The sociology of emotions: A meta-reflexive review of a theoretical tradition in flux

Abstract

Based in a novel ‘meta-reflexive’ review of sociology of emotions (SoE) articles, we suggest that there are two primary SoE theoretical traditions that function within geographic silos: the USA is distinctly social psychological, while in the UK and Australia, SoE is more aligned with the humanities. In both traditions, parallel calls are emerging for interdisciplinarity and further engagement with physiological and pre-personal elements of emotion. Based in Archer’s and Bourdieu’s concepts of reflexivity, we assert the merits of reflexively examining SoE, and then identify key changes in SoE that have emerged across time and geography. Using Kuhn’s work on paradigm shifts, we conclude that SoE is entering a stage of growth and change, and raise important questions about the subdiscipline’s future direction.

Keywords

emotions reflexivity sociology sociology of emotions systematic review

The sociology of emotion (SoE) is a relatively new subdiscipline of sociology, emerging in the 1970s (Turner and Stets, 2005). It recognises emotional experience as integral to social life. While the field is often associated with interactionist and dramaturgical sociology (Hochschild, 1983a; James, 1989), SoE also consists of more macro-theoretical work (Barbalet, 1998; Burkitt, 1997), quantitative analysis (Moon et al., 2009; Patulny, 2015) and phenomenological inquiry (Denzin, 1983). The identity and direction of the subdiscipline draws from a broad range of disciplines, yet there are unifying methodological premises that arguably provide a sense of commonality among researchers. Risking oversimplification, this can be understood as the view that emotion is intimately tied to key sociological concerns such as identity, structure, inequality, normativity, praxis, community, legitimation, politics, interaction, socialisation and ethics.

In this article we argue that SoE is currently in a state of flux amid echoing calls for interdisciplinarity. After significant growth in the subdiscipline in the decades following the late 1970s, SoE has become more reflexive, critical and interdisciplinary. Using Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of ‘field’ as a metaphor for the academy and articles as cultural artefacts, we analyse SoE as an area of change and contestation (Swartz, 1997). We offer a systematic review of the literature drawing from Archer’s (2012) ‘meta-reflexive’ concept, and suggest that there is not one but many SoE theoretical traditions. We show that while symbolic interactionist theories on emotions are readily used across the globe, SoE traditions in the USA are distinctly social psychological, while practices in Europe and Australia are more aligned with debates in the humanities. We present and analyse the parallel calls emerging in these distinct SoE traditions for interdisciplinarity and further engagement with physiological and pre-personal aspects of emotion experienced beyond consciousness. We see the consequent and current period of flux as potentially foreshadowing a paradigmatic shift in the conceptual and methodological bases of the subdiscipline (Kuhn, 1970).

In this article, we establish the merits of reflexively examining SoE and the concepts central to our analysis before outlining the method taken in this review. In the sections that follow, we demonstrate the changes within this subdiscipline that have emerged across time and space. We argue that SoE is undergoing a stage of rapid growth and instability, with mounting pressure for SoE to take on interdisciplinary perspectives. This raises important questions about the future of SoE and its role in public debate.

The reflexive identity of SoE

In late modernity, it is argued, reliance on traditions is decreasing. Instead, Archer (2012: 1) argues, ‘all have to draw upon their … powers of reflexivity … to define their course(s) of action.’ That is, we must embark on internal conversations where we identify our main concerns, the relationships which are most important and then chart a course of action (Archer, 2012). Just as individual identities are reflexively mediated, the collective identity of an academic subdiscipline is often constructed and regulated in this way; a subdiscipline is able to engage with its identity, and reflect on perceptions of that field held within and by others. In the case of SoE, there is a tendency to see emotion as a neglected theme in mainstream sociological research, such that the subdiscipline is located both within, and in response to, dominant disciplinary debates.

