism as an Enlightenment project, notions of the family and childhood
in global ethics, and new theories of consumption and taste.

Catherine Theodosius is a lecturer in health in the School of Science,

Technology and Health at University Campus, Suffolk, UK. Her main
area of interest is in the sociology of emotion and emotional labour.
Her recent book Emotional Labour in Healthcare (Routledge 2008) was
awarded an Honourable Mention for Distinguished Contribution at the
2010 ASA convention in Atlanta. She is currently editing a textbook on
health and well-being, and co-authoring a book on safeguarding vul-
nerable adults.
xii Stickhandling through the Margins
Contributors

Peggy A. Thoits is the Virginia L. Roberts professor of sociology at In-

diana University in Bloomington. Her interests are in mental illness,
stress and social support processes, and emotion. Her research focuses
on the psychological determinants and consequences of holding mul-
tiple role-identies, the social distributions of emotional deviance, and
the conditions under which individuals label themselves as mentally ill
or resist such labelling.

Kevin Walby is assistant professor of sociology, University of Victoria.

He is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet
Escorting (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), and editor (with
M. Larsen) of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information
Process in Canada (University of British Columbia Press, forthcoming).
He has recently published in International Sociology (with S. Hier), Brit-
ish Journal of Criminology (with J. Piche), Punishment and Society (with
J. Piche), Policing and Society (with J. Monaghan), and Social Movement
Studies (with J. Monaghan). He is the Prisoners' Struggles editor for the
Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Melanie White is senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and

International Studies at the University of New South Wales. She is co-
editor of Bergson, Politics, and Religion (Duke University Press, 2012).
EMOTIONS MATTER:
A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO EMOTIONS
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Introduction

k e v in walby, da le s pen cer, a nd al an hunt

The chapters comprising this edited volume originate from a workshop

organized at Carleton University in May of 2009. Funded by the So-
cial Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Carleton
University, the workshop was an opportunity for scholars connected
to the sociology of emotions to have a dialogue. The resulting volume
fosters a diversity of relational approaches to emotions, many of which
represent the discipline of sociology, whereas others are more indebted
to geography, critical criminology, and cultural studies.
While waiting at the airport for incoming flights of workshop par-
ticipants, we held a sign upon which was written ‘EMOTIONS MAT-
TER.’ We received jeers (primarily from men) and puzzled looks. At
one point, an elderly woman came up to Kevin and said, quietly in
his ear, ‘You know, they really do.’ We recall this moment to suggest
that it is not only in lay settings where a mention of emotions draws
mixed responses. Academics seem to be suspicious of emotions. Re-
sponses to the question of how emotions matter range from conjectures
by colleagues that ‘emotions are not important to sociology,’ to doubt-
ful queries such as ‘emotions . . . don’t psychologists study them?’ How
emotions matter is not always self-evident to social scientists. This vol-
ume highlights varied sociological approaches to emotions, but also
aims to stimulate debate across the disciplines.
The sociology of emotions is a growing sub-discipline influenced
by interactionist sociology, which is often dubbed ‘micro-sociology,’ al-
though more and more sociologists have theorized emotions in connec-
tion to social structure (see Clay-Warner and Robinson 2008; Barbalet
1998). The sociology of emotions also draws from newer subfields, such
as cultural studies. Despite a diversity of approaches, there has been
4 Stickhandling
Kevin Walby, Dale
through
Spencer,
the Margins
and Alan Hunt

little dialogue between emotions scholars, especially between scholars

at work in different countries, one consequence being that definitions
of emotions in sociology can sometimes lack conceptual clarity. In addi-
tion, there is considerable disagreement amongst theorists of emotion.
Emotions scholars either fail to communicate with each other, or hotly
contest each new contribution to the literature.
Despite these disputes, or because of them, the social study of emo-
tions is a highly productive area of research. While the popularity of the
sociology of emotions has waxed and waned, emotions remain salient
to understanding social life. The point that Shilling (2002) raises, which
we reiterate, is that ‘classical sociologists were concerned with the ef-
fects of emotions on the moral content of social orders and the ability
of individuals to act morally. To lose this concern would be to lose an
essential part of the discipline’ (28). More broadly, emotions matter to
sociological understandings of action, culture, and the self. This vol-
ume features chapters that build on existing sociological conceptual-
izations of emotions and develops new ones as well. We bring various
approaches to emotions into dialogue, not only to stimulate debate but
also to further develop theories and methodologies.

Why and How Emotions Matter

The sociology of emotions has recently undergone something of a re-

naissance. Despite being vital to the rise of the discipline, emotions and
sociology did not get along during the middle of the twentieth century.
It was only in 1975, when, with Arlie Hochschild’s introduction of the
idea of ‘emotional labour’ as well as Thomas Scheff organizing the first
American Sociological Association session on emotions, that this area
of study regained legitimate status (Wouters 1992). The American Soci-
ological Association Section on Emotions has worked hard to legitimize
this as an area of study.
A common thread that runs through the chapters of this volume is a
conceptualization of emotions as the experience of social relations, rather
than an idiosyncratic condition. Relations cannot be reduced to an indi-
vidual state, but relations are not fully determined by social structure ei-
ther. The reason why the relational cannot be subsidiary to the structural
is that action would be eschewed and social structure would be reified.
Much of what constitutes contemporary discussions of emotions within
the sociological literature is purely analytical (e.g., Turner and Stets 2005),
and is not overly concerned with emotions in action. This volume fosters
 Introduction 5

theories and methodologies that take into account the relational genesis
of the experience of emotion as physical, phenomenal, and structurally
located (see Barbalet 1998). Some of the chapters engage in studies of
emotions in situ, using a variety of methodological techniques.
A relational approach to emotions: (1) cannot reduce emotions either
to the self or social structure but must analyse the interface between
these two levels of analysis; (2) is more concerned with overlapping
emotions in a milieu than with singular states; (3) is more concerned with
what emotions do than what they are; (4) must borrow from sociological
or related theory in order to guide the analysis; and (5) ought to borrow
from methodological traditions in sociology and anthropology to inves-
tigate emotions in situ as they occur during sequences of interaction.
Our main purpose here is to forward an argument for a relational
approach to emotions in sociology and related disciplines. To avoid
reducing emotion, affect, and feeling to one another, and to keep our
focus on the interface between the self and structural shaping, we must
turn to sociological literature and other relational approaches to emo-
tions. In addition, this volume addresses the question of emotions in
relation to power. Though Barbalet’s (2002) edited volume did empha-
size the importance of thinking about emotions as relational, it did not
include a consideration of post-structural theorization of power and its
influence on the sociology of emotions. There is a small literature con-
cerning emotions and power. For instance, Kemper and Collins (1990)
argue that more ‘micro’ emotional processes are the basis of social dif-
ferentiation and stratification. Clark (1990) contends that emotions are
gendered and mark inequality in the workplace. Furedi (2004) has ar-
gued that a therapeutic culture, which encourages people to think of
themselves as emotionally ‘at risk,’ has created new platforms for gov-
ernance of the self and of others. The volume by Clay-Warner and Rob-
inson (2008) pulls the emotions literature away from social psychology
towards structural analysis. Yet there are more ways for the sociology
of emotions to focus on how the governance of human conduct is at-
tempted by agencies that hone in on emotions as pathological. The fol-
lowing chapters try to extend this argument about the link between
power and the politics of emotions.

Breakdown of the Volume

Emotions Matter is organized in two parts. Part I engages with concep-

tual issues. These chapters offer conceptual clarification as it concerns
6 Stickhandling
Kevin Walby, Dale
through
Spencer,
the Margins
and Alan Hunt

emotions in everyday life, especially at the group level. In chapter 2

Jack Katz enriches the pragmatist tradition by examining how emo-
tions arise, moment by moment, out of co-present interaction. He ar-
gues there is a corporeal and immanent emotional sense that emerges
through everyday collaborative forms of sociality. Extending the phe-
nomenological work of Schutz and Merleau-Ponty, Katz writes of a cru-
cible of emotions, referring to the work people do in aligning actions
with the habits, routines, and movements of others.
Sara Ahmed develops an argument concerning happiness as a form
of sociality in chapter 3. She argues that if emotions are sociable, then
sociability may be approached in terms of the limitation as well as the
enjoyment of company. Happiness requires suppression of conflict,
which has significant consequences for people who are marginalized
as a result. Ahmed cites the ‘feminist kill-joy’ and the ‘angry black
woman’ as examples of those whose sociability is an affront to the hap-
piness of some (which, ironically, always requires the unhappiness of
others). Situating the neurophysiological work of Damasio (2000) on
emotion in a bio-psycho-social perspective, Catherine Theodosius chal-
lenges and offers insights into current social scientific understandings
of the nature of embodied emotions in chapter 4. Adding to the litera-
ture on emotion management, Theodosius critically engages with the
work of Hochschild regarding surface and deep acting, as well as Ar-
cher’s (2000) concept of the inner dialogue.
Other chapters draw from scholars outside of sociology in an effort to
exorcise conceptual problems that haunt the definition of emotions. In
chapter 5 Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig develop the concept of ‘illegiti-
mate pain’ to describe situations when pain is hidden for fear of shame
and stigma. Drawing from developments in queer theory, Kenney and
Craig utilize and develop the concept of illegitimate pain to discuss
the pain experienced by lesbian and gay men. In chapter 6 Alexandre
Lefebvre and Melanie White revisit the work of Kant and Bergson to
reveal the contributions of these philosophers to the sociology of emo-
tions. Lefebvre and White argue that both Kant and Bergson not only
critique and avoid the opposition of emotion and reason, but also,
through their respective discussions of religion, assess the nature, func-
tion, and source of emotion. In chapter 7 Laura Suski offers an exami-
nation of the historical development of emotions, placing emphasis on
moral emotions as they concern humanitarian projects. Suski focuses
on debates concerning sympathy and suffering.
 Introduction 7

There has been a call in the emotions literature to consider the histo-
ries of particular emotions (see Dixon 2003), and this volume includes
chapters that draw attention to the socio-historical basis of emotions.
Drawing on the texts of Williams (1977) and Elias (1978), in chapter 8
Alan Hunt considers the tendency in the history of emotions for spe-
cific epochs to be associated with specific emotions. As with other
key thinkers in the historical sociology of emotions (see Stearns 2000),
Hunt is not interested in periodizing emotions. Instead, he offers an
analysis of the contemporary emotional climate of advanced capitalist
societies, which he characterizes as exhibiting a tension between two
distinct processes: one that manifests an intensification of emotional-
ity, and another which yields an emotional climate that is distinctively
hollowed out.
Part II of Emotions Matter is called Emotions and Empirical Investiga-
tions. The discussion of emotions, reflexivity, and research methods,
contributed by Andrea Doucet and Natasha Mauthner in chapter 9,
marks the transition in the volume from the discussion of conceptual is-
sues to research on emotions in action. Drawing from feminist debates
concerning the epistemological issues that arise in friendships and rela-
tions with research participants, Doucet and Mauthner call for social
scientists to focus on how emotions matter to issues such as fieldwork,
data analysis, and writing. Some chapters in this volume examine par-
ticular settings of interaction that tend to be overlooked in mainstream
approaches to emotions. Based on a case study of an earth sciences
department, in chapter 10 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer argue that
consideration of emotions as the experience of relations with humans
and objects supplements understandings of how work is organized.
Drawing on narratives of earth scientists regarding their relationship
to a mass spectrometer named ‘Shiri,’ Walby and Spencer’s analysis
of emotions and organizations illuminates how humans experience re-
lations together but also the experience of emotions in object-centred
sociality. In chapter 11 Peggy Thoits further develops her concept of
‘emotional deviance’ to examine a subset of mental disorders that are
viewed as deviations from emotional norms. Thoits argues that emo-
tion norms are shaped by ideology, and, leading from this assertion,
shows that disagreements among clinicians about the presence of dis-
order may be traceable to ideological differences among them.
While concepts are necessary to understand the relational genesis
of emotions, this volume includes chapters that reflect on individual
8 Stickhandling
Kevin Walby, Dale
through
Spencer,
the Margins
and Alan Hunt

emotions and their specific effects. For instance, in chapter 12 Jil-

lian Deri explores jealousy in polyamorous relationships, an emotion
scarcely analysed in the sociology of emotions literature. Deri shows
that existing approaches to jealousy are based on heteronormative and
gendered knowledges not attuned to the intricacies of polyamorous
lifestyles. Deri focuses on the contextual nature of jealousy and the
types of relations involved in the experience of jealousy. In chapter 13
Sonia Bookman examines the relationship between branding, con-
sumption, and cultural configurations of cosmopolitanism in everyday
urban life. Based on ethnographic research of Starbucks and Second
Cup, she posits that people interact in an embodied process of con-
sumption; through this ‘affective cosmopolitanism’ forms a ‘structure
of feeling’ that is drawn on to orientate selves in the city. Drawing from
45 autobiographical accounts, the final chapter by Joyce Davidson and
Mick Smith highlights the emotional relations to ‘natural’ things and
places experienced by people diagnosed with autistic spectrum dis-
order (ASD). Relying on hermeneutic phenomenology, Davidson and
Smith reverse assumptions concerning people with ASD (i.e., that they
are asocial and ‘unemotional’), showing that their personal geographies
are characterized by emotional and meaningful relationships with the
wider more-than-human world.
PART I

Conceptual Issues in the Sociology

of Emotions

This section maps out major theoretical trends in the sociology of emo-
tions and also situates our contributors in relation to these trends. Just
as the contributions to Emotions Matter follow a relational approach to
emotions whilst drawing from different conceptual resources, the ori-
gins of this field of study are diverse.
It is possible to claim that emotions have been salient to sociology
since the beginning. In the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun, the re-
puted father of sociology, placed great importance on group cohesion
and affection. Khaldun (1989) argued that group cohesion was a result
of desire to avoid shame.1 His attention to emotions was only a small
part of his broad focus on social organization, which rejected natural
and theological explanations of human development.
Sentiments and emotions were also imperative for Scottish moral
philosophers. Adam Smith’s ([1759] 2006) Theory of Moral Sentiments
is an enduring account of self and subjectivity. Smith argues that sen-
timents such as sympathy play a principal role in maintaining social
order. He contends that there exists a moral duty to guard against what
he calls the ‘selfish passions,’ which undermine the propriety of indi-
viduals and the laws of nations. Given what he writes about emotions
and good governance, it becomes clear that Smith’s Theory of Moral
Sentiments was the groundwork for his widely read Wealth of Nations.
Though Karl Marx’s writings on alienation are not an explicit explana-
tion of emotions, Marx’s inversion of Smith’s comments on propriety
and wealth does account for how the capitalist mode of production
creates particular subject positions. The chapters by Hunt and Suski
follow this line of argument concerning the historical context of moral
emotions.
10 Part I: Conceptual Issues in the Sociology of Emotions

Emotions also had great importance in sociology’s foundational

statements (see Shilling 1997), such as writings on order by Comte
and Durkheim as well as writings on the individual by Simmel and
Weber. In early French social theory, the focus on ‘society’ as an entity
over and above the individual is prominent. Comte argued that the
impulse to act comes from emotions and not intelligence. Durkheim
picks up on this claim, arguing that emotion spreads almost conta-
giously through symbolic and collective forms. For Durkheim, col-
lective effervescence, the partaking in shared emotion, is the basis of
religious ideas and group solidarity. Whereas Comte and Durkheim
start from the social whole, Simmel and Weber begin with the creative
and imaginative potentials of individuals. Influenced by Nietzsche’s
vitalism, they focus on the nature-transcending and self-determining
individual. Simmel theorizes emotions and social capacities. Weber
argued that a rationalized social system eroded emotions as a motiva-
tor for action through disenchantment, but he also argued that ratio-
nal actions harness emotions. This divergence of French and German
thinkers concerns the location of emotions (Shilling 1997). In Comte
and Durkheim, emotions are stimulated from outside the individual,
binding people in a moral community. In Simmel and Weber, emotions
emanate from individuals and are stripped out of them by modern
social formations.
At the turn of the twentieth century, there is also a move towards
emotions from thinkers on the fringes of sociology. Henri Bergson con-
sidered emotion to be part of the open or creative tendency of life,
whereas habit and obligation are associated with the closed tendency.
For Bergson, emotions allow humans to move beyond simple repeti-
tion of habit, towards newness in social forms and life itself. As Berg-
son ([1935] 1956:45) puts it, ‘creation signifies, above all, emotion . . .’
The chapter by Lefebvre and White in this volume follows Bergson’s
argument. Another scholar related to the pragmatist tradition and mar-
ginally related to sociology, William James, positioned emotion as con-
tinuous with rationality, arguing that choice is determined by emotion.
For James, emotions are an embodied experience that is generative of
all action, both in terms of goal orientation but also energizing capaci-
ties. Cooley and Mead developed their thoughts concerning emotions
through a dialogue with pragmatism. The chapter by Jack Katz in this
volume extends the pragmatist heritage and puts it in contact with
phenomenology. The sociology of emotions, early on, benefited from
a dialogue with scholars who did not necessarily identify with soci-
 Part I: Conceptual Issues in the Sociology of Emotions 11

ology but placed a considerable emphasis on emotions as relational

phenomena.
In existential philosophy, both Nietzsche and Heidegger highlight the
significance of emotions. Nietzsche (2007) discussed ressentiment and
located it as part of the Judeo-Christian religious doctrines. Nietzsche
understands the Judeo-Christian religious doctrines as being based on
charity, which undermines the quest for self-assertion. Ressentiment,
defined as vengeful desire not readily consummated, is more related
to structural forces, as opposed to resentment, which refers to a short-
term reaction to affronts to the self. The concept of ‘ressentiment’ is
useful for theorizing the historical relations involved in power strug-
gles and governance processes.2 For Heidegger ([1926]1962), emotions
frame an object as mattering in a particular way – as fearful, boring,
cheerful, or hateful. In Heidegger’s Being and Time, emotions are re-
lational; individual emotion not only affects but is affected by our re-
lations with others (see also Heidegger 2001). Heidegger’s work has
spawned a phenomenological stream that continues to shape the so-
ciology of emotions (see Ahmed, as well as Davidson and Smith, this
volume).
Though the sociology of emotions today is fragmented, marked by
divergent methodological strategies (see the introduction to Part II),
the various theoretical traditions live on. The connection between the
interactionist tradition and the contemporary sociology of emotions in
America is especially strong. Two prominent figures in American so-
ciology, both drawing from Goffman’s Durkheimian writing on dra-
maturgy and ritual, are Arlie Hochschild and Randall Collins. Arlie
Hochschild can be credited with renewing interest in emotions in so-
ciology. In The Managed Heart, Hochschild (1983) argued that societies
maintain an emotion culture consisting of emotion ideologies that de-
lineate apposite attitudes, feelings, and emotional responses in basic
spheres of activity (see also Hochschild 1979). It is through socialization
that people acquire the feeling rules. Feeling rules prescribe how an
individual should feel, and display rules specify when and how the
overt expression of emotions is to occur. The chapters in this volume by
Theodosius, Kenney, and Craig, Walby and Spencer, as well as Thoits,
engage with the idea of emotion management. Emotion management
becomes emotional labour when conducted as paid work. Hochschild
initiated an important feminist stream in the sociology of emotions, but
also extended Marx’s structuralist concern with alienation and the capi-
talist mode of production. Continued debates concerning ’emotional
12 Part I: Conceptual Issues in the Sociology of Emotions

labour’ (see Brook 2009; Bolton 2009) confirm how pivotal Hochschild’s
contributions have been to sociological understandings of emotion,
gender, and work.
Collins’s (1975, 1981, 2004) theory of interaction ritual chains argues
that co-presence, mutual awareness, common focus, rhythmic synchro-
nization, and symbolization of the group arouse emotions. Interac-
tion rituals are created when individuals become engaged in common
actions or involved in the same event. Collins is concerned with the
build-up of emotional energy that compels them to engage in interac-
tion rituals (or not). As emotional energy is built up, rituals take on
greater value. For Collins (2004), emotional energy gives the partici-
pants ‘confidence, elation, strength, enthusiasm and initiative in taking
action’ (48–9). Emotional entrainment results in the intensification of
mutual focus and shared mood.
The work of Hochschild and Collins speaks to the pervasive influ-
ence of Durkheim (filtered through Goffman) on the sociology of emo-
tions today, insofar as interaction rituals and effervescence remain
the starting point. Yet Hochschild and Collins move beyond classical
works. Specifically, the writings of Collins link micro-level experiences
of emotions with macro-processes, insofar as interaction ritual chains
serve as the basis of organizations. Drawing from Marx, Hochschild
accounts more for alienation than a Durkheimian perspective allows.
Hochschild and Collins represent American sociology. A great deal
of scholarly interest in the sociology of emotions emanates from the
United Kingdom as well. The sociology of emotions in the UK is more
influenced by continental sociological theory as well as the phenom-
enological tradition. For instance, both Barbalet (1998) and Ahmed
(2004) offer relational approaches to emotions, the former situating his
work in classical sociological theory and the latter positioning her work
as phenomenological. Barbalet (1998) stresses the emotional basis of
action. Emotions are not experienced as idiosyncratic feelings, but are
part of a social transaction. Barbalet’s key contribution is his notion of
collective emotion. An ’emotional climate’ does not require all to expe-
rience the same emotion, and emotions differ in a group depending on
the social positions of those people. His work displaces the contagion
model of emotions (found in Durkheim and Collins) while arguing that
group emotions are experienced in varying intensities.
Borrowing from the phenomenological tradition, Ahmed (2004) pres-
ents a less structuralist model of emotion. She suggests that emotions
move between bodies, aligning subjects with some and against others.
 Part I: Conceptual Issues in the Sociology of Emotions 13

The more emotions circulate, the more affective they become. Through
the circulation of emotions, bodies and worlds materialize and take
shape. Emotions are crucial to the way bodies become problematized
in relation to other bodies, producing the effect of collectivities (39).
The contribution that Ahmed makes is moving beyond outside-in and
inside-out ontologies of emotions (a problem which is prevalent in exist-
ing sociological and psychological theories of emotion). Emotions circu-
late in an affective economy and it is through emotions that boundaries
between the ‘I,’ the ‘we,’ and the ‘other’ are shaped (also see Ahmed as
well as Kenney and Craig, this volume).
There are numerous conceptual models in the sociology of emotions,
past and present. One commonality in the history of the sociology of
emotions is an emphasis on emotions as part of social relations, and
Emotions Matter continues in this direction. We are not implying that the
scholars mentioned above constitute the only noteworthy contributors
to this field. Numerous other sociologists have made eminent contribu-
tions that are oft cited in the following chapters (e.g., Wouters 2001;
Scheff 2000; Katz 1999; Clark 1990; Kemper 1978). We also do not mean
to suggest that sociology as a discipline has a stronghold over the study
of emotions, or that disciplinary boundaries are always useful. For in-
stance, numerous important contributions to understanding emotions
have also been made in organizational studies (see Fineman 2004, 1993;
Fineman and Sturdy 1999), criminology (see O’Malley and Mugford
1994; the 2002 special issue of Theoretical Criminology), and geography
(see Bondi 2005; Thien 2004; as well as the new journal Emotion, Space
and Society). Many of our contributors do not locate themselves in so-
ciology. Davidson and Smith are geographers, while Bookman and
Deri are aligned closely with cultural studies. These different bodies of
thought feed into one another, further developing a relational under-
standing of emotions.

NOTES

1 For more on Khaldun, see Spickard (2001), as well as Dhaouadi (1990).

2 For more on the concept of ressentiment, see Meltzer and Musolf (2002).
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2 Emotion’s Crucible

jac k katz 1

Introduction

Late in his academic career, Ralph Turner, an eminent social psycholo-

gist in UCLA’s sociology department, still had a vivid awareness of his
first teaching experience some 50 years earlier. Turner had meticulously
worked up lecture notes for several of the class sessions. His initial lec-
ture ran without hitch or tangential indulgence. Pleased with the flow
of the session, at the end he consulted his notes. He had gone through
all the preparations he had made for the course.
On hearing Turner’s story, Ted Sarbin, an eminent social psycholo-
gist whose career as an academic psychologist stretched over about
the same span at UC Berkeley and then at UC Santa Cruz, recalled
his first teaching experience. He had put lecture notes into a stack of
three-by-five cards, which he turned as the hour progressed. Coming
to the end of the deck he checked on the time: about 15 minutes of
the 50-minute hour had elapsed. What to do? Trying to comfort him-
self with the psychologists’ understanding that repetition improves
memory, he flipped the deck. Fifteen minutes later he flipped the deck
again.
Lecturers’ tactics for fitting preparation to the teaching hour will
differ, and when they realize their preparation was inadequate, so will
their emotions. However it is handled, the challenge is emotionally pro-
vocative, which is to say that professional horror stories from the biog-
raphies of perhaps the two most famous ‘role theorists’ are useful for
focusing on an existential vulnerability in social life. With experience,
novice teachers usually develop resources for minimizing the risks
of fitting their anticipated performances of self to the immaterial yet
16 Jack Katz

obdurate frames of scheduled class times, but life cannot be com-

pletely insured by preparations, no matter how fully rehearsals
maybe dressed. From the insurance that the teacher can seek in ad-
vance, there is always a deductible demanded in the historically
unique, socially situated durations of real time. However imaginative
in origin, symbolic in interaction, and ephemeral, the performed self
always congeals in something palpable that is always more and less
than anticipated.
The teacher may seek assurance by reading the lecture. Scripted de-
tails may include timed pauses, delimited segments for questioning
and answering, even joking asides. Still there are risks, including los-
ing one’s place and train of thought when looking up to indicate to
the audience that those present in the immediate situation are being
given respect.
Lecturing implies being pre-organized. In the context of the strati-
fied power relations in a class, pauses, which in a conversation would
be provocations for a correspondent to take a turn in speaking quickly,
stand out as awkward. But if lecturing implies a degree of preparation
that is inconsistent with the tenor of spontaneous monologue or con-
versation, it also implies being alive to the instant situation. If he or she
never looks up from notes, the lecturer runs the risk of a prosody that
suggests that nothing more than reading is occurring. For lecturing to
hold onto its raison d’être, something more responsive to the moment
is usually required.2 If the lecturer is not doing something to fit prepa-
ration to the immediate situation, why incur the trouble of assembling
students in a common, designated place? Why not distribute the text
‘for free’ in digital form, transferring the costs of lighting, heating, se-
curity, roof maintenance, and fire insurance to the dispersed, individual
accounts that someone else already is paying?
Putting aside personality and strategy differences, the sources of
emotional provocation as experienced by lecturers are continuous
with emotional provocations that arise generally out of the narrative
structuring of social life. If we examine how, in the most general sense,
social life is constituted by narrative structuring, we can see how per-
sonal style acknowledges and with practice eclipses emotions. Over
time, lecturers commonly develop an occupational aesthetic with
which they tame the insistent explosive potential of their defining
work situation.
Feelings are distinctively three-dimensional experiences. In order
to find the sources of emotions in social life, we are advised to look
 Emotion’s Crucible 17

for matters of texture, or how the practice of behaviour becomes sen-

sible to the practitioner. Our feelings are ways that our corporeality
comes into our awareness in two directions, as an awareness of inter-
nal depths and recesses and as a sensibility guiding and attending our
reach into the world. The foundational question, then, is how does be-
haviour, what we do in projecting ourselves into the world, become
self-sensible?3
The three dimensionality of the subject’s experience of social life
is founded in the very processes through which action is made so-
cial. At a first level, action becomes social by becoming socially situ-
ated. This occurs in the narrative sequencing that makes behaviour
meaningful as a recognizable kind of doing. Structuring experience
into a familiar form of conduct does not require that any other per-
son be present. To appreciate how action in becoming social becomes
sensible, we need to drop temporarily the focus on lecturing, which
implies a co-present interactive relationship with others, and turn to
an example that does not. A simple example such as putting on one’s
own shoes will do.
When a person acts in the responsive co-presence of another, his/
her action becomes social in a compounded way. The narrative that the
person uses to structure action must itself be narrated. To see the emer-
gence of this second way in which action becomes palpable to the actor,
we can look at how one person puts on another’s shoes.
For a full appreciation of how behaviour takes on corporeal resonance
as it becomes social, a third inquiry is required. At a first level, which is
observable when acting alone, the person feels the rhythms, flow, and
hitches in the narrative structure through which he/she makes action
socially meaningful. When acting with another, a second level comes
into play: each feels the push and pull by which two versions of a proj-
ect become the collaborative production of a single executed narrative.
But something more is also always involved. The person knows that
his/her life transcends any situation he or she maybe in. Masking vari-
ous transcendent meanings is also a required part of acting collabora-
tively with another. Emotions arise to register situation-transcending
meanings that must not be displayed to the other.
These three processes create an ontogenetic dialectic in which action
becomes socially meaningful through private practices, then becomes
social in a publicly shared way, then again becomes privately mean-
ingful in ways others cannot appreciate.4 Somewhere along the range
of this three dimensional composition of social life, all feelings and
18 Jack Katz

emotions take shape. Emotions and feelings are ways of grasping, ap-
preciating, and corporeally reflecting on the very structuring of life
into social forms. Lecturers’ emotions emerge as they realize aspects
of the in-class situated structuring of their behaviour that the audi-
ence cannot know. And over time, lecturers’ transform the sensate
substrata of their professional lives – we might say, depending on the
subject’s mood and the analyst’s political perspective, that lecturers
control, tame, discipline, manage, or civilize their emotions – by de-
veloping aesthetics for structuring their working behaviour at each of
these three levels.

Putting on Shoes: Evocative Aspects of the Social Situation

With few exceptions, from the time an adult in the contemporary West
awakens until the time for bedding down to sleep, he or she is in an
unbroken continuum of situations. The situation, a subjectively under-
stood, narratively framed sequencing of physically mobilized action, is
the basic unit, the most universal, ubiquitous, and simplest whole unit
of social life. Situations are sometimes encountered, as occurs when a
student enters a class in progress, or they may be constructed in solitary
phases of living, as when a lecturer prepares class notes. Whether col-
laboratively or individually shaped, situated action makes up the stuff
of social life.
Each situation is a strip of sequential actions, coherent moment-to-
moment as what the actor understands to be narratively interrelated
behaviours. Action is narratively meaningful when in its execution
it references former and subsequent behaviour as occurring within a
course of terminable conduct, which it may do at any given moment by
heralding, initiating, continuing, or advancing; pausing in, departing
from, or abandoning; restarting, reviewing, or finishing some kind of
colloquially recognizable ‘doing.’
As a rough test of the claim that in our wide-awake life we are almost
always in one or another situation, we may ask about any moment of
our daily life: ‘What am I doing?’ There is usually a gerund-like answer
that will fit the moment. Each moment’s doing is shaped with refer-
ence to an overarching course that is substantively known. Each ‘ing’
is at least a mini narrative. The narrative structuring usually goes on
without announcement, but should anyone ask, it will seem natural to
answer with phrases such as ‘putting on my shoes.’5
 Emotion’s Crucible 19

One reason for working with the example of putting on shoes is that
for most readers, putting on shoes will come early in the day’s situ-
ations. What comes before is a transition from repose to motility and
then often a trip to the bathroom for eliminations and ablutions, the
latter being routines that are culturally recognized, elaborately com-
mented upon strips of activity that are often learned through emotion-
ally charged, close supervision. That urination, defecation, bathing, or
‘washing up’ are so obviously socially structured for the individual
makes them too robust as examples for focusing on the prior question
of how, by shaping behaviour according to situated narratives, the in-
dividual structures social character into his or her life. Putting on shoes
is a more innocent, stripped down, usefully unimportant example. And
unlike ‘getting up’ from a sleeping position and bodily eliminations,
putting on shoes is a social construction, not a physical imperative.
We can briefly note several ways that sequential narrative meaning
is used by the person to constitute the situation of putting on shoes.
There is the matter of recipe and the effect of dramatic result. Putting on
shoes requires the ordering of constituent actions. For example, in most
cases the shoe should be put on the foot before laces are tied. Multiple,
sequenced actions are required to get to the end of the process, at which
point an effect is achieved, a qualitative change on the order of an onto-
logical transformation. With shoes on, a new being emerges, a life form
with a bundle of capacities for simultaneously probing and getting en-
ergy from the world. If not quite winged sandals, shoes gird the wearer
with a new competency to carry on the journey ahead, altering traction,
often enhancing endurance. Of course not always: shoes may make
balance exceptionally precarious and rapid travel dangerous, in which
case their use incidentally demonstrates a certain talent. In either case
shoes affect the physics of the body’s movements through space, chang-
ing the muscles engaged in transportation and creating a new posture,
in the process revealing self in the form of capacities to self, even as the
world is revealed in different angles and rates of passing landscape.
We are looking for the grounding of feeling in behaviour. The routine
of putting on shoes is marked by corporeal changes at its onset and at
its terminal boundaries, and also in the shaping of its constituent stages
as they are produced within the social logic of accomplishing the proj-
ect. Thought or self-reflection in an abstracted sense is not necessarily
involved. Feelings arise in the physical practicalities of structuring per-
sonal life into social form.
20 Jack Katz

This is not to say that all situations have recipes leading to transfor-
mations that change one’s practical competency for being in the world.
Making the bed, for example, is a ritualization of the ending of sleep, a
sentimental resource for starting the day but not a preparation that in
some other, practical sense will facilitate later actions. Indeed, making
the bed routinely will require additional work, the work of unmaking
the bed, before the bed is again treated as practically useful for sleep.
This practice, a making that requires an unmaking, is doubly ritualis-
tic. It guides people to move on to the next situations, whether in the
world of wide-awake practical action or into a drowsier routine, in the
way that prayers do; it allies one with patterns and presumed forces
of order.6
The recipe metaphor, which promises a corporeally significant pay-
off, is too strong for much of social life, which has more meandering
and less transformative results. But a core idea in recipes of action, that
of progressing towards an ending, captures a defining feature of all sit-
uated action. Whenever one is engaged in a kind of doing, one operates
in anticipation of completion. Pre-visioning an ending to the doing at
hand is not promise, much less reliable commitment. But it is a mean-
ingful foundation for structuring each moment’s behaviour.
The progression through behavioural recipes that constitutes social
life can be delayed or aborted by any number of tangential involve-
ments and emergent contingencies. Fascinations may be discovered
in matters intrinsic to a given phase. Progressions towards comple-
tion may be put in pause through meditations, reveries, intoxications,
sleep, or other losses of consciousness that will take the structuring of
experience out of the bounds of situated social life. A phone call can
get you out of the shower before you have finished that routine; still,
the phone’s ring is answered with an understanding that lifting the re-
ceiver is not embarking on a rest-of-life engagement. All doings fore-
shadow endings in the minimal respect of anticipating eventual, and
event-occasioned, moments of moving on to other situations, even if
the mode and timing of departure is as yet unspecified, and even if
departure when it comes is not in fact marked as a departure.
An anticipation of moving on, literally of moving the body in space,
is the basis for the temporal foundations of situations as units of so-
cial life.7 The bodily changes in moving on create the dimly sensed but
most universal feeling substructure of social life, the tenor that un-
derlies what Schutz (1962) referred to as wide awake everyday life.
Relative immobility of the body, dialectically related to an absence of
 Emotion’s Crucible 21

traction and friction in moving over space mentally, distinguishes the

various ‘fantasy’ worlds of reveries, witnessing in a theatre, dream life,
and so on.8
Across their range, situations are narratives in that they have end-
ings. More precisely, people make their lives social by starting lines of
action with an understanding that the line of action will be ended. The
‘ending’ feature of the social situation is not necessarily more focal in
awareness than is the moving-towards-death that is a part of all living,
but it is always implicitly attended to in the way situations are entered.
As turning on the shower anticipates turning it off, so starting to put
on a shoe by picking it up anticipates walking away from the shoeing
process.9
Any social situation minimally has a narrative character by virtue of
some action premised on an ending. The situation-constituting action
may be no more than a preparation for a beginning that never occurs,
an enacted promise to start that is reneged upon, or a project aborted,
like putting on a shoe that is then discarded in favour of the decision
to go barefoot. The fundamental actualization of social life is not the-
positive step of completion but something negative, a commitment to
ending, whether through completion or abandonment. I may be en-
gaged in doing something without knowing what my action will lead
to, but I know something will come next. I progress through the project
of putting my shoes on, not yet knowing where I will be going. My un-
certainty about the future does not detract from the socially organized
character of my experience in putting on my shoes.
In addition to the quality of orienting towards an ending, life is made
social by action that unites multiple moments of action into related
stages. Putting on shoes requires multiple steps. Even the most accom-
modating flip-flops require finding the things.10 Slipping into them
means doing separate sub-acts for each foot. And after slipping each
foot into sandals, some adjustment is typically required to get the strap
at the desired relationship to the toes. Only in cartoons do shoes simul-
taneously encase both of a character’s feet.
We are specifying the narrative features that make action social. To
put on shoes one must not only do a series of steps, and do each step as
related to others, the steps must be done in a certain order. If only be-
cause of the certainty of ending involvement, there is directionality in
the sequential arrangement of action. People almost invariably develop
habits as to which foot they put in first, a meta-narrative of ‘my way.’
But in any case, on each occasion the person will put the first foot in as
22 Jack Katz

‘putting in the first foot,’ knowing that the other foot is next in turn. The
‘certain order’ that is requisite is not left first, then right, nor vice versa,
but first one, then the other. With one pair of shoes, the tongue may be
pulled up before the foot is put in; with another pair the order may be
reversed. But the sense of an obdurate world, of the need for strategy
based on an understanding that action must be materially pragmatic,
is acknowledged in the glosses of directionality given to various steps
in the project. It ‘matters’ which order one follows because one acts in
a physical world. Here is a first bit of resonance or sensual reflexivity, a
first analytic step towards an understanding of how feelings arise and
are patterned in social life.
We may note that here is a ‘babushka’ or nested quality to the se-
quential structure that makes action into behavioural units of social life.
If putting on shoes is a project with several stages, each stage is itself
a mini-narrative, for example, tying the laces. Tying laces is itself an
ordered sequence. Each end of the lace is grabbed; the grabbing mo-
tion has a start and a finish. The tying of a knot requires following an
ordered sequence: this end goes over and then around the other end of
the lace, which then is pulled around the first, and so on.
Should a problem arise or should a special examination be engaged,
any step may be broken into subunits. Still, a description of the typical
experience of putting on shoes does not lead to infinite regress. In the
routine of putting on shoes, commonly nothing structural intervenes to
create internal stages between an attentive start to grasp and the grasp-
ing of the lace. If the lace is not found where an eye-guided hand’s
trajectory expects to find it, a corrective subunit will be devised. But
commonly the move is a flow, requiring no sub-molecular unit of at-
tention.
Narrative is meaningful as a concept for describing the social struc-
turing character of action because it is empirically differentiating. At
some point of deconstruction we reach the smallest narrative doll; the
actor’s production of demarcations typically is no more microscopic.
We inspire and exhale; inspiration has a beginning and an ending; but
between the start of inspiration at the end of the prior exhale, and be-
fore the ending of inspiration in the beginning of the next exhale, we
commonly note no intermediary stages. There are flows in our action,
smooth passages within stages that may be broken down into smaller
units by biologists, or by oneself if for some reason one decides to pause
to create a clear end of one phase before the beginning of the next. But
the undifferentiated flows in behaviour are as natural and as vulner-
 Emotion’s Crucible 23

able to attentive disruption as respiration is vulnerable to holding our

breath. To a degree and to achieve a certain effect for awhile, what has
been flow may be made into differentiated and ordered subunits, but
as inspiration must give way to expiration, ending and continuity must
both exist as constants in our social life.
As sociological description can find smaller sequences within the
sequence of putting on shoes, so it can find that the project this time
through is one of a series of similar projects, either experienced or
imagined. Each time shoes are put on they are put on as variations of
a generic action. Is this the first time you’ve put on this type of shoe
or the nth occasion? The typification of the project this time through is
also embodied, conveyed, or lived sensually; typification is naturally
not an act of cognition but a kind of feeling. Putting on a ‘new type’ of
shoe requires special attention, which is a certain tension of corporeal
engagement. As the saying suggests, putting on ‘an old shoe’ evokes a
familiar self.
In searching for the foundations of feeling, we have noted the evoca-
tive implications of orienting action towards ending, of ordering mo-
ments of action into stages as in a recipe, and of attention that gives
strips of action narrative character as a certain instantiation of its type.
We may also note that the narrative structuring of action is accomplished
most immediately not as a direct focus on endings, not as a focus on
typification, not as a focus on the recipe of which the action may be a
constituent part, but as each action is related directionally to others in
the situation. In the awareness of how doing this moment’s action is
a pushing off from a prior action or a pulling towards/setting up of a
next action, there is a corporeal sense of how the relationship is being
shaped. For example, to put on laced shoes, the grabbing of lace ends
may be moved fluidly through and into a tying operation or the lacing
through the eyelets may be adjusted to perfect the equality of the finger
accessible endings. In the latter case the step of grabbing onto the laces
is prolonged, occasioning a hesitation before the next step of tying the
knot is begun. Or each step is done with the same emphasis as the prior
and the next. Or a given step that completes a prior step – think of tight-
ening a double bowknot – may be done in a manner that comments
upon, perhaps celebrates, the completion of the sequence.
Describing the narrative structuring of action that creates the mun-
dane situation of putting on shoes veers into vocabulary that could be
used to describe a musical performance. A piece of music is given a
certain feel as the component parts are marked by the performers as
24 Jack Katz

sub-narratives, and related to other parts in what is, despite the part-
markings, a constant flow. Few people live to make music, but all social
life is lived in musical ways. And as music gives rise to feelings, so
does the prosody of each social situation. Perhaps in this morning’s
putting on shoes, the move from one step to the next is especially even
and smooth; perhaps tomorrow it will be balky and awkward. There is
feeling here, although we are reluctant to call it ’emotion.’ An aesthetic
feeling, perhaps: a matter of sensually experienced style that is part and
parcel of the very doing of social life. A person putting on shoes is at
once producing a colloquially recognizable identity and a sensate self.
We can now quickly move the analysis to appreciate the emergence
of what will be more familiar as ’emotion.’ Say the laces seem to be too
short for a customary bow. Or maybe, even though the shoe is new,
the laces break. ‘Shit!’ one might exclaim, referring to the breakdown
of order and the messy release of the negative powers for which ev-
eryday rituals are prophylaxes. More interestingly for our purpose,
one might also blurt out ‘Stupid!’ Stupid is a characteristic of a per-
son, not a shoe. Falling out of involvement with the practical project,
the person turns to recognize, emphatically if indirectly, that the shoe
already is a social object. Someone, most likely some corporate set of
people, made it. And in the design process they anticipated how peo-
ple would put the things on. The user is enacting a version of a role
that complements the manufacturer’s script as presented to the user in
the material of the shoe. ‘Stupid!’ is about the people who made and
sold this thing.
It is more difficult, but for our objective more important, to appreci-
ate the positive feelings that shoes can give rise to. Through practi-
cally using shoes the shoe buyer ties him or herself to the designer
and manufacturer. As social analysts we are used to focusing on the
status qualities laid on marketed objects, so that when they are satis-
fying to users, it may seem to us that the users are preoccupied with
the artificialities of prestige structures. But putting on shoes requires
craft; some high fashion boots require exceptional effort and trained
dexterity. Accomplishing putting them on can confirm oneself as suc-
cessfully connected to the others who made the shoes. Children know
thisand adults do not forget it. Those others may be inaccessible –
anonymous, not present now or ever in one’s life, collective, never en-
visioned as flesh and blood individuals – but even as the shoe is ‘mine’
it never exhausts its being in my possession. It connects me to ‘them,’
and even if I don’t care about their prestige, even if I begrudge them
 Emotion’s Crucible 25

the profits they are making, there can be a puzzle-solver’s pride in

getting the things to work smoothly as ‘mine.’ This appeal, a kind of-
material seduction to a time-fragmented intercourse, works across the
spectrum of society, from elaborately and creatively laced up ‘ghetto’
sneakers to designer boots gratuitously elaborated with function-
less buckles and ribbons that circumnavigate the calf before ending
in front-displayed bows. There are feelings, emotions, irrationalities
here, but they are not necessarily related to advertised status distinc-
tions. Getting into social objects and making them ‘mine’ is a way to
confirm that I can connect with an invisible, transcendent community
of others. For some that irrationality is religious in a way that adver-
tising semiotics may not know. When the narratives for using bought
objects work well, they complete a social act that was still fragmented
at the point of purchase.

Putting Shoes on Another

We are tracing the emergence of emotions in social life within a prag-

matist perspective. Emotions emerge in response to problems in the
organization of conduct. The structure of conduct is in the first instance
created by what the actor experiences as corporeally distinguished, se-
quential actions used in the course of getting something done. Taking
the example of putting on shoes, we note that a sequence is anticipated
in the design of shoes. In putting on shoes on any given occasion, a
person may go through the course in different ways. He or she may
follow the designed patterning of action, employ a customary but idio-
syncratic approach, or stumble on details of materials or of the scenic
context that are taken to call for a novel approach this one time. The
project may run smoothly or become balky as the person moves from
one phase to the next.
Some feeling is always involved. The practices that constitute social
situations are somehow sensually appreciated. Acting in the world
inevitably evokes some sense of self on a continuum of being merged
naturally with and being artificially inserted into the world. Perhaps
the repertoire is performed as a flowing motif in the background of
thought and talk that are at the centre of consciousness. Perhaps the
situation is lived through as a halting operation requiring repeated
focus on the details of the operation. On occasion the little daily rou-
tine of putting on shoes provokes a more fully formed emotion. The
practitioner may become irritated when focusing on some perceived
26 Jack Katz

fault in design, delighted in the totemic fit between self and world
that is implied in proficient use, or caught up in self-recrimination as
the process is taken to exemplify a general state of personal disorga-
nization.
Note that interaction is already involved even though no one else
is present. When putting shoes on another person – call the latter the
‘wearer,’ the former the ‘aide’ – the interaction in the project becomes
more obvious. Think of putting shoes on a child, an invalid, or a cus-
tomer in a store. Will the wearer remain passive, the aide active through-
out? If not, who will do each of the necessary practical acts? Who will
pick and pick up the pair of shoes? Who will guide each foot into each
shoe? Who will do the buckling or lacing up? Who will adjust sock or
stocking, if any is worn, to shoe? Will one or both define errors in the
process, such as uneven lengths to lace ends, wrong match of left/right
shoe and foot, tongue not pulled out, degree of fastening too loose or
tight? Who will finalize the adjustment of foot and shoe? Perhaps the
wearer in the initial steps of walking in the shoes, perhaps the aide by
judging that the size or style is off and triggering a return to the start of
the process with another pair.
Each of the two, wearer and aide, come to the process with narra-
tives more or less in mind. And each will find that the pair of shoes
applied this time requires some innovation of an unprecedented nar-
rative structure, if only because each operates from an historically
unique physical position. Theoretical differences may get implicated,
as when the aide presumes that shoes should be tied but the wearer
does not. The two must work out which narrative to use, who will
do each part, and when each will do what. The aide may lift the shoe
towards a foot, the wearer may then take over the stage of getting foot
into shoe.
A coordinated single narrative will usually be worked out. We may
gloss the action as ‘the work of putting shoes on another,’ or ‘having
another put on one’s shoes,’ but either formulation is a bit off because
the process inevitably is collaborative. Each will give off and perceive
the other as giving off expressions that indicate offer and acceptance of
contributions to the collaborative process.
It is tempting to refer to the interaction, now occurring between two
co-present individuals, as a ‘conversation,’ and then to rethink the ac-
tion of putting on one’s shoes alone as a silent conversation. Some claim
that conversation is the fundamental or primordial form of social inter-
action. But children learn to negotiate patterned interactions with the
 Emotion’s Crucible 27

world before and as a way into language use. For understanding the
rise of emotions, ‘conversation’ must be appreciated as metaphor: it can
mislead in a way that loses the phenomenon it would illuminate. Talk,
or descriptions of expressive gestures, can be reduced to transcriptions,
but transcriptions are irreducibly static and disembodied; the transcrip-
tion process inevitably loses much of the corporeal reality that makes
lived experience a three-dimensional reality.
If we are to understand the rise and fall of emotions in social life, we
need to keep the moving line of intertwining between self and other (or
world) at the centre of our investigation. If the wearer remains passive
throughout, the aide will repeatedly cross a gap in touching the other
through touching the shoe and foot. Conversely, if the aide supervises
without laying on a hand, two worlds of experience remain at a dis-
tance. But as soon as the two actively interact, their movements enter
an area of ambiguous overlap. The aide pushes the shoe on the wearer;
the wearer moves foot into shoe. Interaction has become intercourse, a
temporally meshed form of interaction that creates existential ambigui-
ties about who leads, who follows, who owns the project.
In putting shoes on a child, the area of ambiguous overlap may be
revealed to the adult aide in an unexpected protest: ‘Let me!’ In watch-
ing a clerk put on a pair of shoes, a customer may take over the lacing
up in a way that may be defined as abrupt by the clerk even while it is
appreciated by the wearer as considerate. These are not simply differ-
ences in the ‘vocabularies’ or ‘scripts’ engaged by each. In the practice
of social life, emotions emerge in the inherently ambiguous overlap be-
tween his action and her reaction, which sequence is itself ambiguously
preceded by her invitation, indifference, or alienation, and his response
to that prior phase.
We have now specified two levels of analysis necessary to the de-
scription of how emotions arise in moments of social life. First we
traced the practical social narrative of the wearer, as he or she interacts
with the shoes. We find that shoes are not ‘just put on,’ they are put
on through following a sequential logic of one sort or another, a recipe
with discrete stages and transition strategies. The process entails fol-
lowing and editing a logic encountered as built into the shoes. Engaged
in this little project of everyday life, feelings arise, usually more in a
sensate, perhaps aesthetic, but not clearly emotional form.
When we examine a situation of co-present interaction such as put-
ting shoes on another, a second level of sociological work appears.
Now in addition to finding and following the social logic of the objects,
28 Jack Katz

one must collaboratively work out a meshing with the social logic per-
ceived in the other’s practices. The two must produce an effectively
single narrative train through emitting and observing signs of who will
do the next move.
For understanding how emotions arise in immediate interaction
with another, the metaphoric vocabularies that are common in social
interaction studies today are inadequate and misleading. The pro-
cesses that give rise to emotions are not grasped by looking at the
‘symbolic’ aspects of the interaction. It is specifically the embodied
interwinings that matter, the physically registered intercourse that oc-
curs when one touches the other and when the two collaboratively
produce trajectories of motion in which actions by one, say in push-
ing on a shoe, are met with a simultaneous reciprocating action such
as pushing the foot in. What we call emotions are reflections on these
embodied intertwinings.
From one to the other side of the transaction, and in ways that the
participants may not themselves appreciate, the emotions being expe-
rienced may diverge. The wearer may think that both are experiencing
the project as done crudely or rudely; the aide may imagine that both
are appreciating a clockwork, mutually respectful collaboration in the
event. The embodied, interactive coordination of individual contribu-
tions to the project is one thing. The emotional upshot of the process
entails individual disengagement from the other and it may be quite
different for each.
Interaction with another is inevitably three-dimensional. From mo-
ment to moment, in finely shaded degrees, each more or less gets trac-
tion from the other’s actions. The phenomenon of traction is not a figure
of speech or thought; it refers to the practical grounding of action. Your
pulling up and tightening the laces makes it a more immediately acces-
sible task for me to tie the bow.
We see that to get the science of emotions right, we have to go beyond
received interaction vocabularies and we have to go beyond the notion
of a mind/body binary. Emotions are not an alternative to or an enemy
of thought. They arise and are perfected in thought-like reflections. In
the shoe example, emotions may arise in a positive form, in recognition
of the other’s sympathetic consideration for what one can and cannot
readily do, or in a negative form, perhaps as a perception of ‘too much’
passivity, or, conversely, as an arrogation of the narrative course. In
any case, emotions will arise as the individual, in his or her existential
 Emotion’s Crucible 29

autonomy, turns in interpretive isolation on the areas of ambiguous

overlap in the process.

Situated Action and Its Transcendence

Using the shoe-dressing example, we have traced two ways that feel-
ings arise out of making behaviour social by producing coherent nar-
rative sequences. There is the recipe-like sequential coherence required
to accomplish the project, a requirement that applies whether acting
alone or with a co-present other. The structure of the sequence is cre-
ated through changes in the embodiment of action. Pauses, transitions,
problems, and shortcut solutions for getting from one stage to the next
are all experienced corporeally.
When acting with another to put shoes on, the process requires that
each work out an understanding with the other as to the relevance to
a jointly executed recipe of one and the other’s actions. The narrative
of practical action must now be narrated: I have to indicate where
I am in the process, my narration has to be monitored for effective
comprehension, I have to register the other’s indications of the other’s
offers to execute steps in the other’s version of an effective narrative,
and on these grounds each stage in the project is subject to misunder-
standing, adjustment, repetition, and so on. I have to signal and moni-
tor the reception of signals as to when the process begins, which foot
I am first trying to fit, who pushes the foot in, when a sub-strip of in-
cidental inspection of the foot’s anatomy has begun and ended, what
is and is not meant as a tickle, and so on. Not uncommonly the other
will volunteer to complete parts of the recipe, perhaps grabbing for
the second shoe, completing the tying of laces, or standing up to press
a resistant foot into a possibly too-small shoe. If we are to collaborate
in putting on the shoes, I must follow the other’s mobilization of the
sequential structure of the process, as the other may idiosyncratically
understand it.
Now my actions and inactions are doubly embodied, in my own and
the other’s responsive/non-responsive body. At some moments, the
other lends his/her body to complete my actions; the other’s body be-
comes an extension of mine, and mine an extension of the other’s. The
line of action is now carried on by the integration of two bodies.
We must note another way that the social actions entailed in collab-
oratively putting shoes on another person differ from the solo project.
30 Jack Katz

Putting on shoes with another requires an essentially negative reper-

toire of expressive action. When I am putting my shoes on alone, I do
not have to be concerned that the shoes remain committed to the project
at hand. But when putting shoes on another, I and the other are both
accountable in a Janus-like sense. Each of us has to shape his/her action
so that it will be witnessable as produced for the shoeing situation that
prevails here and now, which means manifestly avoiding, or in other
words, positively negating personal involvements that transcend the
situation.
In the collaborative situation I do not have to execute any particular
positive action. With the other I may arrange any of a great variety
of combinations of responsibilities defining who does which part of
the necessary operations (finding the shoes, lifting the foot, adjusting
laces, etc.). But when I am alone I must do all of the sequence. In this
sense the solo situation requires more positive or constructive action.
But should I wish to sustain continuous collaboration with another in
the project of putting on shoes, I must not only do the positive narra-
tive work of indicating where each of my motions is in the progression
of the project, and the positive work of indicating my perceptions of
where the other is in his/her understanding of the narrative’s progress,
I must also do negative work. I must also indicate that I am not too
little involved, not ‘away’ on a reverie or otherwise so little engaged
that the other must take up solo responsibility for completion; and I
must avoid indicating I am too much involved in what is transpiring
here and now, as might be the case were I to become so ‘into’ the project
that it goes beyond the dressing narrative; for example, by suggesting
a foot fetish.
When dressing alone, I need not be concerned to perceive in-
dications that the shoes remain in the situation, that they have not
abandoned the project. But when putting shoes on with another per-
son, I know that the other’s life simultaneously persists in other ongo-
ing relations, the totality of which are unknowable to me; has a past
and a future, both of which transcend the framework that is practically
relevant to the project at hand; and has a realm of private meanings
that I cannot access in the immediate situation. As I work out a com-
mon narrative practice with the other, I will be responsive to signs
that the other is ‘away,’ or desirous of pausing from the collaborative
project, or giving it more meaning than as a practical dressing task. As
I am putting a shoe on another person’s foot, I may wonder whether
her pause in pushing her foot in the shoe conveys an expectation that
 Emotion’s Crucible 31

I should push the shoe on, or means that she has abandoned the pro-
cess of putting on this pair in favour of trying another, or indicates
that her attentions have moved to some other area of concern, and so
on. I attend to signs of a certain tension of consciousness – signs of an
at-tention – that are consistent with a presumption that she is negat-
ing orientations that transcend the launched project of putting on the
shoes at hand.
The contrast should not be overdrawn. While I do not need to be con-
cerned to perceive signs that the shoes remain in the situation, when
putting on my own shoes in private I will at a certain stage in the project
need to be concerned to show to the shoes, in a manner of speaking,
that I remain in the project. Shoes are social objects, made in ways that
anticipate how they will be used. Once engaged, material objects differ
in the demands on persistent attentions that they require. Shoes impose
a notable if minimal constraint. Once engaged in the project to the point
that one shoe is on, there are consequences for not continuing; one is in a
more awkward position for walking than before the project began. If my
mind wanders, the shoes will in effect call me back to finish or to reverse
the project. As objects aiding motility, shoes make matters worse before
they make them better. Shoes have not yet been designed to facilitate a
thoroughgoing disrespect for their ontology. I must respect them in the
sense that, once I introduce myself to the shoes and accept the willing-
ness of one shoe to be put on, I will suffer if I do not negate concerns that
transcend the dressing project until my feet are in both of the shoes.11
In effect, I have to show the shoes that I respect their ontology by
limiting my transcending concerns until the project is complete. But
I need not monitor whether the shoes are respecting my ontology; they
will not go away on their own. In the co-present collaborative version
of the project, there is a distinguishing symmetrical obligation for ne-
gating transcending concerns. When putting on shoes with another, the
project requires that I manifestly negate my transcending concerns and
also that I monitor whether the other is doing the same.12 This doubly
negative structure of co-present social action is the foundation for a rich
array of emotions as they arise in the practice of everyday life.
Now we can return to the opening examples of lecturing in a col-
lege class. As when putting on shoes alone, there is a narrative logic
that the lecturer presumes imposes demands on him or herself. The lec-
turer’s talk is constrained to be arranged sequentially on a number of
simultaneously sustained levels: any moment’s utterances are to begin,
complete, or advance the progress of sentence-like phrasings; such
32 Jack Katz

phrasings are to be interrelated into a manifest ‘train of thought’; what

is expressed in earlier parts of the hour is to be related to what comes
later, and vice versa. By ‘are to be’ and ‘is to be’ I mean that each ut-
terance is executed teleologically, in a manner that claims its emergent
functionality in narrative structure: each moment’s action is performed
in a way that asserts the becoming of which it is a part and how it is a
part of that becoming. The lecturer makes his/her action into behav-
iour by producing an expression accountable as a coherent advance in
an emergent narrative.
Some of the lecturer’s feelings are imposed by demands on persistent
attention that are encountered as arising from the social form of the lec-
ture. To isolate the feeling-evocative pressures that arise during a live
lecture delivered to an audience, we can identify those that emerge in
the lecturer’s private rehearsals. In any instance of reviewing notes or
rehearsing a lecture, the lecturer will register transitions, perceive gaps
among segments, realize an awareness of unfulfilled promises and
unannounced tangents, and so on, not necessarily in anything as ab-
stracted, distanced, or self-contained as ‘thought,’ but through feeling
the relationship between narrative structure and the action executed
this time through. Perceived gaps, contradictions, unfulfilled introduc-
tory promises, awkward transitions, muddy passages, and so on, are
registered not in stand-alone thoughts but in and as provocations to
remediation. Seeing a problem in the narrative may not immediately
throw up a solution, but no intervening thought is required to feel the
need to do more. Something ‘nags,’ there is a source of disquiet, some
part of the narrative does not feel right. A private reading of prepara-
tory notes is already a corporeally implicated, feeling-evoking process.
If when preparing lecture notes something seems wrong, the project
cannot be freely abandoned. Like shoes, the lecture is a social form that
once engaged is experienced as demanding that the user not abandon
it for other concerns. That demand often appears as a haunting anxiety
that more preparatory work is needed.
When delivered to a class, the lecturer will be constrained to do the
class ‘with’ the audience. This means not only displaying that he/she is
in the lecture situation and not taken up by transcendent concerns, but
also monitoring that the correspondents are also suppressing transcen-
dent concerns. The class, however passive it may seem, is still a corre-
spondent in the production of the lecture. If on consulting the clock the
lecturer appreciates that the moment to begin has come but no one has
entered the room, she/he will be responsive to the fact. Indications that
 Emotion’s Crucible 33

the audience is not playing a corresponding role that makes sense of

continuing the lecturer’s role may appear in question/answer phases,
when hands are raised unexpectedly, or, most likely in today’s college
teaching environment, if the lecturer takes notice that many students
appear preoccupied with web-searching activities that follow rhythms
not connected to the lecturers. On such occasions the lecturer will take
for granted that he/she must do the work of determining where the au-
dience ‘is at,’ or the work of trying to ignore his/her concern about the
matter. As the class time goes on the lecturer will be pressed to verify
that the audience is still there as an audience.
Now, the negations required by the lecture as a live, correspondent
social form are not just shared on both sides of the lectern, they are
dynamically interactive. In order to keep the audience in the situa-
tion, the lecturer must do the work of manifesting that she/he is main-
taining a lively consciousness to the situation. Pauses can go on only
so long before they begin to undermine the audience’s involvement.
A monotonic reading may be adequate for timing in a rehearsal, but
in a live lecture it will typically be replaced with a prosody that in-
structively dramatizes responsiveness to the instant narrative of the
lecture; that is, that the lecturer him or herself is being taken by the
talk as he/she expects the audience to be taken. A second generation of
feelings emerges from the constraint to manifest a time/space specific
collaborative posture; that is, a being in the situation, in order to keep
the audience in the situation. Becoming a lecturer entails awakening to
and developing a way of structuring a new order of sensibility.
In their debut lectures, Turner and Sarbin sustained the professional
requirement that for all immediate appearances the show was going on
unproblematically. Both not only performed the positive tasks of pro-
ducing a coherent lecture neatly bounded by the duration of the class,
both also avoided indicating problems with the transcendent mean-
ing of the instant session. Both had a problem with the pre-class phase
of the occasion; both came to understand that they had not prepared
enough. Both came to understand the future implications of the par-
ticular challenge their first class meant, that they would have to prepare
more for future sessions. As far as they understood, the students were
unaware of their transcending occupational problems.
Where did the lecturers’ realization of the problematic transcen-
dent meanings of their situationally polished performances reside?
Not in ‘thoughts’ but in emotions. As Sarbin flipped over his deck of
index cards to restart once and then a second time, he continued to
34 Jack Katz

respond to the requirements for maintaining apparent narrative co-

herence in his talk. As Turner came to the end of the hour and realized
he had expended all the preparation he had done for the course, his
dilemma was not shared with the class. The lecturers’ emotions arose
in the crucible formed by the requirements of situationally specific,
publicly witnessable, narratively coherent action, and their embodied
manners of appreciating the transcendent meanings of this class ses-
sion for the next, this ‘first time teaching’ for their teaching careers,
and so on.
Lecturers will always experience something on the continuum that
Sarbin and Turner dramatized at the extremes, although not neces-
sarily in negative directions. At a given moment in a day’s class, one
may realize that preparation for the current lecture has more resources
than anticipated, that there are multiple narrative lines to develop,
only one of which will exhaust the current class session. As the cur-
rent lecture is delivered, the awareness that less work will be nec-
essary to set up future classes will be appreciated in some positive
emotional form.
Emotions are distinctively three-dimensional experiences. Across
their variety, emotions are characterized by feelings that pervade and
recede from anatomically unbounded, more or less deep corporeal
realms. This three dimensionality corresponds to the three dimensions
along which transcendent meanings arise in socially situated conduct.
In a temporal perspective, the novice lecturer senses what he did and
did not do in the past, and the implications of that for future work.
Spatially, the lecturer must stay visibly rooted in the here, even as his
orientation may shift to situations located elsewhere, such as his study,
other class sessions, and what he will make of the experience within
family and friendship circles. A boundary between the public and pri-
vate self emerges in such experiences, the lecturer’s emotions serving
as vehicles for an awareness that must be kept inner. Emotional expres-
sions, such as joking, righteousness, professional élan, and intellectual
passion, are themselves situation-shaped responses which leave hid-
den the lecturer’s transcendent understandings; for example, that this
is the nth re-telling of the joke, that righteousness works with this audi-
ence but not others, that passion expressed in a lecture hall is a low-risk
variety, and so on.
Few lecturers could long sustain careers that suffer the volcanic emo-
tional upshots of the novice’s first-time experience. What happens as
people repeatedly work through a given, initially intense emotional
 Emotion’s Crucible 35

experience? They learn to manage, tame, discipline, or civilize the

emotional potential by developing a working aesthetic. Instead of pre-
writing each word or leaving fate to situational inspiration, the lecturer
will develop a preparation and a performance style. For guiding prepa-
ration, he/she will develop ways of interpreting nagging feelings of
insufficient preparation. As the Turner and Sarbin horror stories illus-
trate, one learns to cultivate a useful disquiet, to distinguish between
haunting feelings that are nuisances as opposed to practically signifi-
cant warnings that should be heeded. For a performance style, the lec-
turer may adopt a strategy of relying on a small number of pre-planned
stories that are to be delivered in an ordered progression, focusing in
the classroom on ‘hitting the mark’ for each narrative component more
or less at a certain time interval, leaving vocabulary and possible tan-
gents to be worked out in the moment within this overall strategy. As
strategy becomes style, emotions become largely a matter of occupa-
tional aesthetic. For first timers, a private awareness of these situation
transcending, existential meanings will often be intensely emotional.
Over time transcendent awareness commonly becomes mannered ap-
preciation.

The Crucible

At some point in the transition from infancy to social competency, we

move into a compelling stream of social situations. In wide-awake ev-
eryday life, we are virtually always ‘doing something,’ organizing our
conduct so that it is part of an activity or project that is accountable to
self as one or another typical narrative. The person may be doing the
narrative ostensibly on his or her own, like putting on shoes in private,
although indirectly, in ways emotions often will grasp before thought
can reflect on the matter, the process will be one of interacting with shoe
designers. Or the person may appear to be following a narrative that
others have produced, like watching a TV show, in which case what a
viewer attends to on the screen and in the audio track will be in some
way unique, the process always a private editing of the script. Active or
passive, behaving on our own or collaboratively with others, we shape
our conduct from moment to moment so that at any time and in any
place we are doing a version of something that routinely has acollo-
quially cognizant name. The most fundamental units of social life are
formed through this giving of narrative meaning to corporeal move-
ment. All meaningful action is felt because it is produced and grasped
36 Jack Katz

by discrete bodily action. It is the very work of structuring action into

behaviour that is the crucible of emotions.

NOTES

1 This chapter has benefited from comments received when earlier versions
were delivered at the Centre for Advanced Study in Behavioral and Social
Sciences in 2001; the Emotions Matter workshop at Carleton University in
2009; and a conference of Italian ethnographers held in Bergamo, Italy, in
2009.
2 There are exceptions for ritual occasions. When ‘prize’ lectures are read, a
lack of spontaneity sustains a double impression, of extraordinarily careful
preparation and of the preciousness of each word. The former conveys
reciprocation for the respect shown by the award committee; the latter
affirms that the audience’s deference is well deserved.
3 As objects of expression, emotions become flattened out. Paul Ekman (1982)
has shown that people universally can identify several different emotions
by looking at two-dimensional photographs. We can name emotions,
but to characterize feelings as ‘anger’ or ‘happiness’ is to reduce a three
dimensional experience to a metaphor-stripped semiotics that applies
equally well to non-emotional self-descriptors. We can enact emotions
so that others, correctly or not, infer what we are feeling. But as we feel,
within our emotional experiences, we resonate with implications of what
we perceive in ways that language always struggles to grasp, in ways
that metaphors and audiovisual representations often convey better than
does flatprose, and in ways that our enacted emotions may turn into two-
dimensional masks. The study of how emotions are presented, dramatized,
or shaped as managed performances leaves the experience of emotion off
the research agenda.
4 Defence of the claim that the dialectic is ontogenetic requires examination of
fetal and neonate behaviour and must await another writing.
5 Blumer (1969) persistently argued that social interaction is at the foundation
of all behaviour. By social interaction he meant taking into account the
response of others in the formation of one’s own action. Following Mead,
Blumer would understand that the narrative structuring of action is part of
social action, whether others are present or not. Action is interactively formed
when the actor, acting in solitary situations or in the presence of others, takes
account of his/her own action from the standpoint of what he/she assumes
is a collectively recognizable kind of doing. In picking up my shoe I am at the
beginning of what I take for granted that others, were they present, would,
were they to see the ensuing stages of the sequence I am launching, see as
putting on my shoes (or cleaning my room, or swatting a fly . . . ). But there
 Emotion’s Crucible 37

is social action even when one’s solitary action, if observed by others, would
be incomprehensible as narrative construction. Thus to a peeping Tom I
may seem to be wandering aimlessly around my garden when I am in deed
systematically structuring my gaze in discrete strips, each strip of attentive
gaze internally structured to gauge the progress of previously noted pest
damage, to follow trajectories of plant growth that may be progressing
towards crowding, to witness novel light patterns as they emerge across
the landscape, and so on. In such solo experiences there is interaction, in
that each moment’s observation implicates the meaning of the person’s past
action (prior observations of pest damage, plant growth, and light patterns
set up the meaning of the current observation as disturbing, intriguing,
etc.) and next actions (time now to act or not, reason or not to continue the
exploration); but to call this ‘social’ interaction is tendentious or redundant
with the concept of interaction. More clearly the activity has narrative
structure.
6 There is no clear line between ritualistic and pragmatically required recipes.
Indeed, one youthful recipe for being antisocial is ritualistically rejecting
steps that others take for granted as practically necessary. Thus adolescents
who do not tie shoes create magically powerful ways of resisting the
embrace of the social; their untied shoes will drive some onlookers to mad
fantasies of tying them.
7 Adam Kendon’s (1990, 2004) studies come the closest to theorizing the
relationship between body movements and the situated structuring
of social life. Body movement may consist of walking off, turning the
page, changing gaze, and so on; no particular region of the body need
be engaged, although in the responsive actions of others, the further
down the corpus the alteration occurs (compare eye gaze to head turn to
torso turn to walking away), the more effective it will be in shaping the
understanding of a co-present other than that the situation is ending. Much
of McNeil’s (1992, 2005) work approaches the relationship from a direction
opposite to that taken in most interaction analysis, which, following
Blumer, sees body deployed in service of mind (anticipating how one will
be seen, one gives a movement a certain flair). McNeil finds that gesture
commonly precedes and shapes the thought to which it is related; body
gives rise to mind. I would add that it does so through the intermediary
step of invoking a situation.
8 See Schutz (1962) on multiple realities.
9 Someone who has never seen a shower might turn a handle, bringing the
water on, without anticipating or understanding that a counter-directional
turn will shut it off, but whatever that person is doing – perhaps turning an
obviously designed object to see why it was made – he or she is not ‘turning
on a shower.’ The nouns we use to designate objects in the social world are
shorthand references to narratives.
38 Jack Katz

10 The pun is not simply rhetorical. Learning to walk is aided if one already
knows how to interrelate moments of life as connected steps, and vice
versa. For the young child, walking is initially a series of discrete narratives.
The concept of steps, with which we populate the social world with
differentiated doings, is laboriously and spontaneously, delightedly and
painfully acquired.
11 The example of putting on shoes raises in a useful way the question
of whether or to what extent the social world is all embracing. Is there
escape? If we avoid commodity objects like shoes, can we declare our
independence from social control? Not so easily. If one goes barefoot,
it matters all the more the nature and condition of the materials on the
ground one walks upon. Walking on paths will be a different experience
than walking off-path. The very phenomenon of a path is a creation by
others. How many have come before and moved over this space, with what
weight, leaving what depressions and ridges, scattering what detritus –
all that will matter even more. Walking on paths barefoot is an especially
intimate way of being with anonymous others (Solnit 2000).
12 A caveat is necessary here. The contrast I have made between the
interaction requirements that obtain when collaborating with co-present
others and that constrain one when using material objects in private
requires complex and historically changing qualifications. Over time,
the material environment of work changes in its negative demands on
users. Computers, for example, are evolving to minimize the constraining
pressure of a given task to monopolize the user’s attention. A few years
ago, ‘multi-tasking’ was unknown; then for some years operating systems
were at a state in which multi-tasking would risk ‘crashing’ the computer.
Computer users were constrained not to be flaky. Now, working alone
on a computer is a robust environment for jumping in focus from here to
there, from work obligations to private indulgence, and among tasks at
different stages of their evolution, whether the tasks are pursued on or off
the computer. One can more reliably take for granted that the computer will
hold as-yet-incomplete projections of the user’s virtual self – where the user
is in a digitally expressed task – in a steady state until he or she is ready
to return. ‘Ticklers,’ alarms, and various reminders can be programmed in
to minimize the scattering of attention. These strategies understand and
respond to the increasingly flexible, costless ability to depart attention from
and return at will to a situated project that has begun.But the progression
towards a computer that can be thoroughly treated with disrespect is not
complete. Even if, given the low level demands I make on my computer,
Imay not have to limit my task-transcending concerns out of fear that the
computer may ‘freeze up.’ I still must treat the computer like a flesh-
and-blood work partner, as having a life of its own. The contemporary
computer has a biography beyond my project that it might divert or
 Emotion’s Crucible 39

digress to attend to. It might pause my work for ‘system maintenance’

or to download software updates from the Internet. Depending on how I
arrange my coffee around it and manipulate it, the computer may break
down or otherwise effectively go away. Users are not yet free to disregard or
disrespect the computer’s ontology.
3 Sociable Happiness

sar a a hmed

Introduction

Emotions are quite sociable. We are moved by the proximity of others.

