In merito ai luoghi comuni sulla debolezza delle emozioni. Due traiettorie

Abstract

Emotions have long been considered a field of analysis of little sociological relevance. As strictly individual phenomena before social, they have been confined to the private sphere of unpredictability and inexplicability. The essay aims to retrace two trajectories of modern and contemporary sociology highlighting the relational potential of emotions but also the limits and alienating effects and individual and collective illiteracy that more recently the management of emotions creates in directing individual and collective existence. The first of the trajectories, which we indicate as «critical», aimed at identifying the connotations that row against the same individual and social freedom, is the one that goes from Comte to Hochschild and Illouz. The second trajectory of a «procedural» type, without introducing Durkheim who is the true master of rituals, moves from emotions as the content of relationships in Simmel to the chains of rituals that according to Collins enhance the emotions themselves (EE) and the elements (few) which, if well controlled, according to Sennett favor sociality.