Introduction: why emotions are crucial

Jack Barbalet

Introduction

The word 'emotion' carries a lot of weight: indeed, it is overburdened with

meaning. Its widest application is probably as a term of pejorative evaluation.
When it is used here, though, emotion simply indicates what might be called an
experience of involvement. A person may be negatively or positively involved
with something, profoundly involved or only slightly involved, but however or
to what degree they are involved with an event, condition or person it neces-
sarily matters to them, proportionately. That it matters, that a person cares
about something, registers in their physical and dispositional being. It is this
experience that is emotion, not the subject's thoughts about their experience, or
the language of self-explanation arising from the experience, but that immedi-
ate contact with the world the self has through involvement.

The necessity of emotion

The conventional opposition between emotion and reason typically leads
sensible people to reject emotion and to regard it as an inappropriate category
of analysis, unless in accounting for psychological and behavioural pathology,
in which case the emotions are held to predominate. Indeed, there is a tradition
in sociology that claims that the power of individual social actors derives from
their self-control in defining purposes and executing them, under the aegis
and direction of values, and against distracting impulses and emotions.
The classic presentation of this argument is in Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), although it is by no means confined to this
work.
What is ignored by this position, though, is the fact that all actions, and
indeed reason itself, require appropriate facilitating emotions if successful
actions or reason at all are to be achieved. How could a person deal compe-
tently with any practical problem without the emotion of confidence in their
actions, without the emotion of trust in the actions of enabling others, without
the feeling of dissatisfaction with failure to encourage success, without the
envy of competitors to spur the pursuit of interests, and so on. Reason, too,
© The Editorial Board of the Sociological Review 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishing.
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Jack Barbalet

requires its back-ground emotions, without which there is no reason; these

include feelings of calmness, security, confidence, and so on. This is not an argu-
ment against reason, only against the inflation of reason at the expense of
emotion. Without the appropriate emotions underpinning and supporting
reason, reason turns to its opposite.
A well-developed appreciation of emotions is absolutely essential for sociol-
ogy because no action can occur in a society without emotional involvement.
By society I mean an interactive system. The smallest society in this sense, then,
is a single human person choosing between alternatives, for such a choice
requires an internal dialogue. And choice itself must include the choice to do
nothing. Everything, then, in the human universe, requires emotional involve-
ment. Consider the issue of social order, for example, arguably a key concern in
sociology.

Emotion and social explanation

Conventional accounts explain the inclination of people in society to conform,

more or less,to an established order of practices in terms of external constraints,
especially the constraints of force or of a system of norms. These alternatives
are often thought to be exhaustive of all possibilities, giving rise respectively to
what are known as the 'coercion' and 'integration' theories of society. An entire
industry has arisen through attempts to reconcile these opposed, partial and
flawed approaches, but it is an industry that adds little to the currency of
sociological thought.
Social order and stable conformity cannot be explained by coercive force,
because the likely outcome of coercive force is resistance, either organized
and therefore conflictual, or frictional resistance, productive of not order but
the disorder of apathy, indifference and alienation. Similarly, social order cannot
be explained by a system of social norms because in any unequal society,
which is to say in any society, there is an absence of a general agreement con-
cerning norms. Instead, we find that social groups tend to adhere to norms and
values that reflect their position in the unequal pattern of the distribution of
resources.
More recently there has arisen another account of social conformity that
shares with an emotions approach the idea of 'internal' rather than 'external'
constraint. But instead of operating in terms of an emotion, say shame, fol-
lowing Elias (1939), for instance, or Scheff (1988), or any emotion at all,
this account operates in terms of internal calculation. Rational choice theory
holds that individuals conform to a social order because it is expedient to do
so, on the basis of a calculation regarding the costs of not conforming weighed
against the benefits of conforming. It is doubtful that this account offers much.
First, people seldom have information regarding the actual costs and actual
rewards of a particular choice of action, and therefore do not have the means
to make a real calculation. Second, actions in society occur in a flow, and there