Sociability can even be a feeling: when you feel sociable you want to be
with others; you register the proximity of others as enjoyment. In this
chapter, I consider happiness as a form of sociability. It is a truism that
happiness is happiest when it is shared with others. And yet does hap-
piness simply bring us together? A social bond might be created if the
same things make us happy. In turn, those who are not made happy by
the same things might threaten our happiness. If emotions are sociable,
then sociability might need to be theorized in terms of the restriction as
well as enjoyment of company.
Before thinking about happiness as a form of sociability I want to
reflect on questions of methodology. How do I approach happiness? It
might be useful to note that there is a body of research called ‘happiness
studies,’ which is also widely referred to as ‘the new science of hap-
piness.’ Much research in this field draws on the nineteenth-century
tradition of English utilitarianism and is premised on the following be-
liefs: happiness is a good thing, and the task of government is to maxi-
mize happiness (cf. Ahmed 2008). One of the key figures in the recent
science of happiness is Richard Layard (2005), often referred to as ‘the
happiness tsar’ by the British media. Layard’s important book, Happi-
ness: Lessons from a New Science, begins as a critique of the discipline of
economics for how it measures human growth: he argues that ‘econom-
ics equates changes in the happiness of a society with changes in its
purchasing power’ (ix). Layard argues that happiness is the only way
of measuring growth and advancement: ‘the best society is the happiest
 Sociable Happiness 41

society’ (5). The science of happiness presumes that happiness is ‘out

there,’ that you can measure happiness, and that these measurements
are objective.
If the science of happiness presumes happiness as being ‘out there,’
then how does it define happiness? Richard Layard (2005) again pro-
vides us with a useful reference point. He argues that ‘happiness is feel-
ing good, and misery is feeling bad’ (6). Happiness is ‘feeling good,’
which means we can measure happiness because we can measure how
good people feel. So ‘out there’ is really ‘in here.’ The belief that you
can measure happiness is a belief that you can measure feelings. Layard
argues that ‘most people find it easy to say how good they are feeling’
(13). Happiness research is primarily based on self-reporting: studies
measure how happy people say they are, presuming that if people say
they are happy, they are happy. This model both presumes the trans-
parency of self-feeling, as well as the unmotivated and uncomplicated
nature of self-reporting.
It matters how we think about feeling. Much of the new science of
happiness is premised on the model of feelings as transparent, as well
as the foundation for moral life. If something is good, we feel good.
If something is bad, we feel bad.1 The science of happiness thus re-
lies on a very specific model of subjectivity, where one knows how one
feels, and where the distinction between good and bad feeling is secure,
forming the basis of subjective as well as social well-being. Cultural
Studies may have an important role to play in these debates by offer-
ing alternative theories of emotion that are not based on a subject that
is fully present to itself, on a subject that always knows how s/he feels
(see Terada 2001). Of course, I should note here that even the associa-
tion of happiness with feeling is a modern one. One of my concerns is
thus to track an association – to ask how feeling good becomes attached
to other kinds of goods. To give happiness a history is to give a history
to its associations.
We do have examples of happiness histories, such as the one offered
by Darrin McMahon (2006). He describes his history of happiness as
an ‘intellectual history’ (xiv) and suggests that his history is one his-
tory of happiness that should exist alongside others: ‘there are infinite
histories of happiness to be written’ (xiii). He suggests that such histo-
ries would be told from more specific viewing points as ‘histories not
only of the struggles of the peasants, slaves, and apostates . . . but of
early-modern women and late-modern aristocrats, nineteenth-century
bourgeois and twentieth-century workers, conservatives and radicals,
42 Sara Ahmed

consumers and crusaders, immigrants and natives, gentiles and Jews’

(xiii). Different histories, we might imagine, unfold from the struggles
of such groups.
I have no wish to supplement McMahon’s history with a history
told from a specific viewing point, as a particular history within a
general history. I want to think about how the intellectual history of
happiness – as a history of an idea – can be challenged by considering
what gets erased if we take this viewing point, where to see what is
erased would change the view you see from this point. Just note how
women appear or do not appear in McMahon’s intellectual history.
The index includes one reference to women, which turns out to be a
reference to John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women. Even the cat-
egory of ‘women’ returns us to philosophy as a white male European
inheritance. If differences matter within the history of happiness, then
they may trouble the form of its coherence.
If we take up happiness as an intellectual history, it is striking how
consistent this history is on one point: happiness is what gives meaning,
purpose, and order to human existence. As Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer
(2002) argue: ‘Everybody wants to be happy. There is probably no other
goal in life that commands such a high degree of consensus’ (vii). Even a
philosopher such as Immanuel Kant (2004), who places the individual’s
own happiness outside the domain of ethics, suggests that ‘to be happy is
necessarily the wish of every finite and rational being, and this, therefore,
is inevitably a determining principle of its faculty of desire’ (24). And yet
Kant (2005) himself suggests, rather mournfully,‘unfortunately, the no-
tion of happiness is so indeterminate that although every human being
wishes to attain it, yet he can never say definitely and consistently what
it is that he really wishes and wills’ (78).2
What if we refuse to wish this wish or to will this will? What if we
were to suspend our belief that happiness is what we want or even
that happiness is a good thing? In this mode of suspension, we can
consider how happiness participates in making things good. Simone de
Beauvoir’s (1997) The Second Sex uses this technique of suspension. As
de Beauvoir argues: ‘it is not too clear just what the word happy really
means and still less what true values it may mask. There is no possibil-
ity of measuring the happiness of others, and it is always easy to describe
as happy the situation in which one wishes to place them’ (28, second em-
phasis added). De Beauvoir shows so well how happiness translates
its wish into a politics, a wishful politics, a politics that demands that
others live according to a wish.
 Sociable Happiness 43

Feminist histories offer a different angle on the history of happiness.

Or perhaps feminist histories teach us that we need to give a history to
unhappiness. The history of the word ‘unhappy’ might teach us about
the unhappiness of the history of happiness. In its earliest uses, un-
happy meant ‘causing misfortune or trouble.’ Only later did it come
to mean ‘wretched in mind.’3 We can learn from the swiftness of trans-
lation between causing unhappiness and being described as being
unhappy. We must learn. The word ‘wretched’ also has a suggestive
genealogy, coming from wretch, referring to a banished person, and is
said to reflect the sorry state of the outcast. The sorrow of the stranger
might give us a different angle on happiness not because it teaches us
what it is like or must be like to be a stranger, but because it might es-
trange us from the very happiness of the familiar.
I offer a different account of happiness not simply by offering dif-
ferent readings of its intellectual history, but by considering those who
are banished from it, or who enter this history only as troublemakers,
dissenters, killers of joy. In this chapter, I explore how happiness offers
a promise (the promise of the return for being sociable in the right way)
before considering how happiness appears to those who are alienated
from its promise, taking up two key figures: the feminist killjoy and the
angry black woman.

Happy Objects

My starting point is not to assume there is something called affect (or,

for that matter, emotion) that stands apart or has autonomy, as if it cor-
responds to an object in the world. I begin with the messiness of the
experiential, the unfolding of bodies into the world, and what I call ‘the
drama of contingency’ (Ahmed 2006), how we are touched by what is
near. It is useful to note that the etymology of ‘happiness’ relates pre-
cisely to the question of contingency: it is from the Middle English ‘hap,’
suggesting chance. One of the early meanings of happiness in English
relates to the idea of being lucky, or favoured by fortune, or being for-
tunate. This meaning may now seem archaic: we may be more used
to thinking of happiness as an effect of what you do, as a reward for
hard work, rather than as what happens to you. But I find this original
meaning useful, as it focuses our attention on the ‘worldly’ question of
happenings.
What is the relation between the ‘what’ in ‘what happens’ and the
‘what’ that makes us happy? Empiricism provides us with a useful
44 Sara Ahmed

way of addressing this question, given its concern with ‘what’s what.’
Take the work of John Locke (1997). He argues that what is good is
what is ‘apt to cause or increase pleasure, or diminish pain in us’ (216).
So we judge something to be good or bad according to how it affects
us, whether it gives us pleasure or pain. Locke suggests that ‘he loves
grapes, it is no more but that the taste of the grapes delights him’
(216). So we could say that an object becomes happy if it affects us in
a good way.
Note the doubling of positive affect in Locke’s example: we love the
grapes if they taste delightful. If the object affects us in a good way, then
we have an orientation towards that object as being good. Orientations
register the proximity of objects, as well as shape what is proximate
to the body. Happiness can thus be described as intentional in the phe-
nomenological sense (directed towards objects), as well as being affec-
tive (contact with objects). To bring these arguments together we might
say that happiness is an orientation towards the objects we come into
contact with. We move towards and away from objects according to
how we are affected by them.
To describe happiness as intentional does not mean there is always
a simple correspondence between objects and feelings. I think Robin
Barrow (1980) is right to argue that happiness does not ‘have an object’
the way that some other emotions do (89). We have probably all expe-
rienced what I call ‘unattributed happiness’: you feel happy, not quite
knowing why, and the feeling can be catchy, as a kind of brimming over
that exceeds what you encounter. The feeling can lift or elevate any
proximate object, which is not to say that the feeling will survive an
encounter with anything. It has always interested me that when we be-
come conscious of feeling happy or of a happy feeling (when the feeling
becomes an object of thought), happiness can often recede or become
anxious. Happiness can arrive in a moment, and be lost by virtue of its
recognition.
I would suggest that happiness involves a specific kind of intention-
ality, which I would describe as ‘end oriented.’ It is not just that we
can be happy about something, as a feeling in the present, but some
things become happy for us, if we imagine they will bring happiness to
us. Happiness is often described as ‘what’ we aim for, as an end-point,
or even an end-in-itself. Classically, happiness has been considered as
an end rather than as a means. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (1998)
describes happiness as the Chief Good, as ‘that which all things aim at’
(1). Happiness is what we ‘choose always for its own sake’ (8).
 Sociable Happiness 45

We don’t have to agree with the argument that happiness is the per-
fect end to understand the implications of what it means for happiness
to be thought of in these terms. If happiness is the end of all ends,
then other things (including other goods) become means to happiness.
As Aristotle describes, we choose other things ‘with a view to happi-
ness, conceiving that through their instrumentality we shall be happy’
(8). Aristotle is not referring here to material things or physical ob-
jects, but is differentiating between different kinds of goods, between
instrumental goods and independent goods. So honour, pleasure, or
intellect we choose ‘with a view to happiness’ as being instrumental
to happiness, and the realization of the possibility of living a good or
virtuous life.
If we think of instrumental goods as objects of happiness then impor-
tant consequences follow. Things become good, or acquire their value
as goods, insofar as they point towards happiness. Objects become
‘happiness means.’ Or we could say they become happiness pointers,
as if to follow their point would be to find happiness. If objects pro-
vide a means for making us happy, then in directing ourselves towards
this or that object, we are aiming somewhere else: towards a happiness
that is presumed to follow. The temporality of this following matters.
Happiness is what would come after. Given this, happiness is directed
towards certain objects, which point towards that which is not yet pres-
ent. When we follow things, we aim for happiness, as if happiness is
what you get if you reach certain points.
The very possibility of being pointed towards happiness suggests
that objects can be associated with affects before they are even encoun-
tered. Happy objects thus need to be re-thought beyond a sequential
logic of causality. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche (1968) suggests that
the attribution of causality is retrospective (294–5). We might assume
that the experience of pain is caused by a nail near our foot. But we only
notice the nail if we experience an affect. We search for the object, or, as
Nietzsche describes it, ‘a reason is sought in persons, experiences, etc.
for why one feels this way or that’ (354).
Once an object is a feeling-cause, it can cause feeling, so that when
we feel the feeling we expect to feel, we are affirmed. The retrospective
causality of affect that Nietzsche describes quickly converts into what
we can call an anticipatory causality. We can even anticipate an affect
without being retrospective insofar as objects can acquire the value of
proximities that are not derived from our own experience. For exam-
ple, with fear-causes, a child might be told not to go near an object in
46 Sara Ahmed

advance of its arrival. Some things more than others are encountered
as ‘to-be-feared’ in the event of proximity, which is exactly how we can
understand the anticipatory logic of the discourse of stranger danger.
As I argued in Strange Encounters (2000), even if the stranger is conven-
tionally understood as anybody we do not know, the stranger is also
somebody we recognize as a stranger, as a ‘body out of place.’ Some more
than others are recognized as strangers: the stranger as a figure is thus
painfully familiar. We recognize strangers as the cause of danger in ad-
vance of their arrival.
We can also anticipate that an object will cause happiness in advance
of its arrival; the object might enter our near sphere with a positive af-
fective value already in place. Objects can become ‘happiness-causes’
before we even encounter them. This argument is different from John
Locke’s account of loving grapes because they taste delightful: I am sug-
gesting that the judgment that some things are good not only precedes
our encounter with things, but can direct us towards certain things. For
example, the child might be asked to imagine happy events in the fu-
ture, such as the wedding day, the ‘happiest day of your life.’ The very
expectation of happiness might be what gives us a specific image of the
future. To share happy objects is to pass certain things around, as if you
are passing the cause of happiness.
The more happy objects circulate, the more they accumulate affec-
tive value, as signs of the good life. What happens when happy objects
circulate? How do happy objects sustain their promise in the absence
of happiness being given? Consider that the word ‘promise’ derives
from the Latin verb promittere, suggesting ‘to let go or send forth, to
put forth,’ as well as ‘to promise, guarantee, or predict.’ The promise
of happiness might be what sends happiness forth. When objects are
promising, they are sent out or sent forth; to promise can mean to pass
around a promise.
Is happiness sent forth? Does the promise of happiness mean that
happiness is passed around? If we were to say that the promise of
happiness means that happiness is sent forth, we might also suggest
that happiness is contagious. David Hume’s (1975) approach to moral
emotions rests on a contagious model of happiness. He suggests that
‘others enter into the same humour, and catch the sentiment, by a con-
tagion or natural sympathy’ and that cheerfulness is the most com-
municative of emotions: ‘the flame spreads through the whole circle;
and the most sullenly and remorse are often caught by it’ (250–1; see
also Blackman 2008). A number of scholars have recently taken up the
 Sociable Happiness 47

idea of affects as contagious in very interesting ways, drawing in par-

ticular on the work of the psychologist of affect Silvan Tomkins (Gibbs
2001; Brennan 2004; Sedgwick 2003; Probyn 2005). As Anna Gibbs
(2001) describes: ‘Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect
leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame,
igniting rage, exciting fear – in short, communicable affect can inflame
nerves and muscles in a conflagration of every conceivable kind of
passion’ (1).
Thinking of affects as contagious helps us to challenge what I have
called an ‘inside out’ model of affect (Ahmed 2004:9), by showing how
we are affected by what is around us. However, the concept of affective
contagion does tend to treat affect as something that moves smoothly
from body to body, sustaining integrity in being passed around. When
Sedgwick (2003) argues that shame is contagious, for example, she sug-
gests that proximity to someone’s shame generates shame (36–8). The
implication of such arguments is that affects are sustained in being
passed around: shame creates shame in others, and happiness creates
happiness in others, and so on. The concept of affective contagion un-
derestimates the extent to which affects are contingent (involving the
‘hap’ of a happening): to be affected by another does not mean that an
affect simply passes or ‘leaps’ from one body to another. The affect be-
comes an object only given the contingency of how we are affected. We might
be affected differently by what gets passed around.
We can take the example of atmosphere. We might describe an ‘at-
mosphere’ as a feeling of what is around, which might be affective in
its murkiness or fuzziness, as a surrounding influence which does not
quite generate its own form. At the same time, in describing an atmo-
sphere, we give this influence some form. We might say the atmosphere
was tense, which would mean that the body that arrives into the room
will ‘pick up’ tension and become tense as a way of being under influ-
ence. When feelings become atmospheric, we can catch the feeling sim-
ply by walking into a room, from a crowd or the collective body from
being proximate to another.
Do we pick up feelings in quite this way? Consider the opening sen-
tence of Teresa Brennan’s (2004) book, The Transmission of Affect: ‘Is there
anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and “felt the
atmosphere” ’ (1). Brennan writes very beautifully about how the atmo-
sphere ‘gets into the individual,’ using what I have called an ‘outside in’
model, very much part of the intellectual history of crowd psychology
and also the sociology of emotion (Ahmed 2004:9). However, later in
48 Sara Ahmed

the introduction she makes an observation, which involves a different

model. Brennan (2004) suggests that ‘if I feel anxiety when I enter the
room, then that will influence what I perceive or receive by way of an
“impression” (a word that means what it says)’ (6).4 I agree. Anxiety is
sticky: rather like Velcro, it tends to pick up whatever comes near, such
that anything that is proximate to us when we are anxious can become
anxious (for a more detailed explanation, see Ahmed 2004:66). Anxiety
is, of course, one feeling state amongst others. You might say we are
always in a certain mood, even if we are not certain what mood we are
in. Bodies thus never arrive in neutral; we are always moody in some
way or another. What we will receive as an impression will depend on
our affective situation. This second argument suggests the atmosphere
is not simply ‘out there’ before it gets ‘in’: how we arrive, how we enter
this room or that room, will affect what impressions we receive. To re-
ceive is to act. To receive an impression is to make an impression.
So we may walk into the room and ‘feel the atmosphere,’ but what
we may feel depends on the angle of our arrival. Or we might say that
the atmosphere is already angled; it is always felt from a specific point.
The pedagogic encounter is full of angles. How many times have I read
students as interested or bored, such that the atmosphere seemed one
of interest or boredom (and even felt myself to be interesting or boring)
only to find students recall the event quite differently! Having read the
atmosphere in a certain way, one can become tense, which in turn af-
fects what happens, how things move along. The moods we arrive with
do affect what happens, which is not to say we always keep our moods.
Sometimes I arrive heavy with anxiety, and everything that happens
makes me feel more anxious, whilst at other times things happen which
ease the anxiety, making the space itself seem light and energetic. We do
not know in advance what will happen given this contingency, given
the hap of what happens; we do not know ‘exactly’ what makes things
happen in this way and that. Situations are affective given the gap be-
tween the impressions we have of others and the impressions we make
on others, all of which are lively.
Think too about experiences of alienation. I have suggested that
happiness is attributed to certain objects that circulate as social goods.
When we feel pleasure from such objects, we are aligned; we are fac-
ing the right way. We become alienated – out of line with an affective
community – when we do not experience pleasure from proximity to
objects that are attributed as being good. The gap between the affective
value of an object and how we experience an object can involve a range
 Sociable Happiness 49

of affects, which are directed by the modes of explanation we offer to

fill this gap.
We might feel disappointed. Disappointment can be experienced as
a gap between an ideal and an experience that demands action. We can
return to the example of the wedding day: the ‘happiest day of your
life.’ What does it mean for such a day to be anticipated as being the
happiest day when the day is actually happening? We might say that
the day happens because of this anticipation of happiness. However
the day happens, when it does happen, happiness is supposed to fol-
low. As Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) explores in her classic The Man-
aged Heart, if the bride is not happy on the wedding day and even feels
‘depressed and upset’ then she is experiencing an ‘inappropriate affect’
(59), or is being affected inappropriately. You have to save the day by
feeling right: ‘sensing a gap between the ideal feeling and the actual
feeling she tolerated, the bride prompts herself to be happy’ (61).
The capacity to ‘save the day’ depends on the bride being able to
make herself be affected in the right way or at least being able to per-
suade others that she is being affected in the right way. When it can be
said ‘the bride looked happy’ then the expectation of happiness has be-
come the happiness of expectation. To correct our feelings is to become
disaffected from a former affectation: the bride makes herself happy by
stopping herself being miserable. Of course, we learn from this example
that it is possible not to inhabit fully one’s own happiness, or even to be
alienated from one’s happiness, if the former affection remains lively,
or if one is made uneasy by the labour of making oneself feel a certain
way. Uneasiness might persist in the very feeling of being happy, as a
feeling of unease with the happiness you are in.
The experience of a gap between the promise of happiness and how
you are affected by objects that promise happiness does not always lead
to corrections that close this gap. Disappointment can also involve an
anxious narrative of self-doubt (Why am I not made happy by this?
What is wrong with me?), or a narrative of rage, where the object that
is supposed to make us happy is attributed as the cause of disappoint-
ment. Your rage might be directed against the object that fails to deliver
its promise, or spill out towards those who promised you happiness
through the elevation of some things as good. Anger can fill the gap
between the promise of a feeling and the feeling of a feeling. We be-
come strangers, or affect aliens, in such moments. An affect alien is
one who is not affected in the right way by the right things. To be af-
fected wrongly might be to commit a social wrong: to be wrong, or to be
50 Sara Ahmed

found as being in the wrong. As I will explore in the following sections,

the distribution of affects is at once to the distributions of rights and
wrongs in different bodies.

Killing Joy

If happy objects are passed around it is not necessarily the feeling that
passes. So what are we sharing when we share happy objects? To an-
swer this question, I will take as an example Rousseau’s Émile, first
published in 1762, which was crucial for how it redefined education
and for the role it gave to happiness. This book is written in the first
person by a narrator whose duty is to instruct a young orphan named
Émile. Within this book, happiness plays a crucial role: the good man
does not seek happiness but achieves happiness as a consequence of
virtue. Rousseau offers a model of what a good education would do
for his Émile, but also for Émile’s would-be wife, Sophy, whom he in-
troduces in the fifth book. In this book, happiness provides a script for
her becoming. As Rousseau (1993) describes: ‘She loves virtue because
there is nothing fairer in itself. She loves it because it is a woman’s glory
and because a virtuous woman is little lower than the angels; she loves
virtue as the only road to real happiness, because she sees nothing but
poverty, neglect, unhappiness, shame and disgrace in the life of the bad
woman; she loves virtue because it is dear to her revered father, and to
her tender and worthy mother; they are not content to be happy in their
own virtue, they desire hers; and she finds her chief happiness in the
hope of just making them happy!’ (431). The complexity of this state-
ment should not be underestimated. She loves virtue, as it is the road to
happiness; unhappiness and disgrace are what follow from being bad.
The good woman loves what is good because this is what is loved by
her parents. Her parents desire not only what is good; they desire their
daughter to be good. So for the daughter to be happy, she must be good,
as being good is what makes them happy, and she can only be happy
if they are happy.
It might seem that what we can call ‘conditional happiness,’ where
one person’s happiness is made conditional upon another person’s, in-
volves a relationship of care and reciprocity as if to say, I will not have
a share in a happiness that cannot be shared. And yet, the terms of con-
ditionality are unequal. If certain people come first, we might say those
who are already in place (such as parents, hosts, or citizens), then their
 Sociable Happiness 51

happiness comes first. For those who are positioned as coming after,
happiness means following somebody else’s goods.
The concept of conditional happiness allows me to be more precise
in thinking about what we share when we share an orientation. If my
happiness is made conditional on your happiness, such that your hap-
piness comes first, then your happiness becomes a shared object. Max Sche-
ler’s (2008) differentiation between communities of feeling and fellow
feeling might help explain the significance of this argument. In commu-
nities of feeling, we share feelings because we share the object of feeling.
We might share sadness, for example, if someone died whom we both
loved. Fellow feeling does not depend on a shared object: it ‘involves
intentional reference of the feeling to the other person’s experience’
(12, emphasis added). I would be saddened by your loss because I love
you, even if I did not share your loss. In the case of happiness, then,
we would have a community of feeling if we were both made happy
by the same thing (for example, we might both be happy as supporters
of a football team if they won). In the case of fellow feeling, I would
share your happiness, but my happiness would refer simply to yours,
such that your happiness was the object of my happiness. (I might be
happy when your football team wins, because their winning makes you
happy, even if I don’t support the team.)
I suspect that in everyday life these different forms of shared feeling
can be confused because the object of feeling is sometimes, but not al-
ways, exterior to the feeling that is shared. Say I am happy about your
happiness. Your happiness is with x. If I share x, then your happiness
and my happiness is not only shared, but can accumulate through being
returned. Or I can simply disregard x: if my happiness is directed ‘just’
towards your happiness, and you are happy about x, the exteriority
of x can disappear or cease to matter. In cases where I am also affected
by x, and I do not share your happiness with x, I might become un-
easy and ambivalent, as I am made happy by your happiness but I am not
made happy by what makes you happy. The exteriority of x would then an-
nounce itself as a point of crisis. In order to preserve the happiness of
all, we might even conceal from ourselves our unhappiness with x, or
try and persuade ourselves that x matters less than the happiness of the
other who is made happy by x.
We have a hint of the rather uneasy dynamics of conditional happi-
ness in Rousseau’s (1993) Émile. For Sophy wanting to make her parents
happy commits her in a certain direction. In one episode, the father
52 Sara Ahmed

speaks to the daughter about becoming a woman. He says, ‘you are

a big girl now, Sophy, you will soon be a woman. We want you to be
happy, for our sakes as well as yours, for our happiness depends on
yours. A good girl finds her own happiness in the happiness of a good
man’ (434). For the daughter not to go along with the parents’ desire for
marriage would be not only to cause her parents unhappiness, it would
threaten the very reproduction of social form. The daughter has a duty
to reproduce the form of the family, which means taking up the cause of
parental happiness as her own.
It should be no surprise that Rousseau’s treatment of Sophy was a
crucial object of feminist critique. Mary Wollstonecraft (1975) in her
Vindication of the Rights of Women spoke out against Rousseau’s vision
of what makes women happy. She comments wryly about his treatment
of Sophy: ‘I have probably had an opportunity of observing more girls
in their infancy than J.J. Rousseau’ (43). The struggle over happiness
forms the political horizon in which feminist claims are made. My argu-
ment is simple: we inherit this horizon.
The figure of the feminist killjoy makes more sense if we read her
through the lens of the history of happiness. Feminists might kill joy
simply by not finding the objects that promise happiness to be quite
so promising. The word feminism is thus saturated with unhappiness.
Feminists by declaring themselves as feminists are already read as de-
stroying something that is thought of by others not only as being good,
but also as the cause of happiness. The feminist killjoy ‘spoils’ the hap-
piness of others; she is a spoilsport because she refuses to convene, to
assemble, or to meet up, over happiness.
In the thick sociality of everyday spaces, feminists are thus attrib-
uted as the origin of bad feeling, as the ones who ruin the atmosphere,
which is how the atmosphere might be imagined (retrospectively) as
shared. In order to get along, you have to participate in certain forms of
solidarity: you have to laugh at the right points. Feminists are typically
represented as grumpy and humourless, often as a way of protecting
the right to certain forms of social bonding, or holding onto whatever is
perceived to be under threat. Feminists don’t even have to say anything
to be read as killing joy. A feminist colleague says to me she just has to
open her mouth in meetings to witness eyes rolling as if to say, ‘Oh,
here she goes.’
My experience of being the feminist daughter in a conventional fam-
ily taught me much about rolling eyes. I recall feeling at odds with the
performance of good feeling. Say, we are seated at the dinner table.
 Sociable Happiness 53

Around this table, the family gathers, having polite conversations,

where only certain things can be brought up. Someone says something
you consider problematic. You respond, carefully perhaps. You might
be speaking quietly or you might be getting ‘wound up,’ recognizing
with frustration that you are being wound up by someone who is wind-
ing you up. The violence of what was said or the violence of provoca-
tion goes unnoticed. However she speaks, the feminist is usually the
one who is viewed as ‘causing the argument,’ the one who is disturbing
the fragility of peace.
Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does the fem-
inist kill other people’s joy by pointing out moments of sexism? Or
does she expose the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or ne-
gated under public signs of joy? Does bad feeling enter the room when
somebody expresses anger about things, or could anger be the mo-
ment when the bad feelings that circulate through objects get brought
to the surface in a certain way? The feminist subject ‘in the room’ hence
‘brings others down’ not only by talking about unhappy topics such
as sexism but by exposing how happiness is sustained by erasing the
signs of not getting along. Feminists do kill joy in a certain sense: they
disturb the very fantasy that happiness can be found in certain places.
To kill a fantasy can still kill a feeling. It is not just that feminists might
not be happily affected by the objects that are supposed to cause hap-
piness, but their failure to be happy is read as sabotaging the happi-
ness of others.
Of course, within feminism, some bodies more than others can be
attributed as the cause of unhappiness. We can place the figure of the
feminist killjoy alongside the figure of the angry black woman, explored
so well by writers such as Audre Lorde (1984) and bell hooks (2000).
The angry black woman can be described as a killjoy; she may even
kill feminist joy, for example, by pointing out forms of racism within
feminist politics. Listen to the following description from bell hooks: ‘a
group of white feminist activists who do not know one another may be
present at a meeting to discuss feminist theory. They may feel bonded
on the basis of shared womanhood, but the atmosphere will noticeably
change when a woman of color enters the room. The white women will
become tense, no longer relaxed, no longer celebratory’ (56).
It is not just that feelings are ‘in tension,’ but that the tension is lo-
cated somewhere: in being felt by some bodies, it is attributed as caused
by another body, who thus comes to be felt as apart from the group, as
getting in the way of its organic enjoyment and solidarity. The black
54 Sara Ahmed

body is attributed as the cause of becoming tense, which is experienced

as the loss of a shared atmosphere. Atmospheres are shared if there is
an agreement as to where we locate the points of tension. As a feminist
of colour you do not even have to say anything to cause tension. We
learn from this example how histories are condensed in the very intan-
gibility of an atmosphere, or in the tangibility of the bodies that seem to
get in the way. Some bodies are reminders of histories that are disturb-
ing, which disturb an atmosphere.

Consciousness and Unhappiness

Some bodies become causes of unhappiness in order both to defend and

restrict the sociability of happiness. Returning to Émile, it is interest-
ing that the danger of unhappiness is associated precisely with women
having too much curiosity. At one point in the narrative, Sophy gets
misdirected. Her imagination and desires are activated by reading too
many books, leading to her becoming an ‘unhappy girl, overwhelmed
with her secret grief ’ (Rousseau 1993: 439–40). If Sophy becomes too
imaginative, we would not get our happy ending premised on Sophy
being given to Émile. The narrator says in response to the threat of such
an unhappy ending, ‘Let us give Émile his Sophy; let us restore this
sweet girl to life and provide her with a less vivid imagination and a
happier fate’ (441). Being restored to life is here being returned to the
straight and narrow. Imagination is what makes women look beyond
the script of happiness to a different fate. Having made Sophy sweet
and unimaginative, the book can end happily.
Feminist readers might want to challenge this association between
unhappiness and female imagination, which, in the moral economy of
happiness, makes her imagination a bad thing. But if we do not oper-
ate in this economy – that is, if we do not assume happiness is what
is good – then we can read the link between female imagination and
unhappiness differently. We might explore how imagination is what
allows women to be liberated from happiness and the narrowness of its
horizons. We might want girls to read the books that enable them to be
overwhelmed with grief.
Feminism involves political consciousness of what women are asked
to give up for happiness. Indeed, in even becoming conscious of happi-
ness as loss, feminists have already refused to give up desire, imagina-
tion, and curiosity for happiness. There can be sadness simply in the
realization of what one has given up. Feminist archives are thus full of
 Sociable Happiness 55

housewives becoming conscious of unhappiness as a mood that seems

to surround them: think of Virginia Woolf ’s (1953) Mrs. Dalloway. The
feeling is certainly around, almost as a thickness in the air. We sense the
unhappiness seeping through the tasks of the every day. There she is,
about to get flowers, enjoying her walk in London. During that walk,
she disappears: ‘But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look
at a Dutch picture), this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing –
nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible;
unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having
children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress
with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not
even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway’ (14). Becom-
ing Mrs Dalloway is itself a form of disappearance: to follow the paths
of life (marriage, reproduction) is to feel that what is before you is a
kind of solemn progress, as if you are living somebody else’s life, sim-
ply going the same way others are going. If happiness is what allows us
to reach certain points, it is not necessarily how you feel when you get
there. For Mrs Dalloway to reach these points is to disappear. The point
of reaching these points seems to be a certain disappearance, a loss of
possibility, a certain failure to make use of the body’s capacities, to find
out what it is that her body can do. To become conscious of possibility
can involve mourning for its loss.
For Clarissa, this rather uncanny sensation of becoming Mrs Dallo-
way as a loss of possibility, as an unbecoming, or becoming ‘nothing
at all,’ does not enter her consciousness in the form of sadness about
something. The sadness of the book – and for me, it is a sad book – is
not one expressed as a point of view. Instead, each sentence of the book
takes thoughts and feelings as if they are objects in a shared world: the
streets of London, the very oddness of the occasion of passing others
by, a feeling of that oddness. The coincidence of how you coincide with
others. As Clarissa goes out with her task in mind (she has to buy flow-
ers for her party), she walks into a world with others. Each might be in
their own world (with their own tasks, their own recollections) and yet
they share the world of the street, if only for a moment, a fleeting mo-
ment, a moment that fleets.
If unhappiness becomes a collective impression, then it too is made
up of fragments that only loosely attach to points of view. In par-
ticular, the proximity between Mrs Dalloway and the character of
Septimus iswhat allows unhappiness to be shared even if they do
not share their feelings; two characters who do not know each other,
56 Sara Ahmed

though they pass each other, but whose worlds are connected by the
very jolt of unhappiness. We have the imminence of the shock of how
one person’s suffering can impact the lifeworld of another. Septimus
suffers from shell shock. We feel his feelings with him, the panic and
sadness as the horror of war intrudes as memory. His suffering brings
the past into the time of the present, the long time of war, its persis-
tence on the skin as aftermath, its refusal of an after. To those who ob-
serve him from a distance, those who share the street on this day, he
appears as a madman, at the edge of respectable sociality, a spectacle.
To encounter him on the street, you would not know the story behind
his suffering. To be near to suffering does not necessarily bring suf-
fering near.
Clarissa and Septimus, as characters who do not meet, thus achieve
an odd intimacy: the not-just-private suffering of the housewife and
the not-quite-public suffering of the returned soldier are interwoven.
Importantly, their sadness is proximate but not contagious. They do
not catch sadness from each other; their sadness is what keeps alive
histories that are not shared, that cannot be shared, as they pass by on
the street. And yet something is shared, perhaps those very things that
cannot simply be revealed. It is Clarissa thinking of her ‘odd infinities’
with strangers ‘she had never spoken to,’ as she sits on the bus, who
wonders whether the ‘unseen part of us’ might provide a point of at-
tachment to others, and might even be how we survive through others,
‘perhaps – perhaps’ (Woolf 1953: 231–2).
Much of the book is about an event that will happen. For Mrs Dal-
loway is planning a party. To some feminist readers, it is the preoccu-
pation with the party that makes the book disappointing. For Simone
de Beauvoir (1997), Mrs Dalloway’s enjoyment of parties is a sign that
she is trying to turn her ‘prison into glory,’ as if as a hostess she can
be ‘the bestower of happiness and gaiety’ (554). For de Beauvoir the
gift of the party turns quickly into duty, such that Mrs Dalloway, ‘who
loved these triumphs, these semblances,’ still ‘felt their hollowness’
(554). For Kate Millett (1970), Mrs Dalloway is a rather disappointing
figure; she exposes Woolf ’s failure to turn her own unhappiness into a
politics: ‘Virginia glorified two housewives, Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs.
Ramsey, recorded the suicidal misery of Rhoda in The Waves withoute-
ver explaining its causes’ (37). We might say that it is because Mrs Dal-
loway is planning a party that we do not have much revealed about her
unhappiness, other than the sadness of recalling lost intimacies: with
Peter and with Sally, who both turn up unexpectedly during her day,
 Sociable Happiness 57

in a way, it is implied, that does not just happen but bears some rela-
tion to Mrs Dalloway’s own thoughts, ‘all day she had been thinking of
Bourton, of Peter, of Sally’ (280). Such lost intimacies become lost pos-
sibilities, hints of a life she might have lived, if things had not turned
out the way they did.
If Mrs Dalloway is distracted from the causes of unhappiness by the
party (and we can have some sympathy with the necessity of distrac-
tions), the party is also the event at which unhappiness comes to life.
For Mrs Dalloway, her party is life; it is how she can make things hap-
pen; it is a gift, a happening (Woolf 1953:185). What happens? That this
question is a question is a preservation of the gift. And something does
happen. For it is in the party that Septimus’s life ‘touches’ Mrs Dallo-
way most directly:

What business had the Bradshaws to talk of death at her party? A young
man had killed himself. And they talked of it at her party – the Brad-
shaws talked of death. He had killed himself – but how? Always her body
went through it first, when she was told, suddenly, of an accident; her
dress flamed, her body burnt. He had thrown himself from a window.
Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the
rusty spikes. There he lay with the thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then
a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it. But why had he done it? And
the Bradshaws talked of it at her party! She had once thrown a shilling
into the Serpentine, never anything more. But he had flung it away. They
went on living (she would have to go back; the rooms were still crowded;
people kept on coming). They (all day she has been thinking of Bourton,
of Pete, of Sally), they would grow old. A thing there was that mattered;
a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life,
let drop everyday in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death
was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the
impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; close-
ness drew apart; rapture faded; one was alone. There was an embrace in
death. (280–81)

Septimus’s death becomes a question that takes Mrs Dalloway away

from the party. She attends to his death and wonders about it. She be-
comes a retrospective witness even though she was not and could not
have been there. The shudder; the sounds of it; the thud, thud, thud of
it; the ground that flashes; the rusty spikes. His death becomes mate-
rial, becomes fleshy through her thoughts. His death announces not
58 Sara Ahmed

only that sadness can be unbearable but that we don’t have to bear it,
that you can fling it away. And in this moment, when death intervenes
in the life of the party, life becomes chatter, becomes what goes on –
‘they went on living’ – what comes and goes – ‘people kept on coming.’
Death comes to embody the suffering that persists when life becomes
chatter.
What is striking about Mrs Dalloway is how suffering has to enter
her consciousness from the edges, through the arrival of another, an-
other who is an intruder, who has not been invited to the party. It is
the suffering of an intruder that exposes the emptiness of life’s chat-
ter. Suffering enters not as self-consciousness – as a consciousness of
one’s own suffering – but as a heightening of consciousness, a world-
consciousness in which the suffering of those who do not belong is al-
lowed to disturb an atmosphere. Even when unhappiness is a familiar
feeling, it can arrive like a stranger to disturb the familiar or to reveal
what is disturbing in the familiar.
I want to think of consciousness of the ‘un’ in unhappy, as conscious-
ness of being not. Consciousness of being ‘not’ or ‘un’ can be con-
sciousness of being estranged from happiness, as lacking the qualities
or attributes required for a happy state of existence. Consciousness of
being not involves self-estrangement, you recognize yourself as the
stranger. Note here that self-estrangement is already worldly if you are
the one whose arrival disturbs an atmosphere. Audre Lorde (1982) dra-
matizes how becoming conscious of being a stranger involves a retro-
spective renaming of apparently random events as racism:

Tensions on the street were high, as they always are in racially mixed
zones of transition. As a very little girl, I remember shrinking from a
particular sound, a hoarsely sharp, guttural rasp, because it often meant
a nasty glob of grey spittle upon my coat or shoe an instant later. My
mother wiped it off with the little pieces of newspaper she always car-
ried in her purse. Sometimes she fussed about low-class people who
had no better sense nor manners than to spit into the wind no matter
where they went, impressing upon me that this humiliation was totally
random. It never occurred to me to doubt her. It was not until years
later once in conversation I said to her: ‘Have you noticed people don’t
spit into the wind so much the way they used to?’ And the look on my
mother’s face told me that I had blundered into one of those secret
places of pain that must never be spoken of again. But it was so typical
of my mother when I was young that if she couldn’t stop white people
 Sociable Happiness 59

spitting on her children because they were Black, she would insist it was
something else. (17–18)

An event happens. And it happens again. The violence is directed

from the white body to the black child, who receives that violence by
shrinking, shrinking away from its sound. But the mother cannot bear
to speak of racism, and creates an impression that the humiliation is
random. You learn not to see racism as a way of bearing the pain. To
see events as racism you have to be willing to venture into secret places
of pain.
Some forms of ‘taking cover’ from pain – from not naming the causes
of pain in the hope that it will go away – are to protect those we love
from being hurt, or even to protect ourselves from hurt, or at least might
be meant as a form of protection. Happiness can also work to conceal
the causes of hurt, or to make people the cause of their own hurt. In
The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde (1997) offers a powerful critique of
the politics of happiness. She writes as a black lesbian feminist who is
experiencing breast cancer. Lorde never refuses the power of ‘writing
as’ nor assumes it can abbreviate an experience. Faced with medical
discourse that attributes cancer to unhappiness and survival to being
happy she suggests, ‘looking on the bright side of things is a euphe-
mism used for obscuring certain realities of life, the open consideration
of which might prove threatening to the status quo’ (76). Lorde moves
from this observation to a wider critique of happiness as an obscurant:
‘Let us seek “joy” rather than real food and clean air and a saner future
on a livable earth! As if happiness alone can protect us from the results
of profit-madness’ (76). Lorde suggests that the very idea that our first
responsibility is for our own happiness must be resisted by political
struggle, which means resisting the idea that our own resistance is a
failure to be responsible for happiness: ‘Was I really fighting the spread
of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food,
pollution of our environment, and the abuse and psychic destruction of
our young, merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest respon-
sibility to be happy?’ (77). I think Audre Lorde has given us the answer
to her question.
We can retrieve a model of false consciousness in critiquing claims
to happiness. You would not be saying: ‘You are wrong, you are not
happy, you just think you are as you have a false belief.’ Rather, you
would be saying there is something false about our consciousness of
the world; we learn not to be conscious, not to notice what happens
60 Sara Ahmed

right in front of us. It is not that an individual person suffers from false
consciousness, but that we inherit a certain false consciousness when
we learn to not notice certain things, or not to apprehend them in a
certain way.
The familiar is that which is not revealed to those who inhabit it.
I am suggesting that happiness is one of the ways in which the famil-
iar recedes. Those who are strangers are thus estranged from happi-
ness; and those who are estranged from happiness might be the ones
to whom happiness is revealed. Of course, it has effects to do the work
of witnessing (and for some, as we have seen, simply to arrive into a
room is a kind of witnessing of a history that others prefer to forget).
The sociability of happiness has costs that are revealed in such mo-
ments of witnessing but are not caused in such moments. In a way,
the ‘happiness’ of happiness is protected by locating its costs in those
who refuse its promise. Political struggles are often struggles against
happiness, as struggles to reveal its costs. To struggle against happi-
ness often means being framed as antisocial; to challenge who and
what gathers under the sign of happiness is to trouble the very form of
social gathering. You can cause unhappiness by revealing the causes
of unhappiness. And you can become the cause of the unhappiness
you reveal.
People often say that the struggle against racism is like banging your
head against a brick wall. The wall keeps its place so it is you that gets
sore. We might need to stay as sore as our points. Of course that’s not
all we say or we do. We can recognize not only that we are not the cause
of the unhappiness that has been attributed to us, but also the effects
of being attributed as the cause. We can talk about being angry black
women or feminist killjoys; we can claim those figures back; we can
laugh in recognition of the familiarity of inhabiting that place. There is
solidarity in recognizing our alienation from happiness, even if we do
not inhabit the same place (and we do not). There can be joy in killing
joy. And kill joy we must, and we do.

NOTES

1 We can see the problems with such an approach when feelings become
measures of rights and wrongs. Richard Layard (2006), for example, argues
that what makes something wrong is that it makes people unhappy, or even
offends people’s feelings. For Layard, the science of happiness is ‘inherently’
 Sociable Happiness 61

pro-poor and for the re-distribution of wealth, as inequalities increase

unhappiness (120–1). Though the unfortunate implication of his argument
is that if inequalities did not increase unhappiness, then he would not be
against them. As he describes it: ‘American slaves wanted their freedom, not
because it would give them higher incomes, but because of the humiliation
of being a slave. Slavery offended their feelings, and that is why slavery
is wrong’ (121). The idea that slavery was wrong because it hurt people’s
feelings shows us what is wrong with this model of wrong. It individuates
and psychologises social wrongs. See Lauren Berlant’s (2000) important
critique of the conflation of pain and injustice, as well as my conclusion
to The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Ahmed 2004) for a reflection on the
relationship between social wrongs and hurt. Note in particular that one
of the problems of the conflation of injustice with hurt is that it presumes
access to the other’s feelings. Any forms of wrong that are not accompanied
by consciously felt suffering that can be spoken about to others would
become invisible in such a model.
2 I will not be engaging with the substance of Kantian philosophy in this
chapter. For a good discussion of Kant in relation to Bergson see Lefebvre and
White, this volume.
3 These definitions and all subsequent definitions and etymological
references are drawn from the Oxford English Dictionary.
4 Brennan (2004) explains this tension between these two aspects of argument
by suggesting that even if I am picking up on an affect, ‘the thoughts I attach
to that affect, remain my own’ (7). The distinction between feeling and
thought used here suggests that if feelings are social or shared, then thoughts
are individual and private. What if the distinction does not hold? Could
affects sometimes be what are not shared, what we don’t pick up on, and
thoughts sometimes be what are shared? For example, we might come to an
agreement about what x means, but feel differently about x. I think we can
go further by unpacking not only this distinction, but also the model of the
social implicit in this distinction. Note that the social becomes what is shared
and transmitted. Perhaps we need to think about the social as an object of
experience that is not shared, so that feelings of tension and antagonism
become part of the fabric of social life rather than being understood as its
failure or absence. My questioning of the model of the social implicit in the
idea of contagion can also be related to other work written under the rubric
of the sociology of emotion. Randal Collins (2004), for example, describes
interaction ritual chains in the following way: ‘processes that take place as
human bodies come close enough to each other so that their nervous systems
become mutually attuned in rhythms and anticipations of each other’ (xix).
I would not deny that emotional and bodily attunement can take place. But
I want to suggest that the tendency to locate sociality in ‘becoming attuned’
means that we might miss out on some important dimensions. We need to
ask for example how some proximities might be refused in the first place:
62 Sara Ahmed

certain others might be designated in advance as strangers, as those with

whom one cannot share a rhythm. The determination of what cannot be
shared – and with whom – is part of social experience. We can also ask: how
is it that some proximities engender attunement and not others? We need,
in other words, an approach that can account for the uneven distribution
of attunement and even the uneven distribution of contagion: the tendency
to become attuned to the bodily rhythms of others or to pick up on affects
might depend on points of identification with or disidentification from
others that are exercised without even being revealed to consciousness. To
use the example of happiness, we might be affected happily by proximity
to some people’s happiness, as a kind of bodily attunement, but not be
affected happily by other others,’ as a way of being or staying out of tune.
What happens once proximity is given depends on how we already feel
about others, or even how we feel in the situation in which we are thrown
together with others. We are thus affected happily by proximity to another
person’s happiness depending on various conditions. Adam Smith (2000)
comments dryly on the conditional nature of sympathetic emotion: ‘it gives
us the spleen, on the other hand, to see another too happy, or too much
elevated, as we call it, with any little piece of good fortune. We are disobliged
even with his joy; and, because we cannot go along with it, call it levity
and folly’ (13, emphasis added). For Smith, to be affected sympathetically
is always dependent on whether emotions ‘appear to this last, just and
proper, and suitable to their objects’ (14). To analyse the conditions in which
feelings are shared is to consider the ways in which feelings are directed
towards objects that will not be agreeable to all. My own work explores how
disagreeable feelings come to be located in particular bodies. To come to an
understanding of the sociality of emotion thus requires historical knowledge
of how certain bodies come to the cause of disagreement (we would need
to think of how histories get under the skin) that would not be visible if we
simply took ‘the situation’ as the starting point for social analysis.
4 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion
Management

c atherine theo d o s i u s

Introduction

This chapter explores neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio’s (2000)

hypothesis on emotion, consciousness, and self, and examines its sig-
nificance to how emotion is managed. Whilst the emphasis is on the
biological character of emotion, this is situated within the broader
bio-psycho-social nature of emotion (Theodosius 2008). Understand-
ing the neurophysiological function of emotion is critical to under-
standing the embodiment of emotion and its management, since if it
is not included within an embodied approach, the body becomes a
mere mechanistic vehicle that is inhabited by us, rather than being us.
Feelings and emotions come from within, I argue, even when they are
externally elicited. It is because they come from within that we know
the feelings we have belong to us, representing our experiences of,
and responses to, the natural and social world (Wentworth and Yard-
ley 1994). Understanding the embodiment of emotion is filled with
hidden pitfalls as it traverses traditional conceptual, methodological,
and epistemological boundaries, confusing mind-body, subject-object
dualisms.
Invariably, the mind is considered subject and the body an object
‘either “in itself” or one that is “good to think” ’ (Csordas 1994:8); or
the mind becomes a mechanistic object, its processes and functions mi-
nutely examined and the body becomes subject to ‘sensation, experi-
ence and world’(8). Emotion sits uncomfortably within these different
approaches that make conceptualizing its embodiment problematic.
However, it is not possible to examine the intersubjective experience,
sensation, and cultural difference of emotion whilst separating it from
64 Catherine Theodosius

the mechanistic processes through which the body and mind physi-
ologically and anatomically work to produce and make sense of them.
Emotion is expressed and experienced within both mind and body, and
it is both the mind and body that enables and constrains that experi-
ence. In acknowledging this, it can be seen that individual embodiment
of mind and body cannot be separated from its material and socio-
cultural environment. Thus emotions are social and part of social in-
teraction. To understand emotion management it is necessary to know
what is happening within the individual and between individuals, as
well as understanding the social context (see also Thoits, this volume).
For example, how does a nurse manage her emotions of frustration in
dealing with a patient with dementia caught up in a continuous loop
of anxiety due to short-term memory loss? To understand this emotion
interaction it is necessary to consider the physiological limitations of
emotion for the nurse who is healthy and the patient who is mentally
unwell, as well as the interaction that is occurring between them and
the social context in which it happens.
Damasio’s hypothesis on emotion, feeling, and consciousness at-
tempts to link internal body function with its external environment by
suggesting that emotion results in the evolution of consciousness so that
human beings might better communicate, develop, and express social
intelligence. Rather than emotions being the antithesis of reason, they
are fundamental and necessary to it. Damasio sees emotion as being
a bodily internal manifestation that feeds into homeostatic processes.
As such, emotion is unconscious. However, he suggests that human
consciousness is feeling the experience of self. He argues that neuro-
scientific evidence reveals that human consciousness has arisen from
the development of emotion, and claims that consciousness cannot
exist without emotion whereas emotion can be present without con-
sciousness. The brain achieves this due to there being different levels of
conscious awareness of feeling. Thus, Damasio’s hypothesis offers both
insights and challenges to current sociological understanding of the na-
ture of embodied emotion and how it might be managed. This chapter
critically considers the significance of his hypothesis to Hochschild’s
(1983) notion of surface and deep acting and Archer’s (2000) notion of
the inner dialogue – each being concerned with emotion management.
Understanding how individuals carry out emotion management is
important to understanding its significance in social interaction, espe-
cially in the workplace. Hochschild, who first developed the term emo-
tion management/work (see Hochschild 1975, 1979, 1983), suggests that
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 65

it is learned through socialization and takes work to achieve. In the

workplace the way in which this is taught, monitored, and put into
practice (the transmutation of emotion work into emotional labour) can
result in the inauthenticity of emotion and the alienation of self from
self and from work (also see Thoits, this volume; Walby and Spencer,
this volume). Recently Erickson (2009) has made a direct link between
stress and burnout amongst health care professionals and emotional
labour, a core component of health care practice.
The act of emotion management/emotional labour usually takes
place as a result of the elicitation of an emotion in response to a par-
ticular social interaction at a particular moment in time. It is externally
elicited and is essentially linked to cognitive appraisal that assesses the
emotion responses required. Thus, Hochschild’s (1983) definition as-
serts that it is ‘to induce or suppress feelings in order to sustain the
outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others’
(7). This process suggests that an individual has conscious control over
his/her emotions in that he/she can actively suppress feelings and
actively induce them as needed. Hochschild suggests that how indi-
viduals achieve this is through surface acting and deep acting. Surface
acting is the ‘ability to deceive others about how we are really feeling
without really deceiving ourselves’; in deep acting, however, ‘we de-
ceive ourselves about our true emotions as much as we deceive others’
(33). She states that the act of emotion management is one that draws
on an integral source of self and that emotion may be elicited internally.
Thus, she recognizes the importance of self-reflection and the experi-
ence of emotion to that in the relationship between the self who owns
his/her emotions. What Hochschild finds difficult to do is conceptu-
alize that relationship (Theodosius 2006, 2008). Thus her self ends up
dividing into a ‘true’ and ‘false’ self that becomes alienated (Wouters
1989; Theodosius 2008).
Elsewhere, I have presented Archer’s (2000) notion of the inner dia-
logue as being useful in understanding how self-identity and emotion
management are connected (Theodosius 2008). Archer incorporates
emotion into the inner dialogue by separating its elicitation from its
management. Emotion elicitation is what she terms first order emo-
tion. Second order emotions emerge through the reflexive inner dia-
logue when the individual becomes cognizant of them. This distinction
conceptually allows for emotion elicitation to be unconscious and a
result of broader relations than social ones. Thus, Archer argues that
first order emotion is elicited as a result of body-environment (natural
66 Catherine Theodosius

order), subject-object (material order), and subject-subject (social order)

relationships. The significance of these emotions is determined by the
individual experiencing them in respect to their inner dialogue, where
they attempt to understand them in relation to their developing per-
sonal identity, what they are interested or involved in, and how they
need to portray that through their social identity. Thus, personal iden-
tity is an achieved self that balances and coordinates all concerns of
the continuous self from the past, in the present, and into the future.
Social identity is tied to social role and context. Archer sees emotions as
fundamentally reflecting on the concerns of the individual, elicited in
response to what is being engaged with in the development of personal
identity through the inner dialogue.
Awareness of the significance of emotion to the individual comes
with the inner dialogue, a reflexive conversation between the ‘I,’ ‘you,’
and ‘me.’ Archer (2000) defines reflexivity as the ‘ability to reflect upon
emotionality itself, to transform it and consequently to reorder priori-
ties within emotion sets’ (222). Using Charles Sanders Peirce’s different
phases of the ego in dialogue, the ‘I’ of the present can address the
future self through the ‘you’ by criticizing, ordering, or anticipating in
relation to past experience, or present or future events. The ‘me’ (non-
Meadean) represents a more overall sense of self held in the emotion
memory: ‘the “me” ’ is ‘all the former “Is” who have moved down the
time line of future, past and present’ (Archer 2000: 229). The dialogue
directly links emotions to rational cognitive processes and together
they form a commentary on the concerns of the individual. The emo-
tions emerging as a result of this dialogue constitute second order emo-
tions (Theodosius 2008).
Archer (2000) suggests that an individual’s personal identity is
shaped and continuously developed and reflected on through their
inner dialogue. The inner dialogue also comments on and works to-
wards maintaining a balance between first order emotions elicited as a
result of interaction with the social, material, and natural world. Second
order emotion, which arises from the reflexive inner dialogic process,
represents the process through which individuals manage their emo-
tions. Thus, emotion management is directly linked to personal iden-
tity, aspects of which are acted out through social roles and identities
to which emotional labour is connected (also see Thoits, this volume).
Emotional labour not only draws on personal identity, it is dependent
on it. Thus, emotional labour stems from the individual’s continuous
and constantly developing personal identity, of which a knowledgeable
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 67

conscious awareness is created through his/her inner dialogue (Theo-

dosius 2008).
To help analyse the significance of Damasio’s hypothesis for emo-
tion management and the inner dialogue, an overview of his argument
is presented first, followed by a theoretical analysis of its application
to Hochschild’s notion of surface and deep acting and Archer’s inner
dialogue. The chapter concludes by juxtaposing the theoretical analysis
with an empirical example. The empirical example is drawn from an
ethnographic case study examining the relationship between emotion
and emotional labour as experienced by registered nurses working on
an acute surgical vascular ward in a National Health Service Hospital
in the UK.1 Short extracts are used from a larger narrative of a newly
qualified staff nurse named ‘Kate.’ The complete narrative, constructed
from her audio diary and interview, can be found in my book Emotional
Labour in Health Care (Theodosius 2008).

Damasio’s Hypothesis

Damasio (2000:133–67) argues that the brain evolved the capacity to

distinguish between stimuli and organic responses to objects that are
internal and belong to it, and those that are external and separate from
it. This ability means that the internal body can respond to itself as if it
too is an object, thereby recognizing the significance of its own internal
mechanisms. The brain can do this because it considers ‘thought’ or
‘emotion’ to be an object, thus emotion and/or thought can elicit emo-
tion. Consequently the brain can distinguish between emotion states
and the sources of those emotions (internal and external), and simul-
taneously regulate its internal milieu. This ability is fundamental to an
individual’s embodied experience of emotion and her/his capacity to
reflect meaningfully upon it. Emotion therefore is not just elicited in
response to the body’s external relationship to its environment, but also
in response to its internal one. How the brain does this is important to
understanding the embodied experience of emotion and how individu-
als manage it. This has implications for Archer’s (2000) conceptualiza-
tion of the inner dialogue, which separates the internal unconscious
elicitation of emotion from its reflexive management.
However, Damasio argues that emotion is almost entirely uncon-
scious. Drawing on Spinoza’s distinction, Damasio distinguishes be-
tween emotion that is unconscious and present at all times, and feelings
that represent an awareness and conscious understanding of emotion
68 Catherine Theodosius

states. Archer (2000) does not distinguish between emotion and feel-
ing, whereas Hochschild (1983) considers feelings to be a milder form
of emotion and uses the terms interchangeably (244). For Damasio, the
distinction is fundamental, for it is only when an individual comes to
feel a feeling that emotion begins to emerge into conscious awareness.
Human consciousness is the conscious feeling of feeling the experience
of self. The central tenet of his hypothesis is that human conscious-
ness developed and extended from feeling emotion. Understanding
how he conceptualizes the relationship between emotion, feeling, and
consciousness is vital when critically assessing the significance of his
hypothesis to Hochschild’s and Archer’s representations of emotion
management.
Damasio (2000) suggests that emotion’s primary function is con-
cerned with ‘survival-orientated behaviours,’ sensing emotions, the
having of feelings that ‘impact on the mind as they occur in the here
and now.’ Thus ‘consciousness allows feelings to be known’ and pro-
motes the impact of emotion internally, allowing ‘emotion to permeate
thought process through agency of feeling.’ Consciousness essentially
‘allows the “object” of emotion and any other object’ to be known (56).
This enables individuals to respond adaptively, thus both emotion and
consciousness are ultimately concerned with survival. This representa-
tion of the relationship between emotion and consciousness echoes that
of Archer’s (2000) in the emphasis she gives towards emotion reflexiv-
ity and cognitive process.
Damasio (2000) suggests that there are different levels/types of
emotions: background emotions, primary and secondary emotions
(all unconscious), and feelings (conscious awareness of emotions).
Background emotions are constant and represent the internal condi-
tion ofthe body that arises from physiological processes and responses
tothe body’s interaction with its environment. ‘These emotions allow
us to have background feelings of tension or relaxation, of fatigue or
energy, of well-being or malaise, of anticipation or dread’ (52). Nei-
ther Hochschild (1983) nor Archer (2000) includes this definition of
emotion, because they do not conceptualize the internal physiologi-
cal significance of emotion to the maintenance/awareness of bodily
function – a significant omission to developing understanding of the
embodiment of emotion. Primary emotions refer to the six univer-
sal emotions of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness
(Darwin 1872; Ekman 1973, 1982, 1984, 1992); and secondary emotions
to social emotions such as embarrassment, shame, guilt, jealousy, and
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 69

pride (Kemper 1987; Scheff 1990; Barbalet 1998). Unlike Archer (2000),
Damasio (2000) does not include emotions elicited in response to the
material world. Damasio claims that all emotions are concerned with
‘the life of the organism and their role in assisting that organism to
maintain life’ (51). They constitute ‘complicated collections of chemi-
cal and neural responses’ that are ‘biologically determined processes,
depending on innately set brain devices, laid down by a long evolu-
tionary history’ that ‘regulate and represent body states.’ Emotions
can be ‘engaged automatically without conscious deliberation’ and
impact on the whole body system causing changes within the ‘inter-
nal milieu, visceral, vestibular and musculoskeletal systems, [and]
numerous brain circuits.’ They ‘occupy a fairly restricted ensemble of
subcortical regions, beginning at the brain stem and moving up to the
higher brain’ (51). An emotion occurs and sends commands to other
parts ofthe brain and throughout the body via the vascular system and
through neural pathways. These commands either act on other neu-
rons, muscular fibres, or on organs (such as the adrenal gland), which
then release their own chemicals into the blood stream (67). This un-
conscious process affects a global change in the body with muscles, for
example, in the face and elsewhere in the body immediately chang-
ing. ‘These changes constitute the substrate for neural patterns which
eventually become feelings of emotion’ (67), which represent conscious
awareness of them. Until conscious awareness occurs, when knowing
an emotion by feeling a feeling takes place, the emotion remains un-
conscious. However, awareness of the minute changes that take place
in the body is something that can be detected by others, and is more
commonly termed non-verbal communication. The impact of the physi-
ological manifestation of emotion has ramifications for Hochschild’s
(1983) notion of surface acting.
How does unconscious emotion emerge into a conscious awareness
of self that is ‘knowing’ of its feeling state in a way that separates the
brain’s capacity to distinguish between something that simply belongs
to itself, and mind, which has a complex consciousness and awarenes-
sof self? Damasio (2000:25) argues that the brain can distinguish be-
tween stimuli and organic responses that relate to objects and those
that relate to the body. This is important to how the brain differentiates
between its internal processes and things that are happening externally
to it, but are equally relevant. Because the brain can respond to itself
as an object, detecting the significance of its own internal mechanisms,
this allows for ‘thought’ or ‘emotion’ to also be perceived as an object.
70 Catherine Theodosius

The brain achieves this by the emergence of a feeling of knowing. ‘Con-

sciousness begins as the feeling of what happens when we see or hear
or touch,’ ‘it is the feeling that accompanies the making of any kind of
image – visual, auditory, tactile, visceral’; ‘ultimately these feelings are
what allow us to say that such images belong to us,’ argues Damasio
(26). Feelings at a very basic level are the foundation of our ‘sense’ of
self, and consciousness is the representation of knowledge of that sense
of self – sense of self being an awareness of self derived from the senses
and therefore ‘sensed.’ Damasio suggests that there are different levels
of consciousness. The initial feeling of knowing is what he coins the
proto-self. The proto-self is mostly unconscious; individuals have a feel-
ing of knowing, and knowing that feeling belongs to them (a sense of
knowing). The proto-self then extends to ‘core consciousness’ where
neural and mental patterning occurs in a way that allows the brain to
recognize the pattern of the organism and the object and the relation-
ship between the two.
The brain does this by generating stories through images (based on
visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and somatosensory modalities
inclusive of phonemes and morphemes) that reflect conscious knowl-
edge of self and objects, internally and externally. Core consciousness,
however, is transient and instant, whereas ‘extended consciousness,’
the next level, is ‘everything core consciousness is,’ only it is linked
to‘past lived experiences and anticipated future ones’ (Damasio
2000:197); the extended conscious sense of self is more robust and is
autobiographical. It is therefore linked to the brains working emotion
memory (LeDoux 1998), which represents organized records of past
experiences (of objects, etc.), which are both explicit (conscious) and
implicit (unconscious). The significance of emotion memory is in the
development of the ‘autobiographical self,’ which has been influenced
both consciously and unconsciously by many factors including intel-
ligence, exposure to knowledge, the social and cultural environment,
and personality traits and predispositions. ‘The autobiographical self
which we display in our minds at this moment is the end product not
just of our innate biases and actual life experiences but of the reworking
of memories of those experiences under the influence of those factors,’
argues Damasio (2000:224). Hochschild’s (1983) notion of deep acting
and Archer’s (2000) inner dialogue are predicated to varying degrees
on an autobiographical self that can draw on emotion memory (Theo-
dosius 2008). However, both conceptualize emotion memory as being
conscious and explicit. In addition, neither acknowledges that emotion
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 71

can be felt without being understood or have such a developed under-

standing of the degrees of consciousness and how either of these relates
to emotion experience and its management.

Surface Acting

Damasio’s (2000) hypothesis is complex, making emotion fundamental

to consciousness and to cognitive process, while paradoxically being
itself unconscious. Because the elicitation of emotion is unconscious,
Damasio claims that ‘we are about as effective at stopping an emotion
as we are at preventing a sneeze’ (49). He argues that it is not possible
for us to prevent the expression of an emotion, only ‘disguise some of
its external manifestations.’ This is because it is not possible to ‘block
the automated changes that occur in the viscera and internal milieu.’
We can ‘educate’ our emotions but not suppress them entirely, ‘the
feelings we have inside’ (49) representing this inability. This is because
emotions are unconscious; therefore, the automatic physiological brain
and body responses that result are impossible to prevent. Thus, Dama-
sio disputes that emotions are manageable.
However, his emphasis on prevention suggests that the point of man-
agement occurs prior to the emotion’s elicitation; thus, the act of man-
agement is one that prevents the emotion from being elicited in the
first instance. This is difficult to achieve, because emotion elicitation
is unconscious. In Hochschild’s definition of surface acting, the point
of management occurs after the emotion has been elicited. Surface act-
ing is carried out in order to prevent the emotion from controlling the
actor, and is intended to limit or manipulate the emotion in order to
prevent it from wholly dictating. Hochschild uses the term suppression
precisely because the emotion has already been experienced. In sup-
pressing the emotion in surface acting, the actor recognizes that it is not
possible to prevent it; rather his/her efforts are directed at stifling and
covering it up. However, surface acting takes the act of management
further. The reason the emotion requires suppressing is because it is
considered socially inappropriate. The actor expresses a more socially
acceptable emotion in its place. Surface acting is an act of management
that aims to prevent emotion from controlling and overriding the indi-
vidual’s choice of how he/she presents him/herself to others. Not to do
so would render every individual subject to his/her emotions, making
social interaction extremely unpredictable. For example, being nervous
due to an unknown situation may elicit physiological changes to my
72 Catherine Theodosius

body that I cannot consciously prevent, such as sweaty hands, tremors,

rapidly beating heart, feeling sick to my stomach, and suffering from
a desire to go repeatedly to the bathroom. If I gave in to those feelings
every time I was nervous, my life would be severely limited. Instead, I
consciously suppress my anxiety and present a calm and confident face
in the presence of others.
The difficulty with surface acting is that the suppression of emo-
tion is not easy to achieve. Even if I manage to present a calm and
confident front, as Damasio argues, my body will display physiologi-
cal changes automatically triggered by the unconscious elicitation of
anxiety. My whole being will embody my anxiety. This will impact on
the degree of success my surface acting has with others because of the
visible physiological presence of anxiety. Equally, because I embody
my ‘real’ emotion state, my display of the more socially appropriate
emotion will be less convincing because the physiological changes
that accompany the release of that emotion won’t be present. Thus
despite my surface acting, I will embody the felt emotion and perform
the simulated one.
The ability to suppress nervousness and present a calm and confi-
dent persona is not the only factor that impacts surface acting. The so-
cial context and the capacity and willingness of other social actors to
accept, recognize, and interpret it also impacts on how the performance
is received. The significance of emotion being unconscious in surface
acting is not that it is not manageable, but that the emotion being ‘hid-
den’ will actually be physically visible. This impacts on how surface
acting is consciously or unconsciously interpreted. However, because
the felt emotion is being deliberately managed and another one ex-
pressed in its place, it is difficult for others to identify with any degree
of accuracy what the managed emotion might be. In unconsciously
picking up signals through another’s body language, people may be
confused as to the individual’s actual feelings, or they may recognize
the surface acting for what it is, either accepting it at face value or judg-
ing the actor accordingly, or they may even concoct an entirely different
interpretation. Thus, socially, the interpretation of emotion expression
is extremely subjective.
That emotion elicitation is unconscious has further ramifications on
surface acting. Because surface acting takes place after the emotion has
been elicited and because the simulation of a different emotion is re-
quired in its place, the actor needs to be sufficiently cognizant of the
unwanted unconscious emotion in order to suppress it and display a
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 73

different emotion. Because emotion elicitation is unconscious, it is pos-

sible that the actor might physiologically display an emotion they are
not aware of having, or display the feeling of an emotion without un-
derstanding its significance. It is simply not possible to suppress an
emotion that the actor is not aware of experiencing. Arguably, this is
irrelevant to understanding the experience of emotion; however, it is
relevant to understanding the relational character of emotion in so-
cial interaction because of the emotion’s physiological manifestation.
Equally, it is likely that suppressing ‘feeling a feeling’ is also difficult
because recognizing its external manifestation requires some degree of
knowledgeable awareness of the emotion experience, in the same way
that those observing it find the physical presence of a managed emo-
tion, as described above, difficult to interpret. Damasio’s assertion that
emotion and its elicitation is unconscious and his representation of its
physiological function, therefore, both challenges and is challenged by
understandings of surface acting.

