Affect And Emotion: New Social Science Understanding, A

Description: In recent years there has been a huge surge of interest in affect and emotion. Scholars want to discover how people are moved, and understand embodied social action, feelings and passions. How do social formations 'grab' people? How do roller coasters of contempt, patriotism, hate and euphoria power public life? This book systematically reviews research in psychology and neuroscience, critical and social psychology, and in sociology, politics and cultural studies. It develops a critique of the 'turn to affect' and argues for an approach based on affective practice. This is a moment in the social sciences requiring concentrated interdisciplinary attention on the figuring of the body and meaning-making. New analyses are needed to explain how affect travels, settles, circulates and coalesces. This book presents a pragmatic social psychology for psychologists and non-psychologists across the social sciences.

Review: Absolutely essential reading for those wanting to understand the recent 'turn' to affect. Offering an extensive analysis of all the perspectives available, including the psycho, neuro, bio and social, Margie Wetherell treads a magisterial path through the radically different offerings, one that illuminates key ideas and will save the uninitiated wandering down many pointless avenues. A path-setting book Beverley Skeggs Professor, Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. Engagingly well written and using up-to-the-minute research, this book will be indispensible for those who want a comprehensive overview of 'where we are now' in research on emotions. But more than this, by developing an original model of 'affective practices', which focuses on the affective assemblages operating in concrete situations, it suggests a way forward that will prove inspirational for new research in this field Ian Burkitt Centre for Applied Social Research, University of Bradford. This important book is a brilliant corrective to some of the careless, poorly psychologically informed work on affect. It is essential reading for all those seriously interested in the topic Valerie Walkerdine Distinguished Research Professor, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University .

Contents: Introducing Affect: Lines of Argument Bodying Affect: Affective Flows and Their Psychobiological Figuring Negotiating Affect: Discourse, Representation and Affective Meaning-Making Situating Affect: Interaction, Accountability and the Present Moment Solidifying Affect: Structures of Feeling, Habitus and Emotional Capital Personalising Affect: Relational Histories, Subjectivities and the Psychosocial Circulating Affect: Waves of Feeling, Contagion and Affective Transmission

Author Biography: Margaret Wetherell is Professor of Social Psychology at the Open University, UK and Director of the Economic and Social Research Council Programme on Identities and Social Action.