Separate to Archer’s (2012) contemporary modernist conceptualisation, Bourdieu (2003: 289) defines reflexivity as applying one’s analytic tools to one’s practices: knowing ‘the world better … as one knows oneself better’. This review of SoE brings both conceptualisations together to ‘meta-reflexively’ question SoE’s theoretical and methodological practices. Using analytic insights fostered through a systematic review, we ask questions about SoE’s alliances, methods, aims and future. This involves treating articles and social theories on emotions as cultural artefacts (McCarthy, 2002). Cultures shape the way we see, interpret and engage, informing subjectivities and habitus(es) (Bourdieu, 1990) or, in the context of the academy, research practices. Here, we analyse articles using social theories on emotions as cultural texts to question SoE’s reflexive identity. We conceptualise articles engaging with social theories on emotion as cultural artefacts of theoretical traditions used by ‘players’ (scholars) within the broader university ‘field’ (Swartz, 1997). This is done to facilitate understanding of the ‘discordant, conflicting, and incommensurable messages’ in the texts (McCarthy, 2002: 44) and ask questions about what SoE is, is not, and what it might become. Following Connell (2007), we also ask about the mobility of emotion theories across national borders: is there one SoE, or are there many traditions? To answer these questions, we undertake a ‘meta-reflexive’ systematic review, acknowledging how this ‘distinctive mode of reflexive deliberation’ (Archer, 2012: 32) has become commonplace in an unprecedentedly self-aware and critical era. Subsequently, we draw on Kuhn’s (1970) influential thesis that science moves through revolutions and paradigm changes when faith in a shared theoretical framework wanes, to interpret SoE’s past, present and future. Research takes place within specific paradigms that favour particular kinds of analysis and methods of data collection that favour the dominant views of the discipline field. This view describes researchers as embedded within a kind of scientific habitus whereby findings reflect lines of questioning that align with the strengths of specific disciplines. We use Kuhn’s (1970) work to conceptualise the progress of subdisciplines as dialectical, transitioning from a shared worldview, to a period of unrest where critiques of this worldview mount, to a period of change that results in a new paradigm, before the (temporary) return of stasis. While these processes can benefit from the challenges posed by interdisciplinary perspectives, blurring discipline boundaries should not be construed as a one-size-fits-all solution to discipline specific criticisms.

Methodology

Reviews play an important role in any discipline. They ‘juxtapose, explain and analyse an assembly of related concepts’, asserting how a (sub)discipline ‘defines itself and its priorities’ (Jutel, 2012: 54). Narrative (literature) reviews of SoE have been regular (Kemper, 1981; Turner et al., 2006; Stets, 2012). Turner and Stets (2005) provide a seminal overview of the theoretical breadth in the subdiscipline, and Greco and Stenner (2008) published a widely read social science reader on emotions, with 55 contributors from Canada, Europe and the USA. Most summary publications, however, are largely USA-based and descriptive of new developments within the field rather than methodical, introspective and critical.

Systematic reviews, in contrast, offer a thorough overview of a body of scholarship, and a different vantage point for understanding a field of research. They involve the methodical search for all studies on a subject, the exclusion of studies not meeting predefined standards of methodological rigour and the combination of statistical results to come to cross-study conclusions (Pearson, 2004). Meta-synthesis reviews of qualitative studies are valued for their capacity to ‘offer a new interpretation of a research question’ (Cooke et al., 2012: 1435). They involve the generation of meta-themes, but rarely exclude studies based on ‘rigour’, as judgements depend on epistemological positioning (Dixon-Woods, 2011; Pearson, 2004).

Rather than aggregating statistical or thematic findings, as in meta-analyses and meta-syntheses, this ‘meta-reflexive’ systematic review takes a novel approach: using a systematic and introspective approach to ask questions about the direction, identity and character of SoE. Using established search and abstraction techniques we ask ‘What is the sociology of emotions?’ and ‘What is it becoming?’