Deep Acting

In deep acting Damasio’s assertion that emotion is not preventable is

more problematic. Hochschild (1983) argues that in deep acting the
individual can induce or exhort emotion, or has previously learned
the correct emotion response to the social situation. She argues that
the act of management in deep acting is so deep that the individual
is unaware that the emotion has been managed; rather the individual
believes it to be his/her ‘real’ emotion. In this respect the point of
management is at the point of elicitation, but Damasio argues that
this cannot be the case because emotion elicitation is unconscious.
However, Hochschild conceptualizes both surface and deep acting as
involving deception because her representation of emotion manage-
ment involves conscious, cognitive processes. In surface acting, the
actor knowingly deceives others by his/her ‘false’ performance of an
unfelt emotion, but in deep acting Hochschild believes the actor de-
ceives him/herself. I have argued elsewhere that deep acting can be
an unconscious or pre-conscious process (Theodosius 2008), and con-
sequently is not about processes of deception. For example, learned
responses to emotion triggers are remembered in the emotion mem-
ory, unconsciously eliciting the previously learned social emotion re-
sponse to the trigger. In this sense, the emotion is truly elicited and
therefore really felt.
74 Catherine Theodosius

Nevertheless, Hochschild’s notion of deep acting includes emotion

being consciously induced or exhorted, which Damasio (2000) would
dispute. His assertion that it is not possible to prevent an emotion,
however, contradicts his own assertion that the brain has the capacity
to distinguish between objects, which include thought and emotion
too. If this is the case, it must be possible for thought or emotion to
unconsciously or consciously act as an emotion inducer. For example,
when he writes about the stages involved in moving from emotion
elicitation to feeling a feeling, stage one requires the ‘engagement of
the organism by an inducer of emotion, for instance, a particular ob-
ject processed visually, resulting in visual representations of the ob-
ject. The object may be conscious or not, and may be recognized or
not, because neither the consciousness of the object nor the recogni-
tion of the object are necessary for the continuation of the cycle’ (283).
The particular ‘object’ could be visual, as in the example he gives here,
but it could also be auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or somatosensory
modalities such as phonemes and morphemes (the basic units of lan-
guage – therefore representing thought), or even an emotion itself. If
all of these constitute an inducer of emotion, then it is possible that
an individual could purposefully use them to induce or exhort an
emotion through the use of his/her senses such as sight, sound, taste,
touch, or through thought processes. That actors do this is at the heart
of Hochschild’s (1983) concept of deep acting, which she bases on
Stanislavski’s method acting. As Damasio (2000) asserts here, it is ir-
relevant as to whether this is a conscious process or not. In deep acting
it is possible to deliberately exhort an emotion in this way. In doing so,
the emotion elicited is really released and felt; it is not fabricated, and
so the individual does not deceive him/herself about his/her ‘real’
emotions.
It is also possible to provoke this process unconsciously, due to so-
cially learned behaviour, psychological reasons, or pre-consciously
through habit (Theodosius 2008). This is where unconscious process
inputs into conscious process; for Damasio argues that implicit (uncon-
scious) emotion memory can input into conscious process such as core
consciousness, extended consciousness, and the autobiographical self.
Again this lends itself to supporting Hochschild’s suggestion that emo-
tion memory can be used to induce emotion (Hochschild 1983; Theo-
dosius 2008). However, to be able to induce emotion in this way, an
individual would need to be knowledgeable about his/her emotions
and emotion triggers. Such knowledge is tied to reflexivity and self-
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 75

identity. Hochschild has difficulty conceptualizing the relationship be-

tween emotion and self. Archer (2000) achieves this by focusing on the
relational element of emotions.

Feeling a Feeling and the Inner Dialogue

The relationship in Damasio’s hypothesis between emotion, conscious-

ness, and self is one that has significant implications for Archer’s (2000)
notion of the inner dialogue (Theodosius 2008). Archer’s distinction
between first and second order emotion allows emotion elicitation to
occur independently from cognitive process, and acknowledges that it
can be unconscious. However, in her notion of second order emotion,
where the inner dialogue offers a commentary on its emotional state,
Archer assumes that the (healthy adult2) individual has a knowledge-
able awareness about what his/her emotions are. There is some debate
within sociology and psychological disciplines about the distinction
between emotion and feelings. As Turner and Stets (2005) note, most
researchers ‘would define feelings as emotional states about which a
person is consciously aware’ (286). This is also Damasio’s stance. Ar-
cher, however, does not engage with the distinction between emotion
and feeling; rather she distinguishes between first and second order
emotions where the development of the reflexive inner dialogue, repre-
senting self-consciousness, brings cognitive awareness to the individ-
ual’s emotion state. Like Damasio, she distinguishes between primary
and secondary emotions as identified by Ekman (1982), Izzard (1977),
and Plutchik and Kellerman (1980); but unlike Damasio, she includes
emotions elicited in response to the external material environment,
such as satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and frustration, which are simi-
lar to secondary emotions (Archer 2000). She argues that emotions are
emergent to the relationship individuals have with the natural, mate-
rial, and social world with which they interact continuously. The im-
pact and importance of that interaction is known to us through our
self-consciousness: ‘by definition self consciousness means that we
are necessarily reflexive beings’ (201). For Archer, it is reflexivity that
enables agents to act purposefully. She draws on Frankfurt’s work on
identification to reinforce her argument: ‘Being conscious in the every-
day sense does (unlike unconsciousness) entail reflexivity. It necessar-
ily involves a secondary awareness of a primary response. An instance
of exclusively primary and unreflexive consciousness would not be an
instance of what we think of as consciousness at all. For what would it
76 Catherine Theodosius

be like to be conscious of something without being aware of this con-

sciousness? It would mean having an experience with no awareness of
its occurrence. This would be, precisely, a sense of unconscious experi-
ence. It appears then that being conscious is identical with being self-
conscious. Consciousness is self-consciousness’ (Frankfurt, in Archer
2000:201).
Archer’s stance on consciousness is substantially different from that
of Damasio, who, as a medical scientist, argues that some individuals,
due to injury or illness (e.g., head injury or epilepsy), can be conscious –
even mobile and conscious – yet have no self-awareness. Equally, he
sees consciousness as being fluid, as something that continuously
changes as it moves forward in time. Thus, Damasio suggests that it
is possible to retain a sense of self from the instance before to the in-
stant we are moving into – and have an understanding of self that has
a long time biography, yet can move forward and be challenged as life
continues. These different emotion memory feats are functionally and
physiologically distinct. Archer’s use of Charles Peirce’s ‘I,’ ‘you,’ ‘me’
in the inner dialogue recognizes this movement; yet her notion of con-
sciousness itself is more static because it is more dualistic, with uncon-
sciousness (un-reflexive) at one end and consciousness (reflexive) at
the other. Conscious awareness of the unconscious primary instance
appears to occur immediately. Thus, as Frankfurt argues, conscious-
ness is self-consciousness. Thus in the morphogenic articulation and
re-articulation process of the inner dialogue, Archer conceptualizes this
as always being progressive, thereby resulting in second order emo-
tions that are readily recognizable and manageable. This does not allow
for emotion to impede cognitive processing (Theodosius 2008). Conse-
quently, Archer’s dialogue does not allow for an individual to go over
and over and over again in his/her mind the same dialogue, unable
to move forward, held stationary by a welter of emotions that can in-
hibit and confuse. In some cases, that confusion arises because the feel-
ings that overwhelm are not readily identifiable. Rather the individual
is feeling the feeling(s) continuously without the ability to reflexively
make sense of them.
Whilst this might be the case, in healthy adults normal life continues,
and though they may not be able to reflexively move forward within
the inner dialogue on this particular issue, their inner dialogue can still
function and progressively comment on other emergent emotions in
response to other events and everyday activities. In this sense, self-
consciousness is continuous. There is a dichotomy within the mind,
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 77

therefore, between the continuous reflexive self, and one that can feel
without having a conscious awareness of the significance of that or be
able to reflect upon it.
Damasio (2000:217) argues that ‘the seemingly changing self and the
seemingly permanent self, although closely related are not one entity
but two.’ The changing self is ‘transient and ephemeral’ and is based on
core consciousness. He suggests that it is not so much that it changes,
but ‘that it needs to be remade and reborn continuously’ because work-
ing memory is concerned with the connections between each instance of
experience. The permanent self, however, draws on long-term working
memory, also supported by core consciousness, but based on extended
consciousness and the autobiographical self where the connections
between experiences have already been established into an under-
standable narrative. Here, the working memory is based on long-term
repository of both implicit and explicit memory (LeDoux 1998). These
memories, however, come initially from core consciousness; they re-
quire sorting, the development of a narrative, such as that which the
inner dialogue provides. Thus, the autobiographical self is influenced
consciously and unconsciously by other factors such as personality
traits, knowledge, and cultural and social experience in the working
and reworking of memory. Effectively, an individual has the capacity
to experience emotion she/he is not knowledgeable about yet is aware
of, through feeling a feeling – and can manage, using surface acting,
that feeling. At the same time, the individual’s ongoing inner dialogue
can be unsuccessfully attempting to make sense of that feeling, in a
continuous negative feedback loop, and at the same time manage suc-
cessfully other emotions emerging in response to ongoing interactions
as they occur.
Essentially, an individual can experience an emotion and be aware by
feeling a feeling in the proto-self that that feeling belongs to them. Core
consciousness develops an ‘image’ through the senses or/and somato-
sensory modalities, that pulse the feeling into conscious awareness in
an instant. This process can keep reoccurring, with the emotion that
is felt but not known also impacting through an embodied awareness
(through physiological changes which occur in the body in response to
its release) and with the brain’s conscious (but unknowledgeable) rec-
ognition of it. Until extended consciousness can, through the working
memory, develop a narrative (made up of consecutive and connecting
sensory and somatosensory modalities), which links to the autobio-
graphical self (connecting the past self to the present and anticipating
78 Catherine Theodosius

the future), the emotion remains unknown, but felt. Thus, ‘feeling a
feeling’ impacts the inner dialogue that attempts to make sense of it.
That the brain has this capacity is essential, or it would not be possible
for emotions to become known; they would either remain unconscious
or automatically be consciously known. At the same time, because the
brain has the capacity to distinguish between different objects, core
consciousness can pulse in images representing the actual instant being
experienced that make sense to working memory in the extended con-
sciousness and to the autobiographical self (consciously and uncon-
sciously) in the carrying out of everyday working life. Thus, the inner
dialogue’s ongoing commentary reflexively monitors emergent emo-
tions, thoughts, and other sensory modalities in response to what is
currently being experienced and require managing in the presentation
of self in everyday life.

Embodied Emotion, Emotion Management, and

the Inner Dialogue: The Case of ‘Kate’

In order to consider the significance of Damasio’s hypothesis for Hoch-

schild’s notion of emotion management and Archer’s inner dialogue to
emotion embodiment in social interaction, I now juxtapose the theoreti-
cal analysis with an empirical one in the case of Kate. Kate has been the
victim of bullying by her colleagues, whose actions imply she is a poor
nurse. Throughout her audio diary, how she felt, reacted, experienced,
and made sense of the bullying emerged as a strong narrative thread.
To begin with, Kate expressed a great deal of anger (a primary emo-
tion) although she does not directly link this to the bullying. She also
expresses a strong sense of shame (a secondary emotion), self-doubt,
and inadequacy. She complains of feeling tired, unhealthy, and miser-
able (background emotions). During the course of the diary Kate comes
to realize that she is a good nurse and overcomes the actions of the
bullies. The diary reflects some of her inner dialogic workings in how
she does this, providing an interesting insight into how she managed
her emotions in the short and long term. It is important to remember
that while the diary represents glimpses of Kate’s private emotion pro-
cesses, throughout each day she had to maintain her relationships with
her colleagues while carrying out her duties. The emotion management
she carries out in order to do so is what I term collegial emotional la-
bour (CEL). The purpose of CEL is to facilitate effective communication
in the administration of nursing duties, to assert status rights over one’s
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 79

colleagues and to acknowledge one’s place in the immediate hierarchy

(Theodosius 2008:182).
Over a 10-day period, during which Kate records her (audio) diary,
this process comes to a culmination: ‘ I’ve just done two long days.
I was as miserable as sin, basically because of the people I was work-
ing with. I cannot work a whole day with some people, and if it hadn’t
been for them, being immature, loud, being stupid around the desk,
I just, I can’t work in those conditions. So basically I just shut down
and ignored them totally, for maybe the last two-thirds of my day
shift.’ Here, Kate suppresses her feelings using surface acting. In so
doing, she ‘effectively’ carries out successful CEL. It was ‘effective’ be-
cause she suppresses unknown emotions of felt feelings unconsciously
elicited as a result of the bullying. The suppression of these feelings is
socially expected because it is inappropriate for her to express them
due to her low place in the hierarchy. Her CEL was successful because
it was accepted by the others. However, despite her emotion man-
agement, on the elicitation of the emotions, her body physiologically
changed in response. Thus, while her display attempts to cover her
feelings, they are still visibly present in, for example, the way she car-
ried herself, the shape of the line creases in her face, in the non-verbal
communicative processes of her body due to the automatic impact of
her emotions on the internal milieu and viscera of the body. The vis-
ible presence of her actual emotion state (even if it is not recognized
by Kate) is significant to the other nurses because it evidences the ef-
fectiveness of their actions.
Although at this stage Kate does not recognize what her emotions
are/represent, their presence is felt, making her feel miserable and un-
well; this conscious feeling is an awareness of the unconscious emotion
of unacknowledged shame elicited as a result of the bullying. Kate does
not recognize it as such; rather she states that she is feeling miserable:
‘I really wasn’t feeling very good, I was totally miserable about being at
work and I just wanted to go home.’ In order to help her manage and
make sense of her feelings, Kate stokes and successfully induces anger
(deep acting).
At the same time that she induces her very understandable anger,
Kate also suppresses it because the nurses behaving badly are the ones
who are bullying her and have a higher place in the hierarchy. In her
interactions with them Kate has to suppress her anger in acts of CEL.
However, some of the minute physiological changes that the anger
unconsciously produces will also be displayed because this induced
80 Catherine Theodosius

Figure 1: Workplace Bullying (Cartoon by Jo Rice, © 2008)

Kate (audio diary): I could quite happily have left yesterday because I am not part
of the crowd that are there, and I most of all don’t wish to be part of it. I don’t find
it very nice; I don’t find it very professional. I don’t find it professional sitting on the
nurses’ station trying to get the loudest fart to ripple along and to make the loudest
noises. If anybody did that in a shop they would be sacked. Because it’s a hospital
these people think that they can get away with it and I think that it is disgusting.

emotion has really been elicited. Thus, Kate carries out effective CEL
through surface acting, and displays in a non-conscious way her real
emotion state that represents unknown ‘hidden’ feelings of shame and
anger induced through deep acting. That Kate can be experiencing and
managing different sets of emotions (or as Archer would term them,
‘clusters of emotions’) is significant for interpreting the social interac-
tion. If Kate was not able to simultaneously do this, then the bullying
would not have been successful, because the bullies would not be able
to see the impact that they were having. Thus, being able to express
their ‘different interactional rights,’ by evaluating Kate’s work, point-
ing out her flaws, having their opinions count, and in doing ‘something
more important’ in their games, the bullies exclude Kate and demon-
strate their higher status (Clark 1990:306). Kate’s CEL actively embod-
ies her subordinate place amongst her colleagues.
The ability to simultaneously induce, express, and suppress emotion
is essential to this act of CEL. The non-conscious physical expression of
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 81

anger and her unacknowledged feelings of shame are just as necessary

to the social interaction as her conscious suppression, socially acted out
through her CEL. The value of Damasio’s neuro-scientific approach is
that it draws attention to the physical presence of felt emotions that have
been managed for social purposes, and thus their significance to social
interaction can be considered. It also contributes to understanding the
complex feelings involved in the embodied experience of emotion, the
brain’s capacity to distinguish between different sets of emotions, and
the degree to which they are consciously recognized. Despite Dama-
sio’s negative assessment of an individual’s ability to manage his/her
emotion because the emotions are unconscious, his hypothesis actu-
ally lends support to Hochschild’s differentiation between surface and
deep acting. The significance of emotion being unconscious and the
different degrees of conscious awareness is also relevant to the inner
dialogue because it is difficult to manage an emotion if the individual
has no conscious knowledge of it.
For example, although Kate’s CEL was socially effective, she was
not cognizant of her entire emotion state. She was consciously aware
in ‘feeling a feeling’ that things were not right, but she was unable to
define her emotions or express what they represented. Rather, she had
a conscious awareness of feeling emotional all the time. However, a
turning point arrived following an emotional outburst, when she lost
the ability to manage her emotions at all: ‘This is me after night duty.
Ididn’t realize how upset I was about the people I have been working
with. Because quite out of the blue in the middle of handover, we were
just generally chatting about the way people behave on the ward and
I just burst out crying. I thought I was angry, I didn’t know I was that
upset. I really thought I was more angry than upset.’
Following this outburst, Kate realizes that she is feeling differently.
The outburst is elicited as a result of a trigger. That trigger is a discus-
sion about the people who have been bullying her. The disapprobation
of the other nurses towards those who have been bullying her enables
Kate to generate a conscious connection between the bullying and her
belief in her nursing abilities and the shame and distress this has elic-
ited in her. Kate realizes that she does not have to accept the evaluation
of the bullies about her nursing abilities. Subsequently, she recognizes
that how she perceives herself and her feelings has changed: ‘This will
be my last report. I feel that I have turned a corner at work. Maybe
I’ve had a “Ward” to shed, maybe my blow out has helped me. But the
most positive thing I have realized in the last week to 10 days is that
82 Catherine Theodosius

I can do my job. And a little while ago I doubted myself, I wasn’t sure
that I could do it. I think that it was because I was feeling less confi-
dent myself for obvious reasons already mentioned before this, and
I know I can do this job because I have been doing it and I do, do it,
and I know that I am not perfect and I’m a human being and I have
times when some days I do the job better than others depending on
how I feel.’
It would appear that Kate’s extended consciousness has made a nar-
rative link, allowing her to acknowledge the impact the bullying had on
her, making sense of the feelings this produced. Several months later,
this emotion trajectory has resulted in a stronger narrative that links
these events to her maturing personal identity (autobiographical self).
Kate then goes on to recognize the significance of her emotions to her
physical well-being. In her interview, she states:

kate: I felt physically sick before I went into work, I felt very emotional
all the time. Very sort of wobbly as well, you know where you feel like
you have got butterflies in your stomach all the time. It was like I was
the new girl every single day for about two and half months. I shouldn’t
be feeling like this! I was questioning myself all the time. But physically
I felt sick and it wasn’t until I burst out crying in the middle of a hand-
over, which embarrassed me quite a lot, that it actually came to a head. I
was getting unhealthy as well. I was getting quite bad skin and my eyes
were really dark all the time; I had permanent bags under my eyes. I was
sleeping like there was no tomorrow. I was sleeping, sleeping, and sleep-
ing, and I was struggling to get up in the morning, which is a sign of
depression actually, isn’t it, if you don’t want to get up and all you want
to do is go to sleep? And I was just walking around knackered all the
time. And I think that was due to the fact that I was having such a hard
time at work.
catherine: And that was mostly due to relationships with colleagues?
kate: Yes. Definitely, and the way they were condescending and just imply-
ing that I wasn’t doing my job properly um, sideways, bang on, head on,
they were at it all the time . . .

Because ‘knowing a feeling requires a knower subject’ (Damasio

2000:285), feeling is fundamental to cognitive process, to the inner
dialogue; this is why the recognition of emotion and feelings is often
considered to be the culmination of, or the pinnacle of, the narra-
tive – the point at which the individual can move forward. However,
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 83

Archer’s inner dialogic commentary is one where the individual is pre-

dominantly cognizant, able to knowledgeably label and interpret the
significance of his/her emotions. Damasio’s hypothesis suggests that
consciousness can move from one of simple embodied awareness of
feeling to one that requires a knower subject who embodies their emo-
tions within their autobiographical self. These stages are evident in
Kate’s narrative, where prior to her outburst she experienced feelings
that made her aware of a change in her inner state, but not in a way
that she had knowledge of (proto-self). However, she was at the point
of knowing she had feelings, and this precipitated her into adapting to
them by responding, considering, and reflecting on what they meant
(core consciousness). Kate needed to act in a way that enabled her sur-
vival in that environment and defended her sense of self. This was car-
ried out through her acts of CEL using both surface and deep acting. In
her CEL she actively suppressed her known anger and feelings of mis-
ery. In the act of not expressing it, Kate displayed her low place in the
hierarchy, and their higher place. If Kate had really been able to manage
her emotions, her anger would not have been visible/felt at all and the
action of the bullies would have been meaningless. At the same time
as this was occurring, Kate became acquainted with her emotion state
and considered what it meant to her (extended consciousness). This
was precipitated when two central factors brought sudden recognition
and conscious acknowledgement of her emotion state. First was the
physical expression in the crying outburst that took place during ‘han-
dover’ when she acknowledged how upset she was feeling; second,
following this, in her inner dialogue which traversed the time period
during which she was bullied and beyond, Kate made the connection
between feeling unwell and miserable, to the bullying, and the loss of
confidence and self-esteem that she experienced as a consequence and
in her inner dialogue goes on to demonstrate how good a nurse she is
in the recognition that she had doubted her ability (autobiographical
self). Further, when recalling her experiences and her understanding
of those emotions using herautobiographical self, she can remember
the feelings without re-experiencing the physiological changes that
they elicit. Damasio (1995) terms this the ‘as if body loop,’ where the
body can create the ‘feeling of the body-state without there being any
actual change’ (Ellis and Cromby 2009:328). This multi-layered process
represents an embodied experience, awareness, and burgeoning under-
standing of emotion and its management in respect to both a sense of
self and personal identity.
84 Catherine Theodosius

Conclusion

Damasio’s (2000, 1995) hypothesis unwittingly provides scientific weight

to Hochschild’s distinction between surface and deep acting in manag-
ing emotion. However, due to the unconscious elicitation of emotion,
Damasio argues that there are physiological limitations to the degree of
control an individual has over emotion. Rather than simply contributing
to the autonomy of emotion over cognition argument, his explanation
of how and why this is the case when applied to the act of emotion man-
agement, highlights the visible presence of ‘hidden’ managed emotions
in social interaction, broadening the significance of embodied emotion
in understanding group interaction.
More significantly, Damasio’s hypothesis about the relationship be-
tween emotion, consciousness, and self, when critically synthesized
with Hochschild’s (1983) and Archer’s (2000) sociological representa-
tions of emotion and its management, offers interesting insights into
how brain function constrains and facilitates how emotion is experi-
enced and managed in the experience of sensing self, and within per-
sonal and social identity. He identifies the brain’s capacity for different
levels of consciousness and its ability to generate a multi-layered inner
dialogue, representative of emergent emotions that are both con-
sciously known and those that are merely felt, in a way that is rep-
resentative of the individual’s embodied self and its immediate and
continual presence within the material and social environment. This
synthesis tentatively moves beyond traditional mind-body and subject-
object dualisms and conceptualizes emotion experience and emotion
management as embodied within a sense of self and personal and so-
cial identity. This transcends the incongruity between Hochschild’s no-
tion of surface and deep acting, acts of emotion management which
happen in the instance required, and Archer’s inner dialogue which
represents personal identity which reflexively makes sense of the sig-
nificance of emotions to individuals as they traverse through life. The
inner dialogue is also essential to how the individual draws on his/her
personal identity in acts of surface and deep acting in the performance
of social identity. This is because the embodiment of emotion represents
the self in situations that can be both present, emergent, and congru-
ent, and present, emergent, and incongruent in an instant and through
the passage of time. We experience emotion and manage it in transient
moments of time in ways that resonate with our sense of self, without
necessarily losing a more comprehensive understanding of personal
 ‘Feeling a Feeling’ in Emotion Management 85

identity that develops and changes in response to the collation of expe-

rience, personal maturity, and the expression of social identity.

NOTES

1 The data comprised 14 months of participant observation, 15 audio diaries

recorded by the nurses, and 15 interviews that included a discussion
about their diaries. The aim of these methods was to observe emotion and
emotional labour as practised (through the observation), to capture intense
emotion that was experienced and felt but not necessarily displayed and
to uncover private emotion commentary (through the diaries), and to
retrospectively consider the significance of those emotion experiences in
respect to their wider identity (through the interviews).
2 The reference to a ‘healthy’ adult is because physical (e.g., head injuries,
epilepsy, tumours, autoimmune diseases, even flu) or mental (e.g.,
depression, psychosis, dementia) disorders may affect the physiological,
anatomical, and biochemical nature of emotion, thereby impacting on how
such an individual ‘perceives’ and manages his/her emotion experiences
and expressions. The reference to adult is because children are not
considered to be sufficiently physiologically, psychologically, or socially
developed, thus their circumstances are not comparable.
5 Illegitimate Pain: Introducing a Concept
and a Research Agenda

j. sc ott kenne y a n d a i lsa cra i g

Introduction

We all experience pain to various degrees and in different ways. Pain is

mundane. Pain is universal. But pain is also variable and it is not trans-
parent. Pain is often felt so physically and individually that it is hard to
conceive as socially constructed or contingent. Yet some forms of pain
are more hidden than others. Indeed, many have noted the ways that
pain is private, subjective, or individual (Ahmed 2004; Bendelow and
Williams 1995a, b). Scarry (1985) observes that physical pain is inex-
pressible by its very nature, noting that ‘pain comes unsharably into
our midst as at once that which cannot be denied and that which can-
not be confirmed’ (4). But there are reasons other than ineffability for
pain to be hidden. Pain may be disguised or veiled for fear of possible
consequences. It is this latter type of pain that we discuss in this chap-
ter, a form of suffering we term illegitimate pain. Even though pain is
often physical in its experience (and this includes both emotional and
more directly physical pain), it is important to understand the socially
contingent nature of suffering (Bendelow and Williams 1995b). Just
because an unpleasant feeling is socially illegitimate, it is no less real
in its consequences. We maintain that attending to such lived experi-
ences can have important implications for understanding behaviour in
a number of sociological subfields.
It is our contention that ‘illegitimate pain,’ although hinted at in
earlier literature, has yet to be theorized with adequate depth. To ad-
dress this, we will first discuss how existing literature contributes to
an understanding of this form of pain. We then propose a theoretical
conception of ‘illegitimate pain’ that is grounded in that literature but
 Illegitimate Pain 87

moves beyond it in order to hone the concept into a sharper analytical

tool. We further elaborate this concept through an initial application of
it to understanding some of the pain experienced by lesbians and gay
men. This illustrative case helps highlight the kinds of research possi-
bilities the concept of ‘illegitimate pain’ brings to the foreground. Our
aim is not only to point out the existence of an under-explored aspect
of emotional and social life, but also to extend that vision and provide a
conceptual definition that opens possibilities for detailed analysis and
future research. By applying the concept of ‘illegitimate pain’ to our
understanding of ‘coming out’ and other pains associated with lesbian
and gay experiences, we articulate the connections between the sub-
jective realm of emotions and more external realms of social life (e.g.,
relationships, organizations, institutions, and culture). Indeed, with ‘il-
legitimate pain’ in our conceptual toolkit, possibilities and interpreta-
tions emerge that can be developed in a wide variety of contexts and
sociological areas of study.

Prior Literature: Hinting at the Illegitimate

A range of work in the sociology of emotions has anticipated and in-

formed our theory. For example, there has long been a normative focus
on the organized parameters surrounding feeling and expression.
Clark (1987) discusses the social organization of sympathy, arguing
that suffering individuals are entitled – or disentitled – to sympathy
depending on adherence to norms of ‘sympathy etiquette’ (303–13).1
Those who breach ‘sympathy etiquette’ may find themselves lacking
the support they desire, or even face stigmatization (291). Similarly,
Hochschild (1990, 1983) contends that people manage emotions in line
with feeling and expression rules through both ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ act-
ing (1990:118–22). Building from this, Thoits (1990) argues that if emo-
tions deviate from norms, or emotion management fails, the result is
’emotional deviance’ (181; see also Thoits, this volume).
While a normative emphasis largely investigates suffering from the
‘outside in,’ phenomenological work like Denzin’s (1990, 1985, 1984,
1983) stresses the need to study emotion from the inside out (1985:224).
Denzin emphasizes: (1) the social interplay between inter and intra per-
sonal interactions (1984:54–7), particularly inhibited social acts, subvo-
cal thought, interpretations, and self-conversations in social action; and
(2) the role of the ‘lived body’ as the point of reference for ‘modes of
emotion’ that may ratify, reveal, or transform the reality experienced in
88 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

relation to interpretive resources. This phenomenological stress on so-

cial subjectivity and lived embodiment adds depth to our understand-
ing and suggests that ‘illegitimate pain’ fosters thought, revelation, self
transformation, perhaps even social change – thereby resonating with
current interest in emotion in social movements (see, among others,
Flam 2005; Robnett 2004; Schrock, Holden, and Reid 2004; Gould 2002;
Aminzade and McAdam 2001).
Finally, Freund (1998) adds a dramaturgical focus on how bound-
aries are unequally manipulated/enforced in relation to social struc-
ture and power. Depending on social position and the performance
demands made, feelings can encourage one to be open to others or to
close off boundaries; that is; emotions can prompt one to adjust the
space of conscious embodied experience (275). This means that the more
subordinate one is, the more likely one is to close oneself off and engage
in dramaturgical displays to maintain social decorum – however, feel-
ings may ‘leak’ out somatically (277). Freund contends that minorities,
subordinates, and those who negotiate stigma by ‘passing’ as ‘normal,’
fear that their ‘inner’ selves are visible to more powerful others, and
the only outlet for embodied, dramaturgical stress is somatic (283–4).
This is consistent with research in the sociology of emotion and health
(Leventhal and Patrick-Miller 2000; Williams 2000).

Theory Building: Defining the Range of Illegitimate Pain

and Sufferers’ Responses

While the literature makes clear there is space for further analysis of
suffering that is not legitimated, simply pointing out the existence of
this form of suffering is insufficient for the creation of a theoretical
concept that can more incisively understand the relations between the
lived, phenomenological aspects of unrecognized pain and the social
relations and structures that shape its existence and experience.
Drawing upon the above, and the examples that follow, we define
illegitimate pain as pain that involves suffering: (1) that is unrecog-
nized and/or socially neglected by society, one’s social group, one’s
significant others, or by the self; (2) that may be stigmatized as devi-
antor deserved, or involve cultural misunderstandings either about
appropriate ways to respond to it or its etiology; and (3) that can be
understood as existing on a continuum of legitimation. Generally, il-
legitimate pain is related to broader interpretive standards and struc-
tured power relations in society, yet mediated through one’s social
 Illegitimate Pain 89

interactions and relationships. In other words, illegitimate pain is the

suffering brought about when individuals internalize, subject them-
selves to, or are subjected to, moral codes that are in conflict with em-
bodied emotional experiences. This conflict between lived experience
and social expectations makes it socially inappropriate for others to
express sympathy or compassion, and this, in turn, exacerbates suf-
fering. Our theorization of illegitimate pain clearly resonates with the
concept of disenfranchised grief (Doka 1989, 2002), whereby ‘[people]
incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly
mourned or socially supported’ (1989: 4). Importantly, the concept of
disenfranchised grief has been usefully employed to understand be-
reavement within LGBTQ communities (see Green and Grant 2008).
This resonance bolsters our claim that pain and suffering is, at least in
part, experienced differently depending on how it is woven into (or
disconnected from) social expectations and contexts, and that LGBTQ
lives provide insight into the construction and experience of illegiti-
mate pain. While the two concepts share a deep affinity, the concept
of disenfranchised grief can be understood as existing beneath and
providing support to the broader theoretical umbrella of illegitimate
pain, which includes but is not limited to understanding bereavement
and loss.
As in Ahmed’s (2004) discussion of shame, we see illegitimate pain
as rooted in sociality, a sense of failure before an idealized other, and
an affective cost of not following the scripts of normative existence. Yet
illegitimate pain is broader than shame, just as it is broader than dis-
enfranchised grief, and it potentially includes other emotions such as
loneliness, anger, or types of prior physical suffering that receive short
shrift from medical professionals. Indeed, our concept is also broader
than stigma, which is but one of the above-noted grounds for illegiti-
macy. While our concept can be related to Scheff ’s (2000:97) discussion
of shame as involving a threat to the social bond, and while we agree
that illegitimate pain, like shame, is often hidden from others, we do
not so readily claim that all its varieties are so hidden from the sufferer
(Scheff 2000). Illegitimate pain also shares an affinity with Katz’s (1988)
analysis wherein forms of crime centre on the ways vulnerability to hu-
miliation is unevenly distributed in our social structure. Again, Katz’s
focus remains narrower than what we present here.
It may be hypothesized that the more legitimate one’s pain is per-
ceived to be in relation to structural, normative, and cultural frame-
works, the more likely one is to express than somatize it. After all, if
90 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

one is seen as a legitimate victim, if peers have received congruent com-

passion training, and if one follows standards of sympathy etiquette,
one’s suffering implicitly calls for sympathetic response, though its ex-
tent and quality can vary widely depending on factors such as social
standing and interpersonal closeness (Berlant 2004; Holstein and Miller
1990; Clark 1987). If an individual’s suffering is misunderstood (rather
than stigmatized or sanctioned), it may still be expressed by sufferers
to some degree, but will evoke few tangible responses. As with crime
victims (Kenney 2002b), family members, friends, and others may feel
sympathy for a victim in pain, but misunderstand how to appropriately
respond, and therefore avoid interaction. As a result, sufferers’ social
circles may shrink, or they may learn to hide their feelings. Still other
types of pain may be neglected, considered relatively unimportant, and
be given little attention. Examples of pain being neglected or deemed
unimportant include: the grief of families of death row inmates (Jones
and Beck 2007), the treatment of the homeless in emergency wards (Jef-
fery 1979), and attitudes towards male victims of domestic disputes
(George 1994). Such sufferers face institutional neglect, scarcity of ser-
vices, or are constrained by gendered scripts, and quickly receive the
message that their suffering is unimportant.
Key to the development of ‘illegitimate pain’ is our contention that
illegitimate pain exists on a continuum. In any given historic, social,
and political context, the legitimacy of pain is relative and ranges
from legitimate pain (i.e., suffering seen as sympathy worthy) at
one end; through to less severe forms of illegitimate pain where in-
dividuals’ suffering is misunderstood, neglected, or considered un-
important; to the far extreme of illegitimate pain where individuals
are stigmatized – often to the point that their pain is viewed as ‘just
punishment.’
Examples along this continuum can be found in the literature. First,
there is the pain of those whose initially understandable pain persists
too long, as seen in ‘complicated grief ’ (Johnson et.al. 2009). Second,
there are those whose emotional expressions are defined as emotion-
ally deviant (Thoits 1990) – for example, expressing grief at a wedding.
Third, there is the suffering experienced by members of highly stig-
matized social groups. Examples of such illegitimate pain include the
intense pain experienced by heroin addicts and alcoholics or the dif-
ficulties faced by ex-convicts seeking to reintegrate into the community
(see Schwartz and Skolnick 1962). It is a reasonable assumption that
the greater the relative degree of stigmatization, the greater will be the
 Illegitimate Pain 91

somatization, the lived embodiment of pain. This somatization of pain

may result in individuals being unable to function efficiently or effec-
tively, and, when coupled with the leakage (Freund 1998) of feelings of
the lived body (Denzin 1985), can thereby contribute to theproduction
of ‘evidence’ for negative stereotypes (Shilling 2003) by making such
people more visible to us (Scarry 1985). We see, then, that understand-
ing the dynamics of illegitimate pain can help us understand informal,
or even formal labelling, as well as the invocation of various social con-
trol practices and ideologies, particularly medicalization of conditions
that could be better understood as resulting from social interactions
and context.
However, this continuum should not only be understood as a con-
tinuum within which different categories of sufferers are necessarily
placed at different points on a spectrum. That is, someone with fi-
bromyalgia is not necessarily linked to a predetermined ‘ranking’ of
illegitimate pain. Instead, as noted in relation to compassion, actors’
experiences of illegitimate pain may shift along the continuum depend-
ing on the social and historical context at hand (Berlant 2004; Bend-
elow and Williams 1995b). Indeed, gaining control over the context of
one’s experiences is central to the options, rooted in deviance literature,
which we contend actors may adopt when they respond to the drama-
turgical stress of managing illegitimate pain. These options include, but
are not limited to: (1) adopting a negative self-concept or deviant iden-
tity through self-labelling of one’s painful feelings, but without deviant
acts or a deviant role to support it (Rubington and Weinberg 2005:385).2
This may also involve individuals ‘passing’ as ‘normal’ (Charmaz 2000;
Goffman 1963), and needing to carefully manage information while suf-
fering in silence; (2) when ‘passing’ is difficult, relying on others’ active
efforts that attempt to preserve the appearance of ‘normal’ interaction
(Rubington and Weinberg 2005); (3) engaging in rationalizations and
justifications relative to dominant moral codes (Scott and Lyman 1968;
Sykes and Matza 1957); (4) getting involved in a subculture and gaining
self-esteem and recognition through participating in subcultural activi-
ties (Rubington and Weinberg 2005; Cohen 1955; Lemert 1951); and/
or (5) transforming deviant identity by engaging in ‘tertiary deviance’
(Rubington and Weinberg 2005; Kitsuse 1980), which involves protest-
ing against the current moral regime and attempting to validate oneself
or one’s group through political action and activism. Here, our model
has suggestive links with Scarry’s (1985) discussion of the cultural im-
plications of pain’s mandated inexpressibility. The first and third of
92 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

these responses for managing illegitimate pain (suffering in silence and

rationalizations) can be understood as mechanisms within the victim
that participate in what Scarry defines as the ‘unmaking’ of an actor’s
world by the regimes and contexts that wield normative power, while
the fourth and fifth can be seen as creative social acts that Scarry argues
emerge to work against pain.

An Illustration and Elaboration: ‘Illegitimate Pain’

and Lesbian and Gay Experiences

In order to clearly illustrate the concept of illegitimate pain, we now

use it to explore the pain from stigmatization of same-sex desire or
sexual behaviour, and/or from how openly individuals express les-
bian or gay sexual orientation. Examples of pain that lesbian and gay
people encounter include (but are not limited to) the pain of being
disowned because of one’s sexual orientation, being held distant by
family and friends, being physically or sexually assaulted, losing em-
ployment or housing without due cause, and, finally, the pain that
comes from fearing any of these things happening. That fear can result
in the necessity or choice to live a ‘double life,’ and can contribute to
a deep sense of shame. Clearly, leading a ‘double life’ is an example
of the conflicted and difficult emotional work that Freund (1998) sug-
gests leads to ‘dramaturgical stress,’ and that is often an unrecognized
and illegitimate pain.
We call the illegitimate pain of lesbians and gay men the ‘pain of the
closet,’ understanding that this is not a homogeneous type of pain, but
can result from a variety of causes, experiences, or contexts. Indeed,
part of the reason we choose this example is to highlight the ways that
the continuum of illegitimate pain is socially, historically, and geo-
graphically contingent. The case of lesbian and gay pain is also par-
ticularly illustrative because different aspects of the ‘pain of the closet’
meet all the components of our definition of illegitimate pain: the pains
of the closet are unrecognized or socially neglected; homosexuals’
pain is often stigmatized as being deserved because of their presumed
deviance; the pain of lesbians and gay men can result from cultural
misunderstanding about appropriate responses to pain, or from misun-
derstandings about the root of the pain; and the pains of the closet can
be understood as existing on a continuum of legitimation.
Changing historical and political contexts provide one example of
how illegitimate pain exists on a continuum. The legalization of same-
 Illegitimate Pain 93

sex marriage in Canada as well as active lesbian and gay rights cam-
paigns that extend the argument beyond that of access to the institution
of marriage, have helped to alter what was once largely considered il-
legitimate, even ‘deserved’ pain. Rather than same-sex desire being
deemed punishable, it is now more often seen as part of human sexual
diversity, and acknowledgement of the ‘pain of the closet’ is more likely
than has been in the recent past – at least in some circles. Indeed, the
LGBTQ rights movement in North America has helped build an insti-
tutionally complete subculture capable of providing participants with
a deep sense of moral self-worth vis-à-vis heterosexist culture. In the
personal and social questioning this movement has encouraged, it has
enabled a movement that works to replace heterosexist moralism with
affirmation of sexual diversity. This changing historical and political
situation is part of the context within which people ‘come out’ – a pro-
cess often understood as one of identity formation where the shackles
of shame are dropped and acceptance of or pride in one’s sexual iden-
tity is taken up – though conscious politicization is not mandatory to
the process.
Much work3 has been done on the process and experiences of lesbian
and gay identity formation (i.e., ‘coming out’). There have been models
suggested to help better understand this life transition,4 and studies of
how the process and experience of coming out differ according to race,
gender, age, ability, class, historical period, and nation.5 Research has
also examined the effect coming out has on the families of lesbians and
gay men,6 as well as the effects it may have in the workplace or class-
room.7 Additionally, research has examined the role of the Internet or
the importance of place in the coming out process.8
What connects much of the research on coming out is its individ-
ual-level focus. Coming out is most often seen as a deeply personal
transition that individuals can experience as self-discovery, realization,
confession, or life-changing choice. Alongside the individual process of
coming out is the process of telling others. This is shown in the many
narratives that make a distinction between ‘coming out to myself ’ and
‘coming out to the world’ (Wolfe and Stanley 1980). Indeed, there are
many people who are involved in same-sex relationships, but do not di-
vulge their sexuality to those outside of an LBGTQ context. Also, there
are those who do not hide their sexuality, but choose not to politicize
that aspect of their lives. This highlights the fact that coming out is not
always a politicization of LGBTQ identities. Yet even when lesbians and
gay men do not come out in a public or political way, the transition of
94 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

coming out is still central to LGBTQ experience. Given the personal na-
ture of this transition, as well as individuals’ choices regarding public
expression of orientation, it is unsurprising that much of the literature
has concentrated on an individual level of analysis.
Interestingly, individuals in the process of coming out react and make
choices that fit well into the options we suggest are possible for those
experiencing illegitimate pain: they may (1) choose to stay closeted,
‘pass’ as straight, suffer in silence, and in so doing nurture a negative
self concept; (2) rely on heteronormative accommodative actions that
preserve the appearance of conventional heterosexual interaction for all
concerned; (3) engage in rationalizations for homosexuality that do not
question the dominance of heteronormativity (e.g., ‘I can’t help who I
love’ – with the unspoken message being that if one could, one would
not be lesbian or gay); (4) get involved in an LGBTQ subculture that
helps nurture self-esteem and positive identity through recognition –
yet which still may not challenge the dominance of heterosexism out-
side the bounds of the subculture; and/or (5) become politically active
by making claims for legitimizing and acknowledging the pain of the
closet, thereby working to challenge heterosexism and homophobia.
The continuum of legitimacy concerning the pain of the closet is not,
however, solely a matter of an individual progressing through stages
of ‘development’ to a more positive sense of self or to being someone
more likely to engage in activism. As Sedgewick has noted, the closet
is a metaphor that has wide-ranging effects (Sedgewick 1990), and one
therefore does not need to be ‘in the closet’ to experience unacknowl-
edged suffering that results from the social and cultural dynamics of
the closet. Violating the norms of heterosexism through being identifi-
ably lesbian or gay – through being ‘out’ – can be the impetus for pain-
ful acts of homophobia. That is, one can be ‘out,’ and have a positive
self-image, and that very openness can result in heterosexist assump-
tions or homophobic attack. Indeed, no matter how ‘well-adjusted’ an
individual may be, that will not assure the recognition and legitimacy
of their pain.
While the individual focus in research on coming out has led to work
that ‘gives voice’ to the pain of the closet, by being rooted in social devel-
opmental models, the connections between institutions, structures, and
social contexts are not sufficiently highlighted. One notable exception
is Evans’s (2002) work on negotiating sexual identity in the classroom,
and the emotional work required by teachers negotiating disclosure or
nondisclosure of sexuality. Here, Evans highlights the connection be-
 Illegitimate Pain 95

tween social-structural position and emotion work, noting that those

who live on the margins must perform qualitatively different emotional
work (32). Other work that does highlight context or institutions often
focuses on place and space in the coming out process (Weston 1995;
Valentine and Skelton 2003). The argument is that urban spaces pro-
vide helpful resources for affirming sexual diversity – so much so that
becoming an urbanite is often deemed central to forming lesbian or
gay identity (Aldrich 2004; Weston 1995). Cities have a large and varied
population, and businesses can therefore benefit from catering to spe-
cific subcultural markets. That is, given the prevalence of heterosexual-
ity, a bookstore or bar that is intended for lesbians and gay men is not
a feasible business venture in a rural place with a limited population.
Furthermore, while rural spaces often do not have a large enough
LGBTQ community for there to be community meeting spaces, they
also provide fewer sexually diverse role models, and fewer potential
partners. Indeed, the city has long been understood as a place that pro-
vides the anonymity, population density, and variety that makes sex-
ual freedom possible more generally – not only for lesbians and gay
men. While consideration of urban/rural differences is important for
understanding the role of place in the social construction of sexuality
because of the opportunities that each provide and preclude,9 it also
provides examples of how the illegitimacy of pain may be geographi-
cally contingent and how place may be a variable in the continuum
that can act fairly independently of other factors. That is, while shifting
historical and political contexts have great effects, and the lived experi-
ence of coming out is connected to the relative legitimacy of the pain of
the closet, the differences between urban and rural spaces can quickly
change one’s place on the continuum of illegitimacy for the pain of the
closet, regardless of where one is in the coming out transition. In other
words, being sensitive to the concept of ‘illegitimate pain’ opens alter-
native ways of understanding the question: Why do lesbians and gay
men often gravitate to urban centres? Why? Because it hurts to stay in
rural areas,10 even if those areas are ‘home,’ and it hurts in ways that
overshadow the influence of recent political change and historical ad-
vances for lesbian and gay rights and recognition. It hurts in ways that
cannot be attended to or solved or absolved through a lesbian or gay
person’s stage of homosexual identity development. It hurts because of
the current social and cultural characteristics of rural areas – the place
itself contributes to the illegitimacy of some people’s suffering, and this
is not attributable solely to the beliefs of the dominant population (who
96 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

may have heterogeneous – even positive – views on homosexuality).

Not only does the sensitizing concept of ‘illegitimate pain’ have the
potential to support tentative conclusions that rural spaces are pre-
sumed to be heterosexual spaces (Little 2003), and to provide further
nuance to our understanding of sexual migration, it could also help us
understand how the connections between subjective, embodied moti-
vating factors and external structural factors effect migration patterns
for other groups as well.
Furthermore, through employing the concept of ‘illegitimate pain,’
coming out can be seen as a continuing navigation of the factors that
affect the legitimacy of the pain of the closet. Rather than simply being
understood as a process of internal self-recognition, journey towards
enlightenment, or progression towards political activism, coming out
can be seen as an ongoing negotiation of the continuum of legitimacy.
Coming out is more than a life transition, and is instead an ongoing
relationship of negotiating power between the margins and centre of
a complex system of sexual stratification (Rubin 1993). In this way, the
concept of illegitimate pain allows us to better account for the appar-
ent contradiction between the fact that ‘coming out’ is both a stage of
lesbian and gay life, and something that lesbians or gay men ‘never
stop doing.’

Conclusion

Illegitimate pain, as a new concept, is implicit in a diversity of earlier,

more narrowly focused work on shame, grieving, humiliation, and
stigma. However, by integrating work from the normative, phenome-
nological, and dramaturgical traditions in the sociology of emotions, we
present a concept with the potential to comprehensively unite and bol-
ster previous work on pain, grief, shame, humiliation, and stigma, and
the ways they are connected to social structures, contexts, and norms.
We have shown the concept to be applicable – even evocative – of fur-
ther research in the important area of LGBTQ experiences. Indeed, it is
suggestive of further research in several other broad areas of sociologi-
cal study.
Thus, pain that is perceived as illegitimate at one point in time, or
in one culture, may be seen as legitimate, even sympathy worthy in an-
other. In at least some circles, this is the case with lesbians and gay
men in North America in terms of the pain that can be associated with
coming out of the closet. As with compassion (Berlant 2004), since attri-
 Illegitimate Pain 97

butions of illegitimate pain are not static, it is important to investigate

how illegitimate pain is constructed by society across both time and
space. Despite the folk perception of unified development or ‘progress’
as we move forward in history, time is not a unifying standard, and
variation in attributions of legitimacy exist both within and between
different social contexts, locations, and time periods. As well, areas of
future research where the concept of ‘illegitimate pain’ may be fruitful
emerge in examination of the many writers who have built upon Spec-
tor and Kitsuse’s (1977) work on the emergence and social construction
of social problems through claims-making, which itself updates and
extends the earlier work of Howard Becker (1963). Particularly sugges-
tive in this respect is the work of Loseke (1993), who argues that a social
problem in the making is an issue in search of a victim. Indeed, this idea
may be deepened by suggesting that a social problem in the making is
an issue requiring evidence of legitimate pain, or claims-makers fight-
ing for recognition of illegitimate pain as socially legitimate.
As outlined above, actors experiencing illegitimate pain face several
choices. By understanding the factors that constrain and enable differ-
ent choices in the face of illegitimate pain, we can therefore approach
the development of social problems with further analytical clarity.
Rather than simply observing that social problems are issues in search
of victims, we are better equipped to understand the social processes
that contribute to the formation of social selves and relations that bol-
ster claims for recognition. Indeed, Emilio Viano’s (1989) four-stage
model of the emergence and struggle for social recognition of various
forms of victimization may also be reinterpreted in this way. Neverthe-
less, it will be important to supplement such relatively pluralistic ap-
proaches with other, more recent work on emotion and the emergence
of social movements that considers structural and power relations in
the emergence and evolution of social categories, problems, and norms.
Finally, it will also be important to consider the role of embodied emo-
tion in revealing new meanings or interpretations for social action and
social movements.
A second area for further research employing our concept of ‘illegiti-
mate pain’ is the related concern that the relative legitimacy or illegiti-
macy of pain depends upon the perspective of the people in question.
What may be legitimate pain, deserving of sympathy, concern and re-
dress to one may be perceived as illegitimate, even deserved, by an-
other. Hence, in addition to the conceptual utility of ‘illegitimate pain’
in understanding identity-based movements for social change, it will
98 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

also be important to consider the potential role played by illegitimate

pain in social conflict. For example, Holstein and Miller (1990) speak
of ‘victim contests’ over who is the ‘real’ or the ‘biggest’ victim in con-
flict situations (113–15), and Kenney and Clairmont (2009) have noted
offensive and defensive use of victim rhetoric in their observations of
youth restorative justice sessions. Indeed, it may be possible to consider
broader social conflicts related to the sociological trinity of race, class,
and gender as, at least in part, imbued with the implicit issue of the
legitimacy/illegitimacy of a groups’ suffering. Thus, the concept of ‘il-
legitimate pain’ can also help us understand reaction and/or resistance
to social movements that are born of legitimacy claims related to the
experience of pain. Indeed, this concept adds phenomenological depth
and an embodied aspect to our understandings of social movements
and resistance.
Third, and in conjunction with the above-mentioned areas of social
movement and social conflict, it will be important to investigate the
dynamic, embodied aspects of illegitimate pain. While Denzin and
Freund’s formulations incorporating phenomenological and bodily
concerns are welcome from a theoretical standpoint, it will be neces-
sary to do in-depth qualitative investigation of socially illegitimate
pain.11 While it may be difficult to access and gain the trust of groups
or individuals whose pain is stigmatized, Thoits’s (1990) suggestion of
the four structural conditions under which emotional deviance is more
likely to be reported may prove a helpful starting point for the recruit-
ment of participants, and could also prove useful in the initial stages of
coding and analysis by providing a possible range of structural forces
that may unite and divide participants.
Even with the difficulty presented by the task of recruiting partici-
pants, gaining a phenomenological understanding of illegitimate pain
will be a significant step in advancing sociological understandings of
emotion, the body, health, and identity-based social movements. Il-
legitimate pain, if left unattended, may hypothetically be expressed
in angry behaviour, such as interpersonal violence or other forms of
criminal behaviour, as reflected in studies of humiliation (Katz 1988)
and of offenders’ condemnation narratives (Maruna 2001). Similarly,
illegitimate pain may lead to secondary victimization (Kenney 2002b)
whereby one adopts the victim role in the face of social reaction to or
neglect of one’s pain.
In summary, we suggest that the concept of illegitimate pain may
be of particular use in understanding the following three areas: (1) the
 Illegitimate Pain 99

emergence of social-problems, claims-makers, and development of

social movements; (2) the formation and nuance of social conflicts in
reaction or resistance to identity-based social movements; (3) the vari-
able effects and relations concerning the range of embodied, lived pain,
particularly in relation to literature on the sociology of the body, health,
and deviance. However, this is not an exhaustive list, and we suspect
that the concept could be applied in many different settings. Deri’s
work in this volume, for example, could possibly use the concept to
understand how sensing potential loss in the emergent pain of jealousy
is understood and acted upon in polyamorous relationships.
Ultimately, future research must incorporate but move beyond nor-
mative external concerns such as the need to adhere to the rules of ‘sym-
pathy etiquette’ (Clark 1987), to ‘manage’ one’s emotions in line with
‘expression’ and ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild 1990), and must also avoid
attributions of ’emotional deviance’ (Thoits 1990). It will also be impor-
tant to consider the etiology of illegitimate pain in any given society or
social situation. Certainly Thoits’s reference to structural variables such
as multiple role occupancy, subcultural marginality, normative and
non-normative role transitions, and rigid rules governing ongoing roles
and ceremonial rituals provide useful ideas for research sites, as does
her suggestion to consider self-help and protest groups (188). Similarly,
Freund’s (1998) suggestion of studying subordinates with imposed and
stressful emotion work, minorities, as well as those who must cope
with a social stigma and ‘pass’ as ‘normal’ (281–2) is useful. Indeed,
this vein of work we propose is in line with a longstanding literature
in the sociology of health indicating a link between socially structured
inequality, socially structured ambiguity, and physical/mental health
problems (Clarke 2004; Stolzman 2000).
Again, other avenues of research may well present themselves. In-
deed, ‘illegitimate pain,’ with its phenomenological attention to the
lived body, may well be a central component of what Shilling (2003:8)
refers to as the ‘absent presence’ of the body in social theory and re-
search. Yet, to neglect illegitimate pain is to fail to step outside ourselves
and take up a sociological vision that digs beneath our commonsense
assumptions and understandings: just because forms of socially orga-
nized pain are perceived as illegitimate, does not mean that they should
be neglected in sociological analysis – indeed, this kind of socially and
culturally sanctioned neglect could prove to be an important social
force in its own right. Nevertheless, by attending to this idea and using
it as a sensitizing concept (Blumer 1969), we hope to shed light on a
100 J. Scott Kenney and Ailsa Craig

number of key areas of sociological inquiry. In this sense, at the very

least, we can question whether we must continue to conceive of pain
as a zero sum game, where one person or group’s legitimated pain in-
fringes upon the claims made by others, and we can also explore how
even unrecognized pain is woven into our social fabric even in spite
of – or indeed because of – its illegitimacy.

NOTES

1 These interpersonal norms include: (1) do not make unwarranted claims;

(2) do not claim too much sympathy; (3) do not reject sympathy; and (4)
reciprocate gifts of sympathy (Clark 1987:303–13). A broader approach
is set out by Berlant (2004), where emotions in operation, like sympathy
and compassion, must be placed in the broader context of inequality
and political economy, along with current debates about things like
‘compassionate conservatism.’ Berlant’s normative and aesthetic reading
considers that people are taught to feel appropriately compassionate (11).
Variation in compassion training ’emerg[es] at historical moments . . . [is]
shaped by aesthetic conventions, and tak[es] place in scenes that are
anxious, volatile, surprising and contradictory’ (7). As such, ‘the word
compassion carries the weight of ongoing debates about the ethics of
privilege – in particular about the state as an economic, military, and moral
actor that represents and establishes collective norms of obligation, and
about individual and collective obligations to read a state of distress not
as a judgment against the distressed but a claim on the spectator to be an
ameliorative actor’ (1).
2 These options are not exhaustive. Kenney (2004:244–9) notes how individuals
in similar situations may choose, learn, or innovate responses based on
awareness of informational resources and orientation to past behavioural
patterns or the synthesis of innovative responses. While one may still suggest
that options may be narrowed relative to, for example, the visibility of
stigmatizing attributes (Charmaz 2000; Goffman 1963), the availability
of significant subcultural contact or differential illegitimate opportunity
structures (Cloward and Ohlin 1960), one cannot dismiss the possibility of
further varieties of innovative responses on the part of reflexive, self-aware
individuals.
3 Citations of previous work on the coming out process are illustrative, not
exhaustive.
4 See Johns and Probst 2004; Chirrey 2003; Floyd and Stein 2002; Esterberg
1997; Levine 1997; Morris 1997; Eliason 1996; Cox and Gallois 1996; Kitzinger
and Wilkinson 1995; Phelan 1993; Rust 1993; Cass 1984a, b; McDonald 1982.
 Illegitimate Pain 101

5 See Parks, Hughes, and Matthews 2004; Li and Orleans 2001; Bhugra 1997;
Bohan 1996; Jackson and Brown 1996; Savin-Williams and Diamond 2000;
Lynch 2004; Jones and Nystrom 2002; Sherry 2004; Samuels 2003; Appleby
2001a, b; Mallon 2001; Watzlawik 2004; Ryan 2003.
6 See Cohler 2004; Herdt and Koff 2000; Lynch and Murray 2000; Oswald
2000.
7 See Ward and Winstanley 2003; Taylor and Raeburn 1995; Schneider 1986;
Raissiguier 1997.
8 See Heinz et al. 2002; Munt, Bassett, and O’Riordan 2002; McKenna and
Bargh 1998; Holt and Griffin 2003; Valentine and Skelton 2003.
9 See Little (2003) for one examination of how heterosexuality is affected by
gendered and sexualized understanding of space and place.
10 This example helps clarify the relation between affect, feeling, and sense.
If emotion may be seen as a physical sense that transmits information to
the self (Hochschild 1983), then emotionally sensing potential claims to
the illegitimacy of one’s sexual orientation in rural areas, including the
probable stigmatization of one’s significant yet hidden desires should
they become known, results in an evaluative response in relation to self,
a devaluing of who one is. In a slightly different way, this could operate
through the ‘somatic sensation of society’ at the heart of Shilling’s (1997)
discussion of Durkheim. This devaluation is manifested both cognitively
and in embodied affect. Indeed, given the need to wall oneself off and
engage in dramaturgical displays discussed by Freund (1998), it may
manifest unpleasantly in the various modes of feeling relative to the lived
body discussed in Denzin’s (1985) phenomenological account.
11 The methods employed by Theodosius in this volume could prove
particularly helpful as an example of how to better capture subjective
experience in relation to social contexts.
6 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion
Alone: Bergson and Kant

al e xandre lefebvre a n d m ela n i e whit e 1

Religion, being coextensive with our species, must pertain to our structure.
– Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

Introduction

There are several reasons, perhaps nowhere so concentrated as in their

treatment of religion, to see Bergson and Kant as opposed. And yet,
as is typical of disagreement, this opposition springs from a shared
insight: both Bergson and Kant envision human beings as endowed
with an overreaching faculty of reason which distorts and even im-
perils human life. Religion is a privileged site to examine emotion,
particularly the relation between reason and emotion. Of course, these
terms require specification; but, as a starting point, we see that phi-
losophy and theology alike have widely assumed religion to be the
paradigmatic case for opposition between emotion and reason. On
the one hand, religion has been dismissed as ‘anthropology disguised
as theology’ (Feuerbach), ‘ideology and false consciousness’ (Marx),
‘infantile neurosis’ (Freud), ‘the nonsensical expression of feeling, dif-
fused by metaphysicians without poetic or musical talent’ (Carnap),
and a ‘category mistake’ (Ryle) (see de Vries 1999:2–3). On the other
hand, from Luther to contemporary evangelism, faith and belief have
been upheld as the only way to reach a God ‘incomprehensible and
inaccessible to human reason’ (Luther 1969:330; see also Connolly
2008:39–68). In short, these positions represent an antinomy (i.e., a
shared presupposition developed in antagonistic directions). Start-
ing from a shared opposition between reason and emotion, one posi-
tion claims that religion will vanish if reason masters emotion, and
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 103

the other position claims that religion will endure if faith asserts its
autonomy from reason.
Kant and Bergson are valuable to a sociological study of emotion pre-
cisely because they criticize and avoid this antinomy.1 As we shall see,
Kant argues that far from opposing emotional excess, extravagant use
of reason solicits it.2 And Bergson argues that the purpose of emotion
is to check the demoralizing and dissolvent tendencies of reason. It is
this shared refusal to oppose reason to emotion and to instead explore
their entanglement that informs the purpose of this essay: to use Kant
and Bergson’s discussion of religion to assess the nature, function, and
source of emotion and its relationship to reason.
We propose to cut into Kant and Bergson’s treatment of religion, hence
their treatment of emotion and reason, through their respective visions
of the potential fanaticism internal to reason. To make this shared vi-
sion clearer, we begin with a remarkable passage in which Stanley
Cavell (1979) comments on Kant’s major work regarding religion, Reli-
gion within the Bounds of Bare Reason: ‘Here, as is typical of Kant’s pro-
cedures, he goes beyond an expected Enlightenment battle that takes
up the cause of reason against irrationality on the most famous field
of the irrational [i.e., religion]. The collection of sections called General
Observations, one of which concludes each of the four parts of Kant’s
volume on religion, together constitute what I think amounts to a gen-
eral theory of irrationality, a systematic account of what turns out, on
this theory, to be a whole class of phenomena, each of them involving a
particular distortion of human reason. Kant calls the four members of
this class fanaticism, superstition, delusion, and sorcery’ (455).
Cavell frames his praise on this ground: Kant is remarkable for hav-
ing shown us the specific deformations reason threatens to impose
upon itself. We propose to extend the spirit of Cavell’s remark. In the
first section we elaborate how, for Kant, reason can elicit reckless emo-
tion which can take the form of passion (Leidenschaft) or enthusiasm
(Schwärmerei).3 In the second section we turn to Bergson’s discussion
of ‘static religion,’ in which instinct and emotion counteract the de-
moralizing and dissolvent power of the intellect. In the third, and last,
section we turn to Bergson’s difficult discussion of love in ‘dynamic
religion.’ Love is of fundamental importance to Two Sources of Morality
and Religion. It is the emotion that not only saves us from our instinctive
tendency to wage war, but it also serves as a counter to our intellec-
tual tendency to separate us from both God and the world. As we seek
to define a concept of creative emotion in Bergson, one constitutively
104 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

engaged in limiting the intellect, our discussion centres on love and

(perhaps hardheartedly) specifies criteria to identify its function. We
propose the following two contributions. First, to provide a concrete
analysis of emotion by contrasting a conception of religion that accords
priority to reason over emotion (Kant) with one that accords priority
to emotion over reason (Bergson). And second, to provide an original
interpretation of Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion as orga-
nized by a simultaneous extension and criticism of Kant’s philosophy
of religion.

Kant: The Fanaticism of Reason

In the preface to the first edition of Religion within the Bounds of Bare
Reason [1793], Kant makes clear that religion is the product of morality,
not the other way around. Indeed, he maintains, ‘morality in no way
needs religion . . . rather, through the power [vermöge] of pure practical
reason [morality] is sufficient to itself ’ (2009:3). Absolute and uncondi-
tioned, pure practical reason commands our will without needing an
external (religious) purpose to learn one’s duty or to impel its perfor-
mance. Nevertheless, Kant does establish a direct and necessary rela-
tionship between morality and religion. This relationship is rooted in
the fact that morality is not indifferent to its realization in the world.
Indeed, it is a duty to bring about a union between morality and its
empirical existence. Kant calls this union the highest good. But see-
ing as the realization of the highest good depends on circumstances
beyond the control of finite individuals, we are led to presuppose – but
merely as a principle or idea of reason (Kant will say a ‘reflective’ pre-
supposition [52]) – ‘a higher, moral, holiest, and all-powerful being that
alone can unite the two elements of this good’ (5). Religion, therefore,
is a natural and necessary product of pure practical reason. In short,
Kant stresses two points: first, morality is the foundation for religion;
and second, religion is not an accidental or contingent phenomenon
but arises to meet an inherent moral need, that is, the realization of the
highest good. In a word, ‘morality leads inevitably to religion’ (8).
The point can be rephrased in language evocative of Bergson: rea-
son alone should be the source of both our conduct and the content of
religion. It is, however, a standing possibility that reason should fail
to determine either of these. In other words, conduct and religion are
free to adopt sources besides reason. This possibility is crucial for Kant.
It represents nothing less than the condition for the two kinds of grief
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 105

specific to human beings: evil and fanaticism. On the one hand, the
source of evil lies in the adoption of a maxim that determines the will
by sensuous nature and not by the moral law. On the other hand, the
source of fanaticism lies in the creation of ecclesiastical rules and prac-
tices unsupported by pure practical reason. We take each in turn.

Evil

It is fundamental for Kant that evil is rooted in freedom of choice. He

thus opposes two major traditions. Against Christian doctrine, Kant
argues that we are not evil by fact of birth or original inheritance. For
him, such an approach would vitiate responsibility for evil by placing
it in acts that cannot be attributed to us (2009: 40). Second, contrary to
Stoicism, evil does not reside in the senses or natural impulses as such.
This approach too would eliminate our responsibility for evil, this time
by grounding it in our natural constitution (57–9). Kant’s position is not
that we should deny our sensuous nature (which includes not only basic
needs but also emotions), but that we should put it in its proper place. It
is only when we elevate sensuality to the status of a maxim for conduct
that we are properly called evil. And so, for Kant a moral human life
consists of striking the proper arrangement between reason that deter-
mines conduct and the natural needs and emotions subordinate to it. As
Arnold Davidson (1993) writes, ‘To place [sensuous nature] in this role
is to create the proper human life, to give appropriate structure to the
link that hangs us between the animal and divine. Our choice of proper
structure is our choice for humanity’ (83). The point we emphasize is that
while the temptation to substitute a moral with a pathological maxim
may be ineradicable – hence Kant’s claim that human evil is endemic or
‘radical’ (32) – moral or rational life does not require release from natural
needs or emotion. We need only keep them in their proper place.

Fanaticism

While the problem of evil opens Religion within the Bounds of Bare Rea-
son, it becomes clear that Kant is equally preoccupied with a more in-
sidious danger. This danger is taken up in the General Remarks that
conclude each of the four parts of the book. Here, Kant addresses ideas
that, while not constitutive elements of rational religion, arise in order
to resolve moral problems raised by our evil nature: ‘Reason, conscious
of its incapacity to deal adequately with its moral need, extends itself
106 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

to extravagant [or transcendent: überschwenglich] ideas that might com-

pensate for this lack, without appropriating them to itself as part of
an expanded possession. [Reason] does not dispute the possibility or
actuality of the objects of these ideas; it just cannot admit them into its
maxims of thought and of action’ (2009:52).
In a letter written more than a decade before this passage, Kant re-
marks on the ‘endless religious madness to which people in all ages are
inclined’ (Kant 1967:83). We might say that the General Remarks flesh
out the three species of madness: grace (Remarks 1 and 4: belief in prac-
tices to propitiate the supernatural); miracles (Remark 2: belief in events
that contradict the law of experience); and holy mysteries (Remark 3:
belief in concepts unfathomable to reason). On the one hand, Kant ad-
mits that these ideas are valuable to clothe or dramatize concepts of
pure practical reason. As we will see in a moment, they respond to a
moral need. But on the other hand, all too often (perhaps inevitably: ‘in
all ages’) these ideas of reason are mistaken for positive insights into
the supernatural. Properly speaking, it is this mistake, not the ideas
themselves, that perverts reason. And it is this mistake that gives the
General Remarks their deep unity. Whereas on the surface they enu-
merate three distinct religious delusions, they are in fact reducible to
a single cause: the failure to preserve pure practical reason as the sole
source of religion. The rest of this section is taken up with two ques-
tions. First, how is it that reason engenders the delusions characteristic
of religion? And second, in what ways does reason excite the fanaticism
it should instead check?4 These two questions anticipate our discussion
of Bergson, who, in persistent dialogue with Kant, also charts the com-
plex internal connections between reason and moral need, and delu-
sion and fanaticism.
We begin with the mistake at the root of delusion and fanaticism.
Throughout his critical writings, Kant acknowledges our human need
to correlate concepts with sensible intuitions or concrete examples.
This correlation goes by different names depending on which interest
is at stake: ‘schematism’ for theoretical reason (Kant 1996a:A137–B176);
‘typic’ for pure practical reason (Kant 2002: 67); and ‘symbolization’ for
aesthetic judgment (Kant 1987:58). Religion is no different; in fact, this
need is pressing: ‘Because of the natural need of all human beings to de-
mand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason, something
that the senses can hold on to, i.e., some experiential confirmation and the
like (a need which one does actually have to take into account if the
intention is to introduce a faith universally), some historical church faith
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 107

must be employed, which one usually also finds to be already at hand’

(Kant 2009:110, translation modified).
Kant (2009) argues on two levels. On the historical level, he claims
that for a new religion to gain acceptance – even Christianity, the ra-
tional religion par excellence (127) – its teachings must take recourse in
sensible examples, even if these appear to contradict its rational core
(miracles, for example). The hope is that once accepted, rational religion
will set aside its sensible aids (152). But on a deeper or universal level,
sensible exemplification of pure practical concepts is a human need as
such. To become comprehensible, moral concepts must undergo sche-
matization. Christ, for instance, is a sensible example used to illustrate
the idea of a human being morally pleasing to God. By bridging divine
and human worlds, Christ models the exemplary life for Christians
(63–6). Such an example is perfectly acceptable, even desirable, so long
as we remember that these examples are illustrations of pure practical
concepts. They are not only necessary but also salutary and give moral
concepts vivid expression.
Examples, however, pose a unique danger: they might be mistaken
for the concept they are meant to represent. The risk is that we invert
the order of priority between concept and intuition, such that the latter
becomes primary. Inherent to religious schematization, therefore, is the
possibility that we treat the illustrations of a moral concept as if they
were a predicate of it. This slip leads us to claim positive knowledge
of the supersensible: ‘This way of conceiving [pure practical concepts
through sensible examples] is the schematism of analogy (for elucidation),
which we cannot dispense with. But to transform it into a schematism
of object-determination (for expansion of our cognition) is anthropomor-
phism, which – for a moral aim – has in religion the most dangerous
consequences’ (2009:65, emphasis added). In theoretical cognition, this
problem does not arise.5 Sensibility does not impede or limit human
knowledge but defines it. But for practical reasons, sensibility poses
a double threat: first, we may adopt sensuous nature as the basis of
our maxims (evil); and, second, we may transform the schema into a
determination of the object itself (delusion). This latter temptation of
reason, at once natural and perverse, is the source of religious illusion.
By virtue of its inherent tendency to seek the unconditioned and get to
the bottom of the supersensible, reason engenders delusion by taking the
sensible schema of pure practical concepts (which by right has only a heu-
ristic function) as cognition of the supersensible. It remains now to be seen
how reason can inspire fanaticism and passion.
108 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

We can approach this question through Kant’s (2009) discussion of

biblical interpretation. Recall that the basis of religion is morality (i.e.,
pure practical reason). As such, all religions are roughly equivalent:
they each consist of a rational core developed through various illustra-
tions and narratives. Certain religions are more faithful to this core but
all consist in this core (111). It follows for Kant that the key to Scriptural
exegesis is pure practical reason: ‘[Rational] interpretation, in view of
the text (of the revelation), may often seem forced, and may often actu-
ally be forced; and yet this interpretation must, if only the text is capa-
ble of bearing [annehmen] it, be preferred to a literal interpretation that
either contains within itself absolute nothing for morality, or perhaps
even acts counter to morality’s incentives’ (110). Pure practical reason is
doubly recommended for decoding scripture. First, it is moral and en-
ables edifying study. And, second, it is universally shared and secures
public discussion and argument (see Rawls 1989/1999). But what hap-
pens when the schema intended to represent religious concepts eclipses
their rational foundation? Kant’s reply is that empirical faith and sub-
jective feeling become the basis for scriptural interpretation. Without a
core of pure practical reason, biblical interpretation becomes based, as
Kant (1996b) observes, on ‘a certain (indemonstrable and inexplicable)
feeling [Gefühl]’ (Ak 285; see also de Vries 2002:67–87). The direct object
of Kant’s (2009) criticism is Luther, for whom no criterion beyond faith
is required to read scripture. Kant criticizes this function of feeling as
an ‘illumination’ that threatens to introduce every kind of arbitrariness
and fantasy into religion (83).
We have so far seen two instances in which reason loses its rela-
tive priority: (1) Revelation and not reason furnishes the substance of
religious concepts (delusion); and (2) Feeling and not reason grounds
religious interpretation and practice (fanaticism). Kant’s genius, if
we can put it this way, is to have shown the internal connection be-
tween delusion and fanaticism. Faith in revelation cannot be rational,
for we would then be asked to believe that an empirical event pro-
vides knowledge of the supersensible; any religion that privileges it
will transform faith into felt conviction. Or, in other words, when a
natural moral need (to sensibly illustrate pure practical concepts) is
taken as positive knowledge of the supersensible (delusion), faith for-
feits its rational basis (for it now attaches itself to revelation and not
morality) and adopts feeling as both a cognitive and practical means
to access the supersensible (fanaticism). Kant’s further accomplishment
is to have clearly described the disastrous consequences of this con-
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 109

nection between delusion and fanaticism. On the one hand, religious

communities become closed (literally parochial) for they are grounded
merely on convergent feelings privately held by their members. On
the other hand, faith turns into intense passion because it has replaced
argument with assertion. The fanaticism of reason is such that by as-
suming positive knowledge of supersensible concepts – something we
cannot know and morally do not need – feeling paves the way for a
religious enthusiasm that cannot but dogmatically insist upon its faith
and practice.

