SOCY1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Correlation Does Not Imply Causation, Emotion Work
Week 9: Sociology of Emotion
Hoschild and Jackson’s literature readings
Emotion is something we think of as idiosyncratic; regardless, the rules around
feeling are very social
Emotions are collective; feeling sad at a funeral is mutualistic
To be able to feel collective emotions, you need to be connected to a complex web
of relations and social network
What we think of as spontaneous is quite shared
Emotion Work vs Emotion Labour
2 very different terms.
Emotion labour is the expressive emotion that you put out as a form of generally
paid, but compensated work. E.g. clerk as a store is tasked with politeness and a
friendly demeanour.
Emotional work is an active process when we actively work to change our affective
state to coincide with social norms/feeling rules. When we know what we ought to
feel but dont feel that way, so we work to align how we feel to how we ought to
feel
Critique of Goffman
Goffman says that we display the proper emotion with any given context
Hoschild says that we just don't display that emotion, but we try to get there. We
do this in 3 ways:
Cognition: Thinking ourselves into the proper emotional state
Manipulations of the body: Manipulating body processes: deep breathing
for instance to calm down
Expressive: When you put on the display so the internal state will follow
She differentiates between deep acting and surface acting
Deep Acting: Emotion work is deep acting. You don’t just try to display the
character, you try to become the character. Making ourselves feel how we
ought, want and expect to feel
Surface Acting:
Feeling Rules
In any given circumstance, there are a set of rules for how we should feel
Organisational development of feeling rules and emotion norms
Feeling rules always are culturally and structurally situated
These rules vary on 3 dimensions
Direction: How do you feel?
Intensity: How strong are your emotions?
Document Summary
Emotion is something we think of as idiosyncratic; regardless, the rules around feeling are very social. Emotions are collective; feeling sad at a funeral is mutualistic. To be able to feel collective emotions, you need to be connected to a complex web of relations and social network. What we think of as spontaneous is quite shared. Emotion labour is the expressive emotion that you put out as a form of generally paid, but compensated work. E. g. clerk as a store is tasked with politeness and a friendly demeanour. Emotional work is an active process when we actively work to change our a ective state to coincide with social norms/feeling rules. When we know what we ought to feel but dont feel that way, so we work to align how we feel to how we ought to feel. Go man says that we display the proper emotion with any given context.