Method

A systematic review of SoE in its entirety, including books, articles and reports, would be a task outside the scope of a single article. Thus, a representative approach was taken (Cooke et al., 2012). Four databases were chosen for their sociological relevance and international coverage: Informit, Project Muse, Proquest and SocIndex. Boolean operators and truncation symbols (i.e. ‘sociology’ AND ‘emotion’) were employed to locate journal articles with subject terms relevant to SoE. The multidisciplinary journal Emotion Review was also hand-searched. Searches were limited to journal articles appearing in English between 1978, the year Kemper (1978) proposed the subdiscipline,¹ and June 2015.

Not every publication that references emotion qualified. The defining characteristic of included articles was the use of emotion to make sense of social life. Thus, only articles that applied, developed or critiqued social theory(ies) on feelings and/or emotion were included.² Articles that primarily reported empirical findings without reference to SoE theories were excluded. Titles and abstracts were assessed on such criteria. Full texts were reviewed and reflective notes taken if the study clearly met the inclusion criteria, or if there was any question about eligibility. Using a purpose-built abstraction table created in Microsoft Excel (2011), the following was also extracted from each article: (1) author details, including discipline, institution and location; (2) article details including title, year of publication, journal title, journal discipline and journal location (based on affiliation with an association or a review of the current editorial board); (3) article type (theoretical, empirical and/or review) and, where appropriate, method; and (4) article contribution including the theory(ies) used and the overarching argument. Information not readily available from journal articles, such as authors’ current discipline, was determined through an online search. Abstracting this data was done to foster an examination of SoE’s current state, how it is conceptualised across national boundaries and time, allowing for a critical and meta-reflexive analysis of what it is and where it is going.

Findings

Findings are discussed here in light of the relevant literature. Because of space limitations, a representative approach is taken; illustrative rather than exhaustive citations are provided. Drawing on Appadurai (1996), findings are organised into four reflexive ‘scapes’ – descriptive, global, historical and critical – that raise questions about the subdiscipline’s future. As such, this vantage point for analysis should not be viewed as fixed and objective, but ‘perspectival’ and subject to change (Appadurai, 1996). We describe SoE’s present advancement and global reach before examining its history, so that an introspective and critical exploration of SoE’s past and future can be established with reference to its present status.

A descriptive view: SoE’s advancement

No longer in its infancy, SoE has developed with increasing momentum over the past three decades. Illustrating SoE’s expansion, the systematic search conducted for this review resulted in 1790 hits, with 228 articles³ meeting the inclusion criteria (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Study selection process.

The majority of included articles were published in the last two decades, with a substantial increase in output since 2003. Articles were split between those focused on developing or critiquing theory(ies) (90) and empirical articles applying and extending SoE theories (98). The remaining (40) articles were commentaries and reviews of the subdiscipline as a whole (Thoits, 1989; Turner, 2009; von Scheve and von Luede, 2005), a specific SoE theory (Smith-Lovin, 1987), or application of SoE theories to a particular topic or setting (Flam, 2002). Empirical studies integrated a range of methods (19 articles used mixed methods; see Figure 2), favouring interviews and surveys.

Figure 2.

Empirical methods used in included articles: number of times this method reported across the included articles.

Most included articles were single-authored (145), written by scholars working in sociology departments and publishing in sociology journals (see Table 1). While this indicates a strong interest in social theories on emotions within sociology, there was evidence of interest in the explanatory appeal of these theories in neighbouring disciplines; 23 authors were based in faculties of business and human resource management.

Table 1.

Disciplinarity of included articles^a.

	Author’s faculty		Journal’s discipline
Sociology	222.5	65%	128.5	56%
Other social sciences^b	43.5	13%	26.5	11%
Psychology, psychiatry and social psychology	16.5	5%	50	22%
Health/medical related^c	10	3%	3	1%
Other disciplines^d	47.5	14%	20	9%
Total	340	100%	228	100%

Notes: (a) Where authors or journals are affiliated with more than one discipline, they have been given a fractional (e.g. 0.5) categorisation. (b) Other social sciences includes: criminology; social sciences; critical/cultural studies; gender studies; social policy; ecology, sustainable, human development; media studies; social work; anthropology; political science; leisure studies; religious studies; qualitative research; race and ethnic studies. (c) Health/medical related includes: public health and science; neuroscience; occupational health and safety. (d) Other disciplines includes: business and human resource management; education; language/literature; history; music; philosophy; defence studies; law; economics.