Bergson: The Dissolvent and Demoralizing Intellect

In several respects, Bergson could not be farther from Kant. As Anne

Sauvagnargues (2004) puns, he is the ‘anti-Kant’ (155; see also Merleau-
Ponty 1960:288). Gilles Deleuze also observes that Kant serves as a ‘point
of reference’ [le rôle de repère] for Bergson, from which he repeatedly gauges
his distance (2004:166; 1991:23). In important respects this is true, and we
will articulate Bergson’s fundamental opposition to Kant on two issues.
First, for Bergson the origin of morality and religion is biology. Indeed,
Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion is the pre-eminent work
on the sociobiology of religion (Ansell-Pearson and Mullarkey 2002:37).
Second, for Bergson neither religion nor morality takes place within the
limits of reason alone. Instead, both constitutively involve emotion. Yet,
despite these differences, we will argue that Bergson’s Two Sources re-
news central insights of Kant’s philosophy of religion. Specifically, we
identify a Kantian debt in Bergson’s identification of the illusions and
dangers internal to reason that solicit and combine with emotion.
Bergson’s Two Sources opens with a sustained engagement with Kant,
one that provides us an opportune sketch of the principal line ofargu-
ment in the book as a whole. Throughout his practical writings, Kant
isolates a particular group of emotions he calls rational emotions. These
are special for Kant because they arise spontaneously from theperfor-
mance of our duty. Feelings of humiliation, sublimity, respect, and awe
are our characteristic experiences of a moral law that subordinates our
sensuous nature without any incentive outside of reason (see Saurette
2005). Bergson (1977) begins his critique by charging Kant with a ‘psy-
chological error’: Kant can attribute such a stern inflexible aspect to
moral obligation because he assumes that those exceptional moments
of struggle with our desires are our ordinary experience of it (20). The
trouble for Bergson is that this approach traces the transcendental
110 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

nature of obligation from occasional empirical experiences of it. As

such, it explains neither the origin nor the essential nature of obligation.
What then is the nature of obligation? Bergson’s (1977) rule of thumb
is to approach any faculty – moral, cognitive, or pragmatic – by asking
how it helps the creature endowed with it to survive and flourish. In a
word, the function of obligation is to integrate the individual into the
social group and thereby ensure its health and cohesion. It is crucial to
notice that, unlike Kant, Bergson does not confine obligation to human
life insofar as ‘it ranks among the most general phenomena of life’ (29).
And so, it is with keen irony that Bergson imagines the following situ-
ation: ‘If we want a pure case of the categorical imperative, we must
construct one a priori . . . Let us imagine an ant who is stirred by a gleam
of reflection and thereupon judges she has been wrong to work unre-
mittingly for others. Her inclination [velléités] to laziness would indeed
endure but a few moments, just as long as the ray of intelligence. In the
last of these moments, when instinct regaining the mastery would drag
her back by sheer force to her task, intelligence at the point of relapsing
into instinct would say, as its parting word [en guise d’adieu]: “You must
because you must” ’ (25).
We see three significant reversals of Kant. First, where reason com-
mands duty for Kant, here intelligence is the condition for asocial be-
haviour. It is when the ant reflects, and only as long as that reflection
endures, that it questions the need of its attachment and duty to the
group. Second, instinct drags the individual back to his/her social
duty. Against Kant, for whom sensuous and instinctive nature is self-
regarding, for Bergson it is instinct that reasserts itself over and against
the temporary egoism intelligence counselled. Third, intelligence sup-
plements or backs up instinct. Intelligence plays on both teams, as it
were: it is the cause for the initial crisis of individualism, but then, once
the individual is reintegrated into the group, it contributes a discur-
sive and categorical command which effectively doubles the force of
instinct. With this, Bergson effectively reverses the priority Kant gives
to reason by according to the intellect a secondary role in enacting ob-
ligation.
Of course, ants are one thing and humans another. But Bergson’s
point is that both actualize obligation according to their specific
makeup. The social structure of insects such as bees and ants is given
directly by their instinctive constitution. Here, the pressure obliga-
tion exerts is instinctive. As Bergson (1977) claims, social life is im-
manent in instinct (27). Now consider human beings. Obligation in
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 111

humans responds to the same problem as in ants: how to integrate the

individual into the group. But given that we are endowed with intelli-
gence, obligation takes a unique form. At once a general phenomenon
of life, it is differently actualized according to the specific being in
question. Borrowing a beautiful phrase from Creative Evolution, obli-
gation in insects and humans ‘represent[s] two divergent but equally
elegant solutions to one and the same problem’ (Bergson 1998:143,
translation modified).
What form does obligation take in humans? Bergson’s (1977) reply is
decisive: habits. According to Bergson our social lives consist of a series
of interlocking obligations to different groups; for example, family, pro-
fession, church, state, and so on. These obligations are made concrete
and quotidian by their embodiment in habits. Actualized by habits,
obligation is less a force that bears down upon us than it is the weave
or texture of life: ‘When it has become fully concrete, [obligation] co-
incides with a tendency, so habitual that we find it natural, to play in
society the part which our station assigns to us. So long as we yield to
this tendency, we scarcely feel it. It assumes an imperative [impérieuse]
aspect, like all deep-seated habits, only if we depart from it’ (19, empha-
sis added, translation modified).
A series of remarks on this passage will bring us directly to religion.
First, when Bergson (1977) observes that habits are as if natural, he is
being deceptively literal. It is not just that effective habits resemble
instinct in their unthought performance. Bergson’s claim is stronger.
Habit is the form instinct assumes in beings endowed with variability
and intelligence (28). Habit accomplishes the work of instinct in the
animal kingdom: it actualizes obligation and assures group solidarity.
Habit and instinct, therefore, are varieties of obligation that establish
continuity and difference between human and animal societies.
Second, whereas animal instincts are fixed (thus the societies they
generate are predetermined), habits are radically contingent. So too,
therefore, are human societies. As one interpreter puts it, ‘Bergson by
no means affirms that social and political forms of organization are
biologically determined or determinable’ (Marrati 2006:595). The only
necessity Bergson (1977) insists upon is the habit of contracting habits
(26). No human society could exist without them, for it would forfeit
moral obligation as such. With this, Bergson establishes the limits of un-
sociability. Intelligence may counsel egoism and break any particular
habit or obligation, but it is inconceivable for intelligence to challenge
habit as such. Like Kant who denies that humans are diabolically evil
112 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

and can contradict the form of the moral law, Bergson insists that even
if intelligence denies any specific obligation, it is impossible for intel-
ligence to challenge the form of obligation. Third, obligation and duty
are fundamentally passive for Bergson. To be moral, all we must do is
ease ourselves into the grooves of habit that society has worn for us.
Indeed, according to Bergson, it takes much more effort and activity
to resist habit and morality than to submit to them. Inverting Kant, we
might say that for Bergson humans are ineradicably good, a fact that
testifies not to their rectitude but to their indolence.
Let us summarize the foregoing. The origin of obligation is not rea-
son but biology. Obligation, in both animals and humans, responds to
the vital need to integrate the individual into the group. Humans stand
out because they are endowed with intelligence. This endowment
poses unique risks: intelligence threatens the social order by dissolving
bonds of duty. Habits may mitigate this threat by serving as a proxy
for instinct; nevertheless, it is a standing possibility that intelligent be-
ings break obligations as it suits them. It is at this juncture that Bergson
introduces religion. In a word, religion is a quasi-instinctive function
that protects human beings from their own intellect. Bergson (1977) be-
gins his analysis of religion on a decidedly Kantian note: ‘The spectacle
of what religions have been in the past, of what certain religions still
are today, is indeed humiliating for human intelligence . . . But there
is nothing for it, facts must be faced. Homo Sapiens, the only creature
endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence to
things unreasonable’ (102).
In addition to the experience of humiliation, a decidedly Kantian
emotion, Bergson agrees that the very condition for superstition and
error is the existence of a rational being. That animals are not super-
stitious is a fact that marks humans out as the irrational (not the ara-
tional) animal. The problem for Bergson (1977), therefore, becomes to
explain ‘how beliefs and practices which are anything but reasonable
could have been, and still are, accepted by reasonable beings (103). A
further point of agreement between Bergson and Kant is their vision of
religion (and religious error) as a ‘general structure of human thought,’
one that they refuse to confine to a distant or primitive past (104). Writ-
ing against Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, who postulated a difference in kind be-
tween primitive and Western minds (1923), Bergson insists that if we
look inward – especially in moments of shock or distress – we may re-
cover insight into original and enduring superstitions that accompany
intelligence as such.
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 113

But now we come to a decisive difference. For Kant, reason must

criticize or check its own overextension, one that illumination and
passivity encourage. Reason is the critical limit. By contrast, for
Bergson superstition itself is the salutary check that mitigates the
dangers of the intellect. Superstition, therefore, is the critical limit.
Such is Bergson’s surprising conclusion we must reconstruct. A good
place to start is to list the dangers posed by the intellect: (1) it counsels
egoism (it is dissolvent); (2) it knows we will die (it is demoralizing);
and (3) it only imperfectly predicts the future (it is anxious). Two Ds
can summarize these dangers: the intellect is at once a dissolvent and
demoralizing faculty (Bergson 1977:205). And so, if intelligent beings
are to thrive, life must provide a solution for the specific problems
intelligence poses:

If intelligence threatens to breakup [romper] social cohesion at certain

points – and if society must carry on – there must be a counterbalance, at these
points, to intelligence. If this counterbalance cannot be instinct itself, for the
very reason that its place has been taken by intelligence, the same effect
must be produced by a virtual instinct . . . [This virtual instinct] cannot act
directly, but, since intelligence works on representations, it will call up
‘imaginary’ ones, which will hold their own against the representation of
reality and will succeed, through the agency of intelligence itself, in coun-
teracting the work of intelligence. This would be the explanation of the
myth-making function [la fonction fabulatrice]. (1977:119, emphasis added,
translation modified)

The myth-making function – what Bergson calls fabulation – is the

heart of religion. Its purpose is to provide representations that check
those tendencies of the intellect that are pernicious to action and sur-
vival. As one interpreter puts it, ‘Fabulation is an action of the intelli-
gence, yet its basic function is to counteract tendencies that are inherent
in intelligence itself ’ (Bogue 2006:204). Bergson (1977) is subtle in his
description of fabulation; it is, as it were, an intellectual or virtual in-
stinct. At once instinctive and intellectual, the essence offabulation is to
create representations (fictions, myth, narratives, hallucinations, etc.)
able to ‘thwart [contrecarrer] our judgment and reason’ (109; see also
Lapoujade 2005).6
To conclude this section, we sketch three dangers posed by the in-
tellect along with the myth or representation fabulation invents to foil
them. We also identify emotions either created or reinforced by religion.
114 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

Because for Bergson religion is a feature of the mind as such, these emo-
tions are characteristic of human existence in all times and places. In
short, religion engenders vast regions of our emotional life.

Egoism

For Bergson (1977), it is intelligence and not instinct that is pathologi-

cal because: ‘[intelligence] would counsel egoism first’ and overrides the
instinct that privileges the group (122). To counter egoism, our myth-
making faculty produces an illusory perception or recollection: ‘Just now,
before the open gate a guardian appeared, to bar the way and drive back
the trespasser. So now some protective deity of the city will be there to
forbid, threaten, and punish’ (122). Religion, therefore, doubles social
obligation with a divine power that prohibits, judges, and punishes con-
duct. In this role, fabulation intensifies those emotions that provide for
the durability of the group such as duty, loyalty, compulsion, fear, guilt,
sanctimoniousness, and so on. Once religion posits a watchful deity, a
whole spectrum of human feeling is entrenched and intensified.

Death

Humans know we will die because we alone have an intellect that en-
ables us to reflect on the death of others and to generalize it to our
own case. For Bergson (1977), such knowledge is an obstacle to sur-
vival. It is demoralizing and paralyzes action; nothing is more useless
to an animal than the awareness it will die (130). Once again, fabulation
comes to the rescue: ‘To the idea of an inevitable death [nature] op-
poses the image of a continuation of life after death; this image, flung
by her into the field of intelligence, where the idea of death has just
become installed, straightens everything out again. This neutralizing of
the idea by the image simply expresses the equilibrium of nature, sav-
ing herself from slipping’ (131). Religion, therefore, furnishes a defen-
sive reaction against the intelligence. And with the notion of an afterlife
comes feelings of assurance, calm, hope, fear, zeal, uncertainty, doubt,
and disbelief. These are specific and direct contributions of religion to
our psychic life.

Uncertainty

Perhaps the main gift of the intellect is that it allows us to anticipate

the future. But by the same predictive capacity that allows insight into
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 115

the future, we are made aware of how uncertain it is. This is an acute
case of the more you learn the less you know: ‘There can be no reflec-
tion without foreknowledge, no foreknowledge without inquietude, no
inquietude without a momentary slackening of the attachment to life’
(Bergson 1977:210). Whereas knowledge of death is certain, knowledge
of the future is uncertain. And yet, both grip us with anxiety and dis-
courage action. Here, fabulation steps in to imagine a supersensible or
tutelary causality (call it theism) that guides our actions and watches
over the future: ‘A representation will accordingly arise, that of favor-
able powers overriding or occupying the place of the natural causes’
(140). In this case, it is less that religion comes to check intelligence, and
more that it allows us to be in the world with intelligence. It relieves
us of paralyzing incertitude and replaces it with confidence, gratitude,
and peace.

Bergson and Dynamic Religion: Love

We have just claimed that fabulation creates emotions that define the
human. But while fabulation produces emotions, Bergson reserves
the name of ‘dynamic religion’ to a phenomenon that is emotion.
This emotion – and so too this religion – is love. Of course, to equate
religion with love ties Bergson to a Christian identification (see
Marion 2007:221–2). But to appreciate Bergson’s (1977) interpretation of
thisidentification, it is perhaps best to begin with the famous (and fa-
mously difficult) concluding lines of Two Sources: ‘Whether we choose
small measures or great, a decision is forced upon us. Humanity lies
groaning, half crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. Men do
not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is
the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or
not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to
live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even
on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which
is a machine for the making of gods’ (317, translation modified).
We can work backwards. It would be accurate to say that fabulation is
a machine for the making of gods: its purpose is to create precisely those
representations that thwart the intellect. But Bergson’s sense in this pas-
sage is very different. The gods he is talking about are us, that is, human
beings. This astonishing claim is bound up with Bergson’s (1977) cos-
mology and philosophy of time and evolution. We will try to put it as
simply as we can. The essence of life for Bergson is creativity. As we have
seen in our discussion of obligation in insects and humans, different spe-
116 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

cies represent nothing other than creative solutions to problems posed

by survival. But while the coming into being of each species marks a
creative effort or act, it is also a relative stop or immobilization of evolu-
tion. The activity of each new species runs ‘indefinitely in the same circle’
(209). Ants will be ants. Humanity, however, is different; it is not stuck
in the same rut or loop by necessity. Borrowing an apt expression from
Deleuze (1986), humans alone are able to undergo a ‘conversion’ and ap-
prehend creativity and the production of the new (7; see also Lefebvre
2008:89–90). Or, in other words, humans alone are capable of thought,
experience of time (or duration), and evolution (life in time).
But we are capable of more. It is possible for us to not only appre-
hend and adequately think time and life, but also to extend and renew
the creative activity of life itself. This is dynamic religion. It does not
represent the whole in ways that comfort us (as does the ‘static’ religion
of the preceding section), nor is it satisfied to adequately contemplate
the whole (as does philosophy); rather, dynamic religion makes of life
what it should have been had it not been burdened by the species that
immobilizes it: an open and creative whole. Bergson (1977) thereby in-
verts the doctrine of grace: rather than receive God’s succour and fa-
vour, human beings unblock divine creativity. We have the potential to
become ‘adjutores Dei,’ helpers of God: ‘God needs us, just as we need
God’ (232, 255). The concluding lines to the Two Sources, however, tell
us that our divine vocation remains a potential, and not a necessary ca-
pacity. As with Kant, who firmly grounds the distinction between good
and evil in human choice, here too Bergson anchors his text in deci-
sion and responsibility. To turn to a Kantian phrase, we must make our-
selves worthy of our creative privilege through an extra effort.7 Only
then will we be ‘capable of loving and making [ourselves] loved’ (255).
We arrive at love. As we have said, it is not merely an emotion associ-
ated with dynamic religion; rather, it is the entire content of it. Where
there is love, there is religion. The challenge becomes, of course, to spec-
ify what Bergson means. Seeing how tempting it is to speak abstractly
about love, our procedure errs on the hardhearted side. We identify
six criteria that make up Bergson’s understanding of it. It is important,
however, to note that Bergson does not claim his writings on love to be
original. He takes himself to report the mystical tradition: ‘God is love,
and the object of love: herein lies the whole contribution of mysticism’
(1977:252). The value of mysticism for Bergson is that it experiences and
enacts this association of love with God (see Cariou 1976). To see what
is enacted, we turn to our criteria.
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 117

Objectless

As with Christianity, divine love is not partial or preferential. It does

not attach to the beloved. Indeed, divine or mystic love outstrips even
the Christian injunction to love thy neighbor. It would not be mislead-
ing to associate it with what Romain Rolland called the oceanic feeling:
‘The sentiment of being present here and now in a world that is itself
intensely existing . . . of essential co-belonging between myself and the
ambient universe’ (Hadot 2009:8). Bergson (1977) is strict that mysti-
cal love does not depend on content; it certainly extends to humans,
animals, and all of nature, but ‘not one of these things which would
thus fill it would suffice to define the attitude taken by the soul, for it
could, strictly speaking, do without all of them’ (38). As the essence
of life is not an object or species but a tendency towards creativity, the
essence of love is not of a thing or even humanity. It is incorporation
and participation in the vital creativity of life (see Ansell-Pearson and
Mullarkey 2002:37).

Embodiment

While love exceeds attachment to any particular thing, Bergson insists

that it is always embodied in specific individuals, that is, mystics. As
Bergson (1977) puts it in Christian phraseology, ‘In all times there have
arisen exceptional [individuals], incarnating this morality’ (34, empha-
sis added). Love, therefore, has a complex relationship to embodiment.
On the one hand, it is incarnated, literally made into flesh, by singular
individuals. The lover is always of flesh. On the other hand, love is of
the vital or creative tendency within any of its corporeal actualizations.
Love is not of the flesh. But we must be careful not to conflate Bergson
with Platonic or Christian metaphysics: love is not of the beyond but of
this world. As Deleuze (1989) might put it, dynamic religion is ‘belief in
this world;’ it is conviction in and affirmation of the openness of every
existent as of the whole (172).

Call

‘If a word of a great mystic . . . finds an echo in one or another of us,

may it not be that there is a mystic dormant within us, merely waiting for
an occasion to awake?’ (Bergson 1977:100, emphasis added). The word
Bergson repeatedly uses to characterize the relationship to a mystic is
118 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

appel, which in French means both appeal and call (34, 84, 100, passim).
And, as he puts it in another context, ‘it is to these [mystics] that men
have always turned for that complete morality’ (34, emphasis added).
This language is obviously theologically loaded: our relation to the
mystic is one of conversion (i.e., to turn) and of a calling. But we must
be attuned to what is being called: to follow a mystic is not to reproduce
his example, but is instead the means to access one’s own love and joy.
In another context, Ralph Waldo Emerson ([1849] 2000) will say that the
value of another great individual is utterly and only to discover one’s
own genius (132–3). Relationship to a mystic, whether lived or indi-
rect, is at once impersonal and intimate: on the one hand, the mystic
is merely an occasion to discover one’s own singular capacity; but on
the other hand, an encounter with a mystic redirects our love to a ten-
dency everywhere present but exemplified by the mystic, with whom
we share special fellowship.

Attraction

Bergson (1977) is fond of calling the mystic a new species: ‘The ap-
pearance of each one of them was like the creation of a new species,
composed of one single individual [d’un individu unique], the élan vital
culminating at long intervals in one particular [individual] (95, transla-
tion modified). No doubt, Bergson intends an irony: the most germinal
individuals are evolutionary dead ends, a species of one unable to pro-
create.8 It is not that mystics constitute a unique species (which could
breed); rather, each mystic is him/herself a species. How then do they
reproduce? Bergson’s answer is that mystics exert attraction over us,
an ‘irresistible attraction’ in fact (96). And so here, as in his concept of
the call, Bergson at once preserves and modifies the ordinary criteria
of love: attraction and procreation. With the call, we attach ourselves
to the mystic only to discover ourselves. With attraction, we fall for the
mystic’s irresistible example, and, in so doing, we are reborn.

Transformation

That love knows no bounds may be a platitude. But in Bergson’s (1977)

hands it becomes a transcendental and cosmological proposition:
‘[Love] is the élan vital itself, communicated whole [communiqué inté-
gralement] to exceptional men who . . . by a living contradiction [con-
tradiction realisée] change into a creative effort that created thing which
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 119

is a species, and turn into a movement what was, by definition, a stop’

(235, translation modified). Love knows no bounds; it is without ob-
stacles. It can accomplish – with an ease unthinkable to anyone out of
love – anything. So too for Bergson. Mystic love accomplishes nothing
short of a transfiguration of the human species. Or, in other words, that
human beings are a stop of evolution is not a problem for mystics. In
fact, the entire purpose of mysticism is to transform the human species
such that it becomes adequate to the thought, experience, and activity
of duration. For the moment, this must appear abstract. But we will
develop this further in the conclusion to the chapter when we examine
two ways that the mystic transfigures humanity: by checking our war-
instinct and by overcoming our intellectual denial of duration.

Divine

A profoundly Spinozist dimension of Bergson’s writing is that we ex-

perience divine joy and love. Whereas Spinoza argues that our joy in
adequate ideas is equal to God’s joy, and that we ‘feel and experience
[sentimus experimurque] that we are eternal,’ Bergson claims ‘[that] by
going deeply into [mystic love], we should find a feeling [un sentiment]
of coincidence, real or imaginary, with the generative effort of life (Spi-
noza 2002:374; Bergson 1977:54, translation modified). When Bergson
asserts that we have experience of God’s love, he does not mean it in
the received sense. It is not that we experience God’s love for us (his
favour or grace), but rather, by renewing the creative impulse of life,
we participate in divine joy and affirmation. If, as Bergson says, the uni-
verse is a machine for the making of gods, then divine love is our own.
Although these six criteria barely scratch the surface of Bergson’s
treatment of love – much less of mysticism and dynamic religion – we
have tried to show how he both preserves and transforms its ordinary
meaning. Love is objectless but attaches to the living world; love is
embodied but outstrips corporeality; love is an intimacy by which we
rediscover ourselves; love is attraction to a being too singular to join;
love completes the human by transfiguring the species; and love is
divine in that we love as gods. The title of our chapter – ‘Religion with
the Bounds of Emotion Alone’ – is intended, of course, to contrast Kant
with Bergson. We have seen that for Kant, rational religion checks our
propensity to extend reason beyond what we can know and to elicit
passions all too ready to combine with it. Our discussion of Bergson
was split according to the division Bergson establishes between static
120 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

and dynamic religion. Static religion is defined by a myth-making in-

stinct that limits the dangers to which humans are exposed by virtue of
their intellect. Dynamic religion is defined by mystic love. What binds
Kant and Bergson is an acute sensitivity to the illusions and dangers
brought on by reason. Furthermore, they reject any straightforward
opposition between reason and emotion, and instead explore their
mutual intensification and coupling. Last, both are committed to a
critical philosophy of religion that assigns to each faculty its place and
limit so that life may be peaceable if not happy. But, among their many
differences, we have isolated one: Kant and Bergson do not agree on
which faculty is in charge. For Kant, it is reason that checks emotion.
For Bergson, whether in static or dynamic religion, the intellect must
be limited so that humans may thrive, either by superstition (static) or
love (dynamic).
To conclude, we sketch two instances in which Bergson urges love to
adopt a critical role to keep the intellect within its proper limits. Or, put
negatively, we examine the cost of two denials of love by the intellect,
one that separates us from God and the other that separates us from
one another. Throughout his writings, Bergson attends to the intellect’s
denial of time and duration. Intelligence, like all our faculties, is a prod-
uct of evolution. Its principal function is to predict the future; as such,
it conceives of time as an external frame in which events occur and can
be calculated (Bergson 1998:ix–x). All of this is pragmatically necessary.
But Bergson’s point is that the intellect negates duration; it denies cre-
ativity and unpredictability to time. In the context of his earlier writ-
ings, the denial of duration falsifies psychical experience (Time and Free
Will [2001]) and evolution (Creative Evolution). In Two Sources, however,
the denial of time is, strictly speaking, a (intellectual, experiential, and
practical) denial of God. To adapt Spinoza’s formula, Deus sive Tempus:
God or time, substance or temporality. Or, as Deleuze (2004) remarks,
God is a movement and not a being (185). It seems safe, therefore, to
claim Bergson’s Two Sources as a critical work: it delimits the proper
place for the intellect as pragmatic action, and it elaborates the costs of
its overextension. This cost is separation from the substantiality of time,
hence from substance itself. What, then, checks the intellect? Bergson’s
response is intuition, ‘[it] is what attains spirit, duration, pure change’
([1938]1974:33, translation modified). Although we cannot elaborate
this difficult concept nor trace its history, we claim that Two Sources ad-
vances a major reinterpretation of intuition. Love in Two Sources repre-
sents Bergson’s final development of intuition: ‘Intuition was turned
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 121

inward; and if, in a first intensification, beyond which most of us did

not go, it made us realize the continuity of our inner life, a deeper in-
tensification might carry it to the roots of our being, and thus to the
very principle of life in general. Now is this not precisely the privilege
of the mystic soul?’ ([1932]1977:250). Mystic love, therefore, has both a
negative and positive function. On the one hand, it checks the denial of
time by the intellect, and, on the other hand, it opens access to the real,
whether that is called life, time, or God.
Despite the importance of the intellect’s denial of time, Bergson is oc-
cupied with a more pressing problem: war.9 To summarize his discus-
sion of the ‘closed society’ in Two Sources, Bergson ([1932]1977) claims
that human beings instinctively form determinate and exclusive com-
munities (whether families, tribes, societies, etc.). Love in closed soci-
eties, therefore, is altogether different from mystical love: it involves
choice and exclusion and does not exclude hatred (39). As Bergson puts
it, ‘the two opposing maxims, Homo homini deus and Homo homini lupus
are easily reconcilable. When we formulate the first, we are thinking
of some fellow countryman. The other applies to foreigners’ (39). The
intellect, however, loses sight of the difference in kind between the
two loves. All it sees is that love appears to expand indefinitely: from
love of family to love of nation, to, so it concludes, love of humanity.
‘It will see in these three inclinations one single feeling, growing ever
larger, to embrace an increasing number of persons’ (38). For Bergson,
this is an illusion; it falsely groups together irreducible kinds of love.
Closed love cannot indefinitely expand; its very condition is the main-
tenance of a determinate group through exclusion. From the perspec-
tive of closed love, we catch a ‘sudden chill at the idea that [we are]
working “for mankind.” The object is too vast, the effect too diffuse’
(36). The consequences of this intellectualist illusion are disastrous.
Writing at the same time as Carl Schmitt, Bergson too anticipated that
human rights are effective only within a determinate community will-
ing to back them.10 The error of the intellect is to believe that love and
protection of the human can grow from closed societies. It is against
this danger that mystical love takes on urgent political import. On the
one hand, clear presentation of its nature will distinguish it from closed
love and avoid intellectualist confusion of the two. And, on the other
hand, objectless and affirmative mystical love may work to circumvent
our instinct towards exclusion and war. The tendency towards closure
may be ‘ineradicable [indéracinables]’ as Bergson says, but, like Kant, he
holds hope that we may always choose against it (288).
122 Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White

NOTES

1 This chapter is dedicated to Beatrice, who did not exactly help but definitely
made everything more fun.
2 For a useful study of Kant and emotion, specifically his concern with the
similarities between extravagant reason and the passions as a pathology
of will, see Caygill (2006). And for a sociological discussion of Bergson’s
attempt to upset the conventional opposition between reason and emotion,
see Game’s (1997) use of Bergson’s creative emotion to contribute to a
‘passionate sociology’ that cultivates wonder, love, and joy in knowledge
practices (398). See also Power’s (2003) discussion of creative emotion as a
qualitative multiplicity that affirms new ways of living and being together in
freedom (70).
3 The delicate distinctions between emotion, affect, passion, and enthusiasm
in Kant are complicated by issues of translation. For example, affect [Affekt]
is often indiscriminately rendered as passion, emotion, and affection
(for a discussion, see Caygill 1995:56–9, 313–14). Schematically put, we
use passion to designate an emotion that has become pathological and
potentially destructive in its disfigurement by the overextension of reason.
This usage is particular to Kant. For an interesting discussion of the
emergence of the concept of emotion as a secularization of passion and
affect, see Dixon (2003).
4 For a discussion of Kant’s positive appreciation of enthusiasm and
Schwärmerei, which appears mostly in Critique of Judgment and Conflict of
the Faculties, see Gailus (2006:28–73) and Lyotard (2009).
5 Better put, it does not arise in this way. In theoretical reason, dialectical
illusions arise when we leave the limits of possible experience. In pure
practical reason, delusions arise when we substitute sensible examples for
the ideas they are intended to represent.
6 In our usage, affect is a higher order term that includes dispositions such
as laziness, passivity, and indolence, which are not adequately termed
’emotions.’
7 Bergson provides a vivid example of fabulation in recounting William
James’ reaction to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. James’ immediate
impulse was to characterize the earthquake as an intentional, personal, and
irascible force. Bergson (1977) comments: ‘Intelligence, impelled by instinct,
transform[s] the situation [and] evokes the reassuring image [i.e., of an
intentional rather than mechanical force]. It lends to the Event a unity and
an individuality which make of it a mischievous, maybe a malignant, being,
but still one of ourselves, with something sociable and human about it’
(158). This picture indeed thwarts judgment and reason, but it does so in the
service of a rational end: to overcome fear and paralysis.
8 See also Deleuze (1990), who speaks of the need to make ourselves worthy
of the event (149).
 Religion within the Bounds of Emotion Alone 123

9 Indeed, Bergson (1977) verges on the sardonic inasmuch as he qualifies his

age as one of overpopulation and hedonism (‘Sex-appeal is the keynote of
our whole civilization’ [302; see also Lawlor 2003:91–7]).
10 Although Bergson’s argument addresses the transcendental conditions
for war in instinct and intelligence, we should not lose sight of the fact
that Two Sources was written in the early 1930s. Furthermore, we should
not forget Bergson’s active participation in international politics and the
establishment of the League of Nations (see Soulez 1989).
11 See Lefebvre (2011, 2012) for an exploration of Bergson’s argument for
theorizing human rights.
7 Humanitarianism as a Politics
of Emotion

laura s u s ki

Introduction

When we witness human suffering and pain, emotions like compas-

sion, pity, anger, and sadness can be evoked. Early philosophers of
morality, most notably Adam Smith, saw the potential of what Nancy
Sherman (1998) labels ‘imaginative transport’; they note how the act of
imagining another’s experience of suffering can inspire moral action
to respond to that suffering. Belief in the power of emotion to move us
speaks to the etymological source of ‘emotion’ in the concept of move-
ment. Emotion can stir or agitate us. We can be ‘moved’ to tears when
we view human suffering. Emotional moments are powerful because
they destabilize the very terrain on which emotions are felt. The ability
of emotions to move us also suggests a kind of vulnerability to the emo-
tional moment as we are being put in motion by the force of a feeling
that may be out of our own control.
Eighteenth-century thinkers such as Adam Smith pointed to the abil-
ity of sympathy to function as a humanitarian emotion and compel
action in the name of suffering. However, cultural historian Thomas
Laqueur (2009) notes that a feeling of sympathy for the suffering of
others produces a ‘strange moral geography’ (33) in which sentiments
for humanity can equally produce indifference as they can relief, and,
thus, the sentiments themselves carry no ‘moral gyroscopes’ (35) that
lead the ‘feeler’ in one direction and not another. Sympathy has be-
come quite suspect in the contemporary political landscape. Sympathy
is often conceived of as capable of building an ethical connection, while
at the same time maintaining a relationship of power that prevents a
‘real’ social connection between humanitarian and sufferer. ‘Bleeding
 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 125

hearts’ may be meaningful to those who experience them, but they do

not inherently bring justice to those who suffer exploitation.
As Brown and Wilson (2009) note, the politicization of humanitar-
ian sentiments lies most centrally in questions of mobilization. How,
when, and why do emotions move us to ethical action? Inspired by these
larger questions, this chapter aims to analyse the emotional models we
might use to elaborate this mobilization process. My goal is to prob-
lematize the way in which emotions like sympathy and empathy are
often conceived as fuels or triggers for humanitarian action. I argue that
this ‘trigger model’ of political action privileges certain emotions over
others, and can lead us to position the emotional as existing prior to the
political. When emotion is positioned as a trigger, its political character
is defined solely by its ability to elicit political action.
The chapter begins with a brief intellectual history of the concept of
humanitarianism. I respond to the historical emphasis on sympathy
as a particularly humanitarian emotion. The contemporary critiques
of the apparent limitations of the sympathetic encounter have led to
anembracing of empathy as an emotion more likely to elicit solidar-
ity. In such a reading, empathy is positioned as the best emotion for
a humanitarian project since it purportedly can offer a ‘real’ identifi-
cation with the humanitarian victim. But how is it that empathy can
configure a radically different social connection than emotions such as
anger or sadness? The second half of the chapter attempts to answer
this question. I use Ahmed’s ontology of emotion as a framework for
understanding the nature of emotional attachment. Ahmed (2004) ar-
gues against both an ‘inside-out’ model of emotions that sees emotions
as moving from within a self outward, and an ‘outside-in’ model that
sees emotions as cultural practices that come from outside the self and
then move inward. She sees emotions as neither in the individual nor
in the social, and instead as producing ‘the very surfaces and boundaries
that allow the individual and the social to be delineated as if they were
objects’ (10). By exploring an alternate model of emotional connection,
I hope to offer some insight into the complex, and often imperfect,
space of the humanitarian endeavour.

Humanitarian Emotions

As a political, social, and philosophical idea, humanitarianism is a

rather vague concept. It is loosely associated with charity and philan-
thropy. It is popularly used to describe the actions of organizations,
126 Laura Suski

states, and individuals. When positioned as a broader social move-

ment, humanitarianism can be described as a secularized or ‘left over’
religious response in the modern era, as a motivation borne out of the
welfare state, or as part of a third sector or civil society. Humanitari-
anism applies to a spectrum of social actors ranging from those who
donate to international charities, to those who intervene on the part of
states to end human rights abuses, and even sometimes to those who
show humane feelings towards animals. The concept of humanitari-
anism appears in only a few dictionaries of philosophy and political
thought. In these rather few entries, it is defined by its central focus on
‘the centrality of human values,’ and by its ‘emotional dedication to
social reforms’ (Dunner 1964:245).1
Humanitarian organizations and institutions began to flourish in
thepost-Second World War era. These organizations continue to have
a rather ambiguous relationship to the political, and, similarly, to the
emotional. An organization such as the International Committee of the
Red Cross emerged specifically as a politically neutral organization
able to offer aid during times of war. The field of international humani-
tarianism became more professionalized and more institutionalized
since the end of the Cold War. In turn, the purpose of humanitarian-
ism has become more politicized. Older agendas to provide relief have
been replaced by more overtly political agendas to eliminate the roots
of conflict (Barnett 2005). Now the defence of human rights is the more
likely humanitarian mantra, and vague obligations of charity and stew-
ardship have been discarded by more radicalized international organi-
zations. However, while the intellectual histories of humanitarianism
and human rights overlap, particularly in the contemporary space of
international humanitarianism, they also have quite distinct histories
that require some ‘careful disentanglement’ (Wilson and Brown 2009:5).
The emergence of humanitarian movements requires a belief in the
possibility of human agency to end suffering, however distant that suf-
fering may be. Laqueur locates this shift in eighteenth-century fiction
such as realist novels, and in medical writing such as autopsies and
clinical reports. For Laqueur (1989), the new and key element of this
body of writing was that it detailed human suffering and exposed lines
of ‘causality’ between readers and those suffering, in turn presenting a
moral imperative, although often selectively applied, for social action:
‘Someone or something did something that caused pain, suffering or
death and that could, under certain circumstances, have been avoided
or mitigated’ (178). By presenting a script of causation alongside ‘habits
 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 127

of feeling,’ the alleviation, reduction, and ultimately prevention of suf-

fering becomes possible, and humanitarians become the agents in the
process.
Humanitarianism’s emergence in the eighteenth century can also
been traced to the development of moral philosophy and sentimental lit-
erature of the period. In these historical discourses, and indeed in many
contemporary social and political discourses, humanitarian sentiments
are largely associated with the most ‘mobile,’ ‘active,’ and ‘social’ of
sentiments – the moral emotions. Published before his famous Wealth of
Nations, Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments tries to come to terms
with how benevolence could be compatible with market structures run
by an economy of self-interest. For Smith (1984), sympathy works by
allowing a spectator to imagine himself in the position of others. In
doing so, the individual need not be part of the sufferer’s community
in order to act on his/her behalf. ‘In the breast of every attentive specta-
tor,’ writes Smith, ‘an analogous emotion springs up’ at the thought of
the situation of others (10). Hume (1949) also argued that morality had
a source in the passions. This relationship is stated strongly in Book II of
his Treatise on Human Nature: ‘Reason is, and ought only to be the slave
of the passions, and can never pretend any other office than to serve
and obey them’ (415).
In the early discourse of sentimentalism, the objects of sympathy are
rather predictable groups of ‘unfortunates’: the poor, the imprisoned,
and the enslaved. The expression of humanitarian sentiment in the
eighteenth century seems to rely on the existence of race, class, and
gender differences. It is a state of social inequality that appears toper-
mit a humanitarian expression of sympathy. As John Mullan (1988)
reminds us, the instinct to benevolence in the sentimental novel was
being celebrated as a ‘rare and delicious moment’ and not as a ‘uni-
versal phenomenon’ to elicit social reform (146). Nonetheless, the new
way in which the sentiment of compassion was being described, and
the way in which pain was considered remediable by human efforts,
set in motion the development of ‘public compassion.’ In distinction
to earlier forms of charity and later forms of the welfare state, explains
Sznaider (1998), the public compassion that would come to characterize
movements like the abolition of slavery ‘de-legitimized earlier values
and practices’ as ‘morally reprehensible’ and ‘cruel’ (120). Still, the ex-
pression of humanitarian sentiment is selective. While the eighteenth-
century sentimentalists embraced the passions and shed tears for the
poor, that form of sensibility could easily coexist alongside larger forms
128 Laura Suski

of social cruelty (Todd 1986:132). Mee (2000) notes that sad, sentimental
stories of the eighteenth century spoke of real social concerns such as
child labour, but they often merely offered the opportunity for polite
readers to ‘exercise their sensibility’ (404). However, some work, like
William Blake’s late-eighteenth-century Songs of Innocence and Songs of
Experience, demonstrated a keen awareness of the fact that pity could
be empty and shallow if it did not incite active sympathy. Thus, while
sentimental literature can be characterized by its indulgence of emo-
tion, this characterization did not preclude attention to the analysis of a
more active human sympathy.
Some scholars note a heightened sense of ambivalence in the senti-
mental literature of the period. Audrey Jaffe’s (2000) work on sympa-
thy gives a particularity to the way in which sympathy is intricately
aligned with middle-class identity. She argues that many of the visual-
ized narratives of the Victorian novel serve to create ‘primal scenes’
where the middle class is precariously poised between ‘dread’ and
‘fantasy.’ For Jaffe, ‘the objects of Victorian sympathy are inseparable
from Victorian middle-class self-representation precisely because they
embody, to a middle-class spectator, his/her own potential narrative of
social decline’ (9). The core of the sensibility that informs ‘vicarious suf-
fering,’ notes Julie Ellison (1999), is ‘alienated and guilty from the start’
(122). In reference to colonial history, she argues that the ‘real politics
of colonialism’ exhibits a powerfully ambivalent wish: that it was ‘ac-
tually possible to conquer and to spare’ (147). Kennedy’s (2004) more
recent work on international humanitarianism entitled The Dark Sides
of Virtue uses a similar vocabulary to describe the possibilities of a new
humanitarianism. Imagine a humanitarianism, he asks, that ‘exercised
power not as humanitarian knowledge imprinting itself on the real, but
with all the ambivalence and ignorance and uncertainty we know as
the human’ (354).
Humanitarian emotions, however, also work to ‘constitute some oth-
ers as legitimate objects of emotion’ (Ahmed 2004:191). The power of
any humanitarian appeal relies on some assessment of how important
or worthy we deem the suffering of those who appeal for our help. Hu-
manitarianism has strong narrative and representational dimensions. It
compels action through the ways that social and political actors witness
or read literal testimonies and visual images of human suffering (Brown
and Wilson 2009). The abolition of British slavery is often cited as one
of the first and most important international humanitarian movements
because it required political action to end a form of suffering that was
distant and out of view. The suffering of slaves, however, is constructed
 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 129

and reconstructed in different historical and social contexts. In refer-

ence to the American abolition of slavery, Kellow (2009) notes how anti-
slavery arguments came in many competing forms. The aftermath of
independence saw some Americans confronting the conflict between
slavery and values of American freedom. Some Americans upheld the
property rights of slaveholders arguing for the compensation to slave
holders for the release of slaves, and others embraced a categorical re-
jection of slavery itself (133–4).
International humanitarianism has also garnered its own power as
an ‘ism’: once a practice restricted to emergency assistance and merely
palliative, it now has an expanding scope and scale such that it is a
key player in ‘helping to reproduce a geopolitical order’ (Barnett 2005:
723–40). Many see international humanitarian intervention as the exten-
sion of the foreign policies of the Northern states. Examples such as the
2003 bombing of the Baghdad offices of the International Committee of
the Red Cross suggest that many share this view. The line between poli-
tics and humanitarian relief has been severed. Latouche (1996) reads
the proliferation of non-governmental and charitable organizations as
obeying the same logic of colonial advance: ‘world domination’ (31).
Suspicious of certain versions of Western humanism, Latouche won-
ders if the nostalgia for universals propels the West into ‘innumerable
snares of bogus universality’ (122). The only ‘true universality’ denotes
an ‘authentic dialogue between cultures’ (125).
Latouche’s commentary reads humanitarianism as a form of social
discipline. Like those who join Foucault in seeing the unfolding of
modern society as the emergence of often more subtle and sophisti-
cated forms of power, the emphasis of the analysis is on the conflict and
social control that humanitarian narratives represent in modern society
(Sznaider 1998). Emotions, too, are part of the practice of social regula-
tion (see Hunt, this volume; Wouters 2007). Arlie Hochschild’s impor-
tant work in the sociology of emotion also shows that emotional labour
requires a suppression and regulation of emotion, at great cost to the la-
bourer (see Theodosius, this volume; Walby and Spencer, this volume).
Similarly, Eva Illouz (2007) stresses the way in which emotional life is
informed by economic regulations and exchange. Modern capitalism,
she claims, means that the ‘private’ emotional lives of individuals are
publically ‘performed and harnessed’ to the ‘discourses and values of
economic and political spheres’ (4).
This conceptualization of the humanitarian as a social and politi-
cal actor is affected by the way in which suffering itself is constructed.
Morgan and Wilkinson (2001) argue that sociology as a ‘moral science’
130 Laura Suski

still has difficulty with the meaning of suffering.2 There remains an ‘un-
resolved problem of theodicy’ when ‘suffering confronts the limits of ra-
tionality’ and ‘impresses upon us the need for other-worldly (magical,
religious, ecstatic) meanings for experiences which cannot be explained
pragmatically’ (204). How can the idea of rationality and progress, ask
Morgan and Wilkinson, be sustained against the historical record of the
twentieth century? They argue that sociology can offer a ‘sociodicy’ for
our times if it is able to study its pain. While articulating experiences
of pain and ‘thinking with suffering’ is difficult, it is absolutely neces-
sary to what they see as a project of exploring the ‘decivilizing tensions
within modernity’ and breaking down the distance between ‘rationally
ordered structures of economic and social progress’ and apparently ir-
rational violence and suffering (Morgan and Wilkinson 2001:210).
Clearly, the shift to modernity is a critical part of the analysis of emo-
tion and its regulation. We need to analyse our social relationship to the
suffering of others by examining the movement away from traditional,
community relationships towards de-personalized, industrial ones.
Still, we should not assume that such a shift necessarily represents a
reduction in an overall humanitarian ‘other-orientation.’ Some sociolo-
gists read this shift as positive because it ushers in a kind of morality
which is better able to deal with difference and the forms ofsuffering
that are not ‘community’ based. In Turner’s (2002) model of ‘cosmo-
politan virtue,’ for example, the contemporary moment of sociological
inquiry is one of discomfort. Images of the modern intellectual as the
‘revolutionary hero’ who is ‘passionately committed to social and po-
litical causes’ are no longer appropriate to a ‘fragmented and diverse
global culture’ (59).
One of the moral implications of ‘feeling for’ distant others in the
contemporary space of the global continues to be the selective nature
of the humanitarian emotions. Our reactions to global suffering must
also be set in relation to the selective presentations of human suffering
in both the popular media and international development campaigns
(see Butt 2002; Lidchi 1999; Tester 2001). Even if driven by claims touni-
versal humanism, not every humanitarian impulse is acted upon. The
humanitarian impulse seems to be strengthened when we encounter
the testaments of individual suffering (Wilson and Brown 2009), but
rarely so profoundly invoked by stories of large-scale suffering. Using
the example of the Gulf War, Hendrickson (1999) speaks to this selectiv-
ity when he explains that ‘something odd happens to the humanitar-
ian sentiments’ when they are delivered through military intervention:
 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 131

‘Intense moral concern over two-dozen Kuwaiti babies deprived of

their incubators easily passes to moral indifference over a million Iraqi
babies deprived of food and clean water’ (234). The humanitarian im-
pulse seems to continue to sit in a very tense position ‘between the
liberal ideal of universal sympathy and specificity of particular identifi-
cations’ (Jaffe 2000:22). In turn, it sits in a very dynamic and often prob-
lematic relationship to the social. Our understanding of humanitarian
sentiments relies heavily on how we map its transformation from an
individualized emotion to a self-reflective or other-reflective emotion.

Configuring the Social

Contemporary philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum and Richard

Rorty have argued for the potential usefulness of models of political
emotions. Others, most notably Hannah Arendt, warned against emo-
tional politics, in particular what Arendt called ‘a politics of pity.’ Cur-
rent scholars, it seems, feel much more comfortable in a language of
moral emotions that emphasizes the ethical importance of empathy.
This shift, at its most basic level, suggests a shift from the sympathetic
claim ‘I recognize your pain’ to the empathetic claim ‘I feel your pain’
(Wilson and Brown 2009:2). On these terms, empathy can offer a more
politically comfortable vocabulary, as it becomes short form for a more
egalitarian, more politicized, and, ultimately, more social identificatory
emotional politics than sympathy and pity. The comfort with a politics
of empathy parallels a new demand in humanitarian ethics to demon-
strate solidarity with victims and to engage in the restoration of their
dignity (Barnett 2005:733). Contemporary scholars in international de-
velopment, for example, speak of a new model of post-development
that is not driven by a charitable aim to end large-scale poverty, but
rather embraces new forms of participatory, local, and sustainable de-
velopment (Sachs 1992). Lilie Chouliaraki (2010) charts this shift by
exploring how humanitarian communication has utilized different aes-
thetic models to engage emotional connectivity between humanitarian
spectator and sufferer. Earlier models relied heavily on realist ‘shock
effects’ in which guilt and shame became pivotal emotions. Later de-
velopment campaigns relied more on positive images that attempted
to restore dignity and agency to the sufferer. Despite the differences,
Chouliaraki notes that both communication regimes have failed to
‘sustain a legitimate claim for public action on suffering’ (109). ‘Shock
effect’ imagery of human suffering may be particularly problematic
132 Laura Suski

when it leads to compassion fatigue, or a feeling of powerlessness on

the part of the spectator.
One of the many ways in which emotions are categorized is to draw
a distinction between basic emotions such as joy, fear, or sadness, and
self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment. Among the
unique features of self-conscious emotions are that they require self-
awareness, they facilitate the attainment of complex social goals, and
they emerge later in childhood than basic emotions (Tracy and Robins
2007:6–7). Self-conscious emotions such as shame are moral emotions
because they provide the ‘motivational force’ to do good or bad (Tag-
ney, Stuewig, and Mashek 2007). Positioning an emotion like empathy
as self-conscious offers some analytical use for drawing out some of the
uniqueness of the moral emotions, and for exploring the different rela-
tionships between thinking and feeling. As Michael Lewis (2007) notes,
feeling empathy means that we ‘feel an emotion and we are aware that
we are feeling this emotion’ (36). It is because of this complex relation-
ship between thinking and feeling that it is difficult to predict which
social context or experience will elicit such emotions. The complexity
of these ‘self-conscious’ aspects of emotions, however, is also linked to
the complexity of the social connections of morality.
The shift from a sympathetic claim to recognize pain to the empa-
thetic claim to feel pain is neither easy nor simple. In the case of em-
pathy, we have often assumed a kind of equation between emotions
and political actions by suggesting that empathy is inherently tied to a
solidarity model of politics, and, similarly, sympathy to a pity politics.
A politicized humanitarianism, however, must speak to the dynamic
ways in which emotions are, to use Ahmed’s language (2004; 2004a),
about ‘attachments’ to people, places, signifiers, the individual, the so-
cial, the psychic, and the collective.
Even a socially powerful emotion such as empathy is not able to
overcome the scenario of inequality that such an emotion confronts.
Can any emotion felt by the humanitarian overcome the fundamental
gap of alterity between those helping and those being helped? Some
forms of pain cannot be shared empathetically (Ahmed 2004). Here,
the connected histories of colonialism, imperialism, race, and gender
inequality are lurking. According to Kozol (2008), we often distinguish
the passive looking at violent spectacles, such as the everyday footage
from Iraq, from conceptualizations of ‘witnessing’ human suffering.
She argues that even the assumed ‘ethical vision’ of empathy must not
‘ignore’ its own ‘political investments.’ ‘Human rights scholars and
 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 133

activists,’ she asserts, ‘need to recognize visual witnessing as enmeshed

inthe historical problematics of neocolonial spectacles of power and
dominance’ (68).
Ahmed’s reflection on economies of emotions is extremely useful
here. By asserting that emotions are not a ‘private matter’ and that they
do not ‘come from within and move outward,’ she positions emotions
as moving, as ‘non-resident,’ and as ‘doing things’ (2004a:117). While
she is not particularly focused on the examination of the moral emo-
tions, I argue that her analysis of how emotions work to both ‘attach’ us
to things and to put us ‘in motion’ is instructive for humanitarian senti-
ments: ‘What moves us, what makes us feel, is also that which holds
us in place, or gives us a dwelling place. Emotion may function as a
‘contingent attachment’ to the world . . . Contingency is linked then to
proximity, to getting close enough to touch another and to be moved
by another. So what attaches us, what connects us to this or that place,
or to this or that other, such that we cannot stay removed from this other, is
also what moves us, or what affects us such that we are no longer in the
same place’ (2004b:27).
Humanitarian emotions work to configure us in social and political
spaces. I use the concept of configuration because it maintains the im-
portance of ethical connection to the mobilization of humanitarianism.
Again, as Laqueur (1989) and others have emphasized, connection al-
lows for humanitarians to see themselves as implicated in the lives of
others. The notion of configuration suggests connections that include
many elements. We can conceptualize an emotion such as empathy as
moving between the individual and the social, and the private and the
public.3 Humanitarian emotions mobilize by not only attempting a con-
nection between the humanitarian and sufferer, but by profoundly al-
tering the terrain on which such a connection is built. As Ahmed (2004)
stresses, struggles against injustice are not about the quality of feelings;
they are not about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feelings. As she puts it, ‘they are about
how we are moved by feelings into a different relation to the norms we
wish to contest, or the wounds we wish to heal’ (201).
This conceptualization requires a re-visitation of the dominant ‘trig-
ger model’ of political emotions. Such a model positions certain emo-
tions as political because they trigger political action, and others as
apolitical or anti-political, because they do not. The best example of the
‘trigger model’ is anger. Humanitarians are rarely associated with this
more negative, and more politically passionate, emotion. By thinking
of emotion as configuration, we focus less on how a so-called irrational
134 Laura Suski

emotion like sadness should be managed, and dwell more on how it

may situate us in social and political contexts.
Woodward (2004) argues that the economy of emotions is shifting
in the contemporary period. A central part of this uniqueness lies in
the fact that we are witnessing in our media-saturated culture a kind
of ‘flattening’ of emotions in which we experience emotion as ‘sensa-
tion,’ rather than more deeply or intensely (also see Hunt, this volume).
Woodward also notes that at the same time we are seeing an increase
in an individual’s emotional repertoire, particularly for men. Even
political male figures like former U.S. president George W. Bush can
be ‘compassionate conservatives,’ and apparently feel other people’s
pain. This tension in contemporary emotion is felt even more acutely
in humanitarian politics, where the relationship between experience
and performance is central to the process of mobilization. If we expe-
rience humanitarian emotions like sympathy on a surface level, or if
we simply attach compassion to an ideological stance, we do not fully
embrace the sociality of suffering, and we may instead succumb to a
kind of self-centred experience of emotion (see Illouz 2007; Wouters
2007). Chouliaraki (2010) signals this danger as a ‘removal of the moral
question’ from the contemporary humanitarian emotional landscape
whereby a private, and often narcissistic, emotional sensibility ‘renders
the emotions of the self the measure of our understanding of the suffer-
ings of the world at large’ (121). Perhaps, then, the promise of a more
radical humanitarianism is a humanitarianism that can confront itself
by ‘moving’ the humanitarian into a different emotional relationship to
injustice.

Conclusions

When we watch one of the many commercials pleading for us to help

children suffering from famine and disease, and find ourselves moved
but not helping, we must ask: Where does the emotion go? There is
something ephemeral about the humanitarian sentiment. As it config-
ures the space between the individual and the social, the public and the
private, so too can it be lost. This ephemeral quality is another reminder
of the complexity of the emotional response to human suffering and
the difficulty of predicting which emotional responses configure politi-
cal actors. Emotions, it seems, are far less like the fuel for the political
that we may have imagined them to be, and much more like the politi-
cal itself. They are a critical part of the project of uncovering injustice
 Humanitarianism as a Politics of Emotion 135

precisely because injustice inserts itself into the space of emotion,

whether we can feel it or not. Hochschild (2007) was right to suggest
that from ‘feeling we discover our own viewpoints on the world’ (88).
The mobility of humanitarian emotions is not located in some kind of
trigger moment, but instead in the social space of ethical connection
itself.
I began this chapter with the question of how humanitarianism is
mobilized, and readers may conclude that I am not much closer to an-
swering the specific questions of why the suffering of some humans
compels humanitarian action, and the suffering of other humans goes
unaddressed. We can begin to answer these questions by paying close
attention to humanitarian narratives, and to the social and political
construction of victims and suffering (Brown and Wilson 2009). In this
chapter, I have argued that the analysis of the model of emotion also has
something important to offer to the project of understanding emotional
mobilization. If we can reflect on the ways in which humanitarian emo-
tions work to attach us and to put us in motion, we may deepen our
understanding of humanitarian action and indifference. The answers
to the questions of mobilization seem to rely less on identifying a par-
ticular emotion as having political potential, than they do on addressing
how humanitarianism puts us into a space where the political relation-
ship between injustice, suffering, and emotion is configured.
Sociologists of emotion may find themselves in the strange posi-
tion of arguing that emotions are inherently and fundamentally social,
while at the same time noting that the analysis of emotion has not al-
ways figured prominently in sociology. This strangeness is particularly
awkward for the analysis of the moral emotions, given that sociology
often stakes its claim as a ‘moral science.’ Sherman (1998), for example,
claims that empathy or imaginative simulation is ‘a basic feature of oc-
cupying a social world, however extended that social world may be’
(113). Sociology clearly has much to offer to the project of addressing
the social dynamics of humanitarian sensibilities.
The emotional space of humanitarianism has become quite messy,
nothing close to the space of moral guidance we might wish it to be.
Empathy is only one among many of the emotional routes a contempo-
rary humanitarian might take. When confronted with the pain and suf-
fering of others, we may feel fear, anger, disgust, or sadness, and these
feelings can lead to a range of actions, and indeed inaction. The only
certainty of the humanitarian encounter is that we fail to fully com-
prehend the suffering of another if we simply imagine it as our own
136 Laura Suski

(Nussbaum 2001). In this way, the emotional space of the humanitarian

is necessarily social: it must be occupied by the presence of both the
self and the other. So too is this emotional space necessarily mobile; the
bleeding heart is never still.

NOTES

1 Humanitarianism demands its position in the realm of morality precisely

because it is an act that is ‘other-regarding,’ and, similarly, seems to lose
this intrinsically moral position if the act of ‘other-regarding’ serves
the pursuit of self-interest (Badhwar 1993), as in the claims by some
thinkers in international relations that foreign aid could never be deemed
humanitarian. Its ‘other-regarding’ nature situates it more squarely in the
sociological, rather than the economic, because the economic subject is
assumed to always act in self-interest (Wolfe 1998).
2 The analysis of humanitarianism does not occupy a larger role in
sociological inquiry, but there are a few references in passing. Becker (1968)
used the word ‘humanitarian’ when he wrote that there was no reason to
suggest that sociologists should choose between being scientists and being
humanitarians: a person can be both ‘passionately convinced of the dire
need for actual, applied scientific control’ and ‘devote his [sic] efforts to the
pursuit of that ultimate value and still be a humanitarian who subjects his
[sic] work in that role to the requirements of “the men of good will” ’ (302).
Sociology stakes its claim as a ‘people-oriented’ discipline. Yet, as Berger
(1963) once noted, a ‘benevolent interest in people could be the biographical
starting point for sociological studies,’ but a ‘malevolent and misanthropic
outlook could serve just as well’ (2).
3 This analysis carries on a dialogue with the work of those feminists
interested in ethics of care, such as Tronto (1993), who emphasized how care
is ‘devalued conceptually through a connection with privacy, with emotion,
and with the needy’ (117). An ethics of care offers an alternative to classical
models of international relations and justice because it departs from the
emphasis on the liberal values of rationality and autonomy. It offers an
account of the self as inherently social, and therefore rejects the abstract
individualist view of self and of community common to much liberal theory
(Friedman 1993; Held 1999). Illouz (1997, 2007) also has much to say about
liberalism and its role in the analysis of ‘public’ and ‘private’ life.
8 The Civilizing Process and Emotional
Life: The Intensification and Hollowing
Out of Contemporary Emotions

al an hunt

Introduction

I arrived at an interest in emotions by a circuitous route. I had been en-

gaged for some time in seeking to understand how groups and activi-
ties come to be acted upon by varieties of moralizing politics. It became
evident that social anxieties played a significant role in stimulating
projects of moral regulation; my concern was with social, shared, or col-
lective anxieties, as distinct from individual states of anxiety. It became
necessary to try and conceptualize anxiety as an emotion.
As I engaged with the emotions literature, it was apparent that much
of it had its intellectual roots in psychology and presumed that emo-
tions were manifested in individual mental states, affects, or feelings.
My initial question was whether it made sense to think in terms of ‘so-
cial or collective emotions.’ I formed the view that the most fruitful
way to distinguish a sociological line of inquiry about emotions was to
insist that emotions have histories, and that engaging with the history
of emotions provided the space for a sociological, rather than a psycho-
logical perspective. A major thrust in the history of emotions has been
the concern to identify periodizations of emotional features of histori-
cal epochs, captured by the use of such concepts as ’emotional styles,’
’emotional regimes,’ or ’emotional climate’ – as illustrated by Stearns’
contention that an emotional style of ‘American cool,’ characterized as
‘impersonal, but friendly,’ emerged in the United States in the 1920s
(Stearns 1994). This chapter will offer an analysis of the contemporary-
emotional climate of advanced capitalist societies (also see Bookman,
this volume; Suski, this volume), which I characterize as exhibiting a
tension between two distinct processes, one that manifests an intensi-
138 Alan Hunt

fication of emotionality and the other that yields an emotional climate

that is distinctively hollowed out, flattened, or shallow.
I approach the periodization of emotions through the deployment
of Raymond Williams’s (1977) treatment of ‘structures of feeling’ and
Norbert Elias’s (1978) analysis of ‘civilising processes.’ These two tradi-
tions offer the necessary components of a fully social sociology of emo-
tions. Williams links emotions to social structure with an emphasis on
the plurality of emotions as a cluster of emotions rather than as discrete
individual emotions. Elias makes available a link between emotions
and social practices.

Raymond Williams

A fruitful avenue for addressing emotions is provided by the Marxist

cultural historian Raymond Williams (1977), who suggests that lived
experiences can be explored through the transformations that take
place in what he calls ‘structures of feeling’ that capture the ‘meanings
and values as they are actually lived and felt’ as well as their interac-
tion with systematic beliefs (132). Williams adopts ‘feelings’ to avoid
such alternatives as ‘world-view’ or ‘ideology.’ Structures of feeling
are ‘structures’ in that they have specific internal relations that both
interlock and are in tension. A structure of feelings grasps these shared
elements and the interconnections that can be found both in specific
generations and in different classes. Williams does not have much to
say about generations, but there is a case to be made for the contention
that generations share a structure of feelings as major harbingers of
changes in emotional paradigms. A generation embodies its collective
identity in response to formative events (Eyerman and Turner 1998:96);
for example, the participation by Canadian and Australian forces in
the First World War was formative for their respective national identi-
ties. A generational structure of feelings produces a distinctive range
of body styles and performances, fashions, and emotional currents;
thus the generation of the 1960s shared significant cultural and politi-
cal markers that provided an emotional orientation that stimulated the
sexual revolution.
Williams (1977) presents a structure of feeling as involving ‘a spe-
cific structure of particular linkages, particular emphases and suppo-
sitions, and, in what are often its most recognizable forms, particular
deep starting-points and conclusions’ (134). Such structures are not
unitary;he stresses the need to take account of the complex relations of
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 139

differential structures associated with the feelings of different classes.

We are accustomed to thinking of moods as a summary form for the
variety of emotions that an individual experiences; I extend the notion
of ‘moods’ to refer to diffuse emotional states as a workable summary
version of the more abstract concept of structures of feelings of social
aggregates. More generally, social configurations exhibit what might
usefully be termed ’emotional climates’ or ’emotional regimes.’
There may be merit in extending Williams’s ideas by looking beyond
the emotional shifts arising from cultural-class configurations to ex-
plore the extent to which state agencies may act as emotional agents;
for example, state welfare in the twentieth century promoted not only
the discourses of ‘social citizenship’ but engendered emotions about
participation that differed from the older model of citizen as a ‘subject’
of sovereignty. T.H. Marshall’s (1963) influential account of the geneal-
ogy of the rise of political, economic, and social rights invites us to look
at emotions from above, for example, the emergence of sympathy for
the poor or the unemployed; but it may also be fruitful to explore the
responses from below, such as resentment against inequality. The sig-
nificant implication being that it becomes fruitful to view social policy
issues through the lens of emotions. Denzin (1984) stresses that emo-
tionality, the capacity for emotional responses, is a key dimension of
lived consciousness and the ‘self-feeling’ involving inner moral feel-
ings and intersubjectivity. Emotionality lies at the intersection of the
individual and collective experience; people are joined to their socie-
ties and to others through both self-feelings and collective structures
of feeling.

Norbert Elias

Elias’s major thesis associates ‘civilization’ with practices of an advanc-

ing ‘social constraint towards self-constraint’ (1994:443), which results
from competitive struggles between social classes that originated first
within aristocracies who had been subjected to practices of restraint
imposed in court society (1978). The civilizing process resulted in the
inculcation of practices of a wide range of emotional restraints, such
as affected relations between the sexes, eating practices and the like,
that became a matter of habit and resulted in changes to the personal-
ity structure associated, for example, with the privatism of familialism
and of marital sexuality. ‘The prohibitions supported by social sanc-
tions are reproduced in the individual as self-controls,’ writes Elias
140 Alan Hunt

(1978:190). Elias pays little attention to specific emotions (aside from

some significant attention to the role of shame) since his concern is
with the internalization of self-control over what might loosely be
termed negative emotions. He provides an account of the managed
decontrol of emotions that is exemplified in the restraints on aggres-
sion and anger and their displacement; for example, into sport where
aggression is subject to rules and subject to an enforcement mecha-
nism (referees, umpires, etc.), and, at the same time, is excluded from
other fields of social activity. In the absence of formal controls in every-
day life, the relaxation of control over emotions is possible only when
mechanisms of self-restraint are sufficiently widespread and strongly
enough internalized.
Elias is at pains to stress that the civilizing process takes different
forms during the course of modernization as wider sections of the
population are drawn into relations that are both more extensive and
that develop specific dynamics. As the lower orders become drawn into
these longer chains of interdependence (during the course of which
mechanisms of self-restraint become more or less automatic), short-
term impulses become subordinated to the commands of an acquired
long-term perspective. The implication is that the civilizing process is
characterized by tensions and contradictions. Individuals experience
tensions or strains as they negotiate the challenges posed by their in-
dividual desires and passions alongside the normative expectations
of self-restraint; in this process they experience the anguish that re-
sults from shame and embarrassment. Modern social life emphasizes
the tensions involved as individuals negotiate their relationship with
themselves and with others such that there is an increasing emphasis
on differences between individuals (the ‘I’) as opposed to shared com-
monalities (the ‘We’). In modernity, there is an increasingly equalized
balance of power between classes and genders, such that all members
of society are required to behave civilly towards one another. The in-
creasingly sharp tensions of modern life mean the individual faces a
unique series of pressures that arise from greater social differentia-
tion, specialization, and heightened competitiveness. The pressures for
self-restraint are such that individuals may give in to spontaneous im-
pulses. These structural pressures of differentiation and individualiza-
tion impose stress on the individual such that he/she is no longer able
to securely regulate his/her impulses; since these drives can no longer
legitimately be acted on in society, they may be inflected internally to
manifest themselves in anxiety and other disturbed and disturbing
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 141

conditions. Such tensions may result in dilemmas over patterns of so-

cial behaviour about such matters as the degrees of sexual familiarity
and appropriate levels of informality.
A characteristic feature of contemporary social life is the prolifera-
tion of varied forms of offensive behaviour; such behaviour is gener-
ally not unlawful but causes distress to others, and, when persistent,
can be threatening to social order. Such behaviour is exhibited by
adults (driving whilst using electronic devices, dumping litter from
their vehicles, etc.), but most interest has focused on conduct exhibited
by young children who behave aggressively towards teachers, senior
citizens, shopkeepers, and others, leading to an increasing experience
of social disorder that results in an undermining of the experience of
community. Such children are often beyond the control of their parents,
or their parents are unwilling to attempt to exercise the traditional ex-
pectation of parental control (Field 2003). The first point to be made
is that it is necessary to amend Elias’s assumption that the achieve-
ment of self-control is a process that the individual achieves alone. But
it is necessary to stress that the process involves what Elias views as
both internal and external constraints. Children typically acquire self-
restraint through relations at home and at school. If a significant pro-
portion of children do not acquire the self-control that is necessary to
sustain viable relations with the communities in which they live, this
will have implications for the emotional lives of communities and their
wider societies.
Elias is careful to avoid equating the ‘civilizing process’ with ‘self-
control.’ While Elias has been criticized as implying a smooth advance
of the civilizing process, he himself was clear that both civilizing and
decivilizing trends coexisted, such that barbarism arises in contexts
where there is a declining restraint on emotional expression. He in-
sists that the civilizing process is not smooth or easy; it is a two-edged
weapon. Its spurts are not necessarily pleasant or convenient for those
involved.
Elias identified a contemporary trend towards informalization that
requires more than the effective internalization of social norms; more
important is a widely dispersed capacity that has become almost au-
tomatic by which individuals are able to select the appropriate level of
formality-informality in a wide range of interaction scenarios. I confess
that I would rather not have sales staff, whom I have only just met and
will never see again, using my first name; this only goes to show how
rapidly the practices of informalization have developed.
142 Alan Hunt

The question that I raise in connection with Elias is: How are we to
understand the transformations in the structure of personality in the
civilizing process that made it possible to relax controls over emotions
without at the same time giving rein to spontaneous and dangerous
surges of impulse? Elias’s key contribution can best be character-
ized as proposing a ‘controlled decontrolling of emotions,’ in which
the civilizing process is manifest in a generalized way such that an
internalized self-control has been firmly established in a way that
emotional spontaneity no longer poses any risk to civilized conduct.
Such a controlled decontrolling of emotions characterizes contempo-
rary heterosexual relations, which permit a considerable degree of
familiarity between the sexes, while, at the same time, the reality of
sexual aggression and harassment reminds us that the decontrolling
of emotional constraints is always unstable. A key feature in this trans-
formation is a change in the balance between externally imposed con-
straints on the individual’s impulses and constraints that spring from
a constant and rigorous self-control. But Elias resists the idea that the
civilizing process simply involves an even extension of self-control.
It is important to a comprehension of his life work to recognize that
he was preoccupied with understanding the dynamic spurts of both
civilizing and decivilizing processes. This was central to his engage-
ment with the history of Germany, which grappled with an attempt to
understand the rise of Nazism (Elias 1996). It is now time to harness
these resources to explore the development of the emotional history of
contemporary society.

