Sociology of Emotion

The sociology of emotions is the article of Katherine Walker from the EBSOHost. The sociology of emotions’ article is based on the study of the sociology of emotions in which defines emotions as socially constructed and culturally variable labels attached to physiological responses to stimuli. Studies have questioned the universality of emotions, their variation across cultures, rules about feelings and emotional displays, and the necessity of emotions to maintaining the social bond. The article was a previously researched article, because the author makes references to Sociology scholars that have established themselves in the field of Sociology, like Emile Durkhem and Erving Goffman (by Katherine Walker, 2010) The sociology of emotions is a relatively new subfield of sociology, which first gained prominence in the 1970 's. Prior to this time, the field of sociology concentrated more on cognition than emotions, although emotions have often remained a subtext in important works. Emotions were seen as the turf of psychologists and biologists. However, sociologists began to systematically study emotions because they realized first, that emotions are fundamentally social, and second, that emotions have always figured as causal mechanisms in sociological theory. Emotions are of sociological interest because they are a primary human motivation, they help in rational decision-making, and they link the biology of the body with classic sociological (John J. Macoinis, 2009) questions about social construction and social control. The authors of the article try to make clear the concept of emotion, asking specifically, what is emotion? Which they explained as a sort of phenomenon that goes through the body, or mentally. For example, that thing that people usually have while watching a horror movie, scare or fear, that makes your heart beat faster. Walker step in the concept that people develop their emotion in seven Stages that start from childhood and goes all the way to

References: Strayer University EBSCO- Host Academic database: Author Katherine Walker, Ph.D, June 1, 2010, Sociology of Emotions. Introduction to Sociology, by john J. Maccionis, Twelve Edition, 2009