A global view: a plurality of SoE traditions

The growth of the subdiscipline has been at once united and divergent across the world. Perhaps reflecting different research traditions in the UK and USA, cross-Atlantic publishing was limited.⁴ A majority of articles were written by authors within a single country, with the USA (116), the UK (40), Australia (32) and Germany (8) leading the tally. Only 10 articles (see Bellocchi et al., 2014; Harding and Pribram, 2004; Moon et al., 2009; Roach Anleu et al., 2015) were the result of cross-country collaboration (Australia–USA, 4; Australia–Sweden, 1; UK–USA, 1; USA–Canada–Germany, 3; USA–South Korea, 1). Dots in Figure 3 represent authors’ locations; lines represent collaborations.

Figure 3.

Annotated world map.

The journal with the highest number of included articles (other than Emotion Review, 37, which was hand-searched) was the UK journal Sociology (16), followed by USA-based journals American Journal of Sociology (14), Social Forces (8), Sociological Spectrum (5) and Social Psychology Quarterly (5), and the Australian Journal of Sociology (5). International journals The Sociological Review (7) and Studies in Symbolic Interaction (6) also ranked highly. Of the 32 articles in the four USA-based journals above, only two co-authors were from outside of the USA. Contributors to articles published in the Journal of Sociology were similarly Australian-based, bar one USA-based co-author. The British journal Sociology showed more international exchange, with included articles submitted by authors from the UK (10), Australia (3), Ireland (2) and Israel (1).

While interactionist and classic sociological theories share wide appeal, findings indicate that in addition to national publishing silos, there are preferences for certain theories across and within national borders (see Figure 4). Internationally, engagement with interactionist theories – including dramaturgical approaches such as Hochschild’s (1983a) – predominated. Over 60 articles, published by authors across the globe, employed Hochschild’s (1983a) concepts of emotion management and feeling rules (Cohen, 2010; Fine and Fields, 2008; James, 1989), often in combination with other theories (Martin, 2000; Taylor, 2010; Wouters, 1992). Collins’ theory of Interaction Ritual Chains (2004) was used in 22 articles (Boyns and Appelrouth, 2011; Dolan and Connolly, 2014; Parker and Hackett, 2012) by primarily USA-based authors. Macro-sociological approaches to understanding the stratified power dimensions of emotion, using theories by Kemper (1978), Barbalet (1998) and others, were used in over 30 studies by mainly USA-based authors (Heaney, 2011; Ray, 2014; Ridgeway and Johnson, 1990). Engagement with classic interactionist theorists such as Mead (2000) and Cooley (1998) was similarly USA-dominated (Bandelj, 2009; Denzin, 1983; Qi, 2011).

Figure 4.

Theories most frequently used in included articles: number of instances where theory mentioned, by authors’ location (continent).

Another international theoretical trend within SoE included revisiting classic sociological texts by Durkheim, Simmel, Weber and Marx for their emotional content (Barbalet, 2006; Shilling, 1997; Weyher, 2012). Bourdieu’s concepts, such as habitus (Dolan and Connolly, 2014; Scheer, 2012) and practice theory (Johnson, 2010; Lutz and White, 1986), were also popular with authors across the USA, Europe and Australia. An extension of Bourdieu’s concepts, ‘emotional capital’, however, was used exclusively in articles focusing on education (Forbes and Weiner, 2008; Nixon, 2011; Reay, 2000) by authors outside of the USA.