The Contradictions of Emotions Today

The predominant feature of the contemporary emotional regime is the

coexistence of a contradictory presence of an intensification of emotion-
ality alongside a flattening of emotional experience. There is agreement
that by the end of the nineteenth century a new emotional style was
developing rapidly. This new style is perhaps best captured by War-
ren Susman (1984) as a transition from character to personality. This
involved a shift from externally defined rules of correct (masculine)
demeanour (stiff upper lip, straight back, walk on the outside of the
sidewalk when accompanying a lady, and many more) and a distinct
set of prescriptions for females organized around the theme of modesty.
The shift to personality involved the quest for individualism made up
from an autonomous, authentic, and distinctive set of emotional and
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 143

behavioural characteristics. The world of personality was less rigidly

gendered than that of character, but in the early part of the twentieth
century personality was a predominantly masculine trait. The rise of
personality involved a shift from externally defined behaviour rules to
an injunction that the individual construct a more or less coherent sense
of the self by putting together a consistent set of emotional practices
and dispositions. Given the significance of generating an emotional
figuration it followed that the expression of emotions, rather than the
prior preoccupation with the control of the emotions, played a signif-
icant part in the performance of subjectivity. This did not mean that
emotional self-control disappeared, but rather that the focus shifted to
concerns with emotional management.
Practices of self-control change over time and across cultural con-
texts. In the twentieth century some nineteenth-century standards have
been intensified; for example, those surrounding personal hygiene
have generated a widening set of restraints and major expansion of
consumerism; also intensified have been restraints on such disparate
practices as personal violence and punctuality. But other nineteenth-
century themes have waned, including formal rules of etiquette and
manners. In the twentieth century there have been fewer detailed rules
(e.g., a retreat of strict gendered division of emotional practices, and a
decline of concern for posture). Change has also been evident in child-
rearing practices that have become more informal and less disciplinary.
An array of more detailed ways of manifesting personal discipline has
expanded in both range and specificity (e.g., restraints on food intake,
weight, smoking, drunkenness, etc.).
The shift from character to personality constituted a significant histori-
cal change in the formation of the individual. How are we to understand
why this change occurred when it did? Two factors are of significance.
First, there was the rise of consumerism, as a result of which the im-
portance of choice came to the fore, thus requiring that the consumer
make active selections in pursuit of the goal of social distinction – a phe-
nomenon analysed by Bourdieu (1984) in his study of distinction. In
the same way, the individual had to make choices in the elaboration of
his/her personality. Consumerism was further stimulated by the new
prospects that confronted the expanding middle classes. They no lon-
ger had access to a sufficient level of economic capital to promote the
socio-economic circumstances of their children; they had insufficient
resources to provide for inheritance between generations, so it became
increasingly important that parents help their offspring develop the
144 Alan Hunt

illusive goal of personality. Education increasingly became the way in

which either general cultural capital or economically relevant skills were
acquired. Demographic changes manifested themselves, such that the
middle classes raised fewer children. Parents devoted increasing time
and energy to their children. There was declining reliance on the disci-
plinary promotion of obedience. Not only did parents engage in more
emotional relations with their children, but in doing so they sought to
stimulate their capacity for self-command along with a personality and
skills that fitted them for the specific roles appropriate to an ever more
complex social division of labour. Not only did these processes stimu-
late the self-formation of individuals, but they also contributed to the
collective formation of an increasingly self-confident middle-class ethos,
a self-conscious middle class that was concerned with distinguishing it-
self from the urban working classes. The resulting culture of self-control
was both powerful and assertive.
A major focus of this new middle-class ethos was strongly focused
on a novel orientation to the economic realm that was different from
the concern with accumulation of the nineteenth-century middle class;
less preoccupied by the goal of wealth, the new middle class was orien-
tated to the construction of successful careers. It would be interesting to
explore the history of the transformations of the idea of a‘career’ dur-
ing the various stages of the formation of the middle classes. The ‘ca-
reer’ involved the pursuit of a long-time commitment, often spanning
the whole working life, focused on internal advancement through the
increasingly formalized mechanisms of ‘promotion.’Such a long-term
commitment required stable emotional self-command, identification
with the enterprise, and cooperative competition with fellow em-
ployees. At an earlier time, particularly from the 1880s, such employ-
ment was viewed as a considerable challenge. The neurasthenia craze
brought the relationship between the middle classes and work into
focus for the first time by presenting the hectic pressures of ‘modern’
work as a source of stress and as a general threat to health and men-
tal well-being (Beard 1972; Gijswijt and Porter 2001). By the end of the
twentieth century, work stress had again reached epidemic proportions
(Wainwright and Calman 2002).
These processes in the formation of the middle classes gave rise to a
changing configuration of emotional life. The emphasis on the mainte-
nance of emotional control declined, and the behavioural problem was
no longer keeping the passions in check. The key requirement becomes
the selection of appropriate emotional responses for specific social sit-
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 145

uations; the concept of emotional management captures this style of

emotional conduct and manifests itself in working and domestic life.

Emotionality in the Workplace

From the late nineteenth century, psychological approaches provided

means to address human subjectivity via new languages for the run-
ning of schools, prisons, factories, and in particular the workplace
(Rose 1989; Illouz 2008). The workplace became a key site for the recon-
figuration of the emotions; while the discouragement of anger had long
been a concern, between the two world wars attention was increasingly
directed at producing configurations of emotions that facilitated coop-
erative relations that would stimulate efficiency – although there was
always a tension between rational efficiency and job satisfaction.
The emotional configuration in the workplace was never smooth and
integrated. Rather, it was marked by a paradox between a hierarchi-
cal ordering that required emotional conformism and obedience and
thus required high levels of self-restraint, and, simultaneously, the self-
motivation of employees. The disciplinary practices led to increasing
levels of surveillance over workplace conduct. However, there is a
realm of work-life in which workers strive to evade the surveillance of
management, and when lack of restraint with respect to many of the
operative emotional codes had free play; ‘escape attempts’ seek relief
from routine and monotony at work, some being mere breaks while
others are more transgressive and resistant (Cohen and Taylor 1992).
Subordinate groups come to speak in two different voices, the hidden
and the public (Scott 1990). It would be interesting to explore further
the emotions of insubordination, which are to be found not only in
workplace, but also in the school and other institutions. Much attention
has been paid to the routinized transgression in early modern societies
that provided relief from the strictly hierarchical social order. Christo-
pher Hill (1972) refers to ‘waves of feelings’ that temporarily ‘turned
the world upside down’ and freed the common people from the author-
ity of the church, state, and social superiors (see also Hobsbawm 1959).
An important feature of the intensification of emotional discipline
is that emotional issues have become increasingly viewed as appro-
priate matters for intervention. Significantly, there has been an expan-
sion of formalized disciplinary codes in the workplace, accompanied
by a similar enlargement of human resources personnel who provide
a quasi-judicial framing of such projects exemplified in procedures
146 Alan Hunt

around anger and violence. The most prominent fields of action have
been with regard to ‘equity’ issues that began with matters of race, but
have grown to incorporate other arenas of ‘difference.’ Prominent have
been the disciplinary engagement with gender relations encompassing
issues of harassment and discrimination.
At the same time as the workplace imposed emotional restraint, the
twentieth century saw a rising current of informalism. Hierarchical dis-
tance was weakened. Often this was unplanned, as in the spread of
the use of familiar names between differently located people; but there
are usually well-understood rules about how far hierarchical formality
can be displaced. While it has become increasingly common to use fa-
miliar names for immediate superiors, this has not granted permission
for such informality with higher-ranking persons. There have also been
planned moves towards informality at work that seek to stimulate co-
operation, as exemplified by the gradual disappearance of segregated
dining rooms and the introduction of activities promoting sociability
that range from wilderness adventures to trips to the bowling alley.
The informalizing tendencies are not in contradiction with the pro-
cesses of intensification, but rather should be understood as facilitat-
ing the dominant emotional paradigm in such a way as to yield an
ever more complex framing of everyday life that calls upon individu-
als to acquire levels of self-regulation, making these more intensified
emotional demands liveable. Informalization does not abolish or even
weaken hierarchies. It manifests itself in displacing the requirements of
formal acknowledgment of social hierarchy and social difference. It is
most evident in informal modes of address and practices between dif-
ferently situated individuals: between students and teachers; between
generations; between the sexes. These shifts have taken place with few,
if any, articulated rules. It is no longer compulsory for males to open
doors for females; but the question of when it is appropriate to do so
is now much more unclear and creates endless possibilities for making
mistakes. To live as we all do within these shifting relations requires a
subtle balance between a variety of opposing motives and behaviours
such as directness and tactfulness, simplicity and sophistication.
Difficult though it is to intuit these unarticulated norms, most peo-
ple succeed in doing so with great skill and have internalized the new
forms of emotional expressivity and restraint. As Elias (1994) observed,
‘as more and more people must attune their conduct to that of others,
the web of actions must be organized more and more strictly and ac-
curately’ (445). We should add, this has to be achieved without there
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 147

being anyone to do the organizing. Elias’s own solution to this diffi-

culty is less than satisfactory, since along with conscious self-control,
he invokes ‘an automatic, blindly functioning apparatus of self-control
[that] is firmly established’ (446). This misses the remarkable skill with
which people negotiate the complexity of everyday social life. Thus, it
is important to stress that informalization places increased demands on
the mechanisms of self-restraint; these are not ‘decivilizing’ processes,
but rather they involve a change in the form of the civilizing process
from external constraint to internal self-restraint.
Informalizing processes coexist with currents that may be viewed
as instituting a ‘reformalization.’ Over the last century, the formaliza-
tion of emotional restraint existed in the form of semi-formalized sys-
tems of etiquette and manners. While etiquette as a system of formal
rules of conduct has faded from much of social life, manners have ac-
quired a somewhat more formalized existence. Manners were histori-
cally buttressed by practices of social exclusion. Today, important areas
of emotional sensitivity are guarded by institutionally supported rules of
political correctness that impose a restrained emotionality. This requires
strong internalization and self-checking mechanisms that are particu-
larly evident in language rules, for example usage that requires the sup-
pression of ‘girl’ and the substitution of ‘woman,’ or the suppression of
‘Inuit’ and the requirement to remember the currently approved label.
In addition to strong internalization, there is a strong external moral-
ization in contrast to the customary conventionalism that sustained the
rules of manners, and, in addition, there are significant sanctions that
meet breaches of the speech and behaviour codes. To offend can result
in acquiring culturally and politically significant labels such as ‘racist’ or
‘sexist’ that are important mechanisms of social exclusion.

Collective Emotions

The paradox of contemporary emotional life requires that individuals

exhibit both expressivity and restraint, which requires a careful balanc-
ing of the culturally approved emotional standards and an awareness
of the everyday reality of emotional practices. Complex though such
an emotional life is, much of the time we succeed with a fair degree
of spontaneity in ‘carrying it off ’ with respect to many frequently en-
countered emotional contexts in which we have a reasonably clear ap-
preciation of what emotional dispositions are expected of us and the
permissible range of emotional display or practice.
148 Alan Hunt

There is a second and deeper form of the paradox of emotions. My

discussion thus far has been located within the conventional frame-
work that treats emotions as either individual experiences or as affects
involved in interpersonal relations. It is in this context that most of the
work that has described itself as a sociology of emotions has been un-
dertaken. It is characterized by the concern to chart the social context
of interactions that manifest emotional features. For present purposes,
Hochschild’s (1983) study of the commercialization of the emotion work
of flight attendants exemplifies this approach. What she does so well is
to reveal the socio-economic context in which conventional signifiers
of politeness are mobilized in the context of self-conscious self-control
within a work situation. There is, however, an inherent limitation to
any such ‘social context’ approach to emotions in that it sets up two
domains – one of emotions and the other of the social environment in
which they exist. Thus, for example, Hochschild’s work does not in-
quire where the emotions deployed on board an aircraft come from; the
emotions are taken for granted as the common sense emotions that ‘we
all know about’ – anger, jealousy, and so on – as if these were ‘natural’
endowments of humans. What happens is that managers and others in
authority can call upon employees to exhibit commercially appropriate
emotions. What is needed is a social theory of emotions that starts out
from the proposition that emotions are an integral component not only
of relations but also of the structures within which those relations are
located. For example, love may be an individual sentiment shared be-
tween two persons, but it is also a structural feature of social relations
in societies in which ‘love’ is a structure of feeling, understood and de-
sired by most, if not all, people.
One of the most distinctive manifestations of the profoundly social
nature of emotions is located in the importance of collective or shared
emotions. Collective emotions arise where people share an emotional re-
sponse without necessarily being in direct contact with one another. Thus,
a collective emotion does not necessarily involve a situation in which
people are together in a shared location or social context, such as a crowd.
More interesting are those circumstances in which disparate individuals
in significant numbers experience the same emotional and politico-moral
reactions. The emotion is shared when people reveal the same evaluation
of a situation, share collective emotional standards, and agree on the ap-
propriate range of responses to the situation. A further dimension of col-
lective emotion is the experience that Durkheim ([1912]1961:241) termed
‘collective effervescence’ – something that occurs typically in religious
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 149

rituals, as a result of which the participants are themselves changed, but

more importantly change their relationship with those with whom they
share that experience. When the assembled individuals feel themselves
dominated by some external event, they begin to think and act differ-
ently from normal times; this is particularly important in events that con-
stitute shared generational experiences, such as collective action against
the Vietnam War or the demonstrations against the World Trade Organi-
zation in Seattle in 1999.
One classic and important instance of a collective emotion that serves
to illustrate a wider category of collective emotions is that of ressenti-
ment. The use of the French word is justified in order to distinguish it
from the more passive connotations of the English word ‘resentment,’
and also because a long line of debate has focused on ressentiment.
What is significant about this collective emotion is its close links to
forms of social (and often political) action. Ressentiment is not simply
a sentiment or feeling linked to an individual’s sense of self; rather, it
imports an element of objective social structure since it seems always to
be an expression of different positions in one or more social hierarchies
and is thus always capable of collective social action.
When Nietzsche ([1887]1989) christened the concept of ressentiment,
his concern was with the distinction between noble and slave morality
in the context of his critique of the historical linkage between Christian
and bourgeois morality. He emphasized the passivity of slave moral-
ity (forgiveness, turning the other cheek). As the concept was subse-
quently developed, it acquired a wider range of nuances. Max Scheler’s
(1961) consideration of ressentiment differed slightly from Nietzsche’s,
as his version focused of the repression of the feelings of slave mo-
rality that expresses itself in impotent hatred, envy, and a desire for
revenge, which can find no expression in an alternative culture but
secretly craves the values that it denies. This form is characteristic of
societies in which a hierarchical order has broken down, yet inequality
and envy remain rife. Ranulf ([1938]1964) links ressentiment to what
he called ‘disinterested moral indignation’ that demands the punish-
ment of criminals. His notion is associated with the presence of a lower
middle class that has been subjected to high degrees of self-restraint,
and thus is subject to frustration of its own desires and the experience
of misery. The resentment of such a class can be deployed against any
social group or class that is perceived as violating these self-imposed
norms. Ranulf ’s 1938 study viewed German fascism as a key instance
of lower-middle-class indignation.
150 Alan Hunt

Ressentiment makes it possible to understand how structural fea-

tures – in particular, forms of inequality, disadvantage, and ethnicity
and class – stimulate socio-political action via the intermediation of the
negative emotions that are attached to undeserving and unworthy oth-
ers. Barbalet (2002) makes the important point that emotions link struc-
ture to agency. He goes so far as to insist that all emotions are related to
differences of power and status between actors.
Further complexity and variation can be added by distinguishing
between different forms of indignation of differently located groups
and classes, for example, by distinguishing between rising and declin-
ing classes (Barbalet 2002b). Thus, the political and emotional content
will be different when advancing classes of merchants are denied ac-
cess to privileged social spaces of a declining aristocracy who can no
longer afford the display that had previously sustained their class
self-confidence. A very common form of ressentiment is deployed
against groups who violate these projected standards of self-control.
I recall that as a child in small town England after the Second World
War, every year people we called ‘gypsies’ travelling in horse-drawn
caravans would set up camp on the edge of town. During their stay,
the residents believed that you needed to buy the clothes pegs that the
gypsy women sold door-to-door because if you did not, bad things
would happen, such as the theft of produce or animals. The gypsies
were feared and resented; their unsettled form of existence and the
mess they always seemed to leave behind led to the shared feeling
that ‘someone should do something.’ While the local policeman was
sympathetic to complaints, he would insist there was nothing he could
do. One of the interesting features of this example is the co-presenceof
desire for action (‘Someone should do something.’) and a fatalism
(‘Nothing I can do.’).
It is characteristic of ressentiment to mobilize spontaneous truth-
claims (‘Gypsies are thieves.’) that generally encounter little resistance,
or, when there is resistance, the commitment to the shared values is
passionate and organized – as in the case of the genocide in Rwanda
in 1994 when the sentiments mobilized were so strong that they were
directed not only against ethnic Tutsis, but also against moderate Hutu.
The concept of ressentiment helps in understanding a variety of social
movements that range from relatively mild forms of prejudice through
to some of the most atrocious acts of genocide. Typical manifestations
of ressentiment can be illustrated by the nineteenth-century Ameri-
can prohibition campaigns and by today’s anti-smoking campaigns.
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 151

Gusfield (1963), in dissecting prohibition did not use the concept of res-
sentiment, but it fits perfectly with his account of the declining status
of rural Protestantism in the USA pitted against the less self-controlled
manners and habits of immigrants from Southern Europe. It is the de-
monstrable evidence of an inability to exercise self-control that today
fuels resentment against smokers and justifies imposing restrictions
on smokers while at the same time displaying the self-control and re-
spectability of the non-smoker (Brandt 2007). It is interesting that Peter
Stearns (1999), having stressed the importance of the struggle for self-
control, misses its other side: the ressentiment at those who either fail
to, or, even worse, celebrate their lack of self-control.
An emergent form of ressentiment has recently targeted obesity. Pre-
viously, individuals varied in size and weight; but now that we have
‘obesity’ as a medico-moral category (and we should also factorin
class), we have a collective, ‘the obese,’ who can be resented because
of their ‘life-style’ with its palpable lack of self-control. A general form
manifests itself in distress that is occasioned by the belief that some
third party has gained an undeserved advantage (for example, the al-
location of a second seat to an obese passenger). It is important to dis-
tinguish this from envy, which is the desire for benefits that others are
believed to possess (Barbalet 1998:137). Ressentiment may also focus on
the shame that arises from a failure to succeed in a legitimate distribu-
tional system, as a result of which collective anger is directed against
those who benefit unfairly without following the rules. This is a very
common form of current ressentiment against immigrants. The emo-
tion of ressentiment is significant in that it reveals a more general fea-
ture of emotion as the unintended and generally unreflexive response
of people to structural features of their social circumstances; in brief,
emotions provide a link between subjective experience and objective
circumstances. It is worth noting that new forms of ressentiment con-
tinue to emerge. Of particular interest is what may be called the ‘new
ressentiment,’ which is exhibited by the socially marginalized (often
referred to as ‘the underclass’), who display extreme forms of aggres-
sive and unrestrained hostility that is closely linked to the antisocial
behaviour discussed above. Another new form of ressentiment is found
in the significant role of media figures, typified by Rush Limbaugh,
who articulate widely dispersed sentiments of ressentiment which may
stimulate forms of collective political action.
It is instructive to compare the emotions of hate and ressentiment. There
is much overlap between ressentiment and hatred in that ressentiment
152 Alan Hunt

is likely to involve sentiments of hatred towards the target of the nega-

tive sentiments. But there is a significant difference. Hatred may be both
individual and collective, while ressentiment can only be experienced in
some collective form. I may hate someone while at the same time recog-
nizing that others do not share my sentiment, but that a collective ‘we’
may hate some other individual or social group.
Cultural histories reveal waves of ressentiment and of social hatreds.
Contemporary emotional currents are buttressed by widely acknowl-
edged social anxieties and fears, perhaps not so strong as ressentiment,
but collective nonetheless. It is not only socially legitimate to admit
one’s fears and anxieties, but it becomes almost expected that one con-
fesses these existential emotions. Parents reveal their commitment to
the project of parenting by revealing their anxieties about their chil-
dren, whether it addresses their safety, their education, or their physi-
cal or mental health. In the early years of the twenty-first century, this
is so familiar that we need to be reminded that probably no more than
two generations ago such anxieties would not have been so readily
expressed. This trend is further amplified by the way in which secu-
rity consciousness, which is primarily manifested in emotions of fear
and anxiety, creates an emotionally charged climate that is primarily
expressed via the relationships between individuals and the wider so-
ciety. Indeed, anxiety and fear have become predominant emotions of
our epoch.
Insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that emotions may ex-
hibit both individual and collective forms. Emotions change their form
not only between cultures, but also across time. An interesting case
is that of grief. Grief varies between cultures; the subdued tears and
muffled sobs of Northern Europe contrasts with the vocal and physi-
cal manifestations in the Middle East. More interestingly, I suggest that
grief confirms the important contention that emotions have histories
which undermine any lingering suggestion that emotions are natural
and invariant physiological responses to external stimuli (Stearns 1993).
Grief has undergone a significant historical shift, one that involves an
expansion of its collective manifestations. Grief has long had distinc-
tively group manifestations. In many cultures, bereaved kin gather to
weep as a form of collective effervescence at a funeral or other death
ritual (Ariès 1985). Such mourning often takes extensive expression in
terms of the numbers involved and their spatial separation, particu-
larly when the person being mourned has an institutional status, such
as a monarch or a religious leader. But more recently grief has become
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 153

particularly interesting because in the West a significant new phenom-

enon is the expression of collective grief in the absence of any personal
or institutional contact between those that grieve and the departed. The
prime instance is the continuing cult of Princess Diana and other celeb-
rities including Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Such manifestations of
sustained and indeed institutionalized grief closely approximate to the
‘collective effervescence’ that Durkheim ([1912]1961) identifies at the
core of religious experience and are part of the wider phenomenon of
the ‘culture of celebrity’ (Schickel 1985).
One important corollary of taking account of the historical variation
exhibited by emotions is that it should shift attention away from emo-
tion management, without in any way implying that the practices of
emotional self-control are unimportant. I make no claim to have dem-
onstrated that all emotions exhibit this characteristic. Yet, it is impor-
tant to remain attentive to the fact that emotions embedded in specific
historical and cultural contexts may be subject to processes of both re-
striction, by management or self-control, and to enhancement, in situa-
tions in which the display of emotions is encouraged.
That emotions are subject to historical change is hardly surprising.
What is more interesting is to address the question: Why do emotions
change when they do? Why do they change in one direction rather than
another? One available approach is to examine the biographies of indi-
vidual emotions; important work has been undertaken on anger (Stea-
rns and Stearns 1986), jealousy (Stearns 1989), disgust (Miller 1997),
and fear (Bourke 2005). This approach runs the risk, however strong
the intention to avoid it, of treating individual emotions as isolated en-
tities. The alternative approach is to seek to capture the emotional cli-
mate of a people or a nation in some specific epoch. Many outstanding
social and cultural histories succeed in presenting a rich and nuanced
image of a society; for example, one can have the feeling of ‘knowing’
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France from Theodore Zeld-
in’s account (1973). The most explicit attempt to capture an emotional
culture is Peter Stearns’s ‘American Cool’ (1994). His account depends
very much on what we understand by ‘cool,’ since his definition of
twentieth-century American culture as ‘impersonal, but friendly’ could
just as well describe a number of other contemporary Western socie-
ties, each with significantly different inflections. His account is centred
on the triumph of emotional restraint, but his argument is significant
in that he succeeds in capturing the coexistence of emotional restraint
with the parallel requirement for emotional openness and expressivity.
154 Alan Hunt

Emotions and Personal Relations

The other realm of social life in which there has been an expansion
of emotionalization is that of personal relations. This development is
closely connected to the major changes in the position of women in
society. The nineteenth-century marriage was conceived in terms of a
contractual, gendered division of labour with the male as breadwinner
and the female as homemaker. The twentieth-century marriage was in-
creasingly conceived in terms of the ‘companionate marriage’ (Lindsey
1927; Collins 2003), in which both parties were enjoined to aspire to
emotional closeness and mutual sexual satisfaction. In the early part of
the century there occurred a major expansion in the various forms of
advice literature – literature that was influenced by the concern with
rising divorce rates that created widespread professional and personal
anxiety. Perhaps most significant was the expansion of marital advice
literature; but there was also the beginnings of marital expertise dis-
pensed by a variety of therapeutic counselling methods. At the same
time, discourses that constructed marriage as problematic were widely
diffused throughout popular culture.
There were considerable tensions and controversies surrounding
the place of emotions within marriage. On the one hand, there was
concern that the weakening of paternal authority should not unleash
uncontrolled emotions in which wives rejected the injunction to wifely
obedience enshrined in the promise to ‘love, honor and obey’ (Stea-
rns and Stearns 1986). The problem was posed in terms of promot-
ing ‘restraint’ rather than obedience. Yet, at the same time, the new
emotionalism within the companionate marriage had to create spaces
for emotional expression. Some of the advice literature came to permit
the expression of marital anger; Cancian and Gordon’s (1988) study of
twentieth-century women’s magazines reveals the permission given
to wives to express anger while being warned against lapsing into
hysteria and tears. A major innovation in the new discourses on the
companionate marriage was the valorization of ‘communication,’ in
which the controlled expression of emotions was encouraged. The new
therapeutic expertise granted couples permission to acknowledge con-
flicts in which anger arose from lack of communication. To achieve
communication, individuals needed to learn to express their emotions,
but at the same time to maintain emotional control. This focus created
a new opportunity for marriage counsellors to formalize their role as
mediators between spouses. Hochschild (1990) astutely notes that the
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 155

permission for emotional display gave rise to the need for ‘expression
rules.’ The implication of this quest for communication in marriage
makes it more necessary that the parties develop the skills necessary
to discharge this unveiling of ‘feelings.’ To have feelings as the lived
experience of emotions has become a fundamental manifestation of
subjectivity.
There is an elusive but significant slippage from ’emotions’ to ‘feel-
ings’; it is not a sharp break, but it is characteristic of the contemporary
discourses of the emotions. Nietzsche ([1887] 1989) was characteris-
tically blunt: ‘I am opposed to the pernicious modern effeminacy of
feeling’ (20). Emotions generally take the form of distinguishable and
categorized forms; they are ordered into positive and negative emo-
tions. There are a few ambiguous emotions that do not fall neatly into
a simple positive and negative classification, such as nostalgia, suspi-
cion, and possibly boredom, although this tends to fall on the negative
side. Emotions carry names, and even though their meanings are not
necessarily precise, it is generally possible for there to be some agree-
ment about what they designate; there is a common sense intuition that
‘we’ know what we are talking about when we refer to jealousy, hate,
or loneliness. In contrast, ‘feelings’ lack the same degree of definition.
I can report feeling sad or happy and these feelings are considered
equivalent to the same named emotions; but I can also have feelings
that I cannot put names to. The result is that a culture of feelings is
one in which individuals are expected to have feelings, and there is a
certain sense in which any and all feelings are legitimate expressions of
our self-identity.

The Search for Intimacy in an Age of Pure Relationships

One of the most pervasive elements of contemporary emotional dis-

course is that of intimacy. It is a goal much sought after. Yet, like other
contemporary elements of emotional discourse, it is far from clear ex-
actly what intimacy requires. While the twentieth-century marriage
aspired to companionship, today the benchmark for a successful rela-
tionship is an intimacy that requires a mutuality of closeness, openness,
and trust that sets the bar very high. This is the age of Anthony Gid-
dens’s ‘pure relationships,’ whose hallmark is the very strange form
of quasi-contractualism: both parties consent to enter the relationship
on terms which allow either party to leave if the relationship no longer
satisfies their needs. Thus, intimacy is more than a desired goal to be
156 Alan Hunt

aimed at, but is the very condition of the survival of the relationship.
Eva Illouz (2008) is correct to pose the problem as being ‘the tyranny of
intimacy’ (105).
Intimacy has been extended to wider familial relations, in particular
between parents and children. The quest for familial intimacy is inter-
estingly captured in the phrase ‘quality time.’ It is not so much the con-
tent of the relation, but the fact that sufficient time should be set aside
from the busy lives of modern parents to devote to their children. At
the same time ‘love’ is no longer an adult emotion grounded in sexual
attraction, but rather plays a significant role in the parent-child relation
with both parents and children regularly needing to confirm their love.
Here there is evidence of the paradox of emotions; love stands at the
emotional apex and yet it has become an everyday ritual to be displayed
whenever parent and child part for even a short time. Thus, there is a
routinization of love that can detract from its emotional import.
Meštrovicÿaa (1997) seeks to capture this trajectory by means of his
concept of the ‘post-emotional.’ I don’t like the term post-emotional
since ‘post’ suggests that society is no longer emotional. But what
he succeeds in capturing is the coexistence of a hyper-emotionality,
a quest for emotional intensity, with a routinization of emotions that
strip them of any real content. This is the emotional configuration that
I seek to capture with the idea that today emotions are increasingly
‘hollowed out.’ By this I mean that while modern social life requires
that emotional practices play a more pronounced part in personal life,
the emotions deployed tend to have less depth or intensity. This is
most evident in the expectation today that everyone should ‘be nice’ at
the expense of real emotions. In the new etiquette books, ‘being nice’
becomes ritualized and routinized, and is a primary form of the de-
mand for emotional self-command, such that the emotions are no lon-
ger policed by the injunction for ’emotional control’; rather, emotional
display is to be modulated in such a way that no possibility arises of
giving offence or of raising the emotional temperature of social inter-
actions. The devaluation of emotions is epitomized in the rise of the
greeting card industry that makes possible a quasi-emotional act whose
content is sentimental and conventional; and more significantly, send-
ing a card frees the purchaser from any need to express an active or
personalized emotion. This devaluation of emotions is also manifest
in the infantalization of Valentine’s Day – no longer an expression of
young love, the occasion has moved into a children’s realm in which
it is compulsory to send a card to everyone in the class. This is part of
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 157

the commercialization of emotions, epitomized by the routinization of

bunches of flowers for Mother’s Day; and in a world of gender equal-
ity Father’s Day had to be invented – although my hunch is that many
people have seen through the fabrication and ignore it. So, rather than
the descriptor ‘post-emotional,’ these processes constitute a move to a
world of synthetic emotions.
A significant component of synthetic emotion is the group that
maybe termed ‘vicarious emotions.’ These have become of increasing
importance as the expansion of popular culture provides endless op-
portunity to experience emotional stimulation vicariously. One of the
most commonly encountered forms is provided by TV soap operas in
which the viewer is invited to share the emotional responses of fic-
tional characters. The joys and sorrows of the daily lives of the char-
acters provide endless opportunities to not only empathize with the
fictional others, but for their emotions to pass across the boundary of
virtual reality and become the viewers’ own emotional experiences.
This is evident in the subsidiary material of soap opera magazines
and on-line sites in which the division between characters and actors
is blurred and the viewer comes close to direct participation in the
real-fictional emotions. In another form provided by TV, talk-show
audiences are invited to engage with the displayed emotions of the
participants who are selected precisely to provide emotional dra-
mas; the audience is expected to take sides and thus to participate
in the emotions on display. This public display of emotions provides
an extraordinarily direct display, not only of specific emotions, but,
more significantly, of a composite of the emotional style of the wider
cultural configuration. Individuals exposed to such an emotional
lexicon are provided with a tutorial guide to socially recognized or
appropriate emotional responses without having to experience the
emotions themselves. One might speak of the emotional ideology of
the period in the sense that soap operas and talk shows provide a full
display of the emotional contexts that are typical of the period. Jock
Young (2007) provides a delightful illustration. While in the neigh-
borhood that is represented in the long-running soap East Enders, he
goes into a local pub where passive spectators are watching one of
the episodes; they don’t interact with each other but they participate
vicariously in the emotional diet being played out (183). The culture
of celebrity similarly provides an invitation to participate in the emo-
tional context of the distant but so close lives of the celebrities (Fried-
man 1999).
158 Alan Hunt

Distant Suffering

A significant contemporary manifestation of synthetic emotions is the

exponential increase in our exposure to distant suffering. The video
camera ensures that the news media is suffused with images of dis-
tant suffering, epitomized by images of starving children in far-away
refugee camps, and of natural disasters, plane crashes, and the like. It
is probable that the high profile in the media attests to a lack of convic-
tion about what constitutes news, with the sense of the irrelevance of
what constitutes matters of public and political importance. Distant
suffering has come to fill the vacuum. But from the standpoint of emo-
tions, this is significant because it mobilizes sentiments of pity, sorrow,
and anguish while rendering viewers passive because there is little or
nothing that they can do; or at best we can reach for our chequebooks
or put a few coins in a collection box. The passive viewer is incited to
an emotional response to distant suffering, but the response can only
be plastic because there is such separation between the viewer and the
reality of distant suffering. Thus, although appearing to be a form of
emotional expressivity, its all too frequent shallowness suggests that
it is a manifestation of the hollowing out of emotions (also see Suski,
this volume).
However, there is a further paradoxical dimension that arises from
distant suffering. It has become all too common that whenever a local
incident involving death or injury occurs the institution in question
offers counselling to help people presumed to be emotionally af-
fected by the event. This clearly is a manifestation of the self-interest
of counselling professionals, but such a response also expands the
category of victims to any degree of proximity. It constructs people
as emotional while ignoring the capacity of people to cope through
their own resources with the ordinary difficulties of everyday life.
This is even more evident with respect to larger-scale events such
as earthquakes and floods, when the counselling teams are on the
ground only just behind the emergency forces. The complexity of con-
temporary responses to distant suffering is further illustrated by the
increasingly common phenomenon of ‘strangers’ exhibiting emotions
and practices of grief and mourning aimed at celebrities with whom
their relationship is merely virtual; the long-lived emotionalism ex-
hibited after the death of Princess Diana is the classic instance of this
response.
 The Civilizing Process and Emotional Life 159

Conclusion

I have sought to harness the theoretical resources provided by Norbert

Elias’s concept of ‘civilising process’ and Raymond Williams’s idea of
the ‘structure of feelings’ to give a historical framing to this engagement
with a sociological account of the formation of the emotional configura-
tion of contemporary Western societies that has revealed the paradoxi-
cal nature of the emotional currents that course through society. The
argument has been developed that we persistently encounter a tension
between an endorsement of an increasingly expressive emotional dis-
play between intimates, of which the highly charged emotionality of
parent-child relations is the exemplar, and, on the other hand, emotion-
ality by its ubiquitous display across a wider range of relations tends to
have less depth or intensity, that I have characterised as an emotional
hollowing-out. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way in which
the ‘love’ emotion, which had long been elevated to the apex of inter-
personal intensity, now figures in a wide range of relational disposi-
tions. It may of course be that we need to take account of the fact that
emotions do not have a fixed content and that ‘love’ is today a much
broader category referring to a range of positive sentiments. If this is
the case, it nevertheless underlines thecontention that there is a con-
tinuing hollowing-out of emotional experience.
The ways in which emotions figure in everyday practices de-
marcate the distinctive civilizing and decivilizing features of mod-
ern societies. Emotions are much more than the internal feelings
and behavioural practices of individuals; rather emotions form the
structures of feelings through which social relations are lived and
contested. What I have not addressed is the bigger question of how
we might explain the historical trajectory of the emotional culture
that I outline. A few reflections may be in order. Changes in emo-
tional culture cannot be independent of wider changes in mod-
ern social formations. There does seem to have been a surprisingly
strong reaction against the core rationalism of the Enlightenment,
which takes the form of a widely diffused anti-intellectualism associ-
ated with increasing uncertainty about progress. One of its strongest
manifestations is an increasing skepticism about the natural sci-
ences whose most visible manifestation has been the reaction against
evolutionism, which, leaving aside the battles over ‘intelligent de-
sign,’ speaks to a deeper current against objectivism one of whose
160 Alan Hunt

major manifestations is a wider sympathy for non-rational, non-

evidentiary forms of thought illustrated by the popularity of alter-
native medicine and alternative therapies. This has found popular
expression in a turn towards subjectivism, which finds expression in
the ready resort to hollowed-out emotions that embody a narcissism
that refuses an engagement with the real difficulties of building and
sustaining viable social relations.
9 Emotions In/and Knowing

andrea d o u cet a n d nata s h a s . maut hne r

Introduction

This chapter focuses on how emotions matter in our knowing pro-

cesses. It is rooted in a two-decade-long research program where we
have explored interconnections between relationality, reflexivity, and
inter-subjectivity in knowledge construction processes at intertwined
levels of nitty-gritty methodological processes and epistemological
conceptualization (e.g., Mauthner and Doucet 1998, 2003; Doucet and
Mauthner 2002, 2006, 2008). Across several cross-cultural qualitative re-
search projects, we have been grappling with emotions: our own, those
of our research respondents, and those that reverberate through our
fieldwork practices and epistemological thinking. Building from the
perspective promulgated in this book that emotions matter, our argu-
ment is that they matter profoundly in knowledge construction pro-
cesses. More specifically, we centre this piece around two questions.
First, how can we bring emotions into our methodological practices?
Second, how do we do this without veering into what Bourdieu terms
‘narcissistic reflexivity’?
Our chapter is structured into three sections. We begin with a brief
background on our theoretical approach to emotions in research, while
also providing some detail on how emotions have been taken up in
qualitative research practice. We then explore selected ways of work-
ing with emotions in research practice. Finally, we address the issue
of if, and where, a sustained attention to emotions in research leads to
‘narcissistic reflexivity.’
162 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

Background and Definitions

Our reflections on emotions draw on cross-disciplinary influences,

including anthropology, sociology, philosophy, geography, and psy-
chosocial studies. In brief, we maintain that emotions in research are
embodied (Rosaldo 1980; Holland 2007; Denzin 1984), involve issues
of judgment and rational thought (see Nussbaum 2001), and are emi-
nently relational, thus constituting ’embodied, interdependent human
existence’ (Burkitt 1997:42; Davidson, Smith, and Bondi 2005; Davidson
and Smith, this volume). We also posit a strong link between epistemol-
ogy and emotions, which is grounded in a view that emotion constitutes
a way of knowing our social worlds (Game 1997). Furthermore, our
particular focus on narrative analysis in research draws together the
issue of knowing others and their stories through empathetic connec-
tion (Nussbaum 1990). Finally, we draw on British geographer Liz Bon-
di’s work on emotional geographies and her argument that knowledge
construction involves attending to the emotional connections between
researchers and their research subjects (Bondi 2005; Knowles 2006; Hol-
land 2007; Davidson and Smith, this volume). We agree with Bondi
(2005) that emotions are inter-subjective, rather than intra-subjective,
and should ‘be approached not as an object of study but as a relational,
connective medium in which research, researchers and research sub-
jects are necessarily immersed’ (433; see also Hollway 2008a, b).1
As detailed throughout this book, the field of the sociology of emo-
tions has burgeoned in the past decade; its articulation within the more
specific field of qualitative methodologies has also received much at-
tention for several decades, especially by feminist researchers. Much of
this attention, however, has focused on emotions during fieldwork or
data collection. One of the most well-recognized instigators of this long
conversation is Anne Oakley’s (1981) classic article published nearly
30 years ago on woman-to-woman interviewing and the importance of
establishing good rapport and good emotional relations with research
respondents.
Challenging the masculine assumptions of ‘proper interviews’ that
dominated the sociological textbooks of the time, Oakley (1981) sug-
gested that contrary to an objective, standardized, and detached ap-
proach to interviewing, the goal of finding out about people through
interviewing was ‘best achieved when the relationship of interviewer
and interviewee is non-hierarchical and when the interviewer is pre-
pared to invest his or her own personal identity in the relationship’ (41).
 Emotions In/and Knowing 163

Drawing on her interviews with mothers, she maintained that her own
identity as a mother came to act as a leveller against a power hierar-
chy in the interviewee-interviewer relationship: ‘Where both share the
same gender socialization and critical life-experiences, social distance
can be minimal’ (55; see also Finch 1984; Rheinharz 1992). Although
Oakley did not explicitly use the term emotions in her work, the tenor
of what she was expressing relates explicitly to how particular types
of methods promote emotional connections and conversely enhance a
research relationship where ‘social distance can be minimal.’
While Oakley’s work was celebrated and embraced by many feminist
researchers, her argument about connectivity and shared emotions on
the basis of gender soon came to be viewed as overly naïve and essen-
tialist. A decade later, such perspectives were being criticized and de-
constructed by many feminist researchers who argued that emotional
connections in research relations are also fraught with inevitable rela-
tional distances and barriers between researchers and the researched.
Sociologists were particularly vocal on this issue of the potential dan-
gers associated with trying to be ‘friendly’ in interviews. Pamela Cot-
terill (1992), for example, drew attention to the ‘potentially damaging
effects of a research technique which encourages friendship in order
to focus on very private and personal aspects of people’s lives’ (597;
see also Stacey 1991). Ironically, in what could be seen as a 360-degree
turn, many feminist researchers began to note that striving for greater
emotional connection did not always have straightforwardly positive
results. As noted more recently by Gesa Kirsch (2005): ‘It is perhaps
ironic, then, that scholars are discovering that methodological changes
intended to achieve feminist ends – increased collaboration, greater in-
teraction, and more open communication with research participants –
may have inadvertently reintroduced some of the ethical dilemmas
feminist researchers had hoped to eliminate: participants’ sense of dis-
appointment, alienation, and potential exploitation’ (2163).
Along with these discussions on how emotions should be invested
in research, researchers have simultaneously recognized the potential
dangers of such investments, and developed other lines of investiga-
tion on the subject of emotions in fieldwork. For example, there is a
large body of research on the emotional exhaustion of fieldwork (Wolf
1996; Hubbard, Backett-Milburn, and Kemmer 2001) as well as on
managing one’s own emotions in interviews and/or fieldwork (Chong
2008; Coffey 1999; Kleinman and Copp 1993). In relation to the lat-
ter, researchers have pointed to how they have engaged in ’emotion
164 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

management,’ which Karen Ramsay (1996) called ‘learn(ing) not to cry

or laugh in the field,’ and which Hochschild (1983, 1998) termed, more
widely, ‘surface’ and ‘deep acting.’
Perhaps the most extensive treatment of this issue is found in Klein-
man and Copp’s (1993) aptly titled Emotions and Fieldwork. While writ-
ten nearly 15 years ago, it remains highly relevant to a discussion of
emotions in knowing processes. The crux of their argument is that
qualitative researchers tend to emphasize mainly positive emotions,
including relational connection, towards their research subjects. In con-
trast to a rosy rendering of research relations, these authors encourage
fieldworkers to acknowledge a wide range of feelings that they experi-
ence in the field and to take these feelings into account in data analysis.
The strength of their work lies in Kleinman and Copp’s emphasis on
emotions in both fieldwork and data analysis, a point that is especially
important given that there has been relatively less attention given to
the latter.
Our own work coalesces with that of Kleinman and Copp and their
plea for greater attention to emotions in data analysis (e.g., Mauthner
and Doucet 1998, 2003). Yet, while this point that emotions matter pro-
foundly in data analysis and knowledge construction processes is now
a fairly well accepted one, the question of how to identify and work
with emotions in our research practice is one that requires further atten-
tion. We begin to take up this challenge below.

Working with Emotions in Our Knowing Processes

Over the past two decades many researchers have found ways of grap-
pling with, managing, and writing about emotions in fieldwork. Psy-
chosocial researchers, for example, draw on psychoanalytic concepts,
such as transference and counter-transference (see Bondi 2005) and the
‘defended subject’ (Hollway and Jefferson 2000; Hollway 2008a) to con-
ceptualize ways of working with emotions in research (Lucey, Meldody,
and Walkerdine 2003; Walkerdine, Lucey, and Melody 2001, 2002; Hol-
lway and Jefferson 2000). Another prominent group of scholars seeking
to incorporate emotional ways of knowing into research practice are
relational researchers, who have been developing and using the Lis-
tening Guide, an approach to fieldwork and data analysis that focuses
detailed attention on emotional inter-subjectivity (Brown and Gilligan
1992; Mauthner and Doucet, 2012). This approach is useful for socio-
logical and other scholars seeking to work with emotions in research in
 Emotions In/and Knowing 165

meaningful ways, but who have no training in psychoanalytic theory

or practice (see also Bennett 2009).
In this second part of our chapter, we draw on our ongoing develop-
ment of the Listening Guide approach to qualitative research in order
to explore three ways of working with emotions in knowledge con-
struction processes. These are: (1) field notes; (2) linking fieldwork and
data analysis processes; and (3) group-based data analysis (including
memory work). We begin with a brief overview of our version of the
Listening Guide.

The Listening Guide

The Listening Guide, also referred to as the voice centred relational

method, is an ‘emergent method of social research’ (Hesse-Biber and
Leavy 2006), which was developed over several years by Lyn Brown,
Carol Gilligan, and their colleagues at the Harvard Project on Women’s
Psychology and Girls’ Development at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education. Its theoretical roots are in clinical and literary approaches,
interpretive and hermeneutic traditions, and relational theory (e.g.,
Belenky et al. 1986; Brown and Gilligan 1992; Gilligan 1982, 1988; Miller
1976, 1986). Since its inception, it has been used, extended, and adapted
in diverse multidisciplinary projects within psychology, sociology,
education, and social work across several countries (e.g., Brown 1998;
Doucet 2006; Halbertal 2002; Gilligan et al. 2006; Mauthner 2002; Mc-
Cormack 2004; Tolman 2002; Way 1998, 2001).
We first used the Listening Guide as doctoral researchers working
with Gilligan at Cambridge University in the early 1990s, with Mauth-
ner further deepening her understanding of it as a postdoctoral student
of Gilligan’s at Harvard University (1995–6). While using the method
under the guidance of Gilligan, we also simultaneously began to de-
velop our own version of it. In the ensuing decades, we have further re-
fined this interpretive guide with each subsequent research project that
we have taken on, drawing on other methodological approaches which
complement it, especially recent innovations in narrative analysis (see
Doucet and Mauthner 2008). While respecting its history, our version
of the Listening Guide is a more critical sociological one which relates
to our broad interest in theoretical and empirical understandings of
reflexivity, feminist approaches to methodologies and epistemologies,
questions about what constitutes ‘data,’ and theoretical debates on sub-
jectivities.
166 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

If there is a recurrent core to the Listening Guide approach, especially

as articulated in our recent work, it is an integrated set of themes that
rely on a relational ontology, inter-subjectivity in knowing, a deeply
reflexive approach to knowledge construction, and an emphasis on
narrative and narrated subjects. While its initial innovation is found
in how it gives particular attention to the detailed processes of how to
analyse qualitative data, and how to ‘do’ reflexivity, it also provides a
reminder of the critical importance of the deeply engaged researcher in-
volved in all stages of the research process, through open and receptive
interviewing processes, reflexive field notes, and group-based analysis.
We explore each of these below.

Field Notes

While taking field notes is standard practice in ethnography or in an-

thropological research (e.g., Clifford 1990), detailed field notes can act
as an important part of our knowing processes in sociological research
projects and as vehicles for linking emotion, observation, interpreta-
tion, and analysis. According to Kleinman and Copp (1993), when we
‘immerse ourselves in the setting and feel like real fieldworkers there
is a tendency to record voluminous notes as “recorded facts,” as proof
that we were there, and to “downplay our reactions and feel like good
social scientists” ’ (19). We concur with their argument that avoiding
negative emotions about the research process and its participants can
lead to us to put off our analysis and to miss crucial observations that
may lead to alternate explanations that build on those same negative
emotions. We also suggest that field notes can act as an important emo-
tional bridge between data collection and data analysis, and that doing
one’s own data collection allows for a greater possibility of the link be-
tween emotions felt while being in the field and those that resurface in
analysis and writing. This has led us to argue for a critical approach
towards the increasing tendency for more established researchers to
delegate fieldwork to more junior research team members (Mauthner
and Doucet, 2008).
The issue of how to do field notes, however, remains somewhat of a
‘secret’ in qualitative research texts (but see Wolfinger 2002). The ques-
tion thus remains: How do we utilize field notes in ways that record
some of the emotions that may matter in our knowing processes?
Guidelines for writing field notes are found, either implicitly or
explicitly, in writing on the Listening Guide. Two points can be men-
 Emotions In/and Knowing 167

tioned here. First, as the Listening Guide is focused on listening and

attending to the emotional quality of the sound and tone of the voices
that we record on our tape recorders, we recommend that, where pos-
sible, researchers listen again to their interviews and begin to jot down
initial interpretations and responses. This allows for a weaving of
emotional and intellectual responses to our research subjects and the
narratives being told and heard (see also Hollway and Jefferson 2000;
Hollway 2008b).
Our second point about field notes in relation to the Listening Guide
approach to research is that they can provide the beginning of a first,
‘reflexive’ reading of interview data; that is, data analysis begins in
the field notes as we re-engage with our research subjects and as we
document our initial thoughts and feelings about our encounter and
our interpretations of the many layers of evolving narratives (see also
Somers 1995; Doucet and Mauthner 2008). While, as described below,
the Listening Guide advocates several systematic readings of interview
transcripts, its first reading combines insights from narrative research
and literary theory, which translate into an integration of narrative
analysis (see Riessman 2008) combined with reader response (Radway
1991). This highly subjective and intuitive reading can be started even
before interviews are transcribed from talk to text in the form of initial
recorded reflections in field notes.
In the projects in which we are currently engaged,2 some of our
most important insights have emerged in the emotional space of field
note writing immediately after we leave the interview setting – in cof-
fee shops, in our home office, on the bus or train, or in our cars. Sis-
ter approaches to the Listening Guide, such as the burgeoning field
of psychosocial methods, take a slightly different approach to field
notes, attending to how the fantasies and defences of researchers af-
fect fieldwork, analysis, and writing (Walkerdine, Lucey, and Melody
2002; Lucey, Meldody, and Walkerdine 2003); as recently described by
Wendy Hollway (2008b), psychosocial researchers may also utilize psy-
choanalytic insights to record field notes about embodied expressions
of research participants.

Connection between Data Collection and Data Analysis

A second way of working with emotions during our research processes

is to emphasize a continuous flow between fieldwork and data analysis;
as discussed above, this can be achieved partly through documenting
168 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

our emotional responses in field notes. It is also important to note that

emotional connections may, and often do, occur out of a sense of ‘being
there’ in the field (see also Geertz 1973, 1988). While a seemingly simple
point, its radical nature is revealed when we consider current academic
climates where more and more team research is being conducted and
where grant holders and lead researchers may do less and less of their
own fieldwork (see Mauthner and Doucet 2008). An excellent depic-
tion of the importance of this view, while 30 years old, still strikes us as
powerful and worth repeating. In the words of anthropologist, Rosalie
Wax (1971):

There were many times when I found sitting in the classrooms or driving
many miles to call on Indian mothers so tiring and time-consuming that I
was tempted to stay home and busy myself with ‘analyzing my materials’
and letting the younger research assistants do the hard, dirty, and some-
times very depressing legwork. But circumstances forced me to do much
of the observation and quasi participation myself. When the time came
to write our report, I was intensely grateful that I had done this, for there
were all manner of statements and remarks in our field notes (and the fill-
in interviews) that we would otherwise have been unable to understand.
Somehow, by sitting in so many Indian homes . . . I, consciously or uncon-
sciously, had picked up the cues that helped us to ‘understand.’ And we
picked up these cues, not through introspection or by extrapolation from
someone else’s notes, but by remembering what we saw and listening to what
we heard. (266–7, emphasis added)

Regardless of their career stage, researchers can benefit from conduct-

ing their own interviews, as these constitute ‘privileged moment(s)’
of knowledge construction (Bourdieu et al. 1999:615). If, as argued above,
emotions in research are embodied, relational, and inter-subjectively
constituted between researcher and researched, then research ‘data’
must be conceptualized as much more than textual residues encapsu-
lated in interview transcripts. Our argument here is that the emotions
gleaned during data collection, and tapped back into during data anal-
ysis, can lead us towards knowing particular forms of understanding
of social phenomena. This is, moreover, part of a larger epistemologi-
cal issue of constantly challenging ‘the curious divide of the theory and
practice of field research’ (Wacquant, personal correspondence, 2009;
see also Wacquant 2009a). Loic Wacquant (2009a) articulates this partic-
ularly well in his explanation of the difference between ‘egological’ and
 Emotions In/and Knowing 169

epistemic reflexivity (121–2, see also 2009b): ‘. . . epistemic reflexivity is

deployed, not at the end of the project, ex post, when it comes to drafting
the final research report, but durante, at every stage in the investigation.
It targets the totality of the most routine research operations, from the
selection of the site and the recruitment of informants to the choice of
questions to pose or to avoid, as well as the engagement of theoretic
schema, methodological tools and display techniques, at the moment
when they are implemented’ (2009b: 147).

Group Analysis

Group analysis of interview transcripts can also provide a further

venue for working with emotions in our knowing processes. While
the Listening Guide employs multiple and successive ‘readings’ of
interview transcripts, a first reading focuses on a narrative reading
combined with a reflexive reading that attends to a wide range of re-
sponses, including emotional ones. The latter part of this first reading
involves reading oneself in the text, and watching for how we respond
to being back in the research relationship. Providing a way of maintain-
ing a sustained relationship with research subjects as well as a concrete
way of ‘doing reflexivity,’ this approach offers the excellent suggestion
of using a ‘worksheet’ technique for this reading; that is, the interview
transcript is transformed into a working document where the respon-
dent’s words are laid out in one column and the researcher’s reactions
and interpretations are laid out in an adjacent column (Gilligan, Lyons,
and Hanmer 1990; Brown and Gilligan 1992; Mauthner and Doucet
1998; see also Norum 2000). This technique enables the researcher to
examine how and where some of her own assumptions and views –
either emotional or theoretical – might affect her interpretation of the
respondent’s words, and in turn how she later writes about the per-
son. As described by Lyn Brown (1994): ‘. . . the first listening or read-
ing requires the listener/interpreter to consider her relationship to the
speaker or text and to document, as best she can, her interests, biases
and limitations that arise from such critical dimensions of social loca-
tion as race, class, gender and sexual orientation, as well as to track her
own feelings in response to what she hears – particularly those feelings
that do not resonate with the speaker’s experience’ (392).
This ‘reading’ of interview transcripts can be done individually or
in small groups with trusted colleagues. In the first research projects
where we used the Listening Guide, along with Carol Gilligan and a
170 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

small group of doctoral students at Cambridge University, we spent an

intensive period of about 17 months collectively analysing each other’s
interview transcripts and building emergent explanations and theo-
retical analysis out of that group work (Mauthner and Doucet 1998).
Working within the context of a group was extremely useful, because,
having read extracts from our transcripts, others were able to point out
where we might have missed or glossed over what they regarded as
key aspects of the interview narrative. This made us acutely aware of
how our emotional responses mattered in knowledge construction, as
well as our control in choosing or ignoring particular lines of inquiry
and explanation. That is, working with other colleagues highlighted
how ‘people have more than one way to tell a story and see a situation
through different lenses and in different lights’ (Gilligan, Lyons, and
Hanmer 1990: 95).
Another kind of group work that works with subjectivity and emo-
tion is the small but burgeoning field of ‘memory work.’ Rooted in the
work of German feminist theorist Frigga Haug (1987) and her theo-
ries on self-development, memory work has mainly been taken up
by researchers in the United Kingdom (see Holland 2007; Crawford
et al. 1992; Thomson and McLeod 2009) who have further developed
innovative approaches to bringing out researcher emotions. Working
mostly in teams, researchers use memory work in varied ways to ex-
plore emotions in relation to research topics and research respondents,
and to reflect on how emotions may affect knowledge production.
Memory work has been effectively employed in research on sensitive
or emotionally laden topics – such as motherhood, fatherhood, sexual
violence, and transitions into adulthood. The value of memory work
is well expressed by Thomson and McLeod (2009) who have recently
written: ‘We have engaged in memory work as a complementary re-
search practice for ten years, with regular memory work becoming a
vital part of communication within research collectives, feeding into
the accumulation of a reflexive understanding of our investments in
our topics of research, or connections with and differences from each
other as well as directly into methodological and theoretical develop-
ment’ (16).
As with many methodological approaches, there is no one particular
way or recipe to undertake memory work. Its recent iterations have
been based in group-based approaches (Crawford et al. 1992; Gordon,
Holland, and Lahelma 2000; Thomson and Holland 2005) or in indi-
vidual approaches (Kuhn 2002, 2007), and with differing emphases on
 Emotions In/and Knowing 171

textual journaling or the use of photography. In spite of its continuing

diversity within research practice, memory work can nevertheless be
called a methodological ‘family’ (Thomson and Holland 2009:29) and
an important means of working with emotions in our knowing pro-
cesses.

Narcissistic Reflexivity

Taking an approach to knowing that involves attending to our emo-

tions through field notes, an integrated approach to emotional work
in data collection and data analysis, and group analysis and memory
work, leads us to the question of how much emotional work needs to be
done in order to achieve ‘good’ knowing, or what philosopher Loraine
Code (1991) has referred to as ‘responsible knowing’(132). On the other
hand, is there a possibility that, by taking emotions into account in our
knowing processes, we might inadvertently veer into what Bourdieu
(2003) called ‘narcissistic reflexivity’ (281)?
Bourdieu’s concept of ‘narcissistic reflexivity’ is part of his larger
‘obsessive insistence on reflexivity’ (Wacquant 2006:11; emphasis added),
which is, in turn, part of an extensive body of writing that spans sev-
eral decades. In brief, Bourdieu (2003) describes this concept in the fol-
lowing way: ‘Scientific reflexivity stands opposed to the narcissistic
reflexivity of postmodern anthropology as well as to the egological re-
flexivity of phenomenology in that it endeavours to increase scientific-
ity by turning the most objectivist tools of social science not only onto
the private person of the enquirer but also, and more decisively, onto
the anthropological field itself and onto the scholastic dispositions and
biases it fosters and rewards in its members’ (281).
Bourdieu’s work with Wacquant helps to explicate even further his
conception of narcissistic reflexivity; he writes: ‘This is to say that the
sociology I argue for has little in common with a complacent and in-
timist return upon the private person of the sociologist or to look for
the intellectual Zeitgeist that animate his or her work . . . I must also
dissociate myself completely from the form of ‘reflexivity’ represented
by the kind of self-fascinated observation of the observer’s writing and
feelings which has recently some fashionable among some American
anthropologists’. . . who, having apparently exhausted the charms of
fieldwork, have turned to talking about themselves rather than their
object of research (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1990:72; see also Bourdieu
2003). Bourdieu (2003) is thus concerned not to turn the lens ‘onto the
172 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

private person’ and to avoid being taken in by ‘the “diary disease,”3

an explosion of narcissism sometimes verging on exhibitionism’ (282);
elsewhere, he urges researchers to draw a distinction between the
“epistemic individual” and the “empirical individual” (Bourdieu 1988),
and he cautions against being taken in by the “biographical illusion” ’
(Bourdieu 1987, cited in Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:207). In light of
these points, our question is: In reflecting upon the emotions that mat-
ter in our knowing processes, how can we ensure that we do not get
trapped into research processes which constitute a ‘self-fascinated ob-
servation of the observer’s writings and feelings,’ and which encour-
age ‘a thinly veiled nihilistic relativism’ as opposed to ‘a truly reflexive
social science’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:72).
Drawing again from Bourdieu and Wacquant, we argue that this
achievement of a ‘truly reflexive social science’ can be done by at-
tending not only to the personal and biographical positioning of the
researcher but to his/her positioning within theoretical, disciplin-
ary, institutional, political, and cultural locations that impact on their
knowing processes (Doucet and Mauthner 2003, 2008). In this vein, we
agree with Bourdieu (2003) that epistemic reflexivity must attend not
only to‘the recording and analysis of the “pre-notions” (in Durkheim’s
sense) that social agents engage in the construction of social reality; it
must also encompass the social conditions of the production of these
pre-constructions’ (282). As Wacquant (2006) puts it, there needs to
be systemic attention to ‘the personal identity of the researcher: her
gender, class, nationality, ethnicity, education, etc.,’ but also ‘(h)er loca-
tion in the intellectual field,’ including ‘disciplinary and institutional
attachments’ (11). Put differently, this means that the objects of study
or ‘social phenomena [are] to be found, not in the consciousness of in-
dividuals, but in the system of objective relations in which they are
enmeshed’ (5).
Thus a key point for this discussion is to appreciate Bourdieu and
Wacquant’s argument that efforts to be self-reflexive in our know-
ing processes can indeed translate into ‘narcissistic reflexivity’ when
this reflexive thinking remains focused only on the ‘private person of
the sociologist.’ Nevertheless, we posit that there is a means of work-
ing with emotion and memories in ways that can have epistemologi-
cal weight. For example, in her work on primary caregiving fathers,
Doucet (2006, 2008) reflected on how a dream came to her while she
was midway through her data analysis and she realized that a child-
hood memory about a single father who lived across the street from her
 Emotions In/and Knowing 173

childhood home was, in fact, the instigating point for her sympathetic
openness to the narratives of lives of fathers who were primary caregiv-
ers of children.
Did Doucet fall into the trap, which Bourdieu (2003) clearly scorns,
of shamelessly promoting ‘the biographical particularities of the re-
searcher or the Zeitgeist that inspires his (her) work’ (282)? While this
danger is, indeed, a possibility, we would argue that it does not neces-
sarily emerge from this rather intimate approach to reflexive thinking.
As argued by Amanda Coffey (1999), ‘[t]he boundaries between self
indulgence and reflexivity are fragile and blurred’ so that there ‘will
always be the question of how much of ourselves to reveal’ (133). Our
view is that any attention to memories, emotions, and dreams as insti-
gators or critical parts of our research must always hold a sustained
focus of inquiry towards why and how they matter to the knowledge
being produced. What is thus required is detailed attention to how
these emotions, memories, or dreams – whether analysed individually
or within a group – lead us down a particular avenue of analysis, expla-
nation, and knowledge construction (see also Gordon 1996; McMahon
1996). If they alter the general direction or tenor of the knowledge being
produced, then they may indeed be useful to reflect on and to possibly
write up as part of our ‘audit trail’ (Seale 1999).
We also want to point out that Bourdieu himself, in his last published
work (2008), quietly argued that there is a way to turn the ‘private
person of the sociologist’ and their ‘intuition’ into a form of research
‘capital’:

‘This kind of experimentation on the work of reflexivity . . . shows that one

of the rarest springs of the practical mastery that defines the sociologist’s
craft, a central component of which is what people call intuition is perhaps,
ultimately, the scientific use of a social experience, which, so long as it is
first subjected to sociological critique, can, however lacking in social value
it may be in itself . . . be reconverted from handicap into a capital. As I have
said elsewhere, it was no doubt a banal remark of my mother’s . . . that . . .
triggered the reflection that led me to abandon the model of the kinship
rule for that of strategy.’ (86)

This admission of Bourdieu that a ‘banal remark’ from his mother ‘trig-
gered’ an important theoretical line of inquiry strikes us as both radical
and somewhat contradictory to his earlier remarks on the dangers of
narcissistic reflexivity. This admission is not the only one in which he
174 Andrea Doucet and Natasha S. Mauthner

reflects, in a subdued manner, on how his own biographical history

and his emotional connections played a role in motivating particular
theoretical interests.
Two other examples of his attention to biographical influences are
Bourdieu’s rambling reflections on how his father praised the young
Bourdieu in his rebelliousness and ‘stubbornness’ against authority
at school. The first is in a passage that begins with: ‘Rediscovering a
photograph in which I was walking alongside my father . . . I remem-
ber what he once said to me, when coming out of the lycée, I related
one of my latest clashes with the school administration’ (2007:89–90).
A further instance are his thoughts on how ‘(t)he experience of boarding
school no doubt played a decisive part in the formation of my disposi-
tions’ (2008:90). Such reflections open up the possibility of considering
Bourdieu as an ally, albeit a cautious one, in work that argues for the
importance of emotions in knowing. As we have argued elsewhere in
our work on reflexivity, it is a matter of how it is done; it is a matter of
‘degrees,’ and of recognizing the necessary limits of knowing all that
matters to our knowing (Mauthner and Doucet 2003). We thus argue
that there is indeed a possibility that attending to emotions in research
and in our knowing processes can veer towards ‘narcissistic reflexivity.’
What matters, then, is how this work is accomplished so as to balance
biographical and emotional influences with a sustained attention to
the demands of a larger conception of epistemic reflexivity. According
to Henri Bernard (1990), Bourdieu ‘has shown how ethnography can
be reflexive without being narcissistic or uncritical’ and offers ‘a way
out of the cul-de-sac that ethnographers and theorists of ethnography
have created for themselves’ (58, 71, cited in Bourdieu and Wacquant
1992:41). We concur that this remains a challenge for researchers who
want to take emotions seriously in their knowing processes.

Conclusions

In this chapter, we have highlighted cross-disciplinary writings, par-

ticularly by feminist sociologists, emotional geographers, and psycho-
social researchers, on the critical importance of taking emotions into
account in processes of knowledge construction. As attested through-
out this book, the field of the sociology of emotions is burgeoning;
nevertheless, less attention has been given to how to work with emo-
tions in our research practice and our knowing processes. Rooted in
 Emotions In/and Knowing 175

a two-decade-long immersion in extending the Listening Guide ap-

proach to qualitative research, we have laid out several practical strate-
gies to identifying and utilizing emotions in ways that matter to our
knowledge production. Specifically, we discussed field notes, an inte-
grated approach to emotional thinking in data collection and analysis,
and group analysis and memory work. Finally, building on selected
insights of Bourdieu and Wacquant, we explored the issue of how re-
searchers can work on emotional terrain in their reflexive thinking and
practices without veering into ‘narcissistic reflexivity.’
Our approach underscores the importance of the inter-subjective
emotions that occur between researcher and the researched in field-
work, field notes, and analysis. We also noted the value of psychoso-
cial methods in excavating emotions in research while simultaneously
concurring with Bennet (2009) that social scientists with no training in
psychoanalytic methods are less well placed to bring such insights into
their field notes and analysis. A final point on emotions in our know-
ing processes relates to the retelling of stories and to the knowledge
outputs that are eventually produced. In our view, an additional key
challenge for researchers who work with and write about emotions is
how to convey, even partially, a small degree of the rich sensuousness
of being in the field with people – embodied subjects who enter into a
brief relation with us as they tell their stories in voices that register a
wide array of emotions and with gestures that convey more than texts.
That is, with Wacquant (2008b), we maintain that it is critical to work
towards a sociology of emotions in methodological writing that seeks
‘to expand textual genres and styles so as to better capture the taste and
ache of social action’ (101).

NOTES

1 We recognize that there is a complexity of work on the differences between

emotions and feeling, and emotions and interpersonal processes, distinctions
that are dealt with in other sections of this text (see also Turner and Stets
2005).
2 Doucet is currently writing a book on mothers who are primary bread-
winners in Canada and the United States, while Mauthner is conducting
a cross-cultural research project on academics and their work.
3 Bourdieu (2003) is drawing here on Clifford Geertz (1998:89), who is
drawing in turn on Roland Barthes (1980:532).
This page intentionally left blank
PART II

Emotions and Empirical Investigations

At the conceptual level, many authors argue that emotions play a

crucial role in shaping human interaction (see Turner and Stets 2005;
Probyn 2005; Lupton 1998). Until recently, however, research regard-
ing emotions in sociology was methodologically underdeveloped. This
section briefly maps out some of the methodological trends in the soci-
ology of emotions.
The entire tool kit of social science is now open for the study of emo-
tion (Planlap 1999), which is a blessing and a curse. The opening of
emotions for analysis by social scientists is a blessing, since, for a few
decades, emotions were primarily an object of inquiry for cognitive and
neurological science, black-boxing the relational aspects of emotions.
The opening of emotions for analysis by all social scientists is also a
curse since coherent theoretical understandings of emotions remain
few and far between, which can result in methodological disarray. Up
to this point in Emotions Matter, the chapters have focused on theoreti-
cal issues, addressing a lacuna concerning concepts and ontological
commitments. The latter half of this volume now turns to empirical
investigations, demonstrating how a relational approach to emotions
can actually inform the craft and techniques of social scientific research.
The prominent American sociologist C. Wright Mills was hesitant to
use the idea of ‘social science’ and preferred the idea of ‘social studies,’
relevant here since the particular methodological and epistemological
commitments required to study emotions as relational cannot be con-
strued as scientific in an abstracted empiricist sense.
Robinson, Clay-Warner, and Everett (2008) argue that there are two
methodological trends in the sociology of emotions in the United States.
First, there has been a qualitative and descriptive methodological ap-
178 Part II: Emotions and Empirical Investigations

proach concerned with context. Katz and Hochschild are key amongst
the scholars contributing to this trend. Second, there has been a quan-
titative and predictive trend using formal modelling techniques. The
volume by Clay-Warner and Robinson (2008) puts these two method-
ological trends into dialogue. While several of the chapters in Emotions
Matter dwell on structural issues, our volume does not follow the trend
towards quantitative and predictive methodologies, for two reasons.
First, a relational approach to emotions is skeptical of attempts to pre-
dict understandings of emotions or outcomes of interaction. A relational
approach to emotions studies emotions in action, assuming that there is
a creativity or contingency in action that cannot be predicted. Second,
we question the objective of trying to predict understandings of emo-
tions or outcomes of interaction as well as the use that such predictive
knowledge might be put to. For instance, in the field of criminal justice,
the goal of trying to predict understandings of emotions is tied to pre-
ventative policing of so-called ‘antisocial behaviour’ and an extension
of the authority of criminal justice institutions.
Of note here is that the trend towards quantitative and predictive
methodologies is not one that has been followed by Canadian sociolo-
gists. In Canada, sociologists and related scholars have a tendency to
draw more from social and cultural theory coming from the United
Kingdom as well as the qualitative and descriptive research trend in
America.
Several of the following chapters engage in studies of emotions in
situ, using numerous methodological techniques. Studying emotions
in situ implies particular methodological and epistemological com-
mitments that are contrary to structuralist but also psychological ap-
proaches to emotions. On the one hand, structuralist accounts ignore
phenomenological, interactionist, and corporeal elements of emotions
as the experience of social relations. For instance, despite his critical
focus on stratification and power, the model of emotions proposed by
Turner (2010) tends towards a structuralism that ignores interaction and
corporeality. Yet psychological approaches to emotions often abstract
emotions from interaction and phenomenal and corporeal experience
(and from other emotions as well) in order to treat them asindicators or
variables in (primarily) quantitative studies. We are critical of experi-
mental approaches to research on emotions, where interaction is cut out
from naturalistic settings and reduced to static behaviourism in a labo-
ratory setting. Psychological theories of emotions can be reductionist
in separating the analysis of emotions from a larger gestalt of the self
 Part II: Emotions and Empirical Investigations 179

(see also Sartre 1949). Not all psychological research is as adamantly

positivist as we suggest, but we have construed psychological research
this way to make it clear that a relational approach in sociology and
related disciplines requires an attempt to conduct research on emotions
at the interface of the self and social structure. The outcome of a rela-
tional approach, whatever methodological form it takes, should be a
de-reification of emotions.
Methodological strategies reflective of this relational approach in-
clude participant observation used in conjunction with interviewing,
and historical sociology or a historicization of emotions. Whereas an
historical approach to emotions (similar to what Hunt and Suski at-
tempt in this volume) does not so much examine emotions in situ,
this method does place emotions in temporal context, examining how
designations of emotions at the intersection of self and social structure
change over time. Participant observation used in conjunction with in-
terviewing (similar to what Walby and Spencer, Deri, as well as Book-
man attempt in this volume) can allow for investigation of emotions in
situ, though we want to stress the magnitude of long-term ethnogra-
phies as well as the tendency towards qualitative realism and subjectiv-
ism that can emerge in qualitative research that is not properly patient
and designed. With these comments on method, we are not suggesting
that the sociology of emotions become myopic as it regards the way
we do research. We are arguing that a relational conceptual approach
to emotions entails methodological and epistemological commitments.
As Doucet and Mauthner put it in their chapter, our understanding of
emotions as relational must feed back into our understanding of the
research encounter itself. Although the chapters that follow are sugges-
tive of how to study emotions as relational, more innovation in the field
of qualitative research is required to achieve this goal.
This page intentionally left blank
10 How Emotions Matter: Objects,
Organizations, and the Emotional
Climate of a Mass Spectrometry
Laboratory

k e v in walby and da le s pencer

Introduction

How do relations with objects matter for the trajectory of organizations

and the people who work in them? There is a small literature on this
topic. For instance, Suchman (2005) explores the capacities of objects
to link human workers in organizations. Knorr-Cetina (1997) has ar-
gued that sociality with objects has become a primary form of sociality.
In organizations today there has been a shift away from solely human
worlds towards thinking of ‘objects as relationship partners or embed-
ding environments’ (25). Objects play an important, almost pivotal, role
in organizations. Objects are vital, like partners, to scientists as well.
Although there is a growing literature on objects and organizations,
this has yet to be fully linked to the sociology of emotions. Emotions can
be conceptualized as the experience of relations with others (Barbalet
2002). Up until recently, there has been a dearth of empirical research
on emotions in organizational studies (Sturdy 2003). One consequence
of this underdevelopment concerning theoretical and methodological
approaches to emotions in organizational studies is that the signifi-
cance of emotions as it regards relations with objects has been ignored.
Scholars in organizational studies have now begun to assess the way
emotions provide a sense of belonging, attachment, and solidarity in
organizations (Miller, Considine, and Garner 2007; Landri 2007; Rafaeli
and Worline 2001). Coupland and colleagues (2008) argue that the way
people tell stories about emotions signals acceptance and/or dismissal
of organizational practices. Yet scholarly depictions of people experi-
encing emotions at work in organizations are a new invention in orga-
nizational studies (Sturdy 2003; Ashford and Humphrey 1995; Fineman
182 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

1993). In this chapter, we demonstrate how the study of emotions in

relation to objects can supplement the way we understand practices,
rules, and status in organizations.
We discuss organizational practices regarding a mass spectrometer
located in the Earth Sciences Department of one Canadian university.
University science departments and their laboratories can be thought of
as organizations since they operate in a shared material setting, with a
shared set of practices, rules, and understandings (Schatzki 2006, 2005).
Our case study supplements debates regarding emotions in organiza-
tions (Fineman 2000; Sandelands and Boudens 2000) by demonstrating
how emotions in relation to objects matter to organizations. We draw on
Barbalet’s (1998) notion of ’emotional climates,’ which refers to social
sharing of emotions at the group level, to show how emotions matter in
three ways. First, emotions provide an orientation towards objects and
other people in the organization. Second, emotions at the group level,
in the form of an emotional climate, provide a mechanism for binding
those who are part of the lab relations amongst themselves. Third, emo-
tions matter insofar as the micro-politics of maintaining the emotional
climate and governing organizational practices regarding the central
object affect how group members become valued and gendered.
The mass spectrometer object we discuss, referred to as ‘Shiri’ by the
earth scientists, is used to produce mass spectrums of rock samples and
determine their composition. Shiri’s name initially came from the side
of a carton that was atop the box the spectrometer arrived in when sent
from the manufacturer. The scientists’ experiences of sociality with this
object fashion a trajectory for the organization and create a shared nar-
rative among lab members. Objects do not always do what scientists
want (de Laet and Mol 2000). Natural scientists are always dealing with
‘a continuous resistance in their objects’ (Czarniawska 2004:53). Law
and Singleton (2005) argue that it is the aleatory capacities of objects, as
opposed to their immutability, which makes them crucial to organiza-
tions, since some solution to the contingency posed by the object must
constantly be sought after. We define ‘aleatory capacities’ as the ten-
dency for objects to produce unanticipated effects that generate emo-
tions for humans who are enmeshed in relations with the object. These
aleatory capacities of Shiri affect the formation of an emotional climate
in the organization. As humans try to standardize the performance of
the spectrometer, they experience and narrate joy and frustration. The
circulation of joy and frustration, especially concerning the small suc-
cesses laboratory leaders achieve in working with the object, creates the
 How Emotions Matter 183

emotional climate. Emotions are socially shared in particular contexts

since they cannot be restricted to any particular individual (Ahmed
2004). The emotional climate arises from the sharing of joy and frustra-
tion related to attempts at managing the capacities of the spectrometer
object. We examine scientists’ talk about emotions as evidence of at-
tempts to stabilize Shiri’s capacities for producing contingent results.
We also analyse the rules for governing the work of scientists, and the
effect that scientists’ deviant actions have on the maintenance of the
emotional climate.
This chapter is organized into four parts. First, we discuss the cen-
trality of objects to the experience of work in organizations. Second, we
make an argument concerning how emotions matter in science depart-
ment laboratories as organizations. After a note on method, we present
our case study of Shiri and the emotional climate of a mass spectrometer
lab by discussing how the aleatory capacities of the spectrometer influ-
ence the scientists’ orientation to the object and to each other, and how
this leads to the formation of an emotional climate. We discuss what
maintenance of the emotional climate means in terms of the gendered
micro-politics of emotions, which are constitutive of the organization’s
trajectory and the lives of workers in the organization. Experience of
frustration compared to joy marks one’s place in the status hierarchy
of an organization (Clark 1990). Maintenance of the emotional climate
of the lab is frustrating work, but it is also devalued, feminized labour.
We argue that consideration of emotions related to object-centred so-
ciality is a significant method of understanding gender subordination
in organizations. Attention to the role of objects in forming emotional
climates concerning science work is a contribution to understanding
organizations, since the focus on emotions as the experience of relations
with humans and with objects supplements understandings of how or-
ganizational practices are experienced.