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 Introduction: why emotions are crucial

is seldom a timeframe available that would be required to make the necessary

calculations.
The situation is in fact even more difficult than these considerations suggest:
the costs and befits of most actions cannot be known until after the action
is concluded, therefore there is never relevant information for a decision based
on a calculation to act. The 'expedient calculator' of rational choice theory is
therefore simply a metaphor; it points to a linguistic turn consistent with pre-
vailing cultural symbols but does not accurately represent the events to which
it refers.
As a matter of fact, one function of emotion is precisely to solve the prob-
lems that a reliance on calculation would create. Our emotional reactions to
events include those feelings that indicate whether an experience is likely to lead
to pleasure or pain, to be favourable or unfavourable. That is to say that emo-
tions point to problems a person faces, and they delimit a set of likely solutions.
And they do this practically instantaneously. Not only do emotions provide
instant evaluation of circumstance, they also influence the disposition of the
person for a response to those circumstances. It is for these reasons that it is
possible to say that emotions link structure and agency. This is an absolutely
crucial proposition for sociology, seldom stated and under-appreciated, demon-
strably true and heuristically invaluable.

The structured differentiation of emotions

Emotions are not simply in individual acts of conformity but in social interac-
tions more broadly. A general theory of emotions based on this idea is in
Kemper, A Social Interactional Theory of Emotions (1978). There are three basic
steps in Kemper's argument: first, all social interactions can be characterized in
terms of two formal dimensions of social relations, namely power and status,
or what might be called involuntary and voluntary compliance, for instance, or
constraint and regard, and so on. Power and status can be scaled in terms of
whether they are in excess of what is required in the relationship, adequate for
it, or insufficient. Agency-who might be responsible for too much or not
enough power, say-can similarly be differentiated, as 'self' or 'other'. The
second step holds that specific physiological processes are stimulated by specific
experiences of power and status. This idea is well known: there is a direct rela-
tionship, for instance, between social stress and myocardial infarction. Finally,
Kemper shows that particular emotions are physiologically specific. For
instance, anxiety is associated with secretion of the hormone epinephrine; anger
is associated with secretion of the hormone noradrenaline. The physiological
processes in Kemper's account are thus the mechanisms that translate the struc-
ture of interactions into the emotions of the actors.
This is such a beautiful model because it links biology and sociology in an
entirely non-reductive way. But that part of the argument need not detain us
here, as the physiological processes can be conceived as constituting an inter-

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Jack Barbalet

mediary variable and our methods textbooks tell us to pay attention only to the
independent and dependent variables; in this case, the social structure and the
emotions. We are then left with the very compelling idea that the particular emo-
tions that people experience arise out of the structure of the relations of power
and status in which they are implicated.
So, if you have insufficient power in a relationship it is likely that you will
experience fear, if you have excess power it is likely you will experience guilt. If
you have excess status it is likely that you will experience shame, if insufficient
status, depression, and so on. In this treatment Kemper gives formal represen-
tation to what novelists, for instance, have always relied upon. Novelist can
produce in their readers an awareness of a character's emotional state by merely
indicating the situation and relationships they are in, because the situation or
relationships provide the eliciting conditions for the emotions that persons ex-
perience. This is the crucial point: emotion experienced in my body as subjective
feeling is part of a transaction between myself and another. The emotion is in
the social relationship. This last point needs to be amplified.
Emotion is in the social relationship, certainly. But what part of the social
relationship is emotion? It is that part of the relationship in which the subject
of the relationship, the person in the relationship, is in some way changed, and,
in being so changed, is disposed to change the relationship itself. Here is the
very dynamism of social interaction and social relationships, in the emotion. I
interact with another whose status is in excess of what is required to adequately
execute the interaction, and that precipitates my anger. I experience the anger
as a transformation of my disposition, from accepting the other to remonstrat-
ing with the other to cease being haughty or interfering with the way I do things.
Depending on how my anger is understood by the other, she will have a com-
mensurate emotional reaction to it, with subsequent changes in her behaviour.
And so it will go on.
To say again what was said earlier: emotion is a necessary link between social
structure and social actor. The connection is never mechanical because emo-
tions are normally not compelling but inclining. But without the emotions
category, accounts of situated actions would be fragmentary and incomplete.
Emotion is provoked by circumstance and is experienced as transformation of
dispositions to act. It is through the subject's active exchange with others that
emotional experience is both stimulated in the actor and orientating of their
conduct. Emotion is directly implicated in the actors' transformation of their
circumstances, as well as the circumstances' transformation of the actors' dis-
position to act.