The appeal of other theories was contained within national borders. The use of three theories was nearly exclusive to the USA: Affect Control Theory (Heise and Lerner, 2006; Lively and Heise, 2004; Rogers et al., 2013); Identity Theory (Robinson et al., 2004; Stets and Carter, 2012); and General Strain Theory, which was employed almost exclusively in articles published in criminology journals (Moon et al., 2009; Slocum et al., 2012). Theories on affect, civilisation and reflexivity in late modernity did not appear as popular in the USA. Articles engaging with theories related to the affective turn in cultural studies (see Hardt and Negri, 2004; Massumi, 2002) were primarily authored by Australians (Faircloth, 2011; Labanyi, 2010; Lupton, 2013; Prosser and Olson, 2013). Elias’s theories on civilisation and emotion were used chiefly by authors in Europe (Berezin, 2002; Burkitt, 1997; Wouters, 1995). Articles using theories of reflexivity in late modernity were written mainly by Australian and European authors (Burkitt, 2012; Deslandes and King, 2006; Holmes, 2015).

This depicts SoE as a subdiscipline of many theoretical traditions: united in the use of interactionist and classic sociological theories, but working within national silos. In the next section, divisions across theories and historical disciplines are discussed.

A historical view: conquests, rediscoveries and internal divisions

Traditionally, ‘inner experiences’ such as emotions, had been viewed as subjects outside of sociology’s repertoire (Junge, 2008: 43). Following its introduction in the late 1970s, sociologists engaged in an interdisciplinary scrum with psychology over the contested terrain of emotions. This ‘border skirmish’ (Williams and Bendelow, 1996: 145) between psychology and sociology seems to have defined SoE in the 1980s and 1990s. Sociology was seen to be taking territory away from psychology. Stearns (1989: 594, our emphasis) used ‘conquest’ language to describe sociology as having ‘carved out a lead in examining the social functions and contexts for emotion’. Fine and Fields (2008: 142, our emphasis) described sociology’s entrance onto the emotions scene in the 1970s as ‘when sociologists first began to colonize emotion’. During this time, sociology metaphorically claimed emotions, pushing psychology to share the academic field and living up to Urry’s (2005) description of the discipline as parasitic.

Simultaneously, sociologists worked to reclaim emotion as part of their own disciplinary history. Before the 1970s, as Weyher (2012: 341) explains, emotions were ‘largely excluded from the sociological lexicon … the very reading of classic texts [had] been historically biased against the seeing of emotions’ – perhaps reflecting sociology’s origins in post-Enlightenment times and its concern with understanding the Industrial Revolution. Since the 1970s, as this review illustrates, sociologists have prioritised re-reading classical sociological texts by Simmel, Durkheim, Weber, Elias and others to rediscover the emotional aspects of theories that were previously inaccessible or overlooked (Barbalet, 2006; Hopkins et al., 2009; Shilling, 1997). This suggests the importance of social theories on emotions within and beyond the habitus, subjectivity and dispositions of the discipline (and those disciplined by it).

If SoE in the 1980s to 1990s was characterised by competition for emotional terrain, SoE the 1990s to 2000s could be described as a period of growth, application and internal debate. During this phase, the application of social theories on emotions began to grow in diverse fields. Hochschild’s concept of emotional labour in particular took firm root in the organisational management literature (Glomb and Tews, 2004; Hampson and Junor, 2010; Morris and Feldman, 1996). Social theories on emotion, ranging from Collins (Milne and Otieno, 2007) to Bourdieu (Forbes and Weiner, 2008), became staples of the education literature.