Objects and Organizations

Understanding the capacities of ‘objects’ is key to appreciating how

emotions related to objects matter to organizations. The way that re-
searchers in science and technology studies have conceptualized
objects is useful for informing how we conceive of the relationshipbe-
tween objects and organizations. As some of the first scholars interested
in objects and organizations, actor network theorists have conceptual-
ized objects as ‘actants’ and ‘immutable mobiles’ (Latour 1996; Callon
184 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

1986). ‘Actants’ are material quasi-objects with their own capacities.

‘Immutable mobiles’ are versions of such quasi-objects that stay stable
and are made use of by those trying to enroll others into world-making
projects (Lynch and Woolgar 1988; Latour 1987). Knowledge networks
form like eddies around objects, drawing other actants to the project.
The object is thought of as an effect of network relations (Law 2002).
Earlier discussions of actor network theory (ANT) were limited in-
sofar as they tended to operate with preconceived notions of what an
object is, instead of asking ontological questions of the objects them-
selves (Law and Singleton 2005). In saying X is an object, an ontological
claim about what X is and what X can do is posited, which works to ‘fix’
the object as singular and unchanging. It is crucial to keep ‘a willing-
ness to push the boundaries of what an object is, or could be’ (Law and
Singleton 2005:340). In other words, objects are ‘fluid’ (de Laet and Mol
2000). Objects are open to change in terms of what they are materially
composed of and how people relate to them.
We conceptualize Shiri the spectrometer as a fluid object since this
object is always being taken apart and added to, and since the way
people in the laboratory establish the significance of the spectrometer is
open to change. The boundaries and the meanings of the spectrometer
are understood by earth scientists themselves as in flux, which influ-
ences how earth scientists in the lab approach the object, sometimes
with careful technique, sometimes with attributions of superstition. As
Ahmed (2006) puts it ‘objects do not only do what we intend them to
do’ (47); their capacities are aleatory, which means our orientation to
the object and the other people related to the object is contingent. The
success of people working with the spectrometer can only be a matter
of degree. We also comment on the gendered meanings that objects can
be imbued with as a result of their aleatory capacities.
Knorr-Cetina’s (1997) work on sociality with objects provides in-
sight as to how objects become central in organizations. She argues
objects are not simply commodities or instruments. Contemporary
organizations are characterized by ‘an increasing orientation towards
objects as sources of the self, of relational intimacy, or shared subjec-
tivity and social integration’ (9). Solidarity emerges from this sociality
with objects. Solidarity refers to how emotions bind members to the
project of the organization and to one another.2 Science laboratories
are best conceived as organizational sites where relations with ob-
jects, relations between workers, and relations with other laborato-
ries are ongoing. Following Knorr-Cetina, our case study of an earth
 How Emotions Matter 185

sciences department examines how the spectrometer object becomes

pivotal in narratives regarding emotions, work, and the future of the
organization.

How Emotions Matter

Emotions are commonly conceived of as hardwired as opposed to em-

bedded in social contexts (Coupland et al. 2008). Yet emotions need not
be taken as idiosyncratic drives. Instead, ‘the emotion is in the social
relationship’ (Barbalet 2002a:4). The sociology of emotions theorizes
emotions as relational and investigates emotions not as an abstract cat-
egory but in their specificity (Probyn 2005). The question of what emo-
tions ‘are’ is displaced to focus on what emotions ‘do’ and how people
talk about emotions (Ahmed 2004a). However, whereas much of the
literature has conceived of emotions as experienced purely in relation
to humans (Kemper 2004; Burkitt 2002; Williams 1998), we conceive of
emotions as the experience of relations with humans and with objects.
The relationship between science and emotion is not one of science
existing in scientists’ heads. We think of science as a set of organiza-
tionally based material and relational processes involving scientists in
groups, as a form of organizing (Thagard 2002). Barbalet (2002a) has
argued that it is necessary to go beyond treating science in terms of
individual brilliance, the politics between rival organizational groups,
or even the passion for knowledge that scientists exhibit, to examine
instead how emotions matter in lab settings. Emotions matter to an un-
derstanding of laboratories cum organizations in three ways.
The first way that emotions matter is in providing an orientation to-
wards objects and other people (also see Ahmed, this volume; Katz, this
volume). Ahmed (2006) argues that emotions are crucial in our orienta-
tion towards objects insofar as emotions are a particular way of turn-
ing towards an object and forming a definite sense of it. Objects can be
viewed and worked with in any number of ways; orientation is always
in flux. Yet the particular way we view and work with an object at any
time is a matter of the emotions we experience in our relations with that
object as well as with other people. Objects are shaped by our orienta-
tion towards them. Yet, in having their own capacities and their own
persona, objects also shape our orientation. The possibility of relations
with humans and objects depends on a basis for experiencing those
relations; emotions are the basis (Collins 2004). Below, we describe how
joy and frustration provide an orientation towards objects and humans
186 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

in the organization, but also how this orientation is generated out of

relations with the spectrometer object.
Emotions are the basis for experiencing relations with humans and
objects, but this experiencing happens somewhere, and, over time, in a
specific context (also see Davidson and Smith, this volume; Bookman,
this volume). The second way that emotions matter is by providing a
mechanism for binding together those who are part of the organiza-
tion’s social group (in our case, members of a lab). The ’emotional cli-
mate’ concept signals emotional experiences that are collective, at the
group level, related to the maintenance of the group as acting together
on shared and specialized projects (Barbalet 1998). Emotional climates
include patterns of experience not experienced by non-members. Par-
ticipation in the group need not be equal, as each member contributes
differentially to the emotional climate of the workplace. Though an
emotional climate can be organized around any cluster of emotions,
below we delimit the emotions discussed in our case study to joy and
frustration. According to Ahmed (2004a), ‘emotions do things, and they
align individuals with communities . . .’ (119). Not only do emotions
provide an orientation towards objects and other people in relations
with that object; emotions experienced at the group level also de-
marcate the parameters of the group and can orient humans to those
outside the milieu. Below we discuss the formation of the emotional cli-
mate, but also the rules that steady the emotional climate by governing
the actions of scientists. We focus on how Quimbanda, the laboratory
leader, and Nell, the lab manager, contribute differentially to the lab’s
emotional climate.
Third, emotions matter insofar as the micro-politics of emotions
influence the way work is organized in the lab. Our case study dem-
onstrates one example of how relations between what Knorr-Cetina
(1999:221) calls incipient and full-fledged scientific persons are medi-
ated through emotional micro-politics that mark status. We define sta-
tus as ‘a position in some system or pattern of positions . . . related to
the other positions in the unit through reciprocal ties, through rights
and duties binding the incumbents’ (Goffman 1961:85). Attention to the
micro-politics of emotions in organizations – how people narrate their
frustration, indignation, resentment, and so on, in relation to others in
the organization – can signal how subtle gender disparities operate and
how these disparities are experienced. In laboratories, the tendency is to
relate to one another with a sense of ‘mono-gender’ insofar as everyone
is treated as a scientist (Knorr-Cetina 1999: 232). Czarniawska (2006)
 How Emotions Matter 187

conceptualizes gender subordination as an organizational practice, and

in our case study we examine the experiencing of certain emotions in
relation to objects and other people as a marker of status subordination.
The work of gendered subjects can be devalued depending on their
relationship to an object in an organization. Below we consider the
work of Nell – the Earth Sciences Department mass spectrometry lab
manager – in terms of emotions, status, and gender.

Case Study Methods: Opening the Black Box

Revealing the complexities as well as contradictions of living and

organizing, case study research investigates events with a focus on
context (Flyvbjerg 2006; Yin 2003). Analysis of only a few participant
narratives from interviews is justified using the case study method
since understanding the context, not staking universalizing claims,
is the purpose. With an understanding that workers in organizations
have multiple senses of self and offer multiple interpretations of any
event (Halford and Leonard 2006; Sims 2005; Czarniawska 2004), we
asked interviewees a series of open-ended questions about their emo-
tions concerning laboratory work. We sampled graduate students
and professors in order to maximize the range of experiences. Early
interviewees were located by soliciting participants online in the
departments of biology, chemistry, physics, and earth sciences. En-
tirely consistent with the method of selection proposed by case study
researchers (Flyvbjerg 2006; Ruddin 2006), after completing an ini-
tial set of interviews in the various departments, the Earth Sciences
Department was selected for a case study since our analysis of the
spectrometer’s centrality to lab operations demonstrates how emo-
tions in relation to objects matter in organizations. A year after the
initial interviews, we returned to our respondents in earth sciences
and discussed changes in lab relations and organizational practices.
Interviews were supplemented by observations of scientists’ work
processes in the labs.3 We substitute pseudonyms for respondents’
names.
Law (2004) writes that as social scientists, events and processes
‘necessarily exceed our capacity to know them’ (6). Research methods
produce the reality they understand, rather than discover it. The same
goes for emotions. Knowledge workers such as scientists are always
burying traces of their constructional activities and black-boxing
their methods (Law 2004). Since emotions are an important part of
188 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

scientists’ orientations towards objects, scientists might be wary of

speaking about lab emotions. We are thus influenced by the meth-
odological principles of actor network theory, but with a twist. The
foundational position of actor network theory (ANT) is that we study
science in action, not ready-made science (Latour 1987). It is not ‘sci-
ence’ per se but the work of organizing and constructing ‘facts’ that is
the focus. We are interested in black-boxed facts, but also in black-boxed
emotions.
Discussing the lack of attention given to methodological issues
concerning emotions in organizational studies, Sturdy (2003) argues
‘emotion does not speak for itself ’ (83). Emotion is difficult to know
in any definitive form. Although narrative analysis allows researchers
to move beyond the ‘tick box’ measurement approach to understand-
ing emotion (Fineman 2004), post-hoc emotion narratives can mask
the relations that generated the experience (Sandelands and Boudens
2000; Fineman and Sturdy 1999; Ashford and Humphrey 1995). We
focus on joy and frustration as prominently narrated emotions within
the emotional climate of the earth sciences department. Whereas joy
is thought to be a primary emotion, and frustration is thought to be
a tertiary emotion derivative of anger, we are less interested in what
these emotions ‘are’ than how scientists narrate a sense of them in re-
lation to their lab work and the spectrometer object. We demonstrate
how joy and frustration are generated from the contingency of success
and failure in science work. As per Sturdy’s (2003) comments on the
limits of knowing emotion through interview-based research, we are
reflexive about the claims we make using the emotion narratives of
respondents.
Our rationale for pulling back from a more ANT-oriented study of
the lives of objects in organizations is that such analyses, which insist
on indeterminacy between humans and objects, while innovative, can
miss how subtle forms of (gendered) subordination operate at work.
Though it is crucial not simply to assume women are subordinated in
organizations because of gender (Alvesson and Billing 1992), gender
and emotion were for a long time ignored in organizational studies
(Halford and Leonard 2006; Sturdy 2003; Linstead 2000). Our analysis
demonstrates how maintenance of the emotional climate depends on
subtle gendered subordination of status in the hierarchy of science, and
how this subordination occurs vis-à-vis relations with the lab’s central
object: the mass spectrometer.
 How Emotions Matter 189

The Emotional Climate of a Mass Spectrometry Laboratory

Orientation towards the Object

Earth Science is interdisciplinary insofar as it draws from geology, ge-

ography, geophysics, chemistry, and mathematics. Earth sciences de-
partments develop specific niches depending on the expertise they
offer and the types of objects they work with. The Earth Sciences De-
partment in our case deals with mass spectrometry. We toured the earth
sciences department, viewing the rock crushing room, the microscope
rooms, the rooms for chemical rock alteration and sample construction,
as well as the mass spectrometry lab itself. As mentioned earlier, lab
members refer to the central lab object – the mass spectrometer – as
‘Shiri.’ It is not unusual for scientists to name the objects they work
with, said Dr Quimbanda, the most senior and experienced scientist in
the lab: ‘I know other laboratories where a lot of the instruments have
names . . . major research instruments . . . I can think of other labs, it is
people names, it is not calling them Archetypteryx or something like
that, but people names, I know of one called Oliver. I guess it is because
we work with them so much and they display personalities.’
By naming Shiri and placing the object at the centre of their lives
and work, Shiri becomes a part of the relational milieu of the lab. Our
connection with objects is central to working life and home life (Turkle
2004). The salience of the attribution of persona (Maffesoli 1996) can-
not be understated, since the persona of Shiri creates an orientation to-
wards the object for scientists within the group. Orientation ‘describes
a kind of affective investment we have in others’ (Probyn 2005:13). The
scientists’ reliance on Shiri’s capacities, to perform efficiently and ac-
curately, facilitates an orientation towards the object and one another
insofar as all lab sociality centres around Shiri.
Shiri’s technical capacities are known and esteemed. Orientation to-
wards the object reflects a readiness for anything to happen. Shiri’s ca-
pacity to affect the scientists’ work, through slowing it up or throwing
off precision of analysis, is acknowledged:

If something goes wrong with her the whole department shuts down. We
can still crush rock or make samples or clean the lab, but can only go for
so long. A month ago there was something wrong with Shiri. For three
weeks her findings were way off, and everyone’s research was coming out
190 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

with totally unexpected results. Useless. So our wonderful professor who

works with Shiri, he was trying to fix her and could not. Everyone was
frustrated. [Another university] has a mass spectrometer, it uses argon
gas. The [other university’s] spectrometer has been down for six months.
Graduate students and professors are not able to do their work, because
what is needed is a little piece called an ion multiplier. They are really
frustrated. (Suzie, graduate student)

The slowing up of work is not Shiri’s fault per se for all members of the
lab. Blame is attributed to ancillary mechanical parts inside to spare
Shiri of culpability, as if blaming Shiri would encourage another con-
tribution to the frustrating scene. Indicative of the scientists’ orienta-
tion towards the spectrometer, Shiri is anthropomorphized while the
component parts that can be swapped out and upgraded retain a status
as mere bits. Made up of multiple other objects (casing, vacuum cham-
bers, filaments, fiber optic cables, sediment), Shiri is subject to various
interpretations, since if the object is unpredictable ‘so too is what makes
it work’ (Law 2002:98; see also Whitley and Darking 2006). The way
that the earth scientists work with one another is influenced by the
affiliative feeling between them and their mutual dependency on the
spectrometer. Objects affiliate humans to each other in organizations
in ways that are binding (Suchman 2005; Collins 2004). The affiliative
feeling also extends to the object at the centre of sociality in this context.

Capacities of the Fluid Object

Objects do not have minds of their own, but they do not always perform
in the way we want them to. Sometimes objects do things we think they
are incapable of. Objects are thus ‘fluid’ insofar as objects can physically
change and the meanings we impute to objects also change (de Laet
and Mol 2000). To be a relationally situated object in an organization is
to be subject to what we call ‘capacity stabilization attempts.’ Humans
try to get the object to work the way they want them to. The object is
changing conceptually and materially, but the humans wish it not to
do so. Human reaction to failures during capacity stabilization contrib-
utes to the attribution of a persona to the object. Narratives regarding
Shiri’s persona vary depending on how one is situated in the milieu
of the lab. The narrative of Suzie, a graduate student, demonstrates
that some scientists have a closer relationship with the spectrometer
than others: ‘She knows when her master [Quimbanda] is in the room
 How Emotions Matter 191

because as soon as he leaves the room, Shiri will conk out. I have to call
Quimbanda at home and say “something is wrong with Shiri.” ’ Suzie
relies on Quimbanda to manage the aleatory capacities of the object, to
keep the spectrometer running. Quimbanda is the ‘laboratory leader’
(Knorr-Cetina 1999:221), who selects personnel and has a significant re-
lationship with the central lab object. Quimbanda’s narrative regarding
Shiri’s persona reflects his status in the lab and orientation towards the
object: ‘We get into this silly business: people think the mass spectrom-
eter is possessed by a spirit. There are jokes about if things did not work
probably it was a new moon or a full moon. This is interesting in the
context of an instrument called Shiri, referring to the moon. We have a
good atmosphere down here and there is a lot of joking that goes on.’
Meisiek and Yao (2005) argue that ‘silly business’ makes sense in or-
ganizations as much as humour in the social sharing of emotion is bind-
ing, relieves tension, and creates meaning for group members. When
testing procedures do not go as planned, the scientists sometimes point
to contingencies outside the laboratory to explain Shiri’s defiance, be
it supernatural possession or astronomical forces. Quimbanda is never
bored with Shiri, and says, ‘Sometimes you wish it was a little more
boring, you wish there was not as many problems to deal with.’ These
‘problems’ are the capacity of the fluid object to act in an aleatory man-
ner. Objects with an aleatory character are bestowed a persona by hu-
mans but also have the capacity to contribute to their own persona.
The name of the object stays the same, but the object signified by
invoking Shiri is in constant flux. Every time a repair is made, parts are
being swapped in. Software is upgraded. New samples are constantly
being loaded on to the filament. Shiri is one of only a handful of spec-
trometers in Canada, and this makes the object especially important
to scientists involved in spectrometry. When we asked if people go to
other laboratories when Shiri’s circuits or software act up, Quimbanda
responded:

They just have to wait until she gets fixed. So far we have not had any seri-
ous problems. Knock on wood. We had one outside the warranty period,
last summer. It was not Shiri herself but an auxiliary unit . . . Everything
was fine, except the current was running but not all the way to the fila-
ment. We would put the samples in, pump it down, and a couple hours
later we would have results, except the results were all off . . . We could not
figure out what it was. It was going though the motions but not doing the
real job . . . I spent the first month of my sabbatical thinking it was a severe
192 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

technical problem, talking to the manufacturer, trying to track down in-

formation, that was frustrating . . . If you do not count my time, my salary,
it only cost us five dollars to fix the bloody thing. The components were a
couple of power transistors.

Quimbanda knocked on wood several times during interviews, indic-

ative of his hope that he can, through various attempts, stabilize the
capacities and persona of the spectrometer. Talk about Shiri’s ‘moods’
is talk about the fluidity of the object, Shiri’s capacity to change and
be unpredictable. The relationship between objects and humans in the
laboratory is put through constant repositioning (e.g., back to the draw-
ing board) due to the aleatory capacities of the object, where failure
results in frustration experienced by the scientists. One piece of ancil-
lary equipment started giving us some trouble about two years ago. We
limped along with it for a year, with it breaking down fairly frequently,
once every two months . . . that has really been a frustration’ (Quim-
banda). The fluidity of the object extends to the users of the object (de
Laet and Mol 2000) because their orientation towards the object must be
variable rather than durable.

Formation of the Emotional Climate

As de Laet and Mol (2000) put it, objects need a community to keep
up and running. The object is part of the community, since the orga-
nizational practices of the community are formed in relation to the
object. In the words of Knorr-Cetina (1997), ‘object worlds . . . make
up the embedding environments in which expert work is carried out,
thus constituting something like an emotional home for expert selves’
(9). Relations with Shiri generate an emotional home or climate for the
earth scientists in the lab. However, the relationship of Quimbanda is
the most important here, because, according to everyone in the lab, he
has the ‘golden touch’ (Knorr-Cetina 1999:229) that keeps Shiri running
the way the lab needs if the lab is to be operational.
The talk of earth scientists about emotions oscillates between narra-
tives of joy and narratives of frustration. Earth scientists report that the
most joyful part of their work, the part where they consider themselves
successful, is when they get some publications out. For Quimbanda, the
most enjoyable part of his work with Shiri is ‘getting good results for
a project. Having results that make some sense.’ Success here can only
be a matter of degrees since capacity stabilization attempts are often
 How Emotions Matter 193

bound to failure. The most frustrating part of research in spectrometry

is when the object fails. Quimbanda attributes failure to poor train-
ing of graduate students, the size of the samples, and contamination
during sample construction or sample loading. The sharing of joy and
frustration leads to formation of the emotional climate, though Quim-
banda’s relationship with Shiri is central in establishing an emotional
tenor. As Nell, the lab manager, puts it: ‘We all know isotopes, we can
all run a mass spectrometer when it is working, but only Quimbanda
can fix her. We need him. He has a magic touch, which of course he de-
nies . . . he is the only one who can make Shiri sing. If something goes
wrong he instinctively knows how to fix her. That is a skill none of
the rest of us have. Not even the technicians. He waltzes in and says
something bizarre and goes to some menu no one has ever seen before,
presses a few numbers and it works again.’
To stabilize the capacities of Shiri, Quimbanda employs techniques
only he seems to possess. Over time, there is a built-up attentiveness
between Quimbanda and Shiri. Generated in this long-term interaction
are mutual focus and closeness. This is what Collins (2004) calls ‘emo-
tional entrainment,’ insofar as confidence is built between partners in
ongoing interaction, which, in the case of Shiri and Quimbanda, is rec-
ognized by members of the organization. We extend the conception of
emotional entrainment, which signals effervescence built up over the
course of a relationship, to include objects. This enhances the argument
of Collins, which otherwise conceptualizes emotions as concerning
only humans. Compared to the narratives of incipient scientists, Qui-
mbanda’s narrative regarding Shiri is characterized by the emotional
entrainment characteristic of intimacy. The emotional climate of the lab,
with its circulating joy and frustration, builds around this pivotal rela-
tionship between Shiri and Quimbanda.

Maintenance of the Emotional Climate

There is a micro-politics to emotional climates inasmuch as emotions

serve to mark one’s status in relation to others in a given context (Clark
1990). Micro-politics of emotions are constitutive of the organization’s
trajectory and the lives of people working in organizations. Whereas
the formation of the emotional climate in this case has to do with the
ability of the laboratory leader to create some success for the organiza-
tion in relation to the aleatory capacities of the object, the maintenance
of the emotional climate – evident in the relation between Shiri and
194 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

Nell, the lab manager – evinces this connection between emotions, sta-
tus, and gender in organizations.
Quimbanda does most of his work directly with the spectrometer.
Nell, the lab manager, does most of her work with the numerous other
scientists interested in Shiri. Nell has worked in spectrometry labs all
over Europe as well as with supply companies, but is an ‘incipient sci-
entist’ (Knorr-Cetina 1999) insofar as she has not experienced upward
mobility in the hierarchies of science organizations. There is resentment
on Nell’s part when she says, ‘I used to be right at the front of my re-
search area,’ but is now unable to chase her passion (despite her qualifi-
cations) due to a gendered division of labour both in her own home and
her second home with the Shiri group. Nell must not only carry on her
position in the lab, but also take care of her newborn child, often having
to bring the child into the lab. Nell’s job is to stock the lab with sup-
plies, complete the bookings, and manage the finances. ‘I do all the little
things that need to be coordinated by a person,’ she said, and, though it
can be hectic, ‘two days a week is right for me. I cannot be right at the
front of my research area here because I do not have a faculty position
and I do not have the emotional energy, I am overloaded with family
responsibility.’
Nell’s position in the lab is as crucial as Quimbanda’s though it is
attributed less status. Nell takes pride in her job as scientist-administra-
tor, finding some parts joyful: ‘There is satisfaction for me in knowing
the lab is speeding along. Everything is smooth, ordered, samples are
not getting held up, the accounts are in order, the feeling that the work
I have to do is all done, so the lab appears to run itself, so Shiri is sing-
ing . . . I help people and meet their needs, I anticipate peoples’ needs,
helping them get the work done, making peoples’ life easier because
they are all stressed and busy . . . plus times when I am running the
machine and we make a breakthrough or make her work really well or
we overcome problems. That feels really good.’
The ‘singing’ of Shiri is a euphemism for optimal performance of the
lab. When there is a sense of order and Shiri is ‘singing,’ Nell experi-
ences the joy of helping other members of the emotional climate. Care
for others, aiding others in completing their tasks, gives a sense of sat-
isfaction to Nell. Such a characterization of the lab challenges quotidian
conceptions of the uncaring, impersonal pursuit of truth and reveals
the emotional effervescence integral to the relational milieu of the labo-
ratory (Gherardi, Nicolini, and Strati 2007).
 How Emotions Matter 195

Nell’s job is not so much to manage the aleatory capacities of the

spectrometer as much as the unforeseen events imposed upon the lab
by members who want access to the spectrometer. Nell said life in the
lab is characterized by frenetic action and frustration. The most frus-
trating part of her job is people who do not ‘play by the rules’:

I have tried to set up a smooth system, for instance with booking the ma-
chine. They have to put the request in by 9 a.m. Thursday morning to use
Shiri the next week. But there are two people in the lab who are completely
incapable of meeting the deadline. And then they wonder why there is
no time for them or they go and ask Quimbanda, but Quimbanda does
not know the schedule . . . that is my job, it is not his job. It makes life im-
mensely complicated. I send out a form at the end of the month for people
to pay for usage. The same person will never pay on time, she never has
the money, I spend my time chasing her on stupid things. It is a job that
should get done quickly. Yet one or two people always come in and screw
it up. It gets difficult and frustrating. She wants a lot of time because she
has a lot of samples to run, but she does not play by the rules.

Lower in the organizational hierarchy, it is Nell’s job to rope in the rule-

breaking of other scientists, which creates frustration. Nell is frustrated
that so much of her time is wasted. When Nell took a medical leave, lab
relations broke down. As Quimbanda put it, students ‘want to put the
samples in and get the numbers, so maintaining quality control under
those circumstances is another aspect of not having the lab manager
around at the moment, because she kept a pretty good eye on that sort
of thing . . . [Nell] can keep an eye on them . . . there are things [students]
could do to make quite a mess down there. Cause a fair bit of trouble.’
Devoid of the aid Nell provides in managing the organizational prac-
tices of the lab, the sociality formed in relation to the object degenerates.
Because of her position as manager in this milieu, Nell is treated not as
a scientist but more as a caregiver. Caregiving is thought of as ‘femi-
nized labour’ in most workplaces (Halford and Leonard 2006), mean-
ing that the work is attributed less status. As Brewis (2006:499) argues,
there is still a tendency to think of women in academic organizations as
providing a service role.
Following Collins’s (2004) discussion of emotions in groups, Nell is
carrying away less effervescence from the context of lab interactions
than she is contributing (134). These micro-politics of emotions relate to
196 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

status asymmetries in the organization. Despite her academic creden-

tials and serving as the veritable oil that keeps the lab cum organization
in working order, Nell does not acquire the symbolic capital that would
be granted to her if she had an academic position. Nell must deal with
the personnel-related issues of the organization rather than the ‘more
serious’ business of spectrometry and scientific fact construction that
Quimbanda is afforded through his status, reflecting a longstanding
separation of femininity from technical work in organizations (Brewis
2005; Linstead 2001). Nell is very busy with her work as a mother at the
same time she is meant to manage the lab. This double bind acts as a
dividing practice, placing Nell in a subservient position in the organi-
zation. The existing gendered order serves in effect to maintain Nell as
a lab manager. Status asymmetries in science labs and technical depart-
ments are often gendered in this way (Knorr-Cetina 1999:232; Alvesson
and Billing 1992).
Nell is pivotal to ensuring that situated and mundane organizational
practices will be completed, which, consequently, makes her central to
the maintenance of the emotional climate. Nell wrote a training manual
instructing scientists on how to work with Shiri and conduct them-
selves in the lab. The stakes are too high for deviation. Rule-breaking is
disallowed. According to Nell,

. . . the more users we get, it is like a thoroughbred, and if you get people
treating her badly, even if they do not realize they are doing it or it is the
way they were doing it in another lab or elsewhere with an older machine,
you end up breaking it. The samples have to be run very consistently. Each
time we run a magazine of samples we run a standard. We know what
the number should be. You should try to use the same conditions, so you
know you are getting reproducibility. I was looking at the log of standard
data and the way some people are running it and thought, ‘Oh my God.’
The status of the reproducibility of the lab becomes questionable if peo-
ple do what they like or do not follow the guide. It screws up everyone
when the lab’s reproducibility is off, because people ask what the standard
results are and I show them this mishmash of dirty printouts, which is
no good. And then their data does not stand up to scrutiny when they
publish.

Rule-breaking related to Shiri is ‘emotional deviance’ (Thoits 1985) as

a display of emotion by the rule-breaker and an experience of disrup-
tion for the rule-makers and followers (also see Thoits, this volume).
 How Emotions Matter 197

As with Sims’s (2005) research on indignation formed in response to

grievances in organizations, Nell’s frustration is generated out of deal-
ing with scientists who rush too much and do not pay attention. Meant
to prevent degradation of the spectrometer’s precision, guidelines are
incontrovertible descriptive accounts of what is supposed to be going
on in the lab, and present all members subject to the guidelines with
the imperative of accountability (Amerine and Bilmes 1990). Account-
ability and reproducibility are the basis by which action is judged as in
need of normalization.
Scientific laboratories have to be concerned about whether their proj-
ects and standards measure up against the projects and standards of
other laboratories (Knorr-Cetina 1999; Latour 1987). The log of the stan-
dard is reproduced as a printout or a graph and shared in the research
community. Nell is concerned about goings on inside the lab, but she
is equally concerned about the reputation of the lab amongst outsiders.
As Nell explains, the log of the standard is vitally important in pro-
moting the status of the lab and enrolling other scientists to conduct
spectrometry there:

When you publish data you want to make sure it is comparable to the data
of others. You say I have these numbers from this area and I will plot this
data over here and you want to put them all on the same diagram and if
they are different those differences are real, not just because analysis was
wrong and just 10ppm off in one direction. Standards are how we keep
our lab reproducible and know we have the right numbers. You have to
know your data is real and you only do that by running standards and
measuring things correctly, and running duplicates to ensure you get the
same results. You cannot generate any old number to six decimal places.
You have to say how you crushed things, leached them, dissolved them,
measured them, what the standard reproducibility of the lab is, so people
can judge whether they can believe your results.

Enrolment is the end product of an incitement or enticement to the

organization based on strength perceived to arise through the reliabil-
ity and validity of the results produced by the object when it ‘sings.’
The log of the standard represents Shiri’s capacities to a wider audi-
ence of could-be members of the lab. Just as certain rules are meant
to stabilize Shiri’s aleatory capacities and limit the fluidity of the ob-
ject, other rules steady the emotional climate by aligning the actions
of some scientists with the organizational practices of the lab so as to
198 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

prevent the detrimental effects that deviancy could have for relations
with the broader earth sciences community. It is crucial that the emo-
tional experience of inter- and intra-lab relations be of confidence, so
that scientists will be continually enrolled in the lab’s projects. Again,
when Nell took a medical leave, lab relations broke down and very
little research was carried out. As Quimbanda stated, ‘since her ab-
sence there has been basically no one in the lab . . . the machine is
sitting down there most of the time not being used.’ In the absence of
Nell, no one can manage the site, leaving the future of the laboratory-
cum-organization more open-ended than the scientists, especially
Quimbanda, would like.

Discussion

The lab cum organization becomes an emotional climate formed

through each scientist’s relationship to the spectrometer. The micro-
politics of emotional climates occur through the marking of status in
relation to the central object. Barbalet (1998) argues not every group
member experiences the same emotions or the same intensity of emo-
tions in the emotional climate. Nell carries away less effervescence
than she contributes to the emotional climate, and experiences more
frustration than joy because of the position she has been allocated in
the organization. Nell’s position in the lab is lesser than the position
of Quimbanda. Positioning Nell in a service role has the consequence
of reproducing her incipient status in the organization. Nell is treated
as support staff despite her expertise, which amounts to a gendered
economy of emotions and organization (Kerfoot and Knights 1998) in
Nell’s attempts at managing the lab. Maintaining the emotional climate
of the lab is feminized labour, which is devalued despite its centrality
to the organization.
Gender subordination at work in contemporary organizations oc-
curs vis-à-vis particular tasks and activities (Erickson, Abanese, and
Drakulic 2000; Gherardi 1994), and in our case study, those tasks and
activities relate to the management of relations with an object. What
happens when the black box of emotions related to objects in organiza-
tions is opened? Gender subordination in organizations can be demon-
strated through consideration of how emotion narratives are indicative
of one’s status in a particular context (Knights and Surman 2008). Our
discussion supplements existing conceptualizations of gender subordi-
nation as an organizational practice (Martin 1990; Czarniawska 2006)
 How Emotions Matter 199

by showing how organizational practices oriented towards sociality

with objects can lead to the gendering of incipiency in science.

Conclusion

Using the example of laboratory work, this chapter has considered the
relationship between emotions and objects within organizations. The
organizational studies literature has hitherto ignored how emotions
are generated in relation to objects and how these emotions matter to
the work conducted in organizations, which has been our rationale for
this research. The work of lab science is accomplished through relations
between objects and human scientists as well as larger research com-
munities. We have sought to show that emotions concerning objects are
integral to the work done in science organizations as far as they influ-
ence the formation and maintenance of emotional climates. The emo-
tional climate of the spectrometry group is shaped by Shiri’s capacities
and Quimbanda’s attempts at stabilizing them. The process of capacity
stabilization attempts is frustrating due to persistent failure. Small joys
emerge when success is achieved in any degree. Object-centred social-
ity in lab work is riddled with failure and so brings with it the same
vacillating emotional experience as human-centred sociality (Suchman
2005; Orr 1996). Not everyone in the lab shares the same level of emo-
tional involvement with Shiri as does Quimbanda, nor do all the group
members experience the emotions of joy and frustration in the same
way. Overall, the group feeling generated in the dynamic interaction of
different objects and humans leads to a collective effervescence. Main-
tenance of the emotional climate, however, involves a frustrating set of
tasks, such as time managing other scientists who disregard the orga-
nizational practices and protocol of the lab. The emotional climate can
dissipate, and organizational practices can come to a halt when group
members integral to maintaining these lab relations are absent.
We have told a story about the relationship between emotions and
objects in organizations using scientists’ narratives as it regards their
work. Storytelling and use of metaphors are a rich source of creating
meaning as it concerns work in organizations. Consideration of the
stories and metaphors that workers share about their work also al-
lows organizational studies scholars a method of analysing workplace
gender subordination (Czarniawska 2004). ‘Shiri’ is a fluid object,
an object that is always changing in terms of how people relate to it.
Even the scientists’ narratives concerning Shiri oscillate in and out of
200 Kevin Walby and Dale Spencer

anthropomorphism, and the object is imbued with gendered meanings

as a result of its aleatory capacities. The emotional climate of the lab is
always in flux because of the aleatory capacities of this object. Yet ‘Shiri’
is also a metaphor for the relational research context of the lab, the or-
ganizational practices that group members must align themselves with,
and how the work of scientists is allotted status.

NOTES

1 We thank Seantel Anaïs, Mike Mopas, Chris Hurl, and Robyn Smith for
their comments.
2 Our position, that emotions are the experience of relations with objects
and humans, is contrary to depictions that describe relations with objects
as perverse. Williams (1998) argues that being lost in relations with cyber
objects is ‘the depth of emotional experience, warmth and understanding
which comes from embodied gestures such as being “touched” by another
human being through face-to-face contact and physical co-presence in the
real world’ (128). Setting up a false dichotomy between humans and the
technological, Williams eschews how humans relate with objects, and the
emotions experienced therein.
3 Field notes were gathered by shadowing the earth scientists at work
(McDonald 2005; Bruni 2005). Fineman and Sturdy (1999) argue that
shadowing is a solid method of researching emotions in action. Going
through the various earth science labs gave us insight into organizational
practices we otherwise may have not adequately understood.
11 Emotional Deviance and
Mental Disorder

peg gy a. tho it s

Introduction

Some time ago I developed the concept of ’emotional deviance’ (Thoits

1985, 1990), extrapolating from Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) seminal work
on emotion norms and emotion management. Hochschild studied in-
stances in which persons failed to feel or express an emotion that was
socially appropriate for a particular situation (for example, losing one’s
temper with a customer when one should remain pleasant), and she
described the strategies people commonly used to reduce ’emotive dis-
sonance’ (1979:565), that is, the mismatch between their feelings or dis-
plays and the situational emotion rule. It was only a short step from
Hochschild’s notion of emotive dissonance to the concept of emotional
deviance. Emotive dissonance generally refers to a transitory discrep-
ancy between a feeling or expression and a situational norm, a dis-
crepancy that typically can be reduced using emotion work strategies.
Emotional deviance refers to persistent, repeated, or intense violations
of societal feeling or expression norms, where emotion management
efforts are often ineffective.
In developing this concept, I was attempting to address an unre-
solved problem in the labelling theory of mental illness (Scheff 1966),
namely, what types of norm violations are classified as symptoms
of mental disorder. Scheff had argued that persons labelled as men-
tally ill had violated ‘residual’ rules, by which he meant norms that
were not etiquette, moral, or legal norms, but social rules so taken for
granted that they were not recognized as norms until they were vio-
lated (e.g., not making eye contact with an interaction partner). After
reading Hochschild’s work, it struck me that ‘residual’ norms might
202 Peggy A. Thoits

not be residual at all: some might be classifiable as feeling and expres-

sion norms. After all, the onset of mental illness is often characterized
in emotional terms: having a nervous breakdown, becoming emotion-
ally disturbed, losing emotional control. Consequently, I suggested that
an important subset of mental disorders might be defined by emotional
deviance, that is, recurrent or intense violations of feeling or expression
norms (Thoits 1990).1
This argument, however, has lacked both theoretical development
and empirical evidence. My purposes in this chapter are to establish
the normative basis of judgments of disorder made by psychiatrists and
clinical psychologists, and to marshal evidence that clinicians, commu-
nity mental health researchers, and laypersons identify a substantial
proportion of mental disorders by the presence of emotional deviance.
Then I extend this normative argument to consider the persistent prob-
lem of diagnostic disagreements among clinicians. Because judgments
of emotional deviance depend upon the ideological frames that in-
dividuals hold (Hochschild 1983), I suggest that diagnostic disagree-
ments may be traceable to ideological differences among clinicians.

The Problem: How Do We Recognize Mental Disorder?

Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists tend to view mental disorders as

real, by which I mean existing, observable, and measurable phenomena
which have etiologies, characteristic symptoms, typical courses, ex-
pectable outcomes, and, for some disorders, effective treatments. I must
immediately clarify that I believe that psychological disorders2 are real.
I have no intention of arguing that mental illness is a myth, that is, a
misleading medical term applied to persons who are simply grappling
with difficult ‘problems in living’ (Szasz 1960, 1994). Although prob-
lems in living (stressors) can indeed precipitate psychological distress
and mood, anxiety, and substance-use disorders (Thoits 1995), severe
mental illness, characterized by serious impairments in functioning, is
both qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from reactions to stressors
(Kessler et al. 2003; Payton 2009). This may be due to underlying psy-
chological, biological, and/or genetic vulnerabilities.
Despite agreeing with clinicians that mental illness is real, sociolo-
gists (myself included) tend to view mental disorders as less definite,
for lack of a better word, than most clinical practitioners and psychiat-
ric researchers do, for several reasons. First, like anthropologists, soci-
ologists are mindful that the nature, types, and definitions of disorders
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 203

vary from culture to culture (Kleinman and Good 1985; Shweder 1994)
and over time within cultures (e.g., Jutel 2009; Kirk and Kutchins 1992;
Kleinman and Kleinman 1985). Second, sociologists emphasize that as-
sessments of disorder are often far less reliable than measures of many
physical conditions, and psychiatrists frequently disagree substantially
about which diagnoses apply to patients depicted in standardized case
histories or videotaped interviews (Aboraya et al. 2006; Garb 1997;
Kirk and Kutchins 1992). Third, sociologists are aware that the inclu-
sion, exclusion, and reclassification of disorders is done by experts in
committees, who frequently are lobbied about proposed alterations
by powerful interest groups such as insurance companies, gay rights
groups, military veterans groups, and feminists, among others (Figert
1995; Kirk and Kutchins 1992; Mayes and Horwitz 2005). In short, so-
cial scientists return repeatedly to the idea that mental disorders are
shaped, negotiated, or constructed through social or political processes.
These negotiation and construction processes are most obvious when
one reads through successive versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSMs, published by the American Psy-
chiatric Association in 1952, 1968, 1980, 1987, 1994, and 2000 (1987 and
2000 are revisions of DSM-III and DSM-IV, respectively). Many changes
are of note: neuroses have been dropped from the manuals’ terminol-
ogy; numerous disorders have been renamed; the diagnostic criteria for
all disorders have been much more carefully delineated; multiple sub-
types of major disorders have been distinguished; homosexuality has
been eliminated as a form of psychopathology; many disorders have
been added, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), caffeine-
and nicotine-related and pathological gambling disorders; contributing
committees and their members are now listed in the manuals; and tenta-
tive new diagnoses are described at the backs of recent editions. Mean-
while, contentious debates go on in both the popular and professional
press regarding the pros and cons of proposed changes. Due to the fact
that the DSM is the clinician’s ‘Bible,’ it is clear that what are consid-
ered mental disorders are periodically being refined, re-conceptualized,
and reconstructed over time. To repeat, I am not arguing that psycho-
pathologies are ‘only’ social constructions. Yes, the boundary around
the broader concept of mental disorder can expand or shrink and the
boundaries around various disorders are renegotiated (Jutel 2009). But
most sociologists accept that there is something inside those boundaries
that is real and problematic and cannot be dismissed as a mere social
construction (see also Williams 2000).
204 Peggy A. Thoits

The boundary-setting process, then, is crucial to understand because

people who display the same cognitive, emotional, or behavioural
symptoms may be classified either as well or ill depending on where
the lines have been drawn between normality and abnormality (Erik-
son 1966). Dramatically different personal and social consequences can
flow from such categorizations due to the stigma attached to mental
illness (Corrigan 2004; Erikson 1966; Link and Phelan 2010; Scheff 1984;
Wahl 1997). The key sociological question becomes: What determines
where the boundaries are drawn? Putting it another way, how do pro-
fessionals and laypersons decide that an individual is exhibiting a psy-
chological disorder or not?
The usual answer to this question, from clinicians and laypersons
alike, is that the person is behaving abnormally (and there is no dis-
cernible physical cause for that behaviour). So what is abnormality? A
simple answer is: a deviation from what is normal. And what is nor-
mal? A cautious answer is that it depends on the cultural norms of the
group within which the person’s behaviour occurs.
Norms refer to expected or appropriate behaviours in specific situ-
ations (Gibbs 1965). Their existence can be discerned through verbal
references to behaviours that are ‘appropriate,’ ‘proper,’ ‘expectable,’
‘normal,’ and the like (and their converses), and by statements involv-
ing what one ‘ought,’ ‘should,’ ‘must,’ or ‘have a right’ to do (and their
converses) (Gibbs 1965; Hochschild 1979). Norms essentially provide
cultural standards against which individuals can evaluate their own
and others’ behaviours (Gibbs 1965). Although norms vary in the de-
gree to which they are consensually held within a culture or subculture
and in the severity of the informal and formal sanctions that are im-
posed when they are violated, when individuals egregiously, repeat-
edly, or persistently break the taboos, the moral norms (mores), or the
conventions (folkways) of a society, observers perceive abnormality –
that is, serious normative deviation – and entertain the possibility that
it represents mental illness (Foucault 1965; Scheff 1966; Thoits 1985).
A connection between normative deviation and mental illness is in
fact implicit in the guiding definition of mental disorders found in
DSM-III (APA 1980) and repeated in the subsequent three versions of
the manuals (APA 1987, 1994, 2000): ‘ . . . [E]ach of the mental disor-
ders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioural or psy-
chological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and is
associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or a disabil-
ity (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 205

a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability or an

important loss of freedom. . . . in addition, this syndrome or pattern must
not be merely an expectable and culturally sanctioned response to a particular
event, for example the death of a loved one . . .‘ (APA 2000:xxi–xxii, empha-
sis added). So a person who has a set of symptoms that are expectable
or normative responses to a major life event does not have a mental
disorder. Conversely, then, if the symptoms are not expectable or nor-
mative responses, they may indicate a mental disorder. The manuals
hasten to add, ‘Neither deviant behaviour (e.g., political, religious, or
sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and soci-
ety are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of
a dysfunction in the individual, as described above’ (APA 2000:xxii). In
short, normative violations that cause individuals distress, functional
impairment, or substantial risk of personal harm are mental disorders.
The normative foundation of judgments of mental disorder becomes
clearer when one looks at the language that appears throughout all
texts of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, begin-
ning with DSM-III (APA 1980) when criteria for diagnoses were first
explicitly specified. These are a few examples from DSM-IV-TR (em-
phases added):

Hyperactivity may be manifested by fidgetiness or squirming in one’s

seat . . . by not remaining seated when expected to do so . . . by excessive
running or climbing in situations where it is inappropriate . . . by having
difficulty playing or engaging quietly in leisure activities . . . by appearing
to be often ‘on the go’ or as if ‘driven by a motor’ . . . or by talking exces-
sively . . . (APA 2000:86)

The essential feature of Selective Mutism is the persistent failure to speak

in specific social situations (e.g., school, with playmates) where speaking
is expected, despite speaking in other situations . . . (APA 2000:125)

At some point during the course of the disorder [Obsessive-Compulsive

Disorder], the person has recognized that the obsessions or compulsions
are excessive or unreasonable. (APA 2000:457)

The essential features of Bulimia Nervosa are binge eating and inappropri-
ate compensatory methods to prevent weight gain. In addition, the self-
evaluation of individuals with Bulimia Nervosa is excessively influenced
by body shape and weight . . . A binge is defined as eating in a discrete
206 Peggy A. Thoits

period of time an amount of food that is definitely larger than most individuals
would eat under similar circumstances. (APA 2000:589)

The point here is not that these judgments are subjective and prone to
possible errors or wide interpretive variations, although one certainly
can see why inter-subjective agreement among clinicians is often far
from perfect. Instead, the point is a normative one: professionals di-
agnose mental disorders on the basis of shared cultural standards or
norms. When individuals behave in normatively ‘unexpected,’ ‘in-
appropriate,’ ‘excessive,’ or ‘unreasonable’ ways that are distressing,
impairing, or harmful, they are exhibiting symptoms of psychiatric
disorder.

Emotional Deviance

Note that the above examples describe behavioural norm violations.

But as Hochschild (1979, 1983) argued several decades ago, social
norms not only govern behaviours, they guide feelings and emotional
expressions as well.3 Collectively, these rules are termed ’emotion
norms,’ which can be subdivided into subsets of ‘feeling norms’ and
‘expression norms’ (Hochschild 1979). Feeling norms govern private,
subjective experiences of emotion in specific situations. For example,
we are expected to feel sad at a funeral, happy at a success, and anxious
before a test. Expression norms, or display rules (Ekman 1984), regulate
outward, public expressions of emotion in particular circumstances.
For example, we are not supposed to cry if we are big boys, we should
smile at our customers, and we should show gratitude for a gift even if
it was not what we wanted. Feeling and expression norms also specify
the acceptable range, intensity, and duration of emotions in specific cir-
cumstances (Hochschild 1979) and the actors towards whom certain
feelings should or should not be directed (Thoits 1985). Hochschild
(1979, 1983) demonstrated that for a number of structural reasons indi-
viduals frequently do not feel or exhibit the emotions that they should,
so they use a variety of coping strategies to bring their emotions back in
line with the norms. She termed these coping efforts ’emotion manage-
ment’ or emotion work (see also Theodosius, this volume).
When a person experiences or shows inappropriate emotion, or when
his/her emotion work fails to evoke, suppress, or transform unaccept-
able feelings into acceptable ones, the person exhibits emotional devi-
ance (Thoits 1990, 2009). Deviant emotions, when intense, repeated, or
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 207

prolonged, play a major, but usually overlooked, role in the identifica-

tion of mental disorder. This claim can be substantiated by returning to
the content of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. If
one scrutinizes the DSM manuals from 1980 onward, one finds count-
less references to emotional deviance in the text. For example, drawing
from DSM-IV-TR (2000, emphases added):

Individuals with Conduct Disorder . . . may be callous and lack appropriate

feelings of guilt or remorse. (96)

The individual with Schizophrenia may display inappropriate affect (e.g.,

smiling, laughing, or a silly facial expression in the absence of an appropriate
stimulus), which is one of the defining features of the Disorganized Type.
(304)

The intensity, duration, or frequency of the anxiety and worry [an essential
feature of Generalized Anxiety Disorder] is far out of proportion to the ac-
tual likelihood or impact of the feared event. (473)

The essential feature of an Adjustment Disorder is a psychological re-

sponse to an identifiable stressor or stressors that results in the devel-
opment of clinically significant emotional or behavioural symptoms . . .
indicated either by marked distress that is in excess of what would be expected
given the nature of the stressor or by significant impairment in social or
occupational (academic) functioning . . . (679)

Once again the normative bases of these judgments are clear. A lack
of appropriate guilt, excessive smiling or laughing, disproportionate
anxiety, and excessive distress are violations of emotion norms. In these
examples, the emotions are outside the acceptable range or the accept-
able intensity of emotions that a person is culturally expected to feel
or display. A skeptic, however, might point out that these excerpts are
descriptions that are found in the explanatory text of the manuals. To
what extent are deviant feelings or expressive behaviours used as es-
sential defining criteria for psychiatric diagnoses?

A Content Analysis of DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria4

To answer this question, I began with the list of diagnoses found in

Appendix F of the DSM-IV-TR (APA 2000). There are 351 listed Axis I
208 Peggy A. Thoits

and II disorders, excluding codes for ‘other conditions that may be a

focus of clinical attention’ (N = 40) and codes for ‘no diagnosis’ and
‘diagnosis deferred’ (N = 4)5; 351 may seem an astoundingly high num-
ber, but many major diagnoses have several subtypes, each with its
own name, code number, and diagnostic criteria. For example, there
are seven types of Schizophrenia (code 295) and 23 types of Bipolar I
Disorder, Most Recent Episode (code 296). These subtypes are included
in the count of disorders.
In editions III and IV of the diagnostic manual, the essential defin-
ing features of each disorder and subtype can be found in a box or a
section that is set off from the accompanying text. The box or section
summarizes the criteria that must be met in order for a diagnosis to be
assigned by a clinician. Criteria are listed as points A, B, C, and so on. I
coded a disorder as defined primarily by emotional deviance if at least
one of the required criteria for the disorder described an inappropri-
ate emotion or an intense, repeated, or persistent emotional state. Usu-
ally a normative standard of comparison was mentioned in the criteria
with terms such as excessive, unusual, inappropriate, and so forth, as in
the quoted text examples above. However, for a few disorders, norma-
tive standards were unstated. For example, criterion A for dysthymia is
‘depressed mood for most of the day, for more days than not, as indi-
cated either by subjective account or observation by others, for at least 2
years’ (APA 2000:380). Because daily depression for a prolonged period
of two years would clearly be an unconventional emotional experience
in the eyes of most cultural members, I coded dysthymia as defined by
emotional deviance. Finally, DSM criteria sometimes consisted of lists
of several possible symptoms, only some of which referred to emotions.
As an example, here are the criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder, a
childhood diagnosis (APA 2000:102, emphases added):

A A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behaviour lasting at

least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are
present:
(1) often loses temper
(2) often argues with adults
(3) often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ re-
quests or rules
(4) often deliberately annoys people
(5) often blames others for his/her mistakes or misbehaviour
(6) is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 209

(7) is often angry and resentful

(8) is often spiteful or vindictive
Note: Consider a criterion met only if the behaviour occurs more fre-
quently than is typically observed in individuals of comparable age and
developmental level.

B The disturbance in behaviour causes clinically significant impair-

ment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.

If half or more of a listing of symptoms involved deviant feelings or

emotional displays, I coded it as a disorder defined by emotional de-
viance. In this case, four of the eight symptoms listed under criterion
A are emotional ones. Note that the symptoms had to occur more fre-
quently than is typically observed in children of similar ages and devel-
opmental levels – this is an explicit reference to normative standards in
the diagnostic criteria.
Using these guidelines, a second rater and I independently coded
all 351 diagnoses, with 84 per cent agreement between us. All dis-
agreements were resolved by discussion. Analysis revealed that 107,
or 30.5 per cent, of all disorders had emotional deviance as an essen-
tial defining feature.6 Although it may not seem particularly striking
that almost a third of all disorders are characterized and identified by
the presence of emotional deviance, there are two considerations that
make this figure more impressive. First, as seen in Table 1 (below), no
other types of disorders in the diagnostic manual occur as frequently.
Thus, a substantial minority of all currently defined disorders are iden-
tified by individuals’ emotional deviations (Table 1, below). Second,
and more importantly, the 30.5 per cent figure does not indicate the
prevalence of emotional deviance in the general population, and there-
fore understates the social and clinical significance of these types of
disorders. For estimates of prevalence, it is necessary to turn to the
findings of three large-scale epidemiological studies of mental disor-
ders in the general population: the Epidemiological Catchment Area
Studies conducted in the early 1980s (Robins and Regier 1991), the
National Comorbidity Survey conducted in the early 1990s (Kessler
etal. 1994), and the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication which
occurred in the early 2000s (Kessler et al. 2005). These studies used
DSM-III and DSM-IV criteria to assess the most severe and the most
frequently occurring psychiatric disorders in the community-residing
U.S. adult population.
210 Peggy A. Thoits

Table 1
Types of Disorders in DSM-IV-TR (APA 2000)a

Disorders defined by emotional deviance 30.5% (107)

Substance-related disorders 15.1 (53)
Disorders of infancy, childhood, adolescence 11.7 (41)
Delirium, dementia, amnestic, other cognitive 10.0 (35)
Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders 9.1 (32)
Disorders due to a general medical condition .9 (3)
b
Other disorders 23.6 (83)
Total 100.0 (351)
a
Disorders defined by emotional deviance are not counted in other groups of
diagnoses.
b
“Other disorders” include somatoform, factitious, dissociative, sexual, gender identity,
eating, sleep, impulse control, adjustment, and personality disorders.

Table 2 (below) summarizes the two most common disorders among

individuals with any disorder in the past six or 12 months. (About 25
to 30% of the adult population had a psychiatric disturbance in the
past six to 12 months, depending on the survey.) The vast majority of
persons with a disorder had an anxiety or mood disorder. The second
most common psychiatric conditions were alcohol- or drug-related
disorders, and these were noticeably less frequent. Disorders charac-
terized by emotional deviance are the most common psychiatric distur-
bances among persons who have clinically diagnosable mental health
problems. Not surprisingly, these are also the most prevalent disorders
found among individuals in outpatient mental health treatment (Katz
et al. 1997). In sum, for psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, emo-
tional deviance is a central defining feature of a substantial subset of
mental disorders, including those which are the most prevalent in the
adult population.

Mental Health Screening in Community Studies

Community mental health researchers also rely on emotional deviance

to identify psychological disturbance. Community studies typically
assess the prevalence of ‘non-specific’ mental health problems. Non-
specific means that particular psychiatric disorders are not measured
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 211

Table 2
Among Those with Any Psychiatric Disorder in the Past Year (Ages 15–55)a

Epidemiological Catchment Area Study, Robins et al. 1991 (6-month prevalence):

68% had an anxiety or mood disorder
40% had alcohol or drug abuse/dependence
National Comorbidity Survey, Kessler et al. 1994 (12-month prevalence):
78% had an anxiety or mood disorder
37% had alcohol or drug abuse/dependence
National Comorbidity Survey-Replication, Kessler et al. 2005 (12-month prevalence):
84% had an anxiety or mood disorder
18% had alcohol or drug abuse/dependence
a
Because these surveys sampled respondents within differing age ranges, figures here
are based on ages that are common to all three studies.

in these surveys. Instead, researchers assess the presence of any men-

tal health problem in a given time period or the frequency with which
individuals experience common psychological symptoms in a stated
time frame. Investigators use either screening questions or scores on
screening scales to indicate the presence or degree of non-specific men-
tal health difficulties.
Across community surveys, the two most commonly used screen-
ing questions are, ‘Have you ever had a nervous breakdown?’ and
‘Have you ever seen a professional for a personal or emotional prob-
lem?’ (e.g., Brown 1978; Veroff, Kulka, and Duvan 1981). Note the terms
‘nervous’ and ’emotional’ in these screening questions. Researchers use
these terms because they are widely understood by laypersons to refer
to mental illness or psychological difficulties (Gove 2005). Similar ques-
tions are used in contemporary epidemiological surveys such as the
National Comorbidity Survey and its replication (Kessler et al. 1994,
2005).
Scales are employed far more often in community studies than
single-item screening questions. Widely used scales include the Beck
Depression Index (Beck et al. 1961), Spielberger’s State and Trait Anxi-
ety scales (Spielberger and Sydeman 1994), and the Centre for Epide-
miological Studies-Depression Scale, or CES-D (Radloff 1974), among
others. The most frequently assessed symptoms in these scales are
212 Peggy A. Thoits

those of depression and anxiety (e.g., feeling sad, feeling blue, feeling
no interest in things, feeling tense, feeling nervous for no obvious rea-
son, worrying constantly). Symptoms of depression and anxiety are
highly correlated, and, when assessed together in the same instrument,
indicate a state of generalized psychological distress (Mirowsky and
Ross 2003). Depression, anxiety, and distress scales ask how often over
the past week, month, or six months the respondent has experienced
each symptom. Responses (e.g., never, sometimes, often, very often)
are then summed into total symptom scores, running from lowdepres-
sion/anxiety/distress scores to high. Prolonged feelings of depression,
anxiety, or distress represent moods, that is, emotional states that in-
creasingly become unrelated to their initiating situational stimuli over
time. Emotional states that appear unrelated to the person’s present cir-
cumstances will be perceived by others as deviant. In essence, commu-
nity mental health researchers are measuring emotional deviance when
they estimate the prevalence of non-specific mental health problems in
community samples.

How Laypersons Recognize Mental Illness

Not only clinicians and community mental health researchers recognize

emotional deviance as an indicator of mental disorder, but laypersons do
as well. In the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS), a nationally represen-
tative sample of 1,444 adults were read one of five randomly assigned
vignettes which described individuals exhibiting DSM-IV symptoms of
schizophrenia, major depression, alcohol dependence, cocaine depen-
dence, or typical emotional reactions to ordinary life troubles. The sex,
race/ethnicity, and educational level of the vignette characters were
systematically varied across vignettes. The schizophrenia, cocaine, and
alcohol vignettes did not refer to emotional states, while the depres-
sion and troubled person vignettes did (see Link et al. 1999 for exact
wording). Among a number of questions, respondents were asked how
likely it was that the person in the vignette was experiencing mental ill-
ness. The vignettes and survey questions were replicated 10 years later
in the 2006 GSS with a sample of 1,518 respondents. Table 3 (see below)
reports the percentage of respondents in each survey who said it was
somewhat or very likely that the character was experiencing mental
illness. Not surprisingly, respondents recognized mental illness in the
character with schizophrenia, who displayed cognitive deviations (he/
she thought people were spying on him/her, heard voices telling him/
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 213

Table 3
Percentages of General Social Survey Respondents Who Believed the Vignette
Character Was Experiencing Mental Illnessa

1996 2006

Vignette Character:
Schizophrenia 88.1 93.7
Alcohol Dependence 48.7 50.9
Cocaine Dependence 43.5 n.a.
Major Depression 69.1 75.2
Ordinary Troubles 21.5 29.9
Total N 1356 1373
a
Percents summarize respondents who thought it was ‘somewhat likely’ or ‘very likely’
that the vignette character was experiencing mental illness.

her what to do) and behavioural deviance (he/she retreated from work
and family, spending most days in his room) for a prolonged period
of time (six months). It is also clear in Table 3 that survey participants
were uncertain whether alcohol and cocaine addictions should be clas-
sified as mental illness. Of central importance, the percentages show
that respondents distinguished sharply between the depressed and the
troubled vignette characters.
The depressed character felt down for two weeks, had a flat, heavy
feeling all day, felt no pleasure even when good things happened,
could not concentrate, was constantly tired, could not sleep at night,
felt worthless and discouraged, and had pulled away from his family
for the past month. The troubled character sometimes felt worried, a
little sad, and had trouble sleeping at night, believed things bothered
him/her more than they do other people, was sometimes nervous or
annoyed when things went wrong but, in general, enjoyed being with
other people and was getting along with his/her family. Clearly, the
negative affect of the depressed character was prolonged and unre-
sponsive to positive changes in his/her life while the troubled charac-
ter was only intermittently worried, annoyed, or sad in response to life
changes.
Despite the fact that survey respondents heard the description
of only one vignette character (so they could not make comparisons
among characters’ symptoms), they recognized the persistent negative
214 Peggy A. Thoits

emotions of the depressed character as deviant, indicating probable or

certain mental illness, and evaluated the less intense and short-lived
emotions of the troubled character as conventional or normal. Corrob-
orating this interpretation, respondents were also asked how likely it
was that the vignette character was ‘experiencing part of the normal
ups and down of life.’ Among those who heard about the depressed
character, 38 per cent and 25 per cent in 1996 and 2006, respectively,
said the experience was ‘very likely’ part of life’s normal ups and
downs. In contrast, among those who evaluated the troubled character,
67 per cent and 62 per cent in the two surveys said it was very likely the
character was experiencing normal ups and downs. These differences
strongly suggest that lay observers’ judgments were influenced by the
degree to which vignette characters’ symptoms deviated from emotion
norms.
In sum, for clinicians, for community mental health researchers, and
for laypersons, excessively intense, inappropriately prolonged, oddly
flattened, unusually absent, or situationally unexpected emotions (as
well as delusions, hallucinations, and bizarre behaviours, of course)
play an important role in the identification of mental disorder.

Ideological Variations in Emotion Norms

Assuming that emotional deviance does play a central role in the rec-
ognition of psychological disturbance by professionals and laypersons,
there is a further point to be made: what is viewed as emotional de-
viance depends on individuals’ underlying ideological orientations or
frames. As noted earlier, norms vary across societies and across sub-
groups within a society. This is because social groups differ in their cul-
tures, or more specifically, in their cultural ideologies. Ideologies can be
viewed as systems of ideas (assumptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes)
that are shared by collectivities or interest groups (Purvis and Hunt
1993; Hall 1986; Swidler 1986). Drawing from Gramsci, Hall (1986:22)
points out, ‘There is never any one, single, unified and coherent “domi-
nant ideology” that pervades everything,’ but instead there are many
systems of thought promoted by political, religious, economic, class, ra-
cial, ethnic, and other interest groups within societies. Ideologies guide
practical activities and are manifest in individual and collective life
(Hall 1986:20). Social norms are integral aspects of ideologies because
norms are beliefs about what is valuable and appropriate for individuals
to think, feel, or do in everyday life. It follows that emotion norms, and
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 215

therefore assessments of emotional deviance, will depend on the ideo-

logical frames that individuals bring to situations (Francis 1997; Hoch-
schild 1989, 1990; Taylor 1995, 2000; Thoits 2009). Hochschild (1990)
offers a useful example: men and women who are traditional in their
gender-role ideology believe a woman’s place is in the home even if she
has to work, and a man’s place is in the labour force even if he has to
help out at home. Traditional women who identify with and love their
jobs and traditional men who enjoy childcare tasks regard their feel-
ings as socially inappropriate. In contrast, such feelings are regarded
as entirely appropriate bywomen and men who hold nontraditional,
egalitarian gender ideologies.
Data from the Emotions Module of the 1996 GSS allows a demon-
stration of the effects of ideology on assessments of emotional deviance
(Thoits 2009). The Emotions Module was a battery of questions about
emotions, particularly anger, administered to a random subset (N = 1,460)
of the GSS sample that year. Respondents were asked to recall a recent in-
cident in which they felt ‘really angry, irritated, or annoyed’; 77 per cent
(N = 1,125) recalled and described an event to the interviewer. A series of
closed-ended questions then were asked about that incident, including
towards whom the respondent felt angry and how intensely and how
long he/she felt angry. Among the follow-up questions was an item as-
sessing emotional deviance: ‘Did you feel like your reaction to the situa-
tion was appropriate, or did it seem wrong to you somehow, for example,
too intense or the wrong emotion for the occasion? On a scale that runs
from 0 as completely right to 10 as completely wrong for the situation, tell
me whether your feelings were right or wrong for the situation.’ Among
respondents who described asocial situation evoking anger (N = 966), the
mean score was 3.7 (st.d. = 3.3), indicating that the average respondent
regarded his/her anger as appropriate rather than inappropriate in the
circumstances.
Interestingly, women and men did not differ significantly in their rat-
ings of emotional deviance, despite the existence of broad American
beliefs that anger is more permissible for men than women to feel and
display (Kring 2000; Simon and Nath 2004). This, it turned out, was be-
cause respondents’ perceptions of emotional deviance were dependent
on their gender-role ideologies. I subdivided survey participants into
those holding traditional versus nontraditional attitudes on the basis
of their agreement or disagreement with statements about men’s and
women’s roles (e.g., ‘It is more important for a wife to help her hus-
band’s career than to have one herself’; ‘Both the husband and the wife
216 Peggy A. Thoits

should contribute to the household income’). I also subdivided them

into non-feminists and feminists if they replied no or yes, respectively,
to the question, ‘Do you consider yourself a feminist?’ Table 4 (below)
shows the mean emotional deviance ratings that respondents gave to
their angry feelings by gender and gender-role ideology. Women who
held nontraditional gender role beliefs were significantly less likely
than other groups to see their angry feelings as inappropriate or wrong.
Feminist-identified men perceived their anger as significantly more de-
viant and feminist women rated their anger as significantly less deviant
compared to males and females who did not claim a feminist identity.
Thus, individuals’ evaluations of their angry feelings were contingent
on their gender-role beliefs, supporting the idea that ideology frames
the meaning and normative appropriateness of individuals’ emotional
experiences (Hochschild 1989, 1990). The patterns in Table 4 hint that
persons who adopted egalitarian beliefs may have taken special pains
to reject a quintessentially male-typed emotion in gendered ways –
women by embracing their anger as a legitimate, acceptable feeling to
have, men by regarding their anger as too stereotypically masculine or
aggressive and therefore socially unacceptable.
Obviously, these kinds of findings can generalize to other social
groups. For example, clinicians’ gender, race, class, religious, and/or
political ideologies could influence their assessments of the relative
presence or absence of emotional deviance in their clients and thereby
affect the diagnoses that they assign. However, clinicians’ ideological
beliefs usually are not measured in studies of diagnostic judgments, so
their effects must be inferred from patterns of diagnostic errors. A clas-
sic example can be found in the work of Kleinman and Kleinman (1985)
who studied the puzzlingly high prevalence of neurasthenia (somati-
zation disorder) coupled with a low prevalence of major depression in
psychiatric patients treated at Hunan Medical College in China. They
showed with diagnostic interviews that patients with neurasthenia
(chronic pain or illness without biological cause) were actually suffer-
ing from depressive disorders. They reasoned that both patients and
psychiatrists focused on somatic complaints and overlooked emotional
symptoms for ideological reasons: it was politically dangerous at the
time of these studies (in the 1980s) for patients to be depressed (i.e.,
withdrawn, alienated, and in despair) in response to the upheavals and
deprivations in their lives caused by the Cultural Revolution. To have
physical ailments (headaches, insomnia, stomach problems, fatigue,
etc., which are also depressive symptoms) was far more acceptable
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 217

Table 4
Mean Emotional Deviance Scores by Gender and Gender-Role Ideology

Men Women

Traditional Gender-Role Ideology 3.9 3.8

(St.d.) (3.3) (3.3)
N 267 279
Nontraditional Gender Ideology 3.9 3.3*
(St.d.) (3.3) (3.4)
N 126 291

Men Women

Non-Feminist Identity 3.8 3.7

(St.d.) (3.2) (3.3)
N 341 415
Feminist Identity 4.7* 3.3*
(St.d.) (3.4) (3.4)
N 52 155
a
Standard deviations in parentheses.
* Asterisk indicates that this group differs significantly from the other three.

both socially and politically. The political ideology of the era framed
the meaning of patients’ symptoms.
Studies of gender, race, and social class biases in clinicians’ judgments
also hint at the influence of ideological beliefs. A careful literature re-
view by Garb (1997) showed that symptomatic individuals’ status char-
acteristics do not sway clinicians’ judgments when they are assessing
the patient’s need for hospitalization, the need for involuntary commit-
ment, or the severity of illness (see also Thoits 2005; Thoits and Evenson
2008). Social status biases become evident, however, when clinicians
assign specific diagnoses (Garb 1997; Loring and Powell 1988; Dixon,
Gordon, and Khomusi 1995). For example, histrionic personality dis-
order (characterized by ‘a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality
and attention seeking’ [APA 2000:714]) is more often attributed to fe-
male patients, while antisocial personality disorder (characterized by
indifference to the rights of others, repeated physical fights or assaults,
deceitfulness, and unlawful behaviour) is more frequently assigned to
218 Peggy A. Thoits

Table 5
Diagnoses Selected by Psychiatrists, Cross-Classified by the Gender and Race of the
Psychiatrist and the Described Patient

Psychiatrist

WM BM WF BF

WM schizo reactive schizo depress

BM paranoid schizo paranoid paranoid
Patient WF depress depress reactive reactive
BF depress depress schizo schizo
NI schizo schizo schizo schizo

Note: WM = white male, BM = black male, WF = white female, BF = black female,

NI = no information about gender or race of the patient was provided.
Schizo = Undifferentiated schizophrenia, the correct diagnosis
Paranoid = Paranoid schizophrenia, the most severe diagnosis
Depress = Depressive disorder, a moderately severe diagnosis
Reactive = Brief reactive psychosis, the least severe diagnosis
Adapted from Loring and Powell (1988)

male patients with the same symptoms (Garb 1997), patterns consistent
with gender stereotypes.
Perhaps the most compelling example of systematic errors in clini-
cians’ judgments can be found in a now-classic study by Loring and
Powell (1988). They drew a random sample of psychiatrists from the
members of the American Psychiatric Association, sent them actual case
studies of patients who were displaying DSM-III symptoms of undif-
ferentiated schizophrenia, and asked the psychiatrists to identify the
proper diagnosis for each case from a list of possible diagnoses. The
case descriptions differed in only one respect across respondents:
the patients in the case studies were randomly described as a white
male, a white female, a black male, a black female, or no information
about the race and sex of the patient was provided. Table 5 (above) sum-
marizes the results from the Loring and Powell study. The cells of the
table list the diagnosis that was chosen by the majority of psychiatrists
who read each case.
When no information was given about the sex or race of the patient
(the row labelled ‘NI’), the majority of psychiatrists correctly identi-
fied the patient as suffering from undifferentiated schizophrenia. How-
ever, when psychiatrists misclassified patients, they did so in directions
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 219

biased by gender and race. Focusing first on diagnoses of depressive

disorder, female patients (regardless of race) were more often misclassi-
fied as suffering from depression by male psychiatrists (again regardless
of race). Looking next at diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia, which
was the most severe diagnosis among the available choices, black male
patients were misclassified more frequently by white psychiatrists
(both male and female) and by black female psychiatrists. Finally, ex-
amining diagnoses of brief reactive psychosis, the least severe and most
short-term disorder among the possible choices offered, white patients
(both male and female) were categorized with this disturbance by black
psychiatrists (both male and female) and by white female psychiatrists.
Clearly, psychiatrists’ judgments were affected by the gender and race
of the patient as well as by their own statuses.
These patterns of error suggest that clinicians’ gender and racial ste-
reotypes (i.e., cultural beliefs about group traits) filtered their interpre-
tations of presenting symptoms. An alternative possibility, though, is
that clinicians’ knowledge shaped their diagnostic decisions. Histrionic
personality disorder and affective disorders in fact are more common
in women, and antisocial personality disorder and substance use dis-
orders are more frequent among men (e.g., Kessler et al. 1994, 2005).
Blacks have higher rates of paranoid schizophrenia than whites, per-
haps due to the experience of racial discrimination (Whaley 1997). It is
reasonable to assume that clinicians are aware of such epidemiological
patterns from their professional training, reading the psychiatric litera-
ture, or perusing descriptive text in the DSM manuals. However, this
alternative theoretical possibility remains consistent with my argument
because clinical knowledge itself is ideological. Clinical ideology places
a value on scientific methods of discovery and bases beliefs about what
is empirically true on those methods. In short, cultural stereotypes or
biases produced by scientific knowledge of epidemiological patterns
may distort clinicians’ interpretations of the symptoms that are exhib-
ited by patients who differ from one another only in sex or race but not
in symptoms.
Studies of clinical judgments do not usually include assessments of
practitioners’ beliefs, so the influences of stereotypes or professional
knowledge remain unobserved and must be inferred from patterns of
diagnostic errors. Future research will need to test the hypothesis that
assessments of deviance depend on practitioners’ belief systems. Given
that laypersons’ perceptions of emotional deviance vary systematically
with their ideology (Thoits 2009), it would be reasonable to suspect that
220 Peggy A. Thoits

similar findings would be found among clinicians and that ideological

differences among practitioners would account, at least in part, for di-
agnostic disagreements among them.