Collective emotions

Kemper's model raises the question of theorizing collective emotions because it

imputes structural factors in the etiology of emotional experience. Thus persons
sharing common structural circumstances might experience common emotions,

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 Introduction: why emotions are crucial

without recourse to contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo and Rapson, 1994), for

instance, or other factors. And yet, such aggregations of emotional experience
are not group emotions. What I call here group emotions, as opposed to aggrega-
tive emotions, arise not because of merely common structural causes but
because of relations between members of a group. IL. Monero's (1951; 1953)
work in sociometry is one approach that indicated the reality and significance
of group emotions: attractions and repulsions are experienced at the individual
level but necessarily underlie the formation, direction and persistence of groups
as indivisible entities. There are other sources to this general idea (see Smith and
Crandell, 1984). A relevant concept in this regard is that of emotional climate
(see Barbalet, 1998, pp. 158-60; de Rivera, 1992).
An emotional climate does not require that every person subject to it ex-
perience the same emotion. As emotional climates are group phenomenon and
as different people occupy different positions within groups, perform different
roles and have different capacities, it is indeed likely that individuals will differ
from each other in their emotional experiences. Yet in their relationships they
will each contribute to the feelings of the group qua group, to its emotional for-
mation or climate. Collective emotions are discussed in various ways in a number
of the papers below.
The social significance of emotion is registered by a consideration of par-
ticular social processes or institutions. Consider the phenomenon of unem-
ployment, for instance. Before dealing with the emotional dimensions of
unemployment it is necessary to say something about unemployment in general.
First, the link that employment provides, between the individual and a mean-
ingful relationship with the larger community, is lost in unemployment (Lane,
1991, pp. 260-1), so that unemployment is not merely loss of employment but
of a range of associations and capacities, some of which are ostensibly uncon-
nected with employment. Indeed, Karl Mannheim describes how unemployment
destroys an individual's 'life plan', and in doing so is much more likely to create
'apathy rather than rebellion in the minds of its victims' (1940, p. 181). Second,
the sources of advantage in labour markets may translate to aggravated disad-
vantage in unemployment. For instance, technologically skilled workers who
suffer structural rather than cyclical unemployment may face longer periods of
unemployment than less skilled and therefore more mobile workers. These and
similar fundamental experiences necessarily contain compelling emotional
dimensions. In summary, those who fail in labour markets, according to Robert
Lane, following Marie Jahoda, 'learn externality, passivity, helplessness, the
importance of luck, chance, and fate ... [and] many will learn self-blame,
demoralization, and depression' (Lane, 1991, p. 170).
Thinking of those emotions explained in the simple Kemperian model, it can
be predicted that unemployment will typically generate fear, through an insuf-
ficiencyof one's own power in labour market relations; shame, through an excess
of status in terms of the ratio of market relevant qualities to market perfor-
mance; depression, through an insufficiency of status in terms of the ratio of
past standing to present standing; and anger, through an excess of the status of

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Jack Barbalet

other's standing in labour markets, be they employers, managers, employed

workers, or whoever. This is a simple and minimal set of probabilities, to which
others must be added. Differential time frames impact on emotional experience,
especially around the emotion of hopelessness (see Kurt Lewin, 1948). Resent-
ment has been identified as a key emotion among declining groups in trade cycle
movements (Bensman and Vidich, 1962, pp. 37-9). The likelihood of experience
of moral indignation in those who are disadvantaged by a distributional system
they regard as legitimate can also be mentioned in this context (Barbalet, 2002).
Another emotion also typical of the condition of unemployment is boredom
(Barbalet, 1999).
No matter what the social phenomenon, its processes and outcome can
always be better understood when its emotional dimensions are identified. That
is because the emotional dimensions of a thing determine its social significance
and course.

Contributions to emotions research

At the present time, research in the sociology of emotions is no longer novel

and untried. Since the mid-1970s there has been a growing number of impor-
tant publications that self-consciously set out to expand the horizons of socio-
logical writing by focussing upon emotions. Indeed, even before the advent of
the term, sociology of emotions, sociological writers had demonstrated the cen-
trality of emotions to social processes and sociological explanation. Some of
these are well known still, including C. Wright Mills, George Homans, Richard
Sennett, Peter Blau, Alvin Gouldner, among others, even if they are not remem-
bered for their discussion of emotions. Others are almost entirely forgotten, such
as Sven Ranulf (1933, 1934, 1938), even though their work is arguably path-
breaking (see Barbalet, 2002).
The chapters in the present volume continue, then, the work of a tradition
or sub-discipline of sociology that has a strong and vigorous history. Indeed,
they demonstrate that a sociological appreciation of emotions should not be
construed as a mere sub-specialism of the discipline, focussed only on emotions
management and social psychological in its orientation. The chapters below
bring a concern with emotions to core themes of sociological inquiry. They not
only contribute to our sociological understanding of emotions, they also make
important contributions to the substantive fields they address-and there are a
number of these.
In the first chapter below, Chris Shilling shows that we can understand the
history of sociology itself, and developments within it, through the ways in
which the concept of emotions has served as an organizing principle in research
and explanation. The very last chapter, by Ian Burkitt, explores emotional ex-
periences in terms of social and cultural processes. Burkitt shows how speech
genres, bodily activity, and social relationship articulate together in the produc-
tion of specific emotions. These two chapters demonstrate how examination of
emotions enhances both social theory and sociological research.