Yet SoE grew as a fractured subdiscipline during this time. While Turner (2010) divides emotions theories along micro and macro scopes, others highlight distinctions between interactionist theories, which value emotions as consciously acknowledged and culturally relative (Harding and Pribram, 2004), and theories that depict emotions as both conscious and unconscious universal phenomena with structural properties (von Scheve and von Luede, 2005; Wang and Roberts, 2006). When dramaturgical approaches like Hochschild’s (1983a) are categorised as a branch of interactionism, the former clearly enjoys a position of dominance within SoE, with a majority of articles employing interactionist social theories. Figure 4 also shows that there are numerous articles using structural theories. Several important critiques of interactionist perspectives have recently arisen. Barbalet, for example, has emphasised the importance of biology to emotion. ‘Emotions are always physical, involving the hormonal, muscular, and neural systems, and they are always social-structural … [and] cultural’ (Barbalet, 2006: 52). Many, from social psychology (Turner, 2009) to cultural studies (Labanyi, 2010), assert a need to re-evaluate emotions as biological, pre-personal and culturally and consciously mediated.

While there are calls emerging from the USA and Europe for SoE to engage with neurological, physiological and evolutionary aspects (Berezin, 2002; Turner, 2009; von Scheve and von Luede, 2005), there are also calls to engage with affect – a concept with roots in Tomkins’ early psychological theories (Hemmings, 2005) – emerging from Australia, the UK and, to a lesser extent, the USA (Faircloth, 2011; Labanyi, 2010; Lupton, 2013). There is increasing interest among many sociologists in pre-conscious and non-verbal aspects of embodied feeling, and in concepts that include the embodied relationality between people and things, involving sounds, pheromones and other forms of exchange (Faircloth, 2011; Hynes, 2013; Seyfert, 2012). This interest aligns with the affective turn, and also channels literature from the sociology of the body that critiques the undue emphasis given to socialisation or rational choice in explaining action (Shilling, 2007).

Thus, it seems the disciplinary boundary work (Witz, 1992) and the exclusionary and usurpationary strategies that characterised SoE in the 1980s and 1990s, have been replaced with repeated calls for interdisciplinarity.

A critical view of interdisciplinarity: liberating or limiting?

The shift from conquest-oriented boundary work to interdisciplinary collaboration raises the questions: (1) why now? (2) what form will this proposed interdisciplinarity take? and (3) how will this interdisciplinarity shape our collective subjectivity and praxis as a discipline?

Why now? Why are alignments with neuroscience, psychology and biology now more ‘palatable’ (Clarke, 2006: 1154) to sociologists of emotion across theoretical traditions? Several answers seem possible. Perhaps the subdiscipline is now well enough established to withstand multidisciplinary (Berezin, 2002; Williams and Bendelow, 1996) or even interdisciplinary collaboration. Perhaps past debates within SoE that were once acrimonious (Hochschild, 1983b; Kemper, 1981, 1983) have ‘ceased now in favour of a more mature and less contentious debate’ (von Scheve and von Luede, 2005: 303).

Alternatively, calls for interdisciplinarity may reflect wider trends in academia. Undergirded by logics of innovation, accountability and governance (Garforth and Kerr, 2011; O’Reilly, 2009), academics are ‘currently subject to … relentless encouragement to be interdisciplinary’ (Cooper, 2013: 79). Interdisciplinary research is heralded as less reductionist and more ‘democratic’ (Cooper, 2013: 78), commanding ‘a high priority for … research funding’ (Garforth and Kerr, 2011: 657) and reflecting wider neoliberal discourses.

A third explanation might situate current calls for interdisciplinarity in SoE as based in a long history of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘hybridization’ within sociology (Garforth and Kerr, 2011: 659). Sociology, Urry (2005) argues, is an un-centred discipline that has historically responded to and incorporated varied intellectual and social movements. Thus, current calls for interdisciplinarity in SoE might be understood as yet another change in a social science with ‘fuzzy boundaries’ and ‘ever-changing methods, theories and research fields’ (Garforth and Kerr, 2011: 659).

A fourth possibility is that SoE’s maturity, with its own methods and research outputs – particularly following the popularity of Hochschild’s (1983a) work – has attracted interest from other disciplines wanting to more fully explore the social dimensions of familiar emotions (in psychology) or the emotional dimensions of social situations (in law, education, history, etc.).