Conclusions

I have argued and attempted to show that dramatic, persistent, or

repeated deviations from social norms that govern the appropri-
ate range, intensity, duration, and targets of emotions indicate the
presence of mental illness to clinicians, community mental health
researchers, and laypersons. Emotional deviance is an essential defin-
ing feature of 30 per cent of all mental disorders outlined in DSM-IV-
TR, and these emotional disorders (mood and anxiety disorders) are
by far the most prevalent psychological disturbances in the general
adult population. Community researchers identify non-specific mental
health problems in the general population by measuring prolonged
and frequent symptoms of anxiety and depression. Members of the
American public, too, distinguish between mentally ill and normally
troubled vignette characters by the extent of the characters’ emotional
deviations. Using traditional and nontraditional gender-role ideolo-
gies as an example, I have also shown that assessments of emotional
deviance can differ by individuals’ ideology. Emotions that are norma-
tive within one ideological frame may be viewed as deviant from a dif-
ferent belief system. Although ideological variations among clinicians
have not been explored to my knowledge, such differences might help
to explain systematic errors in practitioners’ assignment of diagnoses.
Understanding sources of diagnostic error is crucial, of course, because
diagnoses determine patients’ prognoses, treatment options, and long-
term life chances.
Assuming additional work will further confirm that ideology de-
termines the emotion norms to which individuals adhere and that
violations of emotion norms spark attributions of psychological distur-
bance, there are additional avenues of research that should be pursued
next. First, the content of feeling and expression norms need further
study because relatively little is known about the norms people hold
or the degree of consensus about them. There are notable exceptions
to this statement with respect to anger, jealousy, romantic love, paren-
tal love, and sympathy (Stearns and Stearns 1984; Stearns 1990; Clark
1987; Cancian 1987; Shields and Koster 1989), and there are numerous
 Emotional Deviance and Mental Disorder 221

studies of emotion norms held by workers in various professional, ser-

vice, and manual occupations (e.g., Cahill 1999; Copp 1998; Haas 1977;
Hochschild 1983; Lively 2000; Pierce 1995; Smith and Kleinman 1989;
Stenross and Kleinman 1989; Tolich 1993). But little attention has been
paid to normative beliefs regarding fear/anxiety, sadness, envy, shame,
loneliness, happiness, pride, and a myriad of other emotional states
nor how these emotion norms vary by gender, age, race, ethnicity, and
social class. When investigators do attend to differences in norms by
socio-demographic characteristics, they frequently focus on variations
by gender, neglecting other social statuses.
Attention should also be directed to the underlying ideologies that
define which particular emotions are appropriate or inappropriate
to feel and express. For example, in cultures or subcultures in which
independence is valued and taught, feelings and displays of pride in
personal success may be normative; in cultures that value and pro-
mote interdependence, pride in personal success may be deviant, while
pride in sacrificing oneself to help others succeed may be appropriate
(Markus and Kitayama 1991; see also Rosenfield, Lennon, and White
2005). How emotion norms are framed by broad cultural orientations as
well as individuals’ social, religious, and even political ideologies will
need careful examination.
Studies of these ’emotion cultures’ (Gordon 1989) may also have
practical applications. For example, self-labelling theory (Thoits 1985,
1990) suggests that when people violate important emotion norms,
they experience heightened psychological distress and engage in more
coping efforts to try to contain or transform their deviant feelings. If
these efforts are repeatedly or persistently unsuccessful, individuals
define themselves as having mental health problems and are motivated
to seek counselling or therapy. If they do seek treatment, they encoun-
ter mental health practitioners who typically assign diagnoses. I have
suggested that clinicians draw on their own emotional standards when
making diagnostic decisions. In order to be of therapeutic assistance,
however, practitioners must also be attuned to their patients’ under-
lying ideological beliefs, because those beliefs determine the emotion
norms to which patients are attempting and failing to conform, causing
them distress. In short, defining and understanding clients’ psychologi-
cal problems will depend not only on clinicians’ own emotional stan-
dards, but on their grasp of the ideology and norms that clients have
used to assess themselves as in need of professional intervention.
222 Peggy A. Thoits

NOTES

1 Williams (2000) has argued that mental health should be conceptualized as

emotional health.
2 I will use the terms mental disorder, psychological/psychiatric disorder,
psychological/psychiatric disturbance, psychopathology, and mental illness
interchangeably in this chapter for variability in the text.
3 One could also argue that there are norms that govern what is acceptable
to think and the ways in which it is appropriate to reason – i.e., there are
cognitive norms. The basic argument I make in this chapter about emotional
deviance should apply to cognitive deviance as well.
4 I am grateful to Ashley Thompson for coding and research assistance on the
DSM-IV analysis described in this section.
5 Axis I is the set of clinical or functional disorders; Axis II is the set of
personality disorders.
6 The author will provide a list upon request.
12 Polyamory or Polyagony? Jealousy
in Open Relationships

jillia n deri

Introduction

When discussing polyamory, the two most common responses I receive

are, ‘I could never do that; I would get too jealous’ and ‘Where do you
find the time?’ While I cannot address the time question, I find the issue
of jealousy absolutely fascinating. The assumptions implied in this re-
mark sparked my research into how polyamorists are affected by jeal-
ousy. Popular rhetoric insinuates that non-monogamy is impossible; if
one’s lover has sexual encounters outside the relationship, jealousy will
be the inevitable and intolerable outcome. At the same time, jealousy is
viewed as a sign of love, and is thus the expected and noble reaction
to a partner’s sexual and/or romantic activities outside of the relation-
ship. By this logic polyamory would cause jealousy – and monogamy
would be the cure. By engaging in multiple relationships, polyamor-
ists seek to do exactly what popular culture deems unsavory. And mo-
nogamous people do indeed experience jealousy. Jealousy does occur
in polyamorous relationships, but its circumstances are different, and,
consequently, the experience and embodiment of jealousy is also dif-
ferent from dominant portrayals of jealousy. This chapter explores the
following question: How and why do polyamorists manage jealousy?
Non-monogamous relationships have existed throughout recorded
history; however it is only recently that polyamory has emerged as a
‘burgeoning sexual story’ (Barker 2005), with a particular discourse
and cultural practice. Polyamory is commonly defined as a form of
non-monogamy where people simultaneously maintain multiple sex-
ual and emotional relationships and where all parties are aware and
consenting (Sheff 2005; Haritaworn, Lin, and Kleese 2006). Polyamory
224 Jillian Deri

(often called poly by its practitioners) differs from swinging in its em-
phasis on emotional intimacy and longer-term commitments. Poly-
amory differs from polygamy (wherein a husband can have several
wives) in its emphasis on gender equality. In polyamory both men
and women are free to have multiple partners. Polyamory also dif-
fers from adultery in its focus on honesty, consent, and full disclo-
sure by all parties involved (Sheff 2005). The word polyamory (coined
from within the community) is used to describe a sexual identity,
sexual preference, practice, and/or philosophy. Unlike many sexual
minorities who were named by scientific ‘experts,’ polyamorists con-
tinually work to have polyamory recognized as a sexual category and
to educate psychological institutions about care for the community
(Weitzman 1999, 2006).
Polyamorists resist the intersecting regulation of emotion and sexual-
ity and create alternatives that better meet their needs. First, polyamor-
ists critique the institution of monogamy and its accompanying norms
of emotions, sexism, and heterosexism. Second, polyamorists re-craft
their understanding of love, relationships, sexuality, and emotions in
ways that minimize instances of jealousy. They strive to replace jeal-
ousy with compersion, a term used by polyamorous people to describe
feelings of pleasure in response to a lover’s romantic and/or sexual en-
counters outside the relationship. Polyamorists question how the dom-
inance of monogamy shapes our emotion world (i.e., the encompassing
way in which a culture’s words and concepts shape people’s emotional
responses (see Plummer 2001)). This includes the idea that sexual ex-
clusivity is the epitome of love and commitment and that any diversion
from this path should be met with distrust and jealousy. In response,
polyamory offers alternate values and ideas about emotions. Jealousy
is not inevitable or intolerable and the parameters of relationships are
flexible. Polyamorists re-imagine and re-craft their preferred guidelines
of sexuality by creating norms and strategies that steer their practice as
a culture. These rules include ways to initiate communication, nego-
tiate boundaries, and structure disclosure. By doing so, polyamorists
create a lifestyle where compersion is not only possible, but actually
common. While not always successful in practice, these ideas inform
the culture of polyamory and shape polyamorists’ embodied experi-
ence of jealousy.
For this chapter, I begin with an overview of the sociological re-
search on jealousy and polyamory. Then I discuss how polyamorists
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 225

have re-imagined jealousy and have developed tools, strategies, and

norms that facilitate compersion. To understand polyamorous norms,
I examine the common themes of polyamorous practice that emerged
through my interviews. I address several tensions and contradictions
with which the polyamorous community grapples and document an il-
lustrative moment of this rapidly blossoming culture. Like most social
norms, the rules of polyamory are always in flux and are not always
followed. The strategies in place to mitigate jealousy do not work for all
polyamorists and circumstances. For this reason, I particularly examine
the intersection of what polyamorists do and what they wish they were
doing.
For my research, I used qualitative, semi-structured, open-ended in-
terviews with 22 self-identified queer, lesbian, and/or bisexual poly-
amorous women in Vancouver, British Columbia. Interviews focused
on how and why they practise polyamory and how they experience and
manage jealousy within open relationships. Some questions I sought to
understand were: What stories of jealousy emerge from the culture and
experiences of queer polyamorous women in Vancouver? How does
a re-imagining of love and jealousy shift embodied affect? What con-
tradictions and tensions exist within polyamorous culture? Is the ex-
perience of polyamory enough to overcome polyagony? Polyagony is a
tongue-in-cheek polyamorous term to remind us that jealousy can
sometimes be excruciatingly painful. My interest in this ‘ugly feeling’
(Ngai 2005) stems in part from the soft taboo surrounding jealousy.
While jealousy is repeatedly expected in dominant culture, people are
also shamed for feeling it. As a result, people often downplay their
jealousy and recast actions displayed in a jealous episode as a matter
of honour, pride, or anger (Clanton 1996). Jealousy occurs at the in-
tersection of contradictory feelings: love and hate, romance and heart-
break, excitement and fear. This cultural feeling and experience has
been linked to such social concerns as difficult feelings (Baumgart 1990;
Clanton and Smith 1977), damaged relationships (White and Mullen
1989; Salovey 1991), and male violence (Pines 1998; Kleese 2006). As
Ngai (2005) makes clear, an analysis of ugly feelings, so named for their
unpleasantness, reveals a great deal about the structures and institu-
tions in which they emerged, since these feelings operate at the inter-
section of internal feelings, social inequalities, and critical resistance.
Polyamorists are forging creative understandings of jealousy, which
might answer that initial reaction: ‘But I would get jealous.’
226 Jillian Deri

Jealousy Research and Polyamorous Culture

The use of the term jealousy varies both in academia and lay discourse.
People differ in their description of how it feels, the events that ‘cause’
it, and the behaviours associated with it. Guerrero (Guerrero, Trost,
and Yoshimura 2005) defines romantic jealousy as ‘a multi-faceted set
of affective, behavioural, and cognitive responses that occur when the
existence and/or quality of a person’s primary relationship is threat-
ened by a third party’ (233). While this definition is based on primary
relationships, I argue that any relationship can be subject to jealousy.
Also, Guerrero’s definition does not make the distinction between real
or imagined threats. My study looks at how people manage jealousy in
relationships where the inclusion of a ‘third party’ is openly negotiated
and thus the absence of other lovers is not the preferred strategy to
mitigate jealousy. Jealousy is a complex emotional experience that com-
bines many primary emotions, including fear, anger, sadness, betrayal,
and hurt (Turner and Stets 2005; Stearns 1989), and it is for this reason
that some theorists are reluctant to call it an emotion on its own (Hupka
1984). Hence for many theorists, jealousy refers to the emotion, feeling,
character trait, and/or ’emotional episode’ of a situation, a multitude of
feelings related to the situation, actions, and often a resolution (Parrott
1991:4). Polyamorists recognize jealousy as part of a spectrum of emo-
tions, ranging from polyagony to tolerance or indifference.
It is useful to distinguish between two types of jealousy: suspicious
and fait accompli jealousy (Parrott 1991) that follows the division be-
tween real and imagined threats. Suspicious jealousy is the feeling of
distrust or doubt in relation to a partner’s unfaithfulness and/or com-
mitment to the relationship. Fait accompli jealousy is where the threat
or ‘rival’ is known and/or the relationship is in real jeopardy, such as
when a lover has left one person for another. Envy can also be subdi-
vided into two groups: malicious versus non-malicious envy (Parrott
1991). Non-malicious envy is the feeling of wanting something that
someone else has (such as a relationship with a certain person). Mali-
cious envy is the feeling of wanting someone not to have the object/
subject that you desire and wanting bad things to occur to this person in
relation to the desired object/subject. Malicious envy is reminiscent of
the German term schadenfreude, which is the feeling of taking pleasure
in another’s misfortune. To want an object is simply desire, but mali-
cious envy is the adverse feeling in relation to this desire. Fait accompli
jealousy frequently accompanies malicious envy when a person wishes
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 227

bad fortune upon their romantic rival, which might explain why some
people’s jealous anger is directed towards the rival rather than towards
the lover (Yates 2007).
Georg Simmel (1955) notes that jealousy and envy require a feeling
of entitlement regarding the possession of an object/subject. Similarly,
Candida Yates (2007) argues that sometimes envy is about possession
for ‘possession’s sake’ as opposed to actually wanting the object/sub-
ject. This urge towards possession may reveal one’s own ‘narcissistic
fragility, something that provokes envy of the other’s apparent com-
pleteness’ (25). Simmel (1955) also notes a third distinction within the
family of envy and jealousy – begrudging, which he defines as ‘the en-
vious desire of an object, not because it is especially desirable but be-
cause the other has it [and it is] accompanied by the utter unbearability
of the thought that the other possesses it’ (51).
Jealousy is manifested on/in the body with physical and psycho-
logical symptoms. Culture plays a role in how jealousy is experienced,
how one appraises the situation in which it arises, and how jealousy
is expressed. Jealousy is a social emotion in that it is experienced in
relation to another person (real or imagined) (Parkinson 2005). Conse-
quently, I ground my theory in work that links sociological, cultural,
and biological processes in the formation, experience, and expression
of emotion (William and Bendelow 1996). Ahmed (2004) argues that
‘rather than seeing emotions as psychological dispositions, we need
to consider how they work, in concrete and particular ways, to medi-
ate the relationship between the psychic and the social, and between
the individual and collective’ (27). Additionally, Harding and Pribram
(2004) argue that even though emotions tend to be understood as indi-
vidual and private affairs, ’emotions are formed and function as part
of the historical, cultural, and political contexts in which they are prac-
ticed to reproduce, and potentially resist, hegemonic relations’ (865).
I investigate how polyamorists’ cultural beliefs (not solely individual
beliefs) translate into embodied feelings, for instance both enabling and
preventing the experiences of jealousy and compersion. Ahmed sug-
gests that collective sensations are transformed into ‘an act of reading
and recognition’ (2004:29), so that internalized cultural practices and
embodied ideas reveal themselves narratively. Through this academic
and narrative research, the emotion of jealousy is revealed to be at once
a function of social ideas about love, monogamy, and polyamory, and
is experienced as bodily sensations that are interpreted by conscious
understandings of those feelings.
228 Jillian Deri

Research on jealousy often assumes a monogamous relationship,

and, hence, also assumes that a third party is never welcome and al-
ways a threat. This research often identifies a partner’s cheating and/
or the suspicion of cheating as a ‘crisis event’ from which to discuss
jealousy (see Bryson 1991:202). For polyamorists, having other lovers
is consensual and pre-negotiated, and therefore the presence of another
lover is not enough reason to feel jealous. It is therefore under different
circumstances that polyamorists experience jealousy. The participants
in my study reported feeling jealous when their partner started to date
someone new, when a relationship shifted into love, when the other
person was too similar to themselves, when there were overlapping
roles, when they felt less secure within a relationship, and/or for no
identifiable reason. For polyamorists, cheating or lying is more likely
the breaking of an agreed-upon rule rather than an outside sexual affair
(Wosick-Correa 2008).
Current literature presents a highly gendered portrayal of the ex-
perience and expression of jealousy. For example, Buss (2000) argues
that men respond with jealousy to a partner’s (feared or real) sexual
interactions with another, while women tend to become jealous due to
a partner’s emotional attachment to another person. Buss (2000) also
argues that lesbians respond like heterosexual men, while gay men re-
spond like heterosexual women. Clanton (1996) argues that men are
more likely to deny jealousy, call it anger, and fight to avoid humilia-
tion, whereas women are more likely to admit jealousy, internalize the
blame, and work on the relationship. Popular media representations
of jealousy reinforce this dichotomy, in that women express jealousy
with cattiness, gossip, or manipulative behaviour, while men express
jealousy with anger or violence. Such generalizations, however, may
reveal more about cultural ideology and socialization than intrinsic
truths about gender or jealousy. When research begins with an as-
sumption that men and women are two discrete entities, one will often
find results to suit this assumption (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Suchan as-
sumption leads the inquirer to emphasize differences between gen-
ders rather than differences within a gender or similarities between
genders, let alone questions about the construction of the dichotomy
(Peterson 2004).
The expression of jealousy is socially acceptable only within cul-
ture- and gender-specific parameters. In certain cultural frameworks,
it is only acceptable to verbalize jealousy when there are identifiable
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 229

reasons for its cause, and instead of acting jealous, one must calmly use
psychological vocabulary (Zembylas and Fendler 2007). When emo-
tions are expressed this way, it is assumed that people are speaking
their truth and are taking care of themselves (Zembylas and Fendler
2007). Most other expressions of jealousy are seen as ’emotional’ or ‘ex-
cessive.’ An understanding of that which is labelled emotional requires
an analysis of gender, race, class, and ability, since women, people of
colour, the working class, and people with disabilities are dispropor-
tionally thought to be over-reacting or ‘over the top’ (Harding and Pri-
bram 2002, 2004; Parkinson 2005). Kleese (2006) argues that ‘jealousy is
constructed in a way that justifies the control of women’s bodies and
sexuality and has the potential to legitimize all kinds of male violence
and atrocities’ (647). Relatively, there is more room for women to ex-
press their emotions, as a man who is emotive is more likely to have
his masculinity called into question (Jackson 1993). However, women
who act on, rather than verbalize their jealousy-inspired emotions that
do not fit conventional gender roles, such as anger, are seen as inap-
propriate. Crying may be seen as a feminine expression of an emotion,
but too much crying is deemed hysterical. ‘Normal’ jealousy can be
expressed in flirtatious jest, but excessive jealousy is seen as a sign of
character weakness, low self-esteem, or even insanity (Clanton 2001).
Jealousy is further complicated by the way some people take pleasure
in knowing that someone is jealous of them, and might even try to elicit
this response in others.
Prior to 1970, jealousy was usually described as a ‘proof of love,’ co-
inciding with that period’s emphasis on commitment in relationships.
Since the Sexual Revolution, with its emphasis on personal freedom,
jealousy has been understood as a defective characteristic of a person
who is unable to trust, ‘unduly possessive, insecure, and suffering from
low self-esteem’ (Clanton 2001: 160). Clanton (1996) evinces that ‘jeal-
ousy is a socially-constructed emotion that changes to reflect changes
in marriage rules, the adultery taboo, and gender roles’ (173). I argue
that polyamorous discourse has the potential to further shift our un-
derstanding of jealousy. If polyamorous discourse increases in cultural
representation, compersion may become more common. Not all poly-
amorous people are good at alleviating jealousy, and at times they rein-
force or repeat conventional manifestations of jealousy. The discourse
on polyamory challenges hegemonic structures of emotion by exposing
the cultural ideologies of jealousy while concurrently developing its
230 Jillian Deri

own set of norms about jealousy. Polyamorous people are not the only
ones who experience compersion; they are, however, actively dissemi-
nating this concept.
A popular view within polyamorous (poly) culture is that jealousy is
an emotion over which people have a great deal of control. Easton and
Liszt (1997) argue that jealousy is not something that is caused by one’s
partner and therefore cannot be blamed on her/him. Instead, jealousy
originates within oneself and thus is one’s own responsibility. By this
argument, the feeling of jealousy or behaving jealously will not change
a partner’s actions. The one who suffers most is the one feeling jealous.
Easton and Liszt (1997) describe jealousy as an emotion that cannot be
experienced in isolation, but rather is representative of other feelings,
such as low self-esteem, insecurity, or dissatisfaction with the relation-
ship. They argue that because jealousy is related to these unfavourable
emotions, it is also linked to a feeling of shame, which can prevent
acknowledgment and mitigation of jealousy. Similarly, in his popu-
lar online essay, Veaux (2009) argues that within open relationships,
jealousy needs to be addressed by looking at underlying emotional is-
sues rather than changing the actions that are the surface triggers of
jealousy, otherwise patterns will repeat themselves. Taormino (2008)
argues that it is important to let yourself feel any remaining jealousy
and validate whatever feelings you have, instead of ‘criticiz(ing) your-
self or pil(ing) shame and judgment on top of it – that will just make
you feel worse’ (162). Additionally, Taormino argues that one must be-
lieve that loving multiple people is possible in order to be successful
in open relationships. She contends, ‘If you don’t, you will always see
other people and other relationships as infringing on and threatening
to yours’ (158).
Easton notes that the dominant model for dealing with negative emo-
tions is to deny and avoid them. She argues instead for a socio-political
analysis of personal experiences of jealousy that encourages full expres-
sion of all emotions (Easton, in Kleese 2006:646). In her popular online
essay, Labriola suggests that polyamorous people need to rewrite pop-
ular myths about love and relationships.1 For example, there is a core
myth that ‘if a partner really loved me, (s)he wouldn’t have any desire
for a sexual relationship with anyone else.’ She re-writes this myth into,
‘My partner loves me so much that (s)he trusts our relationship to ex-
pand and be enriched by experiencing even more love from others.’ My
research looks at how these polyamorous ideas are actualized in a way
that makes embodied experiences of compersion possible.
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 231

From Polyagony to Compersion

Polyamorists are critical of the dominance of monogamy, compulsory

monogamy, or mono-normativity (Ritchie and Barker 2006) and how
this shapes emotional experiences of jealousy, love, and sexuality. It
should be noted that there is a difference between the practice of mo-
nogamy and the institution of monogamy. If one accounts for the preva-
lence of cheating, swinging, and polygamy (and desiring such sexual
encounters), the practice of true monogamy is rather rare – both in
Western culture and elsewhere (Kipnis 2003; Mead 1977). However, as
monogamy is held up as the standard of true love, any breach of this
practice is frowned upon. In other words, if true love is necessarily mo-
nogamous, breaching monogamy joins love to its adverse counterpart –
jealousy. Polyamorists work to remove the connection between love and
sexual exclusivity, thereby disrupting the connection between jealousy
and non-monogamy.
While popular culture and the emotion world of monogamy do in-
fluence the experience of jealousy, emotions cannot simply be liberated
from these dominant forces, much like sexuality cannot be liberated
from repression (as demonstrated well by Foucault (1976/1978)). In-
stead, following Weeks’s (2008) example, we must look at the ‘histori-
cally shaped series of possibilities, actions, behaviours, desires, risks,
identities, norms, and values that can be reconfigured and recombined,
but cannot be simply unleashed’ (29). Weeks notes that while the cul-
tural regulation contributes to subjectivity, emotions, and sexuality,
agency also matters. Such agency emerges through grassroots orga-
nization and ‘the democratization of sexuality and intimate life’ (32).
Polyamorists manifest these kinds of alternatives to jealousy by devel-
oping a different set of expectations than those implicit in dominant
culture. The culture in which we live, in part, shapes our identities, and
our understanding of this identity is somewhat limited by the language
available (Weeks 2003). Whereas a monogamous cultural discourse has
no word for the opposite of jealousy, polyamorists identified language
to express occasions of pleasure ensuing from their non-monogamous
practice: compersion.
According to Heaphy, Donovan, and Weeks (2004), the particular
practice of consensual non-monogamy in same-sex relationships (such
as those I research) reflects Foucault’s idea that resistance produces
creative outcomes. An unintended benefit of historic homosexual ex-
clusion from institutionalized marriage is that gays and lesbians have
232 Jillian Deri

ample opportunity to question the institution of marriage. Through

their reflexive critique, they creatively produce relationship alterna-
tives to mainstream options that often better reflect their chosen expres-
sions of pleasure. These creative practices include open relationships,
the emotional dimension of polyamory, and cultivating the experience
of compersion.
Polyamorists actively develop poly philosophy that contributes to
the experience of emotions associated with relationships, jealousy, and
love – in both positive and negative ways. There is an interesting con-
tradiction within the polyamorous community. On the one hand, jeal-
ousy is seen as something to which polyamorists need to give particular
attention – they need to be proactive and upfront in managing jealousy
and therefore good at its mitigation. On the other hand, several poly-
amorists in my study reported a certain pressure to be ‘over it already,’
and this pressure actually stood in the way of mitigating jealousy since
it drove it underground. One participant, Coraline,2 called this ‘the pos-
turing of poly cool.’ Some participants would tell me how ‘jealousy is
socially constructed by the monogamy-centric mainstream culture’ and
thus should not be part of their poly experience. They felt that if they
chose polyamory, they could not complain about how hard it could be.
Heloise made the analogy, ‘If you move to the rainforest of Vancouver,
you’ve got no right to complain about the rain.’ When polyamorists feel
pressure to not be jealous, they don’t talk about their challenges, and
this gives the false impression that everything is easy.
Polyamorists are aware of the misconceptions and prejudice around
non-monogamy, such as that polyamorists are commitment-phobic,
promiscuous, or idealistic. When talking to monogamous people about
their relationships, polyamorists sometimes downplay the challenges
of being polyamorous in an attempt to avoid adding the stigma of
jealousy to the stigma of being poly. Polyamorists work hard to dispel
these negative stereotypes, and therefore may gloss over the challenges
of being polyamorous that could leave them open to criticism (Kleese
2007). Additionally, some polyamorous people downplay the sexual
component of their relationships, emphasizing instead the importance
of the emotional connection in an (somewhat successful) attempt to
gain mainstream credibility (Peppermint 2007).
The culture of polyamory challenges several ideals of monogamy and
romantic love. It rejects the romantic ideal of ‘total devotion,’ wherein
true love must have only one object, and that true love lasts forever
(Goussinsky 2008). Polyamorists are critical of ideas of possession,
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 233

ownership, or entitlement regarding a lover (Robinson 1999), which are

central tenets of envy as described above by Simmel. Polyamorists see
multiple loves as a more realistic portrayal of love, rather than idealis-
tic. They claim that jealousy is a ‘natural’ part of a relationship, yet also
say it need not be there at all in relation to a lover’s other sexual en-
counters. Polyamorists differentiate and disconnect the source of jeal-
ousy from the event. They understand the source of jealousy as one’s
own insecurities or monogamous socialization. When jealousy does
arise, they address the emotion rather than the event that ‘caused’ jeal-
ousy. Polyamorists support their lovers to mitigate adverse emotions,
though the individual is ultimately responsible for their own emotional
experience. For example, polyamorists will support their partners by
offering reassurance or ‘being extra sweet,’ but will still go on a date
with their other lover.
According to Buss (2000), an evolutionary psychologist, jealousy
in monogamy developed as a tool to identify a partner’s cheating, to
show devoted love, and therefore to prevent the partner from straying.
Because polyamorists encourage encounters outside the relationship,
jealousy functions as a barrier, instead of a tool, to the full actualiza-
tion of polyamorous love. Polyamorists want to trust their partners
to play outside of the relationship, want their partner to have a good
time doing so, want them to return afterwards, and they want to feel
compersion throughout this process. Because cheating and loss is still
possible in polyamorous situations, however, Buss’s description of the
role of jealousy is still partially applicable. One participant spoke of
the ‘ultimate poly betrayal’ – a partner having unsafe sex with another
lover. She noted that her jealous intuition that he was doing so was
‘crazy-making,’ particularly since her partner always responded to her
suspicion as if she was just being insecure. In this case, the polyam-
orous ideal of addressing the emotion instead of the event would not
serve her well. The distinction between suspicious and fait accompli
jealousy is relevant here. Clearly, freedom to have multiple sexual rela-
tions does not necessarily translate to trustworthy or ethical behaviour.
Polyamorists enable compersion through developing and negoti-
ating rules within their relationships. They nurture a feeling of ‘spe-
cialness’ in each relationship by creating or identifying an aspect that
is unique to the couple (Jamieson 2004; Wosick-Correa 2008). While
monogamous people often depend on sexual exclusivity to maintain
a feeling of specialness, polyamorists find other ways to achieve this.
In poly couples where there is a primary/ secondary hierarchy, they
234 Jillian Deri

may negotiate reserving certain features for their primary relationship,

such as acts (often sex acts), certain locations (their bed, for example),
or create certain time restrictions (‘Be home by 2 a.m.,’ ‘Only one date
a week,’ etc). One participant’s only rule was ‘Don’t do anything you’d
be ashamed of.’ Another site for negotiation is around rules of disclo-
sure. Some variations of these are: ‘Tell me only the necessary details,’
‘Tell me before you do anything,’ ‘Tell me within 24 hours after an act,’
and ‘Tell me all the juicy details.’ One participant had a three-question
agreement, where her partner could ask her three questions about a
date, thus putting the control of information sharing into her partner’s
hands. Her partner could opt to hear more banal information (such as
‘What did you have for dinner?’) or choose more intimate questions.
After the three questions, she could decide whether or not she wanted to
hear more. Among my interview subjects, honesty was highly valued,
but notably, full disclosure was rarely practised and rarely idealized.
Over-sharing was often seen as disrespectful since it led to ‘dumping’
onto people information that they may not have wanted to know.
Within polyamorous culture, as one participant stated: ‘It’s not sleazy
to hit on someone’s partner.’ Poly etiquette suggests that it is okay to
flirt with or pursue a person who has a known partner. When one does
so, they are not seen as trying to ‘steal’ one’s date, as long as they fol-
low proper etiquette. Such etiquette involves demonstrating respect,
clarity, and open communication towards the person with whom one
is flirting and their partner(s). Etiquette also suggests that a person de-
vote their full attention to the person (or people) with whom they are
on the date. Flirting with other people is usually not done at this time.
When polyamorists neglect these subtle social graces, however, oth-
ers feel disrespected and compersion is difficult. It is important to note
that flirting means different things in different cultural contexts. Within
polyamory, flirting does not necessarily represent desire to replace, but
might represent playfulness, appreciation, friendship, or romantic in-
terest (the subtleties of which are significant, yet not always apparent).
Polyamorists are most likely to experience compersion when they feel
as though they are being taken care of by their partners and feel secure
within these relationships. Notably, like most etiquette, actual practices
do not always reflect the unspoken cultural rules.
Given the small size of many poly communities, overlaps of friends
and lovers are quite common. Overlapping social networks could be a
catalyst for jealousy, but polyamorous people have established etiquette
where difficult emotions are minimized through upfront discussion.
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 235

In this instance, polyamorous etiquette calls for people to communicate

with all the people who might be adversely affected by a relationship,
including friends and ex-lovers. Etiquette calls for them to ask for per-
mission or act in a way so as to minimize jealous tensions. Most par-
ticipants relied on other polyamorous people for relationship support
and were particularly caring and accountable to each other. For these
reasons, polyamorous people widen the boundaries of their poly fam-
ily to include lovers, ex-lovers, close friends, and intimate non-sexual
friends, treating them all with consideration as one might a relation-
ship. Also significantly, close friendships or deep respect often form be-
tween people who are both lovers to one person (also called cohearts).
Celia was a participant who identifies with and practises both mo-
nogamy and polyamory, stating that her preference shifts over time de-
pending on the dynamic with her lover(s). She noted that in her poly
relationships, it has been common for her partner to check in with her
about whether or not it is okay to flirt with a certain person. This act of
reaching consent included her in the decision, which mitigated the po-
tential for jealousy. Her monogamous partners, however, did not think
to check in about flirting since it is not supposed to exist with in their
dynamic and such boundaries are assumed rather than discussed. Ac-
cording to Celia, it was this exclusion from the decision-making process
that triggered her jealousy. She also noted that in a polyamorous dy-
namic, a partner’s crush could potentially become a new relationship,
whereas in a monogamous dynamic, the fear is that they may leave
her entirely for another person. Tianna argued that if a crush remains
unexplored because it is taboo, it will likely blossom. If a partner is per-
mitted to explore a crush, they are likely to ‘get it out of their system’
and find a better balance. In both of these cases, practising polyamory
works to decrease instances of jealousy.
There is a joke about polyamory that sums up one apprehension
about the lifestyle: How many polyamorists does it take to screw in a
light bulb? None; they are too busy processing to screw. In other words,
polyamory is a lot of work. Celia noted, ‘Polyamory may be many great
and wonderful things, but simple is not one of them.’ The idea that
relationships take work is so pervasive that it often goes unquestioned
(Kipnis 2003). Add more relationships into the mix and there will be
more work (Taormino 2008). For polyamorists much of this work is
done through communication and negotiation, often geared towards
reducing jealousy. Non-violent communication was expected and there
was an understanding that jealousy should never be dealt with in a
236 Jillian Deri

violent or aggressive fashion. Polyamorous culture encourages clarity

and upfront communication, in particular about attraction to other peo-
ple, intentions within a relationship, and sexual practices. Although not
unique to polyamory, an unintended benefit of such communication is
a great depth of intimacy, feeling of freedom, and a sense of interdepen-
dence within a relationship.
All of my study participants agreed that communication was the
central tool for mitigating jealousy and enabling compersion. Commu-
nication involves negotiating boundaries (which are never a given),
learning and expressing one’s own triggers for jealousy, and building
trust. Some participants felt that the vulnerability that comes from dis-
cussing one’s jealousy was emotionally risky. Through practising poly-
amory, however, jealousy was normalized and thus minimized. For
instance, one participant noted that as soon as she vocalized her feeling
of jealousy and had it heard, the feeling dissipated. Grace said, ‘One
of my yoga instructors said whenever she felt jealous she would tell
whoever she was jealous of that she was jealous at the first opportunity
that she could, and she found that the other person usually took it as a
compliment and that diffused the situation a little bit. It was easier for
her to feel this bad feeling when it was actually making someone else
feel good, but at the same time there was no power because the other
person couldn’t use the jealousy over her because it was out there in
the open.’ Similarly, Janelle argued that polyamorous culture encour-
ages people to experience jealousy rather than deny it, ‘So just allowing
yourself to even just be jealous is so much more freeing and you end
up not being as jealous. And also being able to talk to your partner and
say, ‘You know what? This threatens me,’ or ‘I need some reassurance,
can you give that to me?’ And it kind of just dissipates. Okay, I’m not
so jealous anymore.’
The issue of trust arose frequently among polyamorous participants
in relation to jealousy and security within a relationship. It was par-
ticularly important to trust their partner to have responsible sex out-
side the relationship, both physically and emotionally. While they may
know and trust their partners, they also want to be able to trust their
partner’s date, which they may or may not know well. Uslaner (2001)
argues that there are two kinds of trusters, a distinction that coincides
with my participants’ approach to polyamorous practice. Moralistic
trusters have an optimistic view of people, assume people are gener-
ally good, and thus are more likely to trust someone they do not know.
They felt that a partner’s choice to stay or leave is irrespective of being
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 237

actively polyamorous, and thus they easily trusted their partner’s out-
side sexual and emotional actions. Strategic trusters, on the other hand,
depend on accumulated information. They approached polyamory
with skepticism and hoped to overcome distrustfulness once people
proved themselves. While their core reasons for practising polyamory
were strong (i.e., philosophically based or towards a more realistic por-
trayal of their love), they had to work hard to trust the intentions of
their partners and cohearts. Moralistic trusters had an easier time with
compersion. Some participants straddled both sides of the fence, such
as Coraline, who stated, ‘You trust what you know,’ and thus she ap-
proached her relationships not with a lack of trust but with an optimis-
tic lack of expectations.
The above polyamorous narratives lead one to ask why polyamor-
ists continue to practise polyamory through such difficult emotions.
My research indicates that the answer is manifold. First, while jealousy
within polyamory can be hard, there is jealousy in monogamous prac-
tice as well. Second, once tools are in place to manage difficult emo-
tions like jealousy, it is experienced less negatively. Most polyamorists
stated that jealousy was more common in their early experiences of
polyamory and became increasingly rare. Third, the tools in place to
mitigate jealousy in polyamorists’ relationships could be applied to
other difficult emotions. Fourth, my participants described polyamory
as a much more realistic and freeing expression of their love than mo-
nogamy would be, and thus welcomed the full package. They see poly-
amory as no less normal than monogamy, just less common. Fifth, the
benefits of polyamory outweigh the difficult feelings, and the pleasure
found in compersion was particularly satisfying. Sixth, the challenge of
polyamory and its ensuing opportunity for growth was highly gratify-
ing. And lastly, the sexual enjoyment was a significant benefit to poly-
amorous practice.
Studies have shown that open relationships correlate to increased
self-esteem and self-knowledge (Wolfe 2003), personal empowerment
(Sheff 2005; Weitzman 1999), and ‘boosts in sexual self-confidence . . .
and [the] dissolution of jealousy’ (De Visser and McDonald 2007:69).
My study reveals similar results. One participant, Cheyenne, talked
about polyamory as empowering, and felt a great deal of pride and
satisfaction in bringing her jealousy to a place of solid compersion: ‘You
know those moments when you feel really proud of yourself about the
way you live and what you do. Like, “Look at us!” And I do, I feel so
attached to that word [compersion], really excited that I do receive so
238 Jillian Deri

much pleasure from my partner being off with someone else and hav-
ing a great night. I want to hear about it the next day in whatever degree
of detail they want to give me. And that’s fun.’ Another participant,
Nora, responded: ‘It is all worthwhile for me to do it. It’s a beautiful
thing. It’s like getting your cake and eating it too. Even if it means the
making of the cake is six times longer, it’s worth it. It’s the most difficult
cake in the universe to make.’
While most polyamorists maintain ‘It’s not all about the sex,’3 the
sexual benefits of polyamory were frequently mentioned in the in-
terviews. Several polyamorists talked about eroticizing what may
have otherwise triggered jealousy (such as a partner having sex with
someone else), thus converting a potentially painful event into one
of pleasure. Research on swinging has also demonstrated that certain
situations that are ripe for jealousy had an erotically stimulating effect
on swingers (De Visser and McDonald 2007; Gould 2000). Similarly,
Stearns (1989:15) notes that a certain amount of jealousy can ‘provide
some enjoyable spice.’ Many polyamorists report that having outside
sexual experiences increases their overall libido and that this increase
transfers to their other partners. One participant expressed a strong
sense of sexual compersion: ‘If my lover has a lover who I am friends
with or who I like, and this is about 98 per cent of the time, watching
them hug, kiss, snuggle, love, have sex with that person is so hot I could
almost die from it. It’s not even a vague pleasure. It’s like Oh my God,
right. It’s the hottest thing ever. Ever. And the better I like the person
that my lover is having sex with, the hotter it is.’ Heloise described an-
other aspect of compersion: ‘It’s funny because if you look at the “How
do you know if your spouse is cheating” [article in a magazine] and
some of the big signs are, he’s suddenly bringing you gifts, they’re tell-
ing you they love you more, and you are having more sex. And I’m like
“Right, what’s wrong with that?” Okay, so find out who they are cheat-
ing with so they stop doing all those wonderful things for you. I mean
the concept is that they are doing it out of guilt, but it could be that they
are feeling more sexual and more loving and more gregarious.’
Even though it is often neglected in sociological research, love is cen-
tral to Western culture (Jackson 1993). Love, of course, is also a central
organizing principle within polyamory. Love’s shadow is jealousy –
and jealousy plays a significant role in the polyamorous experience,
either by its presence or its absence. The more people open their hearts
to truly open relationships, the more vulnerable they are to the expe-
rience of jealousy, or, alternatively, the more they can conquer love’s
 Polyamory or Polyagony? 239

shadow. Through their extensive critique and re-imagining of jealousy,

polyamorists seek to shift personal and cultural understandings of jeal-
ousy. Compersion is a creative act of resistance that places the body,
pleasure, and love at centre stage. Polyamorists’ practice of compersion
challenges emotionally normative constructions of jealousy.

Conclusion

From the interviews I conducted, I found that my participants defi-

nitely experienced more polyamory than polyagony. It could be that
those who struggled greatly are no longer polyamorous and therefore
did not make it into my sample. Although their class backgrounds
varied significantly, my sample represents people who have enough
privilege and education to be able to persevere with polyamory, which
then must also influence their approach to processing jealousy. I would
argue, however, that jealousy is manageable in most polyamorous re-
lationships, so long as all practitioners are willing to do the work. The
existence of polyamory contradicts conventional beliefs about the natu-
ralness and inevitability of jealousy and the supposed gendered ways
that jealousy is embodied. While polyamorists do not necessarily have
different emotional experiences than monogamous people, they follow
a different model of love that in turn affects their emotional experience.
Through the creation of a cultural ideology of poly, polyamorists have
enabled the emotional experience of compersion. Polyamory exempli-
fies a culture where sexual non-exclusivity is not necessarily associated
with jealousy, and offers an alternative narrative of the embodiment
and expression of jealousy. As to the question, ‘Where do you find
the time?,’ I offer a response provided by one participant, Priscilla,
‘There is always room for Jell-O and always time for Facebook – and
one more lover.’ In other words, we make time for that which we love.

NOTES

1 http://www.cat-and-dragon.com/stef/Poly/Labriola/jealousy.html.
2 All names are pseudonyms.
3 A polyamorous slogan made popular by CunningMinx’s podcast
Polyamory Weekly.
13 Feeling Cosmopolitan: Experiential
Brands and Urban Cosmopolitan
Sensibilities

sonia boo km a n

Introduction

Contemporary consumer culture is considered a ‘key arena in which

the emotional dynamics of our lives are played out’ (Williams 2001:3).
In this arena, the ‘brand’ has emerged as a potent platform on which
such emotional dynamics unfold. Increasingly patterned through an
‘emotionalized approach to brand design,’ a strategy referred to as
‘emotional branding,’ the brand has become a key mechanism for the
management, mobilization, and valorization of emotion in the con-
sumer market (Zyman 2001:vi; Gobé 2001; see also O’Shaughnessy and
O’Shaughnessy 2003). The emotionality of the brand is the focus of this
chapter. Taking the case of specialty coffee brands Starbucks and Sec-
ond Cup, it explores the ways in which the brands are configured to en-
gage consumers sensually and emotionally, using emotionally driven
marketing techniques and devices. Aiming to cultivate emotional
connections with consumers and build brand value in what has been
termed an ‘experience economy’ (Pine and Gilmore 1999), I argue that
brands are co-shaping passions, feelings, and emotional experiences in
a dynamic interplay with consumers.
To make this argument, I draw on data extracted from an extensive em-
pirical study spanning the production and consumption of the brands,
conducted mainly in Toronto, and also in Vancouver, over a period of
three years.1 The project employed three main qualitative research strat-
egies including participant observation of both Starbucks and Second
Cup branded cafés, semi-structured interviews with over 60 producers
and consumers of the brands, as well as a visual analysis of various
brand materials such as brochures, coffee labels, and advertisements.
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 241

The chapter begins by outlining the different perspectives on emotion

that inform my analysis, followed by a discussion of emotional brand-
ing. Drawing on recent branding theory and a view of the brand as an
interface (Lury 2004; Arvidsson 2006), I then introduce the experiential
brands Starbucks and Second Cup. I consider the ways in which the
brands are designed to frame and mediate certain affective responses
and emotional experiences through the organization of a themed socio-
spatial ‘servicescape,’ focusing in particular on the cosmopolitan pos-
sibilities they proffer. ‘Cosmopolitan’ can be defined both in terms of
its popular, everyday usage as an attitude and stance of openness and
ability to negotiate and comprehend cultural diversity, and in its more
political and philosophical bent as a form of global citizenship, under-
pinned by an understanding of global interconnectedness and aware-
ness of a global realm of responsibility (see Binnie et al. 2006; Hannerz
1996; Beck 2002; Urry 1995, 2000). Both of these conceptualizations in-
form the cosmopolitan experience that is structured by the brands.
I focus on cosmopolitanism because many Starbucks and Second
Cup consumers identified it as part of the brand experience. For ex-
ample, Jeff, a regular consumer at Starbucks, was discussing the pro-
cess of ordering coffee, which involves the use of ‘foreign’ languages
and choosing from a ‘global’ selection of coffees, when he remarked
that Starbucks was ‘branding themselves as this more sophisticated,
cosmopolitan, exotic experience . . .’ When asked to elaborate on this,
he suggested that Starbucks expressed a kind of ‘cosmopolitan cool’
that he described as a modern, urban style. Another regular Starbucks
consumer, Sharon, indicated that ‘the overall culture of Starbucks, or
feeling of Starbucks, is cosmopolitan’; the same ‘feeling’ she associ-
ates with being ‘downtown’ in the city of Toronto. The final part of the
chapter expatiates this urban cosmopolitan sensibility. Encompassing
affective and aesthetic elements, it will be argued that such cosmopoli-
tanism comprises a ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1977) that underpins
the formation of new urban cosmopolitan lifestyles, and is given cul-
tural expression by the brands.

Approaching Emotion

In exploring the emotional dimension of brands, I draw on recent work

in the area of emotional geographies that considers emotion ‘in terms of
its socio-spatial mediation and articulation rather than as entirely interi-
orized subjective mental states,’ and that takes a ‘non-objectifying view
242 Sonia Bookman

of emotions as relational flows, fluxes or currents, in-between people

and places rather than “things” or “objects” to be studied or measured’
(Davidson, Bondi, and Smith 2005:3). This perspective is useful for con-
sidering how certain sentiments, mediated by the brand interface, are
constituted in the interplay between brands and consumers in every-
day urban life.
Writing in this vein, Thrift (2009) focuses on affect in relation to emo-
tion. He suggests that emotion is an expression of the (incomplete)
capture of affect, which is not amenable to representation. Precogni-
tive, and pre-discursive in nature, affect is generally a ‘semiconscious
phenomenon’ that involves bodily states, processes, and knowledges
(Thrift 2009:239). It is a form of embodied thinking, ‘often indirect and
nonreflective,’ and a particular ‘kind of intelligence’ that also shapes
how we move, (re)act and ‘relate to the world’ (175). Bound up with
embodied encounters, affect also moves through and between bodies
(broadly understood), which are ‘not primarily centred repositories
of knowledge – originators – but rather receivers and transmitters,
ceaselessly moving messages of various kinds on’ (236). Of concern for
Thrift is the ever more ‘explicit engineering of affect’ through, for ex-
ample, the use of ‘sensory design’ in the production of commodities, or
devices such as the brand, and the way this is influencing disposition
(235, 245).
The approach to emotion that informs this chapter is also influenced
by sociological and cultural analyses that take a fluid view of emo-
tions, in a manner similar to emotional geography perspectives. Burkitt
(2002), for example, indicates that emotions are not objects contained
in bodies, but rather are ‘patterns of relationship’ that have ‘sense and
meaning in the context of relations to other bodies, both human and
non-human’ (151). This suggests, following Ahmed (2004:4), that emo-
tions involve particular ‘orientations towards others’ that are shaped
through practices in everyday life, and are formed over time with refer-
ence to the past.
Using the term feeling instead of affect, Burkitt conceptualizes emo-
tions as complexes involving bodily states, or feelings, as well as
discourse, or the attempt to articulate feeling using emotional vocabu-
laries. While recognizing their intimate connection, Burkitt (2002) dis-
tinguishes between feeling and emotion, indicating that ‘feeling is part
of practical consciousness and involves the way we can act within our
social world through a sense of what has to be done. Emotion, however,
belongs to discursive consciousness and involves the way we articulate
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 243

these feelings . . .’ (154). At the same time, feelings are never fully ex-
hausted through the ’emotional vocabularies’ used to identify and ex-
press them. Delineated in this way, Burkitt’s notion of feeling is akin
to Thrift’s view of affect, both of which are closely associated with, yet
exceed emotion, involve embodied, practical consciousness, shape dis-
positions, and give rise to action. However, I prefer Thrift’s somewhat
more mobile view of affect as a set of flows that moves through bodies,
which constantly receive, transmit, and interpret affects or feelings. In
this chapter I use both terms at different times to discuss processes re-
lated to emotional branding.
To elaborate on feeling in the context of social relations, Burkitt refers
to Williams’s (1977) idea of ‘structures of feeling.’ Williams is attempt-
ing to understand the processual, emergent dimension of cultural and
social forms – how they are lived and experienced in the present as
unarticulated, unfixed, and in the process of becoming. He is interested
in general changes with social life, and defines such change in terms of
‘style,’ referring to a ‘particular quality of social experience and rela-
tionship’ (131). Williams uses the notion of structures of feeling to indi-
cate how such changes in social meanings and values ‘are actively lived
and felt’ in terms of a ‘practical consciousness of a present kind, in a
living and interrelating continuity’ (132). Williams suggests that struc-
tures of feeling enable us to understand ‘our present cultural process,’
and can be especially discerned in forms of art – ‘social formations of
a specific kind’ – where social content tends to be ‘of this present and
affective kind’ (133).
This notion is used by Nava (2002) in her work on the emergence
of a popular cosmopolitan consciousness in the commercial culture of
early twentieth-century England. In her study, she traces how women
in particular, through the consumption of global fashion and décor, ex-
pressed and contributed to the formation of a cosmopolitan ‘structure
of feeling’ in which ‘cultural difference and the foreign constituted a
source of interest, pleasure and counter-identification that existed in
tension with more conservative outlooks’ in that particular time and
place (86). Drawing attention to the affective dimension of cosmopol-
itanism, which is largely understood as an intellectual and aesthetic
stance, Nava’s work provides a useful way of thinking about cosmo-
politanism as a particular way of feeling; an emotional disposition
(Nava 2002, 2007). She also indicates that it is mediated through inter-
actions with consumerist objects, and is generated in specific practices
and performances.
244 Sonia Bookman

This framework for understanding emotion is used in this chapter

to think about the emotionality of brands. Suggesting that brands are
implicated in processes of affective engineering, it allows a consider-
ation of the ways in which they intentionally ‘work on’ and cultivate
certain feelings and emotions. It provides a way of thinking about
the involvement of brands in the socio-spatial mediation of emotions,
which are constituted in the interfacing between brands and consumers.
This framework also informs my analysis of the ways in which brands,
through the structuring of feelings and the mediation of emotion, give
rise to certain structures of feeling through which we feel our way.
Nava’s work will be useful for exploring the specifically cosmopolitan
sensibilities constructed on the platform of the coffee brands I am con-
cerned with.

Emotional Branding

Within contemporary consumer culture, the brand has emerged as a

powerful, ubiquitous market cultural form. Its increasing salience in
economic and cultural life is attributed to a complex set of develop-
ments in marketing, production, and design from the 1970s onwards
(Klein 1999; Arvidsson 2006; Moor 2008; Lury 2004). Following the
theoretical principles of Lury (1999, 2000, 2004), the brand can be un-
derstood as a complex media object that articulates and mediates pro-
cesses of production and consumption, operating as an interface of
communication and medium of exchange. It is a frame that organizes
the (asymmetrical) two-way exchange of information, operating as a
communicative meeting point between consumers and producers. The
exchange is not only a matter of ‘qualitative calculation, but also of af-
fect, intensivity and the re-introduction of qualities’ (Lury 2004:7). The
interface and its communicative possibilities are formatted through a
process of design – the branding process – that involves the integration
and coordination of information in a patterning of activity; the organi-
zation and ordering of relations between products and services in time
and space. Constituted as performative, the functioning of the interface
facilitates the establishment of brand unity or objectivity, and contrib-
utes to the emergence of brand image – ‘the associations that a brand holds
for consumers’ – which is central to creating brand value (80).
In recent years, an emotionalized approach to design has been devel-
oped to capitalize on the brand’s capacity to be ‘affective’ in processes of
exchange, through the communication of information and introduction
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 245

of qualities that are specifically devised to engage the senses, generate

passions, and evoke emotions. This approach, termed emotional brand-
ing, is described by Gobé (2001) as providing the ‘means and meth-
odology for connecting products to the consumer in an emotionally
profound way’ (xv). In his use of the term emotional, Gobé is referring to
the ways in which ‘a brand engages consumers on the level of the sense
and emotions; how a brand comes to life for people and forges a deeper,
lasting connection’ (xiv). To achieve this, to be culturally and emotion-
ally relevant to consumers, Gobé indicates that brands must develop
respectful, dialogic, and intimate relationships with consumers. They
need to understand and facilitate the holistic, emotional experiences
consumers desire through an imaginative approach to, and emphasis
on, sensorial design and emotional appeal. This involves the establish-
ment of brand personality and presence, as well as a brand vision that
enables continual reinvention in order to ensure emotional resonance.
While the emotional dimension of the brand is not necessarily new, it
has recently risen to the fore in brand design and management, and is
increasingly perceived as the key to brand value and success, wherein,
‘building a brand empire ‘is about staking out emotional turf in our
consciousness’ ’ (Wolf, in Arvidsson 2006:82). According to marketing
analyst Ying Fan (2005), ‘brands are now gunning for a share of con-
sumers’ inner lives, their values, their beliefs, their politics; yes, their
souls’ (342; see also O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy 2003). The cul-
tivation of an emotional connection with consumers has become a pri-
mary aim of brands. To accomplish this, various ‘affective techniques’
and emotionally oriented marketing strategies have evolved with the
intent to mobilize affects and produce compelling experiences that be-
come associated with the brand (Thrift 2009:243). One such strategy
consists of the increasingly widespread trend of ‘brandscaping.’ This
is a marketing strategy based on sensorial design that involves the or-
chestration of space, using lighting, interior décor, architecture, and
atmosphere to create a particular ambiance in which consumers are
immersed (Lury 2004). This allows the brand to richly engage all the
senses and suggest ways of feeling, with the aim of constructing inten-
sive aesthetic and emotional experiences that will produce added value
for the brand. Other strategies include brand sponsorship of celebrities
or causes that consumers are already emotionally involved with, the
facilitation of brand communities through the organization of branded
social events, and viral marketing whereby the brand is inserted into al-
ready existing patterns of relations and everyday life, the idea of which
246 Sonia Bookman

is to ‘tie commodities into the affective landscape of consumers’ (Thrift

2009:247; see also Arvisson 2006).
These brand strategies however, require consumers’ embodied par-
ticipation in the performance and production of brand-based emotional
experiences, such as the ‘experience of family bonding at McDonald’s’
or the ‘experience of empowerment with Nike’ (Arvidsson 2006:82).
Through the organization and ordering of retail environments, events,
and sponsorships, brand management is able to establish particular
ambiances that frame and partially anticipate consumers’ engagement
with the brand, enabling emotional experiences to unfold in particular
directions. The aim is to ‘guide the investments of affect on the part of
consumers,’ with the goal of ‘creating an affective intensity, and experi-
ence of unity between the brand and the subject’ (93). This process is
carefully co-ordinated and pre-structured in order to ensure that the
meanings and experiences generated on the platform of the brand fall
within the parameters of brand image, thus adding to (rather than
detracting from) brand value (Arvidsson 2006). Drawing on consu-
mers’ emotional capacities and affective labour, consumers are thus
implicated in the co-creation of brand experiences, and ultimately, brand
value.

Experiential Brands: Starbucks and Second Cup

Now the advertising is not what’s important, it’s more about the experi-
ence. The building of the brand is really about your experience, the way
you build a brand is one experience at a time, fulfilling the expectations of
each consumer every time.
– Greg, VP Operations, Second Cup

Starbucks and Second Cup have been at the vanguard of the trend
towards emotional branding. Starting out in the form of a retail store
selling high-quality coffee beans to a small target market of discerning
middle-class consumers in the 1970s, both brands quickly evolved in
the 1980s to their current predominant form as a streetfront café. Ex-
panding tremendously throughout the 1990s and into the next decade,
these branded cafés are a prominent feature of Canadian cityscapes,
and the café culture they promote is now an integral aspect of everyday
life for many middle-class urbanites.
Premised on the provision of customized, gourmet coffee in a styl-
ized, social, café setting, both Starbucks and Second Cup can be de-
fined as experiential brands, a term used to designate those brands
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 247

which, ‘in conjunction with their corporate-sponsored symbols and

products, offer consumers distinctively themed servicescapes, de-
signed to facilitate certain kinds of hedonic/aesthetic experiences and
social interactions’ (Thompson and Arsel 2004:632). A particular form
of brandscaping, servicescaping is a marketing strategy that involves
the ‘experientializing’ of service industries through their spatialization
and use of sensorial design (Moor 2003). It allows a more ‘proximal re-
lationship between consumer bodies and brands’ through which emo-
tional connections and experiences can emerge (Moor 2003:45). These
experiences are shaped through the use of ‘theming’ – a technique that
provides a framework for the organization of environments in such a
way as to establish a unifying image or experience (Lukas 2007:1). The
marketing literature suggests that theming is key to creating experi-
ences that are engaging, rich, and memorable (Pine and Gilmore 1999).
It works through the identification of a particular theme, as well as a
set of feelings and emotional cues that will convey that theme, using
this inventory to guide the process of design (Pine and Gilmore 1991).
Theming operates as a mechanism through which ‘affective response
can be designed into spaces’ (Thrift 2009:187).
In the case of Starbucks and Second Cup, the organization of the
themed servicescape involves the coordination of spatial, material, and
relational elements, namely coffee, baristas, and the café space, to con-
vey information and introduce certain qualities that will generate care-
fully calculated effects. Smells, images, sounds, gestures, and textures
are configured as cues to prompt affective responses and cultivate feel-
ings that point to the theme. Consumers are called on to interact with
and qualify (Callon, Méadel, and Rabeharisoa 2002) the various cues
they encounter as they enter the café, order beverages and potentially
linger in the café space. In this process of bodily and tactile engagement,
consumers are deeply implicated in production and circulation of the
affects, feelings, and emotions that are associated with the themed ex-
perience they co-perform. The ongoing everyday co-production of this
experience is central to what Second Cup’s marketing director terms
living the brand. This is vital to brand value, which is attained in part
by the way a brand ‘comes to life’ for consumers and is entwined in
their everyday lives through the establishment of affective and emo-
tional connections. Consumers pay for the experience they co-create,
and which forms the basis of exchange.
Delineated by brand engineers as the ‘Starbucks Experience,’ or the
‘Ultimate Coffee Experience’ in the case of Second Cup, the brand ex-
perience, in the case of both brands, is structured through two main
248 Sonia Bookman

themes, including a ‘third place’ coffeehouse theme and the romance

of coffee drinking. As summarized by Howard Schultz, chairman and
chief global strategist of Starbucks: ‘People connect with Starbucks be-
cause they relate to what we stand for. It’s more than great coffee. It’s
the romance of the coffee experience, the feeling of warmth and com-
munity people get in the Starbucks stores’ (Schultz and Yang 1997:5).

The Third Place

The widely recognized third place coffeehouse theme draws on Olden-

burg’s (1989) notion of the ‘third place,’ which he describes as an informal
gathering place outside of home and work, characterized by social inter-
action ranging from an exchange of glances to conversation, and marked
by a sense of playfulness, community, and camaraderie. Reflecting this
formulation, a marketing director for Starbucks Canada remarked:

‘I like to think of the cafés as the third place, so customers have their home
and their work, and Starbucks is, and for a lot of people, the third place that
they go to. So when you go in you’ll see warm colours making you relax,
the music is generally jazzy, which is also relaxing, it’s not invasive, it’s just
there . . . um, we always put in every store we possibly can a space for couches,
chairs, in some stores we have a fireplace . . . the ambiance and atmosphere is
all about creating a very comfortable space where you can come, have your
cup of coffee, read a paper if you want, or visit with a friend.’

A third place ambience is thus framed through configurations of café

space, including the use of architecture and interior design. It also in-
volves the ‘performatting’ (Adkins 2005) of baristas, who are trained to
convey third place qualities such as friendliness, hospitality, and recogni-
tion through emotional labour intended to foster feelings of belonging and
circulate a sense of community among patrons. Consumers are invited to
‘hang out’ in these spaces, configured as a comfortable and familiar ‘home-
away-from-home,’ and actively co-construct a third place experience,
which is constituted as much from consumers’ emotional engagement and
social activity as it is from the features of café design (Arvidsson 2006).

The Romance of Coffee

Of particular interest for this chapter, and thus elaborated in more depth,
is the romance of coffee drinking, which is linked to a ‘cosmopolitan
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 249

connoisseur’ experience. Coffee drinking is romanced by the brands, in

part through the configuration of specialty coffees, which are introduced
to consumers in ‘the way wine stewards bring forward fine wines,’
with an emphasis on origins as a distinguishing factor in discriminat-
ing coffee quality and ‘taste’ (Schultz and Yang 1997:246). Designed to
both ‘educate’ consumers and encourage emotional involvement, in-
formation about specialty coffees and their diverse origins is conveyed
aesthetically for the most part through the use of colour, textures, im-
ages, and sounds assembled in the form of brochures, wall murals, or
even background music.
For example, consumers encounter displays of coffees that are
designed to express a variety of coffee styles through colourful, il-
lustrated packaging and stamp-like coffee labels. Second Cup offers
take-away cups patterned to tell the ‘story of coffee’ through artis-
tic images of coffee plants, producers, and global coffee expeditions.
Meanwhile, Starbucks provides brochures that act like tour guides to
a ‘world of coffee’ (Starbucks 2002a). Decorated with vintage maps,
travel notes, and postage stamps, these brochures introduce consum-
ers to fine coffee such as Ethiopia Sidamo, described as a magical
brew with a fleeting, floral aroma, a bright yet soft finish, and an exotic
lemon-pepper taste (Starbucks 2002a). Provided with brand-based
‘coffee passports’ to collect coffee ‘stamps’ and record their travels,
consumers are invited to sensually and imaginatively discover the
‘world of coffee’ and ‘taste’ the differences (in origin) configured cul-
turally as an ‘authentic’ tradition to encounter, an ‘exotic’ destination
to venture to, or a ‘mysterious’ flavour to imbibe (Second Cup 2008;
Starbucks 2002a).
Information designed to convey coffee origins are intended to sug-
gest feelings and circulate certain emotions that will convey the ro-
mance of coffee. Discussing a newly created Huehuetenango single
origin coffee label, Second Cup’s marketing director explained the sig-
nificance of aesthetic presentation in terms of emotional appeal: ‘. . .
yeah I mean there is a sense of adventure, it’s a bit of an escape that
allows you to go off to an exotic destination, and uh, you know, I think
that adds a little bit to the mystique of the coffee; another way that we
continue to try and support and build value for the product that we’re
developing . . . and also there’s an education piece plus creating a sense
of intrigue and involvement, which I think gets people more involved
in the overall experience.’ Designed to stir a host of potential emo-
tions, such as the ‘excitement’ of adventure, a sense of ‘intrigue,’ and
250 Sonia Bookman

‘delight’ in discovering new tastes, origins, and cultures, consumers are

encouraged to get ‘caught up’ in the romance and to develop a shared
‘passion’ for coffee through the cultivation of connoisseurship (of the
playful or serious sort) with the brand.
The romance of coffee is further invoked through an emphasis
onethical consumption, wherein the ‘love’ of coffee (diversity) is ex-
tended to a ‘care’ for coffee origins. This involves the formatting of
corporate social responsibility to frame and mediate altruistic, affec-
tive relations between the brands, their consumers, and coffee origin
communities. To this end, both Starbucks and Second Cup have de-
veloped elaborate programs focused on improving coffee production
practices, establishing environmental initiatives as well as pioneering
socially responsible coffees such as Second Cup’s ‘Rwandan Cup of
Hope.’ Starbucks’s ‘Commitment to Origins’ initiative, for example,
involved the development and promotion of a series of ethical cof-
fees (Starbucks 2002b). The aim was to express and communicate, as
a marketing director put it, ‘our passion about our coffee,’ which en-
compasses ‘everything in terms of where we buy, how we buy, how
we help origin countries, the kind of blends we make, the kinds of
products that we sell’ (interview). Displayed in ‘authentic’ burlap sacs,
these coffees were presented to consumers through packaging aesthet-
ics that employed ‘natural’ materials, and fair trade testimonials to
evoke ethical sentiments and mobilize emotions such as empathy for
others and hope for change.
Gobé (2001) has flagged this kind of ‘cause marketing’ as an important
trend that is ‘perfectly in sync with the premise of Emotional Branding;
it has everything to do with getting to know who your consumers really
are, what really matters to them, and showing them you feel the same
way’ (298). Pointing to Starbucks’ programs as exemplary of this ap-
proach, he suggests that the ‘effort to give something back to the often
Third-World countries where their product is harvested shows a rec-
ognition of the need for respect for human conditions at the product’s
source and a perspective of global diversity’ (300). Going a step fur-
ther than simply demonstrating their concern to consumers, Starbucks
and Second Cup invite consumers to become involved in such efforts.
A paragraph from Starbucks ‘Commitment to Origins’ brochure de-
clares: ‘We try to make a difference to the people and places that pro-
duce coffee, to the countries we visit and the families we touch. Every
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 251

time you purchase Starbucks coffees, you’re also making a difference,

helping to improve people’s lives, and encouraging conservation where
our coffee is grown’ (Starbucks 2002b).
Constituting an ethical ‘frame of action’ the brands pattern possibili-
ties for consumers to act out feelings of ‘care’ and ‘empathy,’ and dem-
onstrate a ‘perspective of global diversity’ by becoming responsible
consumers. Such programmed, altruistic practices allow consumers to
‘feel good’ about consuming specialty coffees and ‘doing good’ in the
global coffee community, facilitating the circulation of emotions such as
pleasure in the consuming encounter.

Romancing Coffee, Invoking Cosmopolitanism

Bound up with the complex set of emotions inspired by the romance of

coffee – such as the ‘excitement’ of adventure to distant places, ‘delight’
in diversity, and ‘empathy’ for coffee growing others – the brands con-
struct a cosmopolitan experience. By ‘working on emotions,’ consum-
ers are potentially aligned with the brands as cultural connoisseurs and
concerned global citizens; they are encouraged to feel and be cosmo-
politan with the brand (Ahmed 2004). This is a cosmopolitanism pre-
mised on an interest in, passion for, and openness to cultural diversity
as constituted via the medium of coffee, as well as an awareness of
global community and its interrelatedness through altruistic engage-
ment with coffee growing ‘others.’ Following Nava (2002), it is an emo-
tional as well as aesthetic disposition.
In order to enact this alignment, however, the brands establish a cos-
mopolitan context for action that attributes coffee origins and coffee
producing ‘others’ as the source of ‘our feeling’ – of the cosmopolitan
orientation afforded by the brands (Ahmed 2004). Aestheticized and
culturally framed as ‘exotic,’ ‘authentic,’ and ‘underdeveloped,’ cof-
fee producers and origins are differentially positioned in relation to
an audience of primarily (though not exclusively) urban middle-class
Western coffee consumers as the source of cosmopolitan ‘interest’
and ‘altruism.’ As Ahmed (2000) notes, ‘emotions may involve ‘being
moved’ for some precisely by fixing others as ‘having’ certain char-
acteristics’ (11). Here, the ‘fixing’ of coffee producers and origins in
terms of a ‘third world difference,’ is precisely what enables the unfix-
ing and becoming of the brands and their consumers as cosmopolitan.
252 Sonia Bookman

Feeling Cosmopolitan: Consumers and the Co-creation

of an Urban Cosmopolitan Sensibility

While Starbucks and Second Cup orchestrate distinctive brand

experiences – encompassing a range of feelings and emotional perfor-
mances – they nonetheless require consumers’ active participation in
order for these to be realized. As Arvidsson (2006) suggests, ‘brands do
not so much provide ready made experiences, as much as they enable
the production, or co-creation, of an experience . . .’ (35). Although this
dynamic process is tightly managed by the brands, it is not fully deter-
mined. It is not assumed that consumers are straightforwardly seduced
by the romance of coffee, that they conduct emotional performances as
suggested, and co-produce a narrow cosmopolitan experience as engi-
neered. Implicated as ‘interactants’ in the café servicescape, consumers
engage with the brands in embodied, proximal processes of qualifica-
tion, negotiating emotional appeals and affective pulls, co-generating
brand experiences in a way that ‘tends to exceed the programming ef-
forts of marketing’ (35). Turning to this interplay, in what follows I trace
the co-creation and contours of a specifically urban cosmopolitan sen-
sibility and structure of feeling constituted in the interfacing between
consumers and the brands.

