Course Introduction

30208 - Emotions and social stratification

Philipp Wunderlich

2023

Introduction

  1. Emotions in sociology

  2. Learning goals of this seminar

  3. Requirements & tasks

  4. Course plan

  5. Organizational issues

Emotions in sociology

Emotions

„(…) emotions constitute the bodily manifestation of the importance that an event in the natural or social world has for a subject.” (Bericat, 2016, p. 493)

  • Appraisals of situations or objects

  • Relational nature

  • Feeling, subjective experience & embodiment

  • Action tendencies & motivations

  • ➔ Emotions are social, social life is emotional

Sociology of emotions

  • Emotion cultures, norms, rules

  • Social constructionist perspectives on emotions

  • Intergroup, collective emotions

  • Emotions in social interaction and ritual encounters

  • Structural accounts, power and status

Examples

  • Anger and indignation as drivers of social movements and protest.

  • Shame and pride as emotions of social control (e.g. flight shame).

  • Deep acting of emotions in service professions

  • Emotional dynamics underlying right-wing populism

This seminar

Interest & preconceptions

  • What are you expecting from the course? What is your personal interest (in light of your previous studies)?

  • How do you think emotions are related to dimensions of inequality such as class, gender, race, age or education?

Learning goals

  • Explore the research field of emotional stratification.

    • How does social structure affect emotions?

    • How do emotions reproduce social structure?

  • Focus on writing: How to author papers and provide helpful feedback.

  • NOT our focus:

    • Applied quantitative socio-structural analysis.

    • Country comparisons

    • Comprehensive explanations of social inequalities

Requirements

  • Regular participation

  • Active participation

    • Mandatory reading and reading responses

    • Writing tasks (RQ, first draft)

  • Grade (Seminar paper / oral exam)

Regular participation

  • You may miss up to 2 sessions without a doctor’s note.

  • I will not control your presence regularly, but:

  • You have to attend regularly, to be able to fulfill active participation

Active participation

  • Reading responses have to be uploaded each Sunday (end of day).

    • Miss no more than 2.

  • Submission of research question (31.5.2023)

  • Submission of first draft (750-1500 words, 5.7.2023)

Module exam

  • Either seminar paper or oral exam.

    • Seminar paper recommended in this writing-focused course.

    • Oral exam: Your term paper draft will serve as the basis of the oral exam.

  • Seminar papers will be developed throughout the course

  • Submit final paper until September 30st. (>3.000 words)

Course plan

Overview

  1. General approaches (4 weeks)

    • Weekly reading responses

    • Develop research questions!

  2. Studies & applications (5 weeks)

    • Weekly reading responses

    • Write first drafts!

  3. Peer review (2 weeks)

  4. Seminar paper

Syllabus

Technicalities

Blackboard

  • Blackboard

    • Session readings

    • Upload of reading responses

    • Submission of research questions, first drafts, and final papers

  • Blackboard: POLSOZ_H_30208_23S

    • self-enrollment is enabled.

    • external students need to register as auditors

Literature

  • You should be able to access all course readings in one of three ways:

    • Log in to eduroam or the VPN network and use the DOIs of the papers to find and download them.

    • Within eduroam or the VPN network you can use the PRIMO library catalog to access digital versions of the literature.

    • In rare cases in which books are not accessible online, I will provide copies in due time.

Questions?

Blackboard login