Regardless of the impetus behind the calls for interdisciplinarity, we argue that – should calls for further engagement with neuroscience, biology and psychology be met⁵ – this will have real consequences. In line with Kuhn (1970), these resounding critiques of the core theories that make up SoE can be viewed as a ‘crisis’ point with the potential to usher in a new ‘worldview’ or paradigmatic era for the subdiscipline – an era with substantially different cultures, methods and practices.

Fine and Fields (2008) argue that cultures shape emotions and emotions shape and alter cultures. Clearly, disciplinary traditions, practices and culture have affected sociologists’ abilities to perceive and appreciate emotions in subjects and theories, necessitating the re-reading of classical sociological texts for their emotional dimensions. Interdisciplinarity, involving the blurring of biological, psychological and sociological lenses that accommodate the social, physiological and pre-conscious, could similarly have an effect on our academic subjectivities.

If our theories change to address our neglect of biology and the unconscious, our methods will also certainly need to change.⁶ Interviews and surveys are less adept at capturing the unconscious, physiological and intersubjective (Olson et al., 2015; Prosser et al., 2013).⁷ One of our main concerns will need to be how to measure what eludes consciousness and language (Holmes, 2004). If we conceptualise sympathy as an affect felt along with others (Labanyi, 2010), then we will need to conceptualise feelings as co-productions between and across researchers and participants – not as something done to or extracted from participants (Prosser, 2015). Scholars have begun to suggest ways in which qualitative research and textual analysis might be re-imagined to access affect and intersubjective emotion (Dadich and Olson, 2017; Poynton and Lee, 2011; Wetherall, 2013). Further innovation and reflection is needed to capture the elements of affect that are beyond cognition; to overcome the challenge of avoiding the imposition of categories, order and language on pre-discursive phenomena; and to fully appreciate the challenge that affect poses to traditional ontological assumptions in sociology that frame reality within the confines of consciousness (see Packer, 2011).

Finally, the way we conceptualise emotions may substantially affect how we practise sociology. Cooper (2013) argues that when we change our theoretical and epistemological frameworks, we also change our study outcomes. Theoretical traditions impose certain conditions on the conclusions that can be made because of the assumptions underpinning these traditions (especially regarding neutrality). Theoretical shifts can also potentially alter our social worlds. Montgomery’s (2008) empirical findings related to public (emotional) health messages following the beginning of the US–Iraq war serve as an example. The Bush administration, with the American Psychological Association, advised parents to turn off the news and manage their emotional responses to viewing video footage of the war to reduce its traumatic impact on children. Montgomery (2008) argues that framing emotions as potentially harmful had the consequence of propagating political submission.

Thus, theoretical and epistemological emotion frameworks matter. An overly psychological or therapeutic ‘emotions as damaging’ discourse can undermine social change, encouraging emotion management and passivity over political action.⁸ This is, perhaps, most concerning given sociology’s commitment to ‘mak[ing] a difference in the world’ – to engagement with public debate and emancipation (Bauman, 2008: 237). The main challenge in responding to calls for interdisciplinarity in SoE is negotiating a path around the individualising, pathologising, normalising and regulating potential perpetuated in many models of emotion that incorporate ‘psychical and neurological functioning’ (Blackman et al., 2008: 10).

Conclusion

This article’s contribution is twofold: a novel meta-reflexive approach to the qualitative systematic review and a critical analysis of SoE’s fractured history and interdisciplinary future. Combining reflexive insight with methodical rigour, this article demonstrates the merits of a revised form of critical review: a meta-reflexive systematic review. As illustrated above, reflexively analysing SoE’s praxes, traditions and subjectivities can be a theoretically productive exercise, highlighting taken-for-granted elements of the knowledge production process (Carroll, 2012; Fitzpatrick and Olson, 2015; Gray, 2008).