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 Introduction: why emotions are crucial

The chapters by Mabel Berezin and Theodore Kemper each develop accounts
of political processes in terms of emotions. Berezin explores the significance of
emotions for political processes and institutions. The idea that politics can be
emotional is not new, of course. But Berezin'streatment of the relations between
them leads us to rethink how we understand not just politics but also emotions.
Emotions are not episodic disruptors of but essential to politics: they sustain
political processes, underlie political action and mobilization, and are embed-
ded in political institutions. Berezin concludes with an elaboration of the key
conceptual issues a political sociology of emotions might address.
Complementing Berezin's broad approach, Kemper's chapter focuses on the
emotions generated by a single event, namely the attacks on New York and
Washington of September 11, 2001. By distinguishing ten different publics,
Kemper demonstrates the force of his interactional theory of emotions, which
predicts the emotional content of reactions to September 11 in each of them.
Like Berezin, Kemper is also interested in the distinction between individual
level and group level emotions, and especially the different types of coping
responses that emerge for individuals on the one hand and groups on the
other. Kemper's account of the structural conditions of coping strategies, the
character of group emotional experience, and the type of coping responses
that form out of them, offers significant insights into political processes in
general.
Economics, both as financial processes and organization, is the focus of the
following two chapters, by Jocelyn Pixley and Helena Flam. Pixley shows that
while economists typically ignore emotions, core concepts of economic dis-
course, including interest and expectation, are inherently and profoundly emo-
tional. She goes on to show how economic decision-making, for example, can
be best understood as a process in which emotions are not only necessary but
can be conceptualized to enhance explanatory purchase. The chapter concludes
with the significance of an emotions approach to economic practices including
economic policy. The emotional component of persons, as managers and
employees, is shown by Flam to be crucial for an understanding of economic
organizations. The sociology of organizations has long been aware of the impor-
tance of emotional display in management and the emotional costs of employ-
ment. Flam's contribution is to show that these issues do not exhaust the
relevance of emotions in organizations. Indeed, Flam moves beyond the
narrow perspective of an exclusive orientation to emotional labour and shows
how an appreciation of the role of emotions need not be confined to economic
organization but also disorganization, not merely employment but also
unemployment.
A third set of chapters, by Charlotte Bloch and Jack Barbalet, consider emo-
tions in science and research. Bloch's chapter reports an empirical study of
academic researchers and the structural conditions of research activity. The
interactional elements of research, she shows, are competition and recognition.
Within this framework the social relationships of research require participants
to manage a number of key emotions, including those of uncertainty, shame,

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Jack Barbalet

anger, and pride. Bloch's account not only develops our understanding of emo-
tions and emotional culture, but enriches the sociology of research organiza-
tions and their environments. Barbalet examines the changing and uneven
relationship between emotion and science. In doing so he outlines an approach
to the sociology of science that gives priority to the emotional engagements of
scientists, not only in terms of their motivation, but in the core activities of
scientific discovery and validation. In doing so Barbalet points to resources
neglected by conventional sociologists of science. His paper concludes by sug-
gesting the benefits of an examination of science to a sociology of emotions,
and to a sociology of science that appreciates the constructive role of emotions.
Together, then, the chapters constituting this Sociological Review Monograph
achieve at least three things: first, they provide a clear statement of the signifi-
cance of emotions for sociological research; second, they report on the contri-
butions of previous sociologists who have enriched our understanding of both
emotions and the substantive fields under discussion; and finally, each chapter
that follows makes a significant contribution of its own both to the sociologi-
cal study of emotions and to each of the key areas of sociology they address.
Here is the state of the art and the prospects of an exciting future for sociology.

References

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