An Urban Cosmopolitan ‘Feel’

Many of the consumers I interviewed in Starbucks and Second Cup

cafés indicated that the presence of coffees from around the world,
the ‘rich and earthy’ colours used in café decor, the sounds of ‘world’
music, and images of coffee growers elicited a cosmopolitan ‘feel.’ For
example, Chris, a creative producer and regular Starbucks consumer,
pointed to a connection between Starbucks’ global array of coffees and
a cosmopolitan sentiment in the following excerpt:

chris: Just being exposed to the fact that there’s lots of different variet-
ies from all over the world; I didn’t think about that too much before
Starbucks culture came about . . . I guess that’s where the gourmet, that’s
where it comes in, when people start becoming attuned to the various
tastes of the various countries and regions, it’s almost become like a
wine, to some degree. Um, but the environment itself tends to lend to
that as well, right, they have that sort of, now I can’t say that this one
has that, but um, yeah at various points throughout their décor, through-
out the year, they tend to sort of have that travel theme happening
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 253

I think. Almost like, I don’t know if this is accurate, but it’s almost that
travel-stamps-on-the-side-of-a-suitcase type of feel.
interviewer: Where do you get that from?
chris: From the décor. Not this particular décor, but in general that’s a com-
mon theme in Starbucks.
interviewer: So, do you get a sense of travel and adventure, being here?
chris: Hmmm, I don’t know if it’s travel and adventure, or if it’s more of a
sort of cosmopolitan feel. That’s more accurate.

Aestheticized elements designed to invoke the romance of coffee, such

as coffee labels, packaging, and murals, are perceived by Chris in terms
of a travel theme, constituting an ambiance described as a ‘travel-
stamps-on-the-side-of-a-suitcase type of feel.’ This affective backdrop is
fundamental to the emergence of the cosmopolitan sensibility he iden-
tifies. When asked what he meant by cosmopolitanism later in the same
interview, Chris replied, ‘Urban cosmopolitan. So you’re in the city, and
it’s part of the variety of city life, you know, different people come to-
gether to experience that whole thing, I don’t know’ (interview). While
not fully or clearly articulated in terms of specific emotions, Chris de-
scribed the cosmopolitan ‘feel’ he connects with Starbucks as an ‘urban’
cosmopolitan orientation, premised on engagement with cultural di-
versity and difference, experienced as part of everyday urban life.
Qualified in this way, Chris’s response reflected a common trend
among consumers, who often referred to the cosmopolitan ‘feel’ they
identified as urban, metropolitan, or downtown, bound up with expe-
riences of daily city life and associated with urban lifestyles. This was
the case for business owner and Starbucks consumer Jeff, who associ-
ated Starbucks with a particular urban style, which he termed ‘North
American cosmopolitan cool.’ When asked to explain what he meant
by this, he responded:

Um, okay, North American cosmopolitan cool is jazz, Miles Davis, Ameri-
can Indie movies, more like modern. I tend to associate North Americans
who adhere or latch onto European things as, I guess there’s people that
seem to consume things that have greater legitimacy as a result of their
classical old status, or ballet, opera, Shakespeare . . . These guys give
greater legitimacy to things that are older. So in contrast to that, North
American urban cool would be much more avant-garde in the sense that
it’s looking at things that are very recent . . . European cool would be like
the Stratford Festival or Shaw Festival, whereas North American cosmo-
politan cool would be like the newest plays.
254 Sonia Bookman

Differentiated from the ‘European feel’ he attributed to traditional

Italian cafes, Jeff described Starbucks’ ‘cosmopolitan cool’ as modern,
urban, and innovative. Such cosmopolitanism involves an ‘interest’ in
cultural variety, but ‘delights’ in popular culture especially, and ‘avant-
garde’ cultural innovation. Indeed, both Starbucks and Second Cup are
configured as culturally open and progressive, not only through café
design, but also through strategic brand sponsorship of ‘cutting edge’
cultural events including film, jazz, and fringe festivals.
Jeff ’s account of ‘cosmopolitan cool’ reflects the ‘popular usage’ of
‘cosmopolitan’ to express ‘a modern style of urbanity characterized
by cultural liveliness and a certain sophistication’ (Haylett 2006:187).
It is particularly identified with ‘chic cafés, arts festivals, international
fashion and food, and vibrant streetlife’ (187). This particular urban
‘style’ underpins what analysts have identified as the emergence of
new urban ‘cosmopolitan lifestyles’ evident among certain factions
of the new middle- and gentrifying classes (Binnie et al. 2006; Brown
2006; Young, Diep, and Drabble 2006). Especially constituted through
consumption practices, it is also manifest in the rise of ever more ‘cos-
mopolitan spaces of consumption’ designed to cater to and support
the articulation of such lifestyle formations (Binnie et al. 2006; also
see Shields (1992) for a discussion of lifestyle consumption). Configur-
ing a ‘cosmopolitan space of consumption,’ Starbucks gives cultural
expression to this cosmopolitan form, or, following Williams (1977),
structure of feeling.

Situated Cosmopolitan Sentiments

The urbanness of the cosmopolitan style and sentiment produced on

the platform of the brands is an outcome of a dynamic interplay be-
tween consumers and brands (both of which are in open-ended rela-
tions with external environments) in particular urban settings. As Moor
(2003) has indicated in her study of the brand Witnness’ spatialized
event-oriented marketing strategies, ‘the “effects” of affect must always
be actualized or made sense of “locally” ’ (52; see also Massumi 1996).
This points to the significance of the broader environments in which
brand encounters occur, in conditioning affective responses and medi-
ating emotions in the interfacing between brands and consumers.
Prominent features of the urban ‘consumptionscape,’ the Second Cup
and Starbucks cafés where I conducted my research were located in
urban shopping and leisure areas, financial districts, and up-and-coming
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 255

or gentrified neighbourhoods in the cities of Toronto and Vancouver.

Their location is tactically coordinated as part of brand strategy, which is
designed to incorporate urban environments into the third place brand
image, and connect with target audiences of primarily affluent urbanites
as they go about their daily urban routines and engage in mundane con-
sumption practices. Consumers’ affective and emotional involvement
with the brands is influenced by these broader contexts in which such
relations unfold.
This is particularly apparent in the following excerpt from an inter-
view with Starbucks consumer Sharon, a professional working in the
financial district of Toronto: Compared to Tim Hortons – Tim Hortons
is you know, rural, small town, and there’s a warm and fuzzy feeling,
and we all grew up with Tim Hortons; now Starbucks is new, and it’s
very lively, the colours are very bright and bold, and it’s part of my
downtown, it’s part of my everyday, and if I, you know, if I’m going
on vacation I will likely go to another city; that’s what appeals to me, is
sensory overload. There’s a little bit of stimulation at Starbucks which
I associate with life around me, cosmopolitan; it’s downtown.2 Con-
trasted with Tim Hortons, which is perceived as ‘small town’ and paro-
chial, Starbucks is considered by Sharon to be urban and cosmopolitan.
Characterized by a certain cultural liveliness, it enables her to ‘feel very
cosmopolitan,’ as she put it, expressed as openness to new cultural ex-
periences, a search for contrasts rather than the comfortable familiarity
she associates with Tim Hortons. Forming the basis for an ‘affective
intensity,’ Sharon articulates an experience of unity between the way
she feels cosmopolitan and the feeling of cosmopolitanism that is at-
tributed to the brand. The cosmopolitan feeling Sharon associates with
Starbucks is bound up with her impressions of city life. She qualifies af-
fective cues and information designed to convey the romance of coffee
through an urban lens, interpreting ‘bright and bold’ colours as the vi-
brancy of urban life. The urban cosmopolitan ‘feel’ that emerges in this
process reflects a complex interplay between the brand and Sharon’s
urban disposition (including her emotional ‘orientations’) and context
of consumption.
As Crossley indicates, emotions are situated and context-specific:
they ‘form part of our point of view on the world; we do not just have
them, we exist in and by way of them’ (in Williams 2001:59). A specific
way of feeling and emotional orientation, an urban cosmopolitan ‘feel’
is shaped through the intersection of brands with consumers and their
everyday urban rhythms and routines of going to work ‘downtown,’
256 Sonia Bookman

hanging out with friends in a ‘hip’ neighbourhood, or simply reading

the weekend newspaper. This cosmopolitan sensibility is clearly situ-
ated, rooted in the particularity of urban locations, environments, spa-
tial practices, and embodied performances (Cheah and Robbins 1998;
Savage, Bagnall, and Longhurst. 2005). It produces a particular kind of
cosmopolitan experience associated with the brands, which diverges
from the generic cosmopolitan experience they frame. Interestingly,
some of the more difficult aspects of the intended experience, such as
recognition of global responsibility through the performance of altru-
istic actions do not figure as part of the popular cosmopolitan sensibil-
ity constituted in the interplay with consumers. While exceeding the
engineering efforts of brand management, a specifically urban cosmo-
politanism nonetheless falls within the parameters of brand image, still
constituting a cosmopolitan experience as part of the overall brand
image, with a slight variation in kind.

Brand-Based Diversity and Local Cosmopolitan Openness

Engagement with cultural diversity is a central component of the

cosmopolitan experience that consumers associate with the brands. It
enables the circulation of feelings and emotions such as ‘intrigue’ with
cultural variety, as well as a ‘delight’ in this diversity, which are bound
up with expressions of cosmopolitan openness. As mentioned earlier,
Starbucks and Second Cup assemble a global diversity of coffee origins,
styles, and cultures in the themed servicescape. Designed to invoke a
‘passion’ for (coffee) variety as part of a ‘cosmpolitan connoisseur’ ex-
perience, consumers are presented with aesthetic information designat-
ing distinct coffee sources and destinations. For consumers, this conveys
the idea that the brands are bringing together a ‘world of coffee’ and
cultures, constituting a kind of global diversity that they notice within
the café. Nonetheless, several consumers also pointed out the limits to
such diversity; as Starbucks consumer and graduate student Jennifer de-
clared, ‘they have an Italian CD, they have a Brazilian CD, so in that
way, they sort of . . . it’s diversity, but it’s rigidity-conformed diversity in
terms of music, and in terms of atmosphere.’ Interacting with the brands
in localized practices and embodied performances as they go about their
everyday urban lives, consumers qualify and reconfigure such diversity
as urban multicultural difference, or the ‘variety of city life,’ as Chris put
it. Illustrated in the quotes above, consumers tend to relate information,
such as the ‘bright and bold colours’ used to convey ‘exotic’ origins, or
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 257

murals containing images of ‘distant’ destinations, to their urban envi-

ronments, characterised by an array of cultural flows and ‘in situ’ cultural
difference (Latham 2006:95). The experience of brand-based diversity is
bound up with routine engagement with variety in the multicultural
cities of Toronto and Vancouver. In this interchange, global cosmopoli-
tan awareness and cultural interest is reworked as local openness via
the brand; an instance of the ‘global grounded in the local’ (Binnie et al.
2006:15). This is illustrated in the following commentary by Second Cup
consumer Sean, who works and studies part-time in Toronto:

I think it [Second Cup] is trying to project that image [as being cosmo-
politan], and the people who are going there are also trying to project that
image. Um, here on this street corner it is relatively multicultural, but a
Second Cup in North York is going to be all white, and yet the people in
there are somehow in some sense thinking of themselves as taking part in
the world culture or something like that . . . I know there’s tons of Star-
bucks in suburbs and in smallish towns, and that’s one of the things that’s
attractive about them, is that you can be in a strip mall in an utterly homo-
geneous area and you can think of yourself as taking part in; it’s project-
ing itself as being urban and as being worldwide, so you get to think of
yourselves as a big city person who knows about the world.

Appealing to emotional imaginations, the brands enable consumers to

feel and be cosmopolitan, to imagine themselves as ‘a big city person
who knows about the world.’ As Ahmed (2004) suggests, there is a ‘plea-
sure’ associated with sitting in a café and ‘feeling’ cosmopolitan, which
involves a certain way of thinking about and seeing oneself as a ‘good
or tolerant subject.’ However, as Sean also intimates, the openness that
is structured in this interplay is limited, involving relatively easy and
superficial encounters with difference. Patterned as part of the servic-
escape, consumers can experience a multiplicity of highly staged and
selective cultures from the safety of their window seats, without ever
leaving the café environment. Performed in this way, consumers co-
create a narrow, urban cosmopolitan experience on the platform of the
brand.
Through the structuring of feelings and framing of emotional experi-
ences, the brands give rise to a contemporary cosmopolitan structure of
feeling that is linked to the experience of the multicultural Canadian city,
and involves an orientation of (limited) openness to diversity and delight
in popular culture. It reflects a particular quality of urban experience
258 Sonia Bookman

marked by the banality of cultural diversity, which has become a ‘routin-

ized part of cultural practice and social interaction’ in everyday urban
life (Nava 2002:94). Particularly available to middle-class consumers,
it is a style and sentiment that reflects cosmopolitanism in its popular
mode, and underpins the construction of cosmopolitan lifestyles.

Conclusion

The growing emphasis on emotional branding and rise to prominence

of experiential brands speaks to Ahmed’s (2004) concern with the in-
tensification of emotionality in contemporary society (see also Hunt,
chap. 8), suggesting that brands and consumer culture are important
sites in which this process is occurring and can be fruitfully explored.
This chapter has focused on the experiential brands Starbucks and
Second Cup, considering the ways in which they frame a range of af-
fective responses and emotional performances through the design of
a sensorial café servicescape and the use of theming to program dis-
tinctive brand experiences. Arguing that consumers are implicated
in the co-generation of emotions and experiences on the platform of
the brand, I traced the emergence of an urban cosmopolitan sensibil-
ity constituted in the dynamic interplay between urban Canadian con-
sumers and these specialties coffee brands. This situated cosmopolitan
aesthetic and structure of feeling forms part of the brand experience.
Giving cultural expression to this structure of feeling, the brands enable
certain consumers to feel and be ‘cosmopolitan’ with the brand, and to
assemble urban cosmopolitan lifestyles through participation in such
cosmopolitan spaces of consumption.
This analysis points to the ways in which brands have become an
‘affective force’ in consumer culture; they are spun into, and shape our
everyday emotional lives, structuring possibilities for feeling, influenc-
ing dispositions, and patterning emotional performances. It draws at-
tention to the ways in which corporations are increasingly ‘working on’
our emotions through the use of ‘affective techniques’ and knowledges.
It also suggest that emotions as cultural practices are shifting through
consumer culture, with significant social and cultural implications that
are as yet unfolding. As Thrift (2009:73) cautions: ‘Through history, of
course, landscapes have been constructed and experiences have been
put up for sale but I think the new developments which, by engaging
all the senses, produce new realms of experience to exchange should
give us pause.’
 Feeling Cosmopolitan 259

NOTES

1 The research was conducted as part of my doctoral research project,

‘Framing Consumption, Configuring Production, Generating Culture: An
Enquiry into the Branding Processes of Starbucks and Second Cup.’ In total,
80 participant observations were conducted at 22 cafés in Toronto (11 each
of Starbucks and Second Cup cafés), and 10 participant observations
were conducted in Vancouver. Forty-one interviews were conducted with
Starbucks and Second Cup consumers (20 of whom were Second Cup
consumers and 21 Starbucks consumers). A further 22 interviews were
conducted with production-oriented participants, including baristas,
managers, franchise owners, marketing directors, and creative designers in
both companies.
The author wishes to thank Susan Frohlick and Liz Millward for reading
earlier versions of this chapter, the editors and reviewers for their helpful
comments, as well as the research participants and cafés that hosted me
during the research.
2 Founded in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario, Tim Hortons is the dominant
mainstream coffee and donut chain in Canada. Having established over 2000
sites by 2005, it has become a well-known Canadian institution and icon
(Tim Hortons 2008).
14 Autistic Autobiographies and More-
than-Human Emotional Geographies

joyc e davids o n a nd m i ck s m i th 1

Autism made social life hard, but it made animals easy.

– Dr Temple Grandin, Animals in Translation

Introduction

Qualitative analysis of recent autobiographies by individuals with au-

tism spectrum disorders (ASDs) (Davidson 2007, 2008) reveals that au-
thors’ relations with nonhuman others comprise a significant emergent
theme. Such autobiographical writings suggest that autistic interac-
tions with animals – and sometimes-inanimate aspects of the ‘natural’
environment – have profoundly emotional qualities of a kind more usu-
ally associated with social settings. This suggestion is conspicuously
at odds with widespread popular views, largely supported by clinical
accounts, that autistic individuals2 are exceptionally asocial and almost
entirely unconcerned with the beings and doings of others (Frith 1996;
Tidmarsh and Volkmar 2003). The name given to the disorder does, after
all, derive from the Greek autos (meaning ‘self ’), and is fully intended to
connote the aloneness and separation of those frequently described as
living as if ‘in a world of their own’ (Szatmari 2004; see Davidson 2007).
This chapter sets out to provide a hermeneutic context for the self-
reported experiences of ASD authors’ relations to the more-than-
human phenomenal world, paying special attention to emotional
geographies. Emotions are, as Heidegger (1988) argues, vital modes
of appropriating and connecting to the phenomenologically ex-
perienced world, modes of understanding and relating that are,
moreover, often pre-interpretative and/or resistant to being fully
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 261

communicated. The clinical and externalist focus on the relative ab-

sence of ASD connections to the social world necessarily undervalues
these, often intense, kinds of emotional engagements. What is more,
ASD authors’ insider accounts are themselves attempts to render
these emotional experiences into a socially communicable (linguis-
tic) form.
ASD authors recount narratives that present radical challenges to
the ‘self-centred’ stereotypes of autism. As Biklen (2005) states: ‘Far
from confirming the deficit model, where the person labeled autistic
is presumed isolated and uninterested, recent autobiographical ac-
counts reveal people in search of connections with the world’ (49).
These connections are, for a significant number of ASD authors, often
experienced most readily and most intensely with(in) a ‘natural’ world
that apparently offers some respite from the disruptive, intrusive, and
communicatively overburdened social world. These personal geogra-
phies are characterized by rich, rewarding, and meaningful relation-
ships with more-than-human entities such as animals or trees, which,
in this broader sense, offer a form of agreeable sociality, a kind of
being-with-others imbued with many varied phenomenal and emo-
tional resonances.
Such a claim might be perceived as uncritically accepting precisely
the kind of distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ worlds that has
been deemed problematic in recent geographical and philosophical
literature (Braun and Castree 2001; Latour 2004). The idea that our
understandings of nature are socio-historically variable and that our
experiences and evaluations of ‘natural’ entities necessarily differ ac-
cording to prevailing interpretations is widely accepted. But this should
not be taken to mean that all there is to the world is human interpreta-
tions, that ‘nature’ is just a social construct (Smith 1999). The phenom-
enal reality of the more-than-human world is not dependent upon the
degree to which that world is socially pre-interpreted – our chemical
knowledge of the molecular structure of water, for example, will not
stop us drowning or slaking our thirst.
Indeed, the case of autism seems to offer a wide spectrum of pos-
sibilities where such social pre-interpretations are minimized or even
entirely absent precisely because of a lack of access to socially mediated
and communicated understandings – whether through ‘choice’ (i.e., a
concern by those with ASD to avoid and shield themselves from so-
cial situations) or ‘necessity’ (i.e., the difficulty or even impossibility
of understanding socially articulated meanings). Ironically, in such cir-
cumstances, experiences of the ‘natural’ world might actually appear
262 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

more immediate, more ‘real,’ engaging, and evocative precisely because

the mediating and disturbing effects and affects of human sociality are,
relatively speaking, absent. The entity on which concern is focused is
not being constantly over-written, taken-up by, or involved in those
socially contrived and socially meaningful activities that seem to con-
fuse and confound those with ASDs. The point here, then, is not to
posit an absolute distinction between nature and culture or between
nature and artifice, but, by beginning with ‘insider’ accounts of au-
tistic experiences, to explain how, and to some extent why, emotional
involvements with elements of a world that is always both more-than
and irreducible to human (social) interpretations becomes an impor-
tant focus for a different form of sociality: an emotionally experienced
being-with-others who are more-than-human.

Researching Autistic Worlds: Context and Method

Perhaps surprisingly, given the wide range of disorders, disabilities,

and differences that have featured in geographical and social science
research, and despite its increasing prevalence and extensive presence
in the popular and cultural imagination (e.g., Haddon 2004), first-hand
experience of autism had, until very recently, attracted relatively little
attention (see Bagatell 2007; Biklen 2005; and Jones, Zahl and Huws
2001; Jones, Quigney and Huws 2003, reviewed in Silverman 2008).
Of the various core features of autism discussed in clinical literature
and the increasing number of published first-hand accounts, it is the
affective, relational differences that are of particular interest for this
chapter. The professionals’ view of the presence, or rather absence, of
such socio-emotional qualities is best summarized by Baron-Cohen’s
(2004) statement that ‘autism is an empathy disorder: those with au-
tism have major difficulties in “mindreading” or putting themselves
into someone else’s shoes, imagining the world through someone else’s
eyes and responding appropriately to someone else’s feelings’ (137).
The question though is whether this inability to ‘mind-read’ is neces-
sarily linked to an emotional deficit or is tied in more complex ways to
problems associated with experiencing and understanding social inter-
actions that consequently finds such encounters particularly (emotion-
ally) disturbing.
Autistic people are often described as preferring the ‘company’ of ob-
jects, maps, timetables, and mechanical ‘systems’ to people (Baron-Cohen
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 263

2000:490). Attraction to technical/cultural systems does indeed feature

heavily in ASD writings, but so also, and arguably just as significantly,
do natural systems: things and others, with whom apparently comfort-
able and comforting lasting relations are formed. The point is not to
argue that ‘nature’ is more important than ‘culture’ in ASD worlds and
writings, but rather to question why such natural relations are so often
overlooked by external clinical accounts.
The increasing publication of ASD autobiographies mirrors the dra-
matic increase in the reported incidence of autism. The methodological
implications of drawing on autobiographical materials are discussed
at length in several recent texts, for example Smith and Watson (1996,
2001), Avrahami (2007), and Davidson (2008a, b). Such implications in-
clude issues concerning the reliability of memories and their recursive
interpretation (especially when inserted into a totalizing and linear life-
narrative), the pressure to conform to a particular (post-Enlightenment)
textual form and model of the self, and the potential influence of previ-
ous works. The fact that ASD autobiographies are sometimes ‘facili-
tated’ by others (see Smith 1996) adds a further level of interpretative
difficulty.
There are also problems in trying to generalize from ASD autobio-
graphical accounts to the experience of autism in general. First, many
of those with ASDs lack the skills or resources, whether cognitive, so-
cial, or financial, to present their accounts in a publishable form. Sec-
ond, in light of the fact that the ratio of males to females diagnosed
with autism is 10:1 (Baron-Cohen 2004), there appears to be a dispro-
portionate number of ASD accounts written by women. Indeed, in the
present study, only 40 per cent of texts identified and analysed prior to
the point at which data saturation was judged to have occurred were
male-authored.
Without underestimating the methodological limitations of this ap-
proach, however, we argue that autobiographical writings constitute
uniquely suitable ‘data’ for qualitative research on autism (Davidson
2007, 2008; Smith 1996), a view that is explicitly supported by many
of the ASD authors whose work informs this chapter. Not only do
such texts present insider accounts, but the very communicative and
social challenges that typify autism also mean that those with ASDs
often prefer to interact with others via the written rather than the spo-
ken word (see Davidson 2008a; Miller 2003; Prince-Hughes 2002). As
Dawn Prince-Hughes (2002) explains in arguing for the importance
264 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

of insider accounts of autism, ‘there is simply no way for nonautis-

tic people to gather this kind of information through questionnaires
or interviews, or through reading what nonautistic people have said
about us’ (xiv).
The present study draws on 45 ASD autobiographies and edited
collections of autobiographical accounts identified through academic
search engines, by snowballing from academic research papers and
first-hand accounts, and via non-academic literature searches (e.g.,
Amazon.com and the New York and London Review of Books). These auto-
biographical writings were subjected to a sequential process of detailed
annotation, coding for emergent themes and critical discourse analysis
(Fairclough 1995). However, the emphasis in this chapter is very much
on the interpretative potential of phenomenological and hermeneutic
approaches. The challenge in interpreting these texts is to allow the
descriptive immediacy underlying ASD authors’ experiential accounts
to emerge in ways that challenge the reader to attend to the far-from-
usual meanings they acquire. The focus is on what life looks like, feels
like, and means for these authors. This requires that we trust insiders’
accounts – despite sometimes surprising departures from typical ex-
perience, expectations, or what is widely considered common sense –
about how, for example, we cannot have emotional or social relations
with piles of sand or patches of grass, or that we cannot really be
‘friends’ with worms or rocks (Gaita 2002).

Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Dimensions

of More-than-Human Emotional Geographies

While phenomenology is not the only qualitative approach where evi-

dence is ‘derived from first-person reports of life experiences’ (Mousta-
kas 1994:84), it does offer an approach that is unusually sensitive to
accounts of experiential differences, since its starting point, as the term
suggests, is the phenomenon (the immediate experience) itself as it is
presented to thought. In other words, and especially as it developed
out of the original work of Edmund Husserl (Welton 1999), phenom-
enology has been concerned with ‘bracketing’ the naturalistic presup-
positions we usually hold about how our experiences accord with the
world’s underlying reality and our subsequently greater concern for
uncovering the cause of these experiences rather than thinking about
the experiences themselves. The naturalistic or ‘common sense’ at-
titude is, as Moran (2000) notes, ‘deeply embedded in our everyday
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 265

behaviour towards objects and also at work in our most sophisticated

natural science’ (147). By contrast, bracketing, referred to by Husserl
as the epoché, requires that we are required to take others’ experiences
at face value rather than trying to squeeze them into our own precon-
ceived ideas of how the world actually is, of what is possible or mean-
ingful to experience.
Those seeking to apply Husserl’s approach tend to emphasize how
this process of bracketing seeks to attain a kind of a-situational purity
insofar as it attempts to approach phenomena in a way that is entirely
free of suppositions. Thus Moustakas (1994) claims ‘[i]n the Epoche, we
set aside our prejudgements, biases and preconceived ideas’ (85). This
‘setting aside’ is an aim to be worked towards as a ‘preparation for new
knowledge’ (85).
Aspects of bracketing, however, seem at variance with hermeneutic
approaches such as Gadamer’s (1998), which claims that all interpre-
tation must inevitably start from ‘historically effected consciousness’
(Wirkungsgeshichtliches Bewusstsein) – that is, from within our al-
ready ‘socially’ pre-given horizon of understanding. Moustakas’s de-
contextualized, almost unworldly notion of phenomenological abstrac-
tion is partly a result of not recognising the problems inherent in simply
trying to extrapolate Husserl’s introspective methodology to cover the
experiences of other people. Our encounters with others’ experiences,
and perhaps especially others’ textual or otherwise reported accounts
of experiences, necessarily have a hermeneutic aspect.
That said, the important methodological point is precisely the man-
ner in which both phenomenology and hermeneutics foster openness
towards different experiences as an ongoing task. In the case of phe-
nomenology, this is a recognition of the importance of (others’ poten-
tially different) experiences as such, while, as Gadamer (1998) argues,
the act of interpretation is itself dependent upon maintaining an open-
ness towards what the other expresses to us (about those experiences).
In this sense, they supplement each other in the ways they foster open-
ness to other experiences as a methodological virtue.
Indeed, the tension between a pure (Husserlian) phenomenology and
a socio-historically emplaced hermeneutics might be understood as mir-
roring the tension between the actual (more or less pre-interpretative)
experiences of the autistic insider and the need to communicate
these experiences to themselves and others within a given social ho-
rizon. And to this degree, the hermeneutic phenomenology of Ga-
damer might prove especially informative precisely because it draws
266 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

‘outside’ researchers’ attention to the limits of their own interpretative

presuppositions.
Hermeneutically, the researcher necessarily works within the recog-
nized and unrecognized ‘prejudices’ that are associated with, amongst
other things, particular academic traditions. That is to say, within the
‘effective historical consciousness’ of his/her own situation. In our
case, these effects might include the discourses, practices, vocabular-
ies, ideologies, and so on, which have influenced and contributed tothe
development of human geography. So when Gadamer emphasizes the
interpretative importance of these prejudices, he does not intend this
term to be understood pejoratively because such effects are, to some
degree, both inevitable and invaluable. His point, too, is that we have to
start all our interpretations from somewhere, from a given interpretative
situation. This also means that if we are not open to different possibili-
ties, this ‘horizon’ of understanding can limit what we regard as impor-
tant and constrain our ability to reach an understanding with others
who do not share our presuppositions. This helps explain why many
approaches to those with ASDs, including clinical interpretations, have
tended to focus on their deficiencies in emotional and communicative
relations to other humans. Modern Western forms of knowledge, in-
fluenced by traditions of academic humanism and dominant human-
centred ideologies, regard relations to other humans as key to, and
definitional of, human sociality.
Phenomenologically, the claims of ASD authors remain problematic
so long as we stay within these socially and academically dominant ho-
rizons. Claims to experience emotional relationships with non-humans
seem to run up against the problem of transposing a person’s position
into that of, for example, the animals those with ASDs claim to under-
stand so well. For example, although Heidegger’s (1995) phenomenol-
ogy allows that the human ‘already finds himself [sic] transposed into
the animal in a certain manner’ (211), he also claims that the animal
is that which it is most difficult to think that there is, in effect, an un-
bridgeable gulf between us. We cannot, he suggests, think what it is
like to be an animal precisely because its world, its phenomenal experi-
ences, are so very different to those of human beings and in particular
because so much of our understanding revolves around the importance
of a linguistic capacity that the animal lacks.
The phenomenological/hermeneutic question raised in trying to un-
derstand ASD authors’ claims is whether non-ASD people can begin to
know what it is like to be a person who claims to feel more like an animal,
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 267

or even a place, than they feel like other people. What would that even
mean, and what are the implications of asking such questions?

Autistic and Ab/normal Emotion

As suggested above, first-hand autistic accounts challenge the idea that

those with ASDs have an impoverished emotional capacity (Davidson
2007; Jones, Zahl, and Huws 2001), emphasizing instead differences
in experiencing and difficulties in communicating or understanding
emotions. Many ASD authors describe feeling terrible pressure in the
presence of others to perform in particular ways, to act – in order to
pass as – ‘normal’: ‘A person with autism has been described as being
a distant and cold-hearted type of person [. . .] I feel a lot inside only I
cannot express my feelings as openly as a normal person can’ (Cowhey
2005:71). Passing entails determining and learning rules of behaviour
that seem to come ‘naturally’ to non-autistic others, such as when and
where it is appropriate to smile, exactly how to do so, and even for
how long. Thus, ‘every autistic person is a sociologist. We have to be’
(Dave, in Osborne 2002:68). Those with ASDs seem to face a hermeneu-
tic challenge if and when they attempt to understand, or be understood
by, non-ASD humans. What they ‘lack’ is not, on their own accounts,
an emotional capacity as such (although it may appear to others to be
so), but certain capabilities concerning interpretative intuitions that
are more usually assumed as ‘second nature,’ and hence assumed
to constitute a shared ground for the interpretative community. This
makes any ‘fusion of horizons’ of understanding, in Gadamer’s terms,
much more difficult since those with ASDs have, instead, to make
these implicitly assumed commonalities explicit through ‘socio-logical’
experimentation.
This interpretative difficulty is further complicated by phenomeno-
logical differences – that is to say, their emotional experience as well as
expression (a distinction broadly accepted although conceptualized
differently by various theorists of emotion [see Solomon 2003]) tends
to be far from typical, too. ASD authors describe feelings around others
that are unusually and often intolerably vivid and complex (Tidmarsh
and Volkmar 2003:518). Relating her own experience of sensory distor-
tion, Prince-Hughes (2004) writes: ‘I lived in a kaleidoscope [. . . look-
ing] at broken colored fragments of people,’ whose faces appeared as
‘blurry objects exploding with invasive stimuli’ (67, 169). Her account
is fairly typical, and such sensory confusion can involve blurring of
268 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

other kinds of boundaries. As Kamran Nazeer (2006) explains in his

autobiographical account: ‘There is a high incidence of synesthesia too,
that is, minds that correlate certain sounds, tastes or textures with col-
ors’ (69). Given that such melting of ‘common sense’ distinctions can
render people an overwhelming mess of noisy eyes, arms, and legs, it
is unsurprising that emotions commonly associated with their presence
are strongly negative, tending to involve fear and anxiety that leads
to avoidance in a manner reminiscent of agoraphobic social avoidance
(Davidson 2003).
Phenomenal and hermeneutic challenges compound each other
since language, with all its layers of expressive, communicative, and
bodily complexity, is experienced as being extraordinarily difficult
and demanding for ASD individuals: ‘you need to comprehend tone
and gestures as well as context and the words used in order to get the
meaning’ (Nazeer 2006:11). In a light-hearted illustration of his point,
Nazeer claims that ‘[s]triking up conversation with strangers is an au-
tistic person’s version of extreme sports’ (31).
Attending to ASD authors’ accounts allows us to see that antiso-
cial tendencies need not necessarily mean that the autistic person is
unfeeling. In fact, the opposite may be the case, as the very intensity
of autistic feeling can mean other people are simply (felt) too much:
One contributor to Miller’s (2003) collection, ‘MM,’ illustrates com-
mon misunderstandings when she claims, ‘people think that because
I need more quiet that I am a selfish bitch [. . . but] I need the quiet
not because I have a cold heart but because I can hear every plea from
every being in whatever space I stand or sit or lie down in’ (MM, in
Miller 2003:30). Like many ASD authors, she is too sensitive to, and
over stimulated by, others’ actions and affects. Being with human oth-
ers can be exhausting, as MM continues to explain, while at the same
time highlighting that her preferred alternative is not solitude: ‘I can
only afford a certain amount of time among humans, and if I don’t
get to moving my senses will overload, and the rest of the day Iwill
have to put myself in the quiet of my room, and miss out on the trees
and rocks and streams that talk to me so much more gently than any
human (30).
Williams (1994) feels similarly about social avoidance of a kind that
seeks out different kinds of connection, rather than aloneness per se.
She writes that: ‘The rewards for friendship seemed a sick joke:
closeness, attachment, belonging. Closeness made earthquakes go
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 269

off inside of me and compelled me to run. Attachment reminded me

painfully of my own vulnerability and inadequacy and was a threat
to security. Belonging was with things and nature, not with people’
(113). Thus, we begin to see that while ASD authors cherish protected
time and territory, the space they require to sense safety isn’t neces-
sarily the ’empty’ space (or ‘fortress’) of aloneness.4 It may be unpop-
ulated by people, but the environment they desire can still be alive
with nonhuman otherness, in whose company a rich and rewarding
range of positive emotions can be experienced. In other words, they
develop unusual or atypical emotional geographies. Most ASD au-
thors are aware of this atypicality. Grandin (1996) writes, ‘I am told
by my nonautistic friends that relationships with other people are
what most people live for, whereas I get very attached to my projects
and to certain places’ (140), and again ‘my strong emotional bonds
are tied up with places more than people’ (92). Even, and perhaps
especially in the face of extreme perceptual distortion, natural ob-
jects and places can be profoundly, delightfully interesting, so long
as there are no demands from others or pressures to ‘make sense.’
ASD authors recount experiences of taking pleasurable sanctuary in
hypnotically beautiful aspects of the nonhuman world. The senses
of sand falling between her fingers – its shifting appearance and
texture – could occupy Grandin (1996) for many happy hours: ‘Each
grain was different [. . .] as I scrutinized their shapes and contours,
I went into a trance which cut me off from the sights and sounds
around me’ (44).
While this ‘interaction’ seems clearly one-sided, others’ relations
appear more ‘social’ in nature, at least in the sense that they involve
unusual openness to other beings and posit some kind of reciprocal
connection. Prince-Hughes (2004), for example, states, ‘I could feel the
personalities of the rocks, the trees, the grass, the hills’ (50), and in her
own striking terms, Williams (2003) writes: ‘I was a social kid: social
with the dirt, the trees, the grass [. . .] I felt the world deeply and pas-
sionately. I was cheerful in my own world and I had a fascination with
anything that was not directly confrontational and which would allow
me to simply be (16).
It seems that many and varied non-human others often match these
criteria, allowing ASD authors to simply be and feel themselves, com-
fortably and even pleasurably, however divergent from the norm their
feelings are taken to be by clinicians.
270 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

Autistic Friendships and Feeling Different

Wendy Lawson’s (2005) autobiography describes the supposedly atyp-

ical emotional relations with nonhuman others she began to form in
childhood: ‘Although I was unable to relate to other children (or even
most other people, whatever their age), with animals it was different’
(28). She writes in detail about one particular companion animal, a gin-
ger mongrel from whom she became inseparable: ‘During my teenage
years, my dog Rusty was my most loyal companion and we explored
life together as only trusted friends know how [. . .] she never changed.
We understood one another, even without words. She demanded noth-
ing from me except my acceptance and availability’ (52).
The understanding Lawson (2005) experienced, to the exclusion and
bafflement of even ‘close’ family members, was felt to be shared with
her friend: ‘To bark like a dog seemed perfectly normal to me’ (44). This
communicative connection with companion animals is not unusual in
accounts of autism, as Jean Kearns Miller (2003) illustrates: ‘I was raised
by our Siamese cat. I could understand her language better than the
human language, and so I spoke Siamese way before I spoke English,
and I thought the cat was my real mother because I could understand
her more than I could understand humans’ (54).
This latter quotation is drawn from an anthology of writings by
women with autism that began on an Internet listserv. In one thread re-
produced in the book, participants discuss the question of whether they
‘have ongoing relationships with animals and/or with inanimate as-
pects of the world that are just as strong/important as (or more so than)
your relationships with humans?’ (Miller 2003:54). Several do, and one
respondent, Wendy, writes, ‘I talk to cats like they are people, because
I have this feeling that they can understand me. And if I treat them as
friends, they become friends’ (in Miller 2003:45). Another, Diane, states:
‘I fixated on cats. But isn’t it sad that, so often, our parents and oth-
ers have tried to take away these very fixations that have made our
hearts open? When growing up (and even still now) I was frequently
criticized by my family about liking cats so much’ (in Miller 2003:45).
Parents, understandably, typically prefer that their child act and have
friends like other children, and ASD authors often write about the ex-
tent to which family have tried to force them into moulds of normal-
ity that simply don’t fit. Often, however, they are also sensitive to the
fact that there may be good and caring reasons for doing so. Gunilla
Gerland’s (2003) book contains the following revelation: ‘Earthworms
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 271

were one of my great delights [. . .] I fondled them and kissed them.

I dug them up in my garden and cautiously patted them. My mother
did not approve of my love of worms and wanted me to be less intimate
with them’ (36). Gerland’s (2003) mother tried to persuade her not to
kiss the worms, but she didn’t respond: ‘Then my mother made a good
decision – the family should buy a cat. It worked. I loved our cat [. . .]
Love in the cat way, a love with one’s integrity maintained, suited me
very well’ (36). Her mother is understandably pleased when Gerland’s
infant affections take a more conventional turn – ‘it was more accept-
able to fondle a cat’ (37) – and indeed it is common for childhood rela-
tions to be formed with furry feline friends. For ASD authors, however,
relationships are often established with less typical animals, not tradi-
tionally viewed as suitable ‘companion’ material.
Temple Grandin describes her particularly empathetic relations with
cows in several publications that combine autobiographical and schol-
arly approaches to both (e.g., Grandin 1996, 2005).5 She claims that these
‘animals saved me’ (2005:4), and takes pains to explain that she feels
closer to cows than to people. At times she suggests that she feels more
like these animals – not simply that she likes or feels more for them –
than people. She refers to a strong connection:

between autistic people and animals: autistic people have mostly simple
emotions, too. That’s why normal people describe us as innocent. An au-
tistic person’s feelings are direct and open, just like animal feelings. We
don’t hide our feelings, and we aren’t ambivalent. (Grandin 2005:89)

Autistic people can think the way animals think. Of course, we also think
the way people think – we aren’t that different from normal humans. Au-
tism is a kind of way station on the road from animals to humans, which
puts autistic people like me in a perfect position to translate ‘animal talk’
into English. (6–7)

Grandin (2005) acknowledges that ‘[s]ome people will probably think

this is an insulting thing to say about autistic people’ (89), and she cer-
tainly does go further than the majority of ASD authors in stressing
her sense of feeling different from humans in such potentially divisive,
animalistic terms. Again, ‘my feelings are simpler and more overt, and
like cattle’ (Grandin and Scariano 1996:92). But, bracketing ‘common
sense,’ humanist presuppositions about the potentially insulting na-
ture of such comparisons in terms of the way that Grandin’s remarks
272 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

might be taken to render those with ASD ‘less than fully human,’ her
account, like those of other ASD authors, actually offers an interpreta-
tive opening on autistic emotional geographies that would otherwise
be unavailable.
Grandin explicitly situates autism as a ‘way station’ between abili-
ties to understand animals and (non-ASD) humans, and explains this
position as one of ‘translation.’ Miller, too, claims to speak cat before
English, to have an ability to understand animals that non-ASD people
tend to lack themselves and thus fail to understand in others. Lawson
writes of understanding her dog despite (or because of) a lack of words
between them. The feelings of closeness these authors express between
themselves and other animals – the ‘love,’ ‘intimacy,’ and ‘delight’ felt
in touching the worm; the relations of ‘trust’ and ‘friendship’ with the
dog; the maternal relation posited with the cat – are all directly corre-
lated with degrees of hermeneutic intimacy; that is, in terms of the ASD
authors’ self-described experience of understanding animals, of an abil-
ity to translate between the animal’s world and their own. This claimed
fusion of horizons of understanding reflects the emotional geography
of their lives, their daily practices and behaviour; it provides and de-
limits a comfort zone.
This (hermeneutic) situation, this ability to translate, is presented as
both an explanation of (i.e., a phenomenal account) and an explana-
tion for (i.e., the cause underlying) the different feelings and relations
experienced by those with ASDs. In other words, their hermeneutic sit-
uation is inseparable from the phenomenological experience of an em-
pathic association that supposedly goes beyond the hermeneutic limits
of human language. In most cases (although again Grandin tends to be
more explicit than usual about this) the translation taking place with
those who lack (human) words is described in terms of a shared feel-
ing, an understanding of how the animals, whether cow, cat, worm, or
dog, themselves are supposed to feel. Dominant humanist approaches
would undoubtedly find such a claim implausible, regarding it as just
an example of misunderstanding the interpretative indeterminacy of
nature, of self-projection and/or wishful thinking. However, the phe-
nomenological point is not whether such understandings are actually
possible – whether Grandin, for example, does understand cows better
than any non-ASD person – but that such experiences, and such a self-
understanding, define the contours of her world. Once we bracket out
the question of how such experiences relate to ‘reality,’ we can concen-
trate on their ‘reality effects’ in terms of how they affect the emotional
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 273

geographies of those with ASDs because it is precisely these feelings

that allow them the space to compose and understand their worldly re-
lations to other animals, places, and, when possible, people. How they
live their daily lives – and in Grandin’s specific case of how animals
end theirs – since she is responsible for the design of half of all North
American slaughterhouses (Grandin 2005:7) – is not something schol-
ars should ignore. Interestingly, and despite the fact that this might
seem a strange mode of employment for someone claiming to empathi-
cally understand how cattle ‘feel,’ Grandin’s employment in this capac-
ity is certainly based on her having convinced at least some non-ASD
people that her hermeneutic, as well as her phenomenological claims,
are valid.

Animal Magic and Animistic Affect

The nature of ASD encounters with animals/places also reflects ASD

understandings of self-identity and often constitutes a key aspect of
developing the kinds of social self-reflexivity that non-ASD people
take for granted. In a very important way, self-constitutive relations
with animals often come first, and the phenomenology of feelings
experienced concerning non-humans is only later taken up by au-
tistic individuals as an educative illustration of the possibilities of
human-to-human relations. The phenomenology of non-human re-
lations described by ASD authors belies any accusation of unjusti-
fiable anthropomorphism. Understandings of social relations (in
the usual, narrowly human sense) are interpreted through the lens
of prior non-human encounters. For example, ASD author Prince-
Hughes (2004), who, like Grandin, is also an academic, has written at
length about her close relations and subsequent ethological studies
with gorillas. Even as a child, her non-human companions were not
entirely typical, and she describes time spent not with a pet pony,
but rather, with a ‘herd of old Morgan horses that had been let go
to roam wild in the hundred acres across the road from the trailer.
My relationship with them andthe emotional sustenance it gave me
was a foreshadowing of the closeness I later had with the gorillas.
I watched them, learned their habits, and knew where to find them
at all times of the day’ (49).
The emotional sustenance and intense pleasure Prince-Hughes and
others describe is often derived from a sense that ‘natural others’ leave
ASD authors space to be themselves. Animals make minimal demands
274 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

and rarely pass judgment: after all, ‘[n]o animal can be a snob’ (Ko-
jève, in Agamben 2004:11). The animal gaze can be felt to affirm rather
than weaken a sense of self and self-worth. Their gentle recognition
and (almost unconditional) acceptance seems to extend to natural envi-
ronments and ‘objects,’ experienced by some ASD authors as ‘genuine
others’ in relation to themselves. Williams (2003), for example, states: ‘I
felt in company with trees. I couldn’t distinguish between the sense of
company in being friends with a tree versus a person except the com-
pany with a tree was easier. I didn’t just climb a tree, I was in company
with it like two friends sharing beingness together [. . .] My experience
with trees is social’ (40).
This is actually very close to the kind of experience that many envi-
ronmentalists trying to defend old-growth forests from clear-cut log-
ging or road developments identify (Merrick 1996). Williams (2003)
goes on to elaborate this sense of being at ease in a style that is, in places,
strikingly reminiscent of Heidegger’s phenomenological writings:
‘I used to cry and stroke our old palm tree in my front yard, telling it in
silence all my feelings of despair and rage, but also sitting at its elephant-
like trunk-feet and jointly appreciating the day and good feelings too.
The tree, unlike people, lived a self-in-relation-to-self world. Unlike the
self-in-relation-to-other world of people, the tree was by nature indi-
rectly confrontational and good “simply being” ’ (40).
This similarity in style of expression with certain phenomenological
writings may be accidental, but the attention to phenomenal detail and
the sense of connective rather than separative ‘sociality’ does speak to
an experiential openness to the world, a kind of be-holding, that is often
lost in the hustle and bustle of social life, in what Heidegger (1988) re-
fers to as a ‘lostness in the everydayness of the they-self ’ (307), an in-
volved attitude of reciprocation that allows us to feel part of the world
rather than standing apart from it. In taking up such a stance, we cease
to be spectators, and become open to affective (emotional) contagion.
Moreover, and in terms that resonate with ASD narratives, ‘nothing is
more contagious than genuine tranquility’ (Jacoby, in Behnke 1999:109).
Many ASD accounts illustrate something of this sense of openness to
contagion, to otherness: ‘All around me I could feel the personalities of
the rocks, the trees, the grass, the hills’ (Prince-Hughes 2004:50); ‘I seem
to be able to feel the trees, the rocks, the water and voices from the past
of a land’ (MM, in Miller 2003:49).
This animistic presence and sense of agency, and even personal-
ity in nature, is not only strongly felt, but also highly valued and
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 275

somehow humbling. In a continuation of the thread from which

MM’s statement is drawn, Ava writes: ‘Many of us here clearly feel
a connection with rocks, plants and animals. For me, this is not just
an intellectual thing, it is something passionate and living that I ex-
perience deeply in mind, emotions and body all at once (e.g., my re-
sponse to a familiar tree). Bound with that is a sense of love, respect
and responsibility for life, that is most simply and purely experi-
enced in the world of nature, but which also extends to the complexi-
ties of human life and the wonders of the wider universe’ (Ava, in
Miller 2003:49).
Again, this seems very reminiscent of the accounts of deep ecologists
and radical environmentalists (Smith 2001). For Ava, the non-human
world is truly awesome and she describes her sense of connection with
it as the basis of her religious experience. These relational bonds with
the natural world do however ‘extend to’ humanity, and this sense of
learning about culture from nature is present in others’ accounts as
well. Miller (2003) comments on this in the following way: ‘A perhaps
startling suggestion is that we may even have learnt empathy and other
moral attributes, through our early relationships with the nonhuman
world, despite a common NT [neurotypical] assumption that fascina-
tion with the nonhuman risks making us more robotic’ (54).
ASD authors learn to relate to and appreciate humanity in and
through relations with nature that feel genuinely reciprocal. If, as ac-
counts suggest, this feeling of the ‘personality’ of the non-human world
comes first, if we take these accounts at face value, then they cannot be
indicative of what humanism might regard as a wrong-headed exten-
sion of understandings of human personality beyond their acceptable
(human or near-human) limits. It is quite the contrary. And this com-
ing to self-awareness through felt reciprocation with, and being shel-
tered by, natural beings extends to coming to social awareness of other
humans and their expectations. Prince-Hughes (2004) writes at length
about being taught sociality by animals who create an atmosphere of
sufficient calm for her to learn, a ‘place’ apart from the negative emo-
tions long associated with human contact: ‘I am blessed to have found
a place to escape that chronic anxiety. The gorillas had an enormously
calming effect on me . . . their social subtleties and calm demeanor al-
lowed me to relax and really watch what they were doing. I saw social
cause and effect for the first time. When I realized their behaviour was so
much like human behaviour I knew I would learn everything I needed
to know from them. I began to cautiously apply the things I’d learned
276 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

from the gorillas . . . and I began to have some success. I actually made
some friends’ (117).
The notion that nonhuman others have the capacity to teach us about
emotion is not exclusive to the writings of those with autism. However,
theorists of emotion who press beyond the anthropocentrically drawn
bounds of typical life-worlds are few and far between. Phenomenolo-
gist Alphonso Lingis (1999) is among those who do, and his questions
illuminate much that is often considered beneath us, in more ways than
one: ‘Is it not animal emotions that make our feelings intelligible? [. . .]
Is not the force of our emotions that of the other animals?’ (44). Illustrat-
ing our early affective interconnections, Lingis writes of human infants:
‘[their] first heavy toddling shifts into tripping vivacity with the robins
hopping across the lawn. They come to feel buoyancy in the midst of
the park pigeons shifting so effortlessly from ground to layers of sun-
drenched air. They come to feel sullenness from the arthritic old dog
the retired cop was walking in the park and that they try to pet. They
contract righteousness and indignation from the mother hen suddenly
ruffled up, her beak stabbing when they try to remove a chick. They
pick up feelings of smoldering wrath from the snarling chained dog in
the neighbor’s yard, and try out those feelings by snarling when they
are put under restraints or confined’ (44–5).
The dominant modern Western worldview fails to see the emotional
power and potential of our relations with non-human others. Draw-
ing lessons from ASD and other boundary-breaking perspectives, we
might begin to question the extent to which typical lives are, therefore,
restricted, emotionally impoverished, and ‘alienated’ in oddly unrec-
ognized ways, just as we might reconsider the view that people with
autism live as if ‘in a world of their own.’ ASD authors themselves ex-
plicitly challenge this view, drawing on their personal experience with
the non-human world to argue that, in fact, it is non-autistic life-worlds
that are narrowly drawn, self- (or at least human-) centred, and thus
closed to interactions with others. Turning once more to Grandin (2005)
for illustration: ‘I always find it kind of funny that normal people are
always saying autistic children “live in their own little world.” When
you work with animals for a while you start to realize you can say the
same thing about normal people. There’s a great big, beautiful world
out there that a lot of normal folks are just barely taking in. It’s like dogs
hearing a whole register of sound we can’t. Autistic people and animals
are seeing a whole register of the visual world normal people can’t, or
don’t’ (24).
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 277

Perhaps, then, paying attention to the writings of ASD authors also

offers non-ASD people ways of re-thinking their own worldly relations
and emotional geographies, re-cognizing the potential to be open to
sensations of awe and exhilaration in the face of a sensorially marvel-
lous non-human world. Rather than regarding encounters with nature
as a distraction from everyday human activities, we might also ‘catch’
something, however little, of its emotionally contagious possibilities.
This is especially so of a culture inoculated by its humanist presupposi-
tions, its lack of phenomenal or hermeneutic openness to non-human
otherness: ‘Most of humanity is ignorant for not hearing and seeing
what is around them. I hear the rocks and the trees’ (MM, in Miller
2003:54). Perhaps on this level at least it is also possible to understand
why ASDs could, at least in some instances, be thought of by those who
experience them in terms of different ability rather than disability –
even in terms that lead some ASD authors to refer to the ‘everyday
heaven’ (Williams 2004), or the ‘wonderful world of autism’ (Cowhey
2005:125): ‘People thought that my standing in the heat for one and
a half hours to watch an insect was a crazy thing to do. I think it is
they who are crazy. By choosing not to stand and watch, they missed
out on sharing an experience that was so beautiful and exhilarating’
(Lawson 2005:115). This is precisely how many, more neurotypical in-
dividuals – for example, those that enjoy hill-walking – describe their
experiences with a ‘natural’ world that, if never entirely unaffected by
society, is relatively free from and resistant to the presence of constant
social intrusions.

Conclusion

Approaching the autobiographical writings of those with ASDs in

terms of phenomenological and hermeneutic openness suggests a pos-
sibility of understanding the wider implications of the remarkable
insights into different kinds of emotional experience these texts offer.
Such authors challenge the view prevalent in clinical and lay writings
that autism involves impoverished or even absent emotionality. Fur-
ther, it draws attention to the extent to which non-human others fea-
ture in the surprisingly ‘social’ emotional geographies of at least some
ASD authors. Approximately half of these personal narratives reveal
that while perceptual differences often render other people offensive
to the highly acute senses of those with ASDs, non-human beings can,
to some extent, be experienced as profoundly pleasurable companions
278 Joyce Davidson and Mick Smith

who shelter the development of ASD personalities and even open edu-
cative insights into human culture that later come to facilitate social
(human) contact (even if such contact remains difficult and never be-
comes ‘second nature’). Since this chapter focuses on those texts that
emphasize this most heavily, and given the necessarily selective nature
of the texts studied, it is clearly impossible to use this material to gen-
eralize about the nature of ASD experiences as a whole. Nonetheless,
it does provide important insights into many ASD lives, and the depth
and breadth of feelings associated with these non-human environments
is truly extraordinary. Recognising this also offers those without ASDs
a possibility of bringing to mind what is often lacking in ‘our’ own
taken-for-granted everyday encounters, a chance to recognize the lim-
its of the effective (and affective) history of modern Western societies.

NOTES

1 This chapter is adapted from a longer version originally published in

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (2009), and the authors are
grateful to the publishers for permission to reproduce the text in its current
form. Thanks to all authors whose work inspired and informed this chapter
and to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
for providing financial support. Thanks also to Sara Ahmed, Stuart Elden,
Victoria Henderson, Dale Spencer, and Kevin Walby for helpful comments.
2 ‘Person-first’ language is avoided in this chapter to reflect the preference
of the majority of authors whose work contributes to this study. As Elesia
Ashkenazy (2009) explains, ‘Though it is common for both the medical and
cure-focused communities to refer to an autistic person as a person with
autism, such references are not the lingo of the greater whole of the autistic
community. In a nutshell, saying a person has autism may imply that the
person is defective or that there is an inherent problem or sickness within
the person. It also implies that autism can somehow be separated from the
person’ (original emphasis; see also Jim Sinclair’s (2009) influential ‘Why I
dislike “person first” language’).
3 Difficulties in interpreting the more-than-human world also, somewhat
ironically, expose the limits of Gadamer’s own focus on human language
which tends to overlook affective (emotional) embodied aspects of our
interpretative relations to social and natural circumstances. This is why
Smith (2005) suggests that Gadamer’s notion of an ‘effective human
historicity’ needs to be supplemented with an ‘affective natural historicity’
when we want to understand human relations to, and especially their
feelings about, the wider non-human world.
 More-than-Human Emotional Geographies 279

4 The Empty Fortress was the title given to Bettelheim’s (1967) controversial
account of what he described as the protective autistic shell.
5 While Canadian composer Glenn Gould’s candidacy for an ASD diagnosis
is a matter of some dispute, his behaviour has certainly led commentators
to reflect on this possibility. Interestingly, one biographer recounts his
penchant for spending time with and singing to cows (Ostwald 1997:93).
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Index

Actant, 183−4 Bendelow, 86, 91

Actor network theory, 183 – 4, 188 Bergson, H., 10, 102 – 23
Affect, 5, 11, 13, 43 – 62, 89, 101, 122, Biklen, 261
148, 189, 207, 213, 225, 241 – 58, 262, Blackbox, 177, 187 – 8, 198
268, 273, 276, 278 Blumer, H., 36 – 7
Affective economy, 13 Body, 19 – 20, 28 – 9, 37, 44, 47, 53 – 9,
Agency, 126, 131, 150, 231, 274 63 – 84, 87, 91, 98 – 101, 227 – 9,
Ahmed, S., 6, 12, 13, 40 – 62, 89, 125, 275
133, 185 – 6, 227, 242, 251, 258, 278 Boundaries, 13, 34, 88, 125, 157,
Ailments, 216 184, 203, 204, 224, 235 – 6, 268,
Aleatory, 182 – 200 276
American sociology, 11 – 12 Brennan, T., 47 – 8, 61
Anger, 36, 49, 53, 54, 68, 78 – 89, Brewis, 195
124 – 5, 133, 135, 140, 145 – 6, Burkitt, I., 242 – 3
148 – 54, 188, 215 – 16, 220, 225 – 9 Buss, 228, 233
Animals, 112, 117, 126, 260 – 79
Anthropomorphism, 107, 190, 200, 273 Canada, 93, 178, 191, 248, 259
Archer, M., 6, 63 – 85 Capitalism, 129
Aristotle, 44 – 5 Care, 50, 65, 67, 136, 172 – 3, 194 – 5,
Autism, 260 – 79 215, 224, 229, 234, 250 – 1
Authentic emotions, 65, 142 – 60 Cavell, S., 103
Autobiographical self, 70 – 83, 260 – 79 Clanton, 228
Clark, C., 5, 87, 193
Barbalet, J., 5, 12, 150, 182 – 5, 198 Clay-Warner, 5, 177 – 8
Barrow, R., 44 Coffee, 240 – 58
Becker, H., 97 Collins, R., 5, 11 – 12, 61, 193 – 5
322 Index The Loyal Atlantic

Community, 10, 25, 48, 51, 90, 95, Earth sciences, 181 – 98
121, 127, 130, 136, 141, 192, 197, Easton, 230
210 – 14, 224 – 5, 232, 248 – 51, 267, Ekman, 36, 75, 206
278 Egoism, 110 – 14
Comte, A., 10 Elias, N., 138 – 59
Confidence, 12, 83, 115, 150, 193, 198, Empiricism, 43
237 Emile, 50 – 4
Consciousness, 20, 25, 31, 33, 54 – 62, Emotion culture, 11, 221
63 – 84, 139, 152, 172, 242 – 5, Emotion management, 6, 11, 63 – 84,
265 – 6 153, 201, 206
Consumerism, 143 Emotion work, 65, 95, 99, 148, 201,
Control, of emotions, 38, 65, 71, 84, 206
91, 139 – 56, 202, 230 Emotional branding, 240 – 59
Cooley, C., 10 Emotional climate, 7, 12, 137 – 53,
Cosmopolitanism, 241 – 59 181 – 200
Creativity, 10, 25, 92, 103 – 22 Emotional deviance, 7, 87, 98 – 100,
Criminal behaviour, 98, 149, 178 196, 203 – 20
Cultural Revolution, 216 Emotional energy, 12, 194
Cultural studies, 3, 13, 41 Emotional labour, 4, 11, 65 – 6, 78, 85,
Czarniawska, B., 186 – 7 129, 248
Emotions Module, 215
Davidson, A., 105 Envy, 149, 151, 221, 226 – 39
Davidson, J., 8, 13, 260 – 78 Ethnography, 166, 174
Damasio, A., 6, 63 – 84 Evil, 105, 107, 111, 116
Death, 21, 57 – 8, 90, 114 – 15, 126, 152,
158, 205 Family, 34, 52 – 3, 92, 111, 121, 194,
De Beauvoir, S., 42, 56 213, 235, 270 – 1
De Laet, 192 Fanaticism, 103 – 9
Deleuze, G., 109, 116 – 17, 120, 122 Feeling, 5, 11
Deep acting, 6, 63 – 84, 87, 164 Feeling rules, 11, 16 – 36, 40 – 62,
Denzin, N., 87, 98, 101, 139 63 – 84, 86 – 91, 101, 108, 109, 117,
Depression, 82, 85, 208 – 20 119, 121, 126 – 35, 138 – 9, 145,
Disappointment, 49, 163, 148 – 55, 159, 164, 167, 169, 171,
Discrimination, 146, 219 175, 190, 199, 201 – 9, 212, 215 – 16,
Disorder, 85, 208 – 20 220 – 1, 225 – 38, 241 – 7, 251 – 2,
Display rules, 11, 206 254 – 5, 257 – 8, 262, 267 – 8,
Donovan, 231 271 – 8
Dramaturgy, 11 Feminism, 52 – 4
DSM-IV-TR, 203 – 20 Fineman, S., 200
Durkheim, E., 10 – 12, 148, 153, 172 Foucault, M., 129, 231
 Index 323

Freund, 88, 92, 98 – 9, 101 Interaction ritual chains, 12, 61

Furedi, F., 5 Interpersonal relations, 148
Intelligence, 64, 70, 110 – 15, 120,
122 – 3, 242
Gadamer, H., 265 – 7, 278
Instinct, 103, 110 – 19, 120 – 2, 127
Garb, 217
Izzard, 75
Gender, 5, 8, 40 – 62, 90, 93, 98, 101,
127, 132, 143, 146, 154, 157, 163,
172, 182 – 8, 194 – 200, 215 – 21, 224, James, W., 10, 122
228, 229, 239 Jealousy, 99, 148, 153, 155, 220,
Gerland, G., 270 – 1 226 – 39
Gibbs, A., 47 Judeo-Christian, 11
Gobe, 245, 250
God, 102 – 3, 107, 115 – 16, 119 – 21 Katz, J., 6, 15 – 39, 89, 178
Goffman, E., 11 – 12 Kant, I., 42, 61, 102 – 23
Grandin, T., 260, 269, 271 – 3, 276 Kearns Miller, J., 270
Grief, 54, 89 – 90, 96, 104, 152 – 3, 158 Kellerman, 75
Guerrero, 226 Kemper, T., 5
Kenney, S., 86 – 100
Harding, 227 Khaldun, I., 9, 13
Heaphy, 231 Killjoy, 43, 52 – 3, 60
Happiness, 6, 36, 40 – 62 Kitsuse, 97
Heidegger, M., 11, 260, 266, 274 Kleese, 229
Hermeneutics, 165, 260 –79 Knorr-Cetina, K., 181, 184, 186, 192
Hochschild, A.J., 4, 6, 11 – 12, 49, Knowledge, 70, 73 – 7, 107 – 9, 115,
64 – 84, 87, 129, 135, 148, 154, 164, 122, 128, 161 – 75, 178, 184 – 5, 187,
178, 201, 206, 215 219 – 20, 242, 265 – 6, 271
Holstein, 98
hooks, bell, 54 Labriola, 230
Humanitarianism, 124 – 36 Law, 9, 105, 109, 112, 141, 217
Hume, D., 46, 127 Law, J., 182, 187
Humiliation, 59, 61, 89, 96, 109, 112, Lawson, W., 270, 272
228 Layard, R., 40 – 1, 60
Husserl, E., 264 – 265 Layperson, 202, 204, 211, 212, 214,
219 – 20
Identity, 24, 65 – 6, 75 – 6, 82 – 5, 91 – 9, Lévy-Bruhl, L., 112
128, 138, 155, 162 – 3, 172, 216, 224, LGBTQ, 89 – 96
231, 273 Liszt, 230
Ideology, 138, 157, 214 – 20, 228, 239 Little, 101
Inner dialogue, 64 – 84 Locke, J., 44, 46
324 Index The Loyal Atlantic

Lorde, A., 53, 58, 59 Organization, 7, 9, 12 – 13, 25, 87, 111,

Loseke, 97 125 – 6, 129, 181 – 200, 241, 245 – 7

Marx, K., 9, 11 – 12, 138 Pain, 6, 38, 44 – 6, 58 – 61, 86 – 101,

Mass spectrometry, 181 – 98 124 – 7, 130 – 5, 204 – 5, 225, 238, 269
McDonalds, 246 Passion, 9, 34, 47, 90, 103, 107, 109,
Mead, G.H., 10, 36, 66 119, 122, 127, 130, 133, 136, 140,
Meisiek, 191 144, 150, 185, 194, 240, 245, 250 – 1,
Merleau-Ponty, M., 6, 109 256, 275
Micropolitics, 182 – 6, 193, 195, 198 Peirce, C.S., 66, 76
Microsociology, 3, 5, 12 Performance, 15, 23, 33 – 6, 52, 72 – 3,
Mill, J.S., 42 84, 88, 111, 134, 138, 143, 182, 194,
Miller, 268 – 74 243, 246, 252, 256, 258
Mind, 28, 63 – 70, 84, 112, 114, 262, Personality, 16, 70, 77, 142 – 4, 210,
268 217, 219, 222, 245, 275
Mol, A.M., 192 Phenomenology, 8, 10, 171, 264 – 5,
Moral emotions, 6, 9, 46, 127, 131 – 5 273
Moustakas, M., 265 Plutchik, 75
Myth, 113 – 14, 120, 202, 230 Polyamory, 8, 99, 223 – 39
Positive emotions, 34, 44, 155, 159,
Narrative, 7, 16 – 19, 21 – 38, 49, 54, 67, 164, 269
77 – 8, 82 – 3, 93, 98, 108, 113, 128 – 9, Powell, B., 218
135, 162, 165 – 70, 173, 185, 187 – 8, Pragmatism, 6, 10
190 – 3, 198 – 9, 227, 237, 239, 261, Pribram, E.D., 227
263, 274, 277 Primary emotions, 68, 75, 78, 188,
Nazeer, K., 268 226
Negative emotions, 28, 140, 150, 155, Prince-Hughes, D., 263, 267, 269, 273,
166, 230, 232, 237, 268, 275 275
Neuroscience, 64, 81, 177 Proto-self, 70, 77, 83
Ngai, S., 225 Psychiatry, 202 – 7, 209 – 11, 216 – 19,
Nietzsche, F., 10 – 11, 45, 149, 155 222
Nike, 246 Psychology, 5, 47, 137, 165
Normal, 76, 88, 91, 99, 149, 197, 214, Punishment, 90, 93, 114, 149
204, 220, 229, 236 – 7, 267, 270 – 1,
276 Racism, 53, 58 – 60
Reason, 102 – 23
Objects, 7, 24 – 5, 27, 31, 36 – 8, 43 – 53, Reflexivity, 7, 22, 66, 74 – 5, 161,
55, 62, 67 – 70, 74, 78, 106, 125 – 8, 165 – 6, 169, 171 – 5, 273
172, 181 – 200, 242 – 3, 265, 267, 274 Religion, 6, 102 – 23
 Index 325

Ressentiment, 11, 13, 149 – 52 Social structure, i, 3 – 5, 17, 22, 24,

Rousseau, J.J., 50 – 2 88 – 9, 94, 96, 99 – 100, 110, 119, 127,
Rules, 11, 87, 99, 105, 140, 142 – 3, 130, 138 – 9, 148 – 9 179, 225, 229
146 – 7, 151, 155, 182 – 3, 186, 195, Space, 19 – 21, 33, 38, 48, 52, 88, 95 – 7,
197, 201, 206, 208, 224 – 6, 233 – 4, 101, 125 – 6, 130, 134 – 7, 150, 154,
267 167, 244 – 8, 254, 258, 268 – 9, 273
Rural, 95 – 6, 101, 151, 255 Spinoza, B., 67, 119 – 20
Stanislavski, C., 74
Starbucks, 8, 240 – 1, 246, 247 – 50,
Scarry, E., 86, 91 – 2 252 – 9
Scheff, T., 4, 89, 201 Stets, J., 75
Schultz, H., 248 Stigma, 6, 87 – 90, 92, 96, 98 – 101, 204,
Schutz, A., 6, 20, 37 232
Scientists, 3, 7, 76, 136, 166, 175, 177, Stoicism, 105
181 – 200, 203 Stranger, 43, 46, 49, 56, 58, 60, 62,
Second Cup, 8, 240, 241, 246 – 7, 158, 268
249 – 50, 252, 254, 256 – 9 Sturdy, A., 188, 200
Self-control, 139, 140 – 4, 147 – 8, Stutzer, A., 42
150 – 1, 153 Subordination, 80, 88, 99, 105, 109,
Self-estrangement, 58 145, 183, 187 – 8, 198 – 9
Self-feelings, 41, 139 Suchman, L., 181
Sentiment, 9, 20, 46, 117, 119, 124 – 5, Suffering, 6, 56, 58, 61, 72, 86 – 92,
127 – 8, 130 – 1, 134, 148 – 52, 156, 94 – 5, 98, 126 – 36, 158, 205, 218 – 19,
158 – 9, 242, 250, 252, 254, 258 229
Servicescape, 241, 247, 252, 256 – 8 Symbolic interaction, 16, 28
Sexuality, 92 – 6, 101, 123, 138 – 42, Sympathy, 6, 9, 28, 46, 57, 62, 87 – 90,
154, 156, 169 – 70, 203, 205, 210, 96 – 7, 100, 124 – 8, 131 – 2, 134, 139,
223 – 39 160, 173, 220
Schilling, C., 4, 99, 101
Scheler, M., 149
Shame, 6, 9, 47, 50, 68, 78 – 81, 89, Taormino, T., 230
92 – 3, 96, 131 – 2, 140, 151, 173, 221, Teacher, 15 – 16, 94, 141, 146
225, 230, 234 Thrift, N., 242 – 3, 258
Simmel, G., 10, 227, 233 Time, 15 – 16, 18, 23, 25, 32 – 3, 35, 37,
Sims, D., 197 45, 48, 56, 65 – 7, 76, 81 – 4, 96 – 7,
Smith, A., 9, 62, 124, 127 114 – 17, 120 – 1, 124, 126, 130,
Smith, M., 8, 13, 263 143 – 4, 149, 152, 156, 185 – 6, 193,
Social status, 4, 24 – 5, 78, 80, 150 – 2, 195, 199, 203, 211 – 13, 234 – 5, 239,
182 – 3, 186 – 7, 190 – 1, 195, 217, 219, 242 – 6, 262, 268 – 9
221 Thoits, P., 7, 11, 87, 98 – 9
326 Index The Loyal Atlantic

Tim Hortons, 255, 259 Weber, M., 10

Tomkins, S., 47 Weeks, J., 231
Toronto, 240 – 1, 255, 257, 259 White, M., 6, 10, 61
Turner, B., 130 Williams, D., 268 – 9, 274
Turner, J., 75, 178 Williams, R., 7, 138 – 9, 159, 243,
Turner, R., 15, 34 – 5 254
Williams, S., 200, 222
Ugly feelings, 225 Woolf, V., 55 – 6
Uncertainty, 114, 128, 159 World, 8, 13, 17, 19 – 22, 25 – 7, 37 – 8,
Unconscious, 64 – 84 43, 55 – 6, 58 – 9, 63, 66, 69, 75, 92 – 3,
United Kingdom, 12, 170, 178 103 – 4, 107, 115, 117, 119, 129 – 30,
Urban, 8, 95, 144, 156, 240–2, 246, 251–8 133 – 5, 138, 143, 145, 157, 162, 181,
Uslaner, E., 236 184, 192, 200, 224, 231, 242, 249,
252, 255 – 7, 260 – 6, 269 – 70,
272 – 8
Vancouver, 225, 232, 240, 255, 257,
259
Veaux, F., 230 Yao, X., 191
Viano, E., 97 Yates, C., 227