In treating articles as cultural texts, this article also illustrates that SoE is made up of numerous traditions with cross-national fractures. Possibly reflecting sociology’s long history of fragmentation (Garforth and Kerr, 2011), epistemological, methodological and curriculum differences across national borders divide SoE traditions (Babones, 2013). Though all SoE theories share a foundation in interactionist theories, the SoE subdiscipline in the USA is distinct in its institutional affiliation with social psychology; by contrast, in Australia, for example, social psychology tends to be located within psychology departments and disciplines, and does not share as close a connection with sociology (Feather, 2005). The SoE subdiscipline outside of the USA is more engaged with approaches that consider emotions in late modernity or the affective derivations of emotions.

The meta-reflexive examination of SoE articles over time offered a reading of SoE’s history. After a formative period of claiming emotions as an appropriate subject for social inquiry and part of our discipline’s history, as well as periods of surge and calm in internal debates, scholars engaging with diverging SoE theoretical traditions – from social psychology to affect – are now converging to insist that pre-conscious and physiological aspects of emotion be taken into account.

These demands reflect the shortcomings of interactionist approaches with regard to incorporating biological aspects of emotion. Calls are now being made for collaboration in emotion research across sociology, biology, psychology and cultural studies. Marking a new chapter in SoE’s paradigmatic evolution (Kuhn, 1970), an interdisciplinary future seems likely and reasonable given the differing expertise available. But, the new interdisciplinary ‘worldview’ in SoE being ushered in, could have real, subjective and methodological impacts affecting our primary concern as sociologists: improving our social world(s). We urge emotions sociologists, during this transition, to keep sight of the specialised contribution that SoE is able to make.

It is time for emotions sociologists to ask if this interdisciplinary shift (and its associated methodological challenges) is cause for excitement, fear or something else entirely. How will epistemologies be stretched or replaced? How will this open or close certain lines of thinking or seeing? Rather than a conservative call for boundary protection, we suggest that there will undoubtedly be benefits to sharing theories and methods across disciplinary and national divides. Clearly, the physiological and pre-conscious limitations of current sociological theories on emotions cannot be ignored. However, there is a need to proceed with reflection and consideration. As Blackman et al. (2008: 10) urge, ‘There is far more work to be done … in linking the current recourse to affect … with models of psychical or neurological functioning that do not bring in psychological individualism through the back door.’

As scholars employing and refining SoE theories embark on this new chapter, praxis should be prioritised. Ongoing reflection on action should help to ensure that SoE scholars do not lose sight of sociology’s role within the academic field, and keep goals of prediction and rigour from overshadowing the equally important goals of critical commentary, emancipation, and phronesis – opening our imaginations to new forms of ‘being’ and practice (Packer, 2011: 14).

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Rebecca E. Olson is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. She has written a monograph on the emotional dimensions of informal cancer caregiving, published by Routledge (Ashgate): Towards a Sociology of Cancer Caregiving: Time to Feel (2015). She is currently working on a book (Routledge, edited with Roger Patulny, Sukhmani Khorana, Alberto Bellocchi, Jordan McKenzie and Michelle Peterie) on Emotions in Late Modernity. Rebecca’s research interests intersect medical sociology, interprofessional practice, emotions and video-based qualitative methods. She has published in journals such as Social Science & Medicine and Medical Education.

Jordan J. McKenzie is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research is informed by European social and critical theory, and these perspectives contribute to his current research in the sociology of emotion. In particular, Jordan’s work critically engages with the current cultural fascination with happiness and the good life in order to better understand how emotional experience reflects modernisation and social change. He is a co-covener for the Social Theory thematic group of The Australian Sociological Association and the Contemporary Emotions Research Network (University of Wollongong).

Roger Patulny is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the co-founder of the Contemporary Emotions Research Network (CERN); and The Australian Sociological Association Thematic Group on the Sociology of Emotions and Affect (TASA-SEA); has been awarded several ARC grants (DP098810; LP140100033); and edited three special editions/sections on emotions for the Australian Journal of Social Issues and Emotion Review. He is currently co-editing a Routledge collection on Emotions in Late Modernity. His detailed profile and full publications can be found at:

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