Documents as ‘risky’ sources of data: a reflection on social and emotional positioning – a research note

As units of analysis, documents are often seen as unproblematic, easily accessed sources of data. This research note discusses and reflects on a research project where documents were not easy to access and instead prompted significant negotiation, contained disturbing information and images and had an emotional impact on the researcher. A reflexive account is provided in this paper, which draws upon feminist methodological theory and explores the researcher’s experiences of using documents in research. The paper concludes that documents should not always be categorised as a low risk data source, rather issues such as access difficulties, ethical dilemmas and potential emotional harm, should also be considered.     

Reconsidering Durkheim's Assessment of Tarde: Formalizing a Tardian Theory of Imitation,Contagion, and Suicide Suggestion

Emile Durkheim summarily rejected Gabriel Tarde's imitation thesis, arguing that sociology need only concern itself with social suicide rates. Over a century later, a burgeoning body of suicide research has challenged Durkheim's claim to a general theory of suicide as 4 decades worth of evidence has firmly established that (1) there is a positive association between the publicization of celebrity suicides and a spike in the aggregate suicide rate, (2) some social environments are conducive to epidemic‐like outbreaks of suicides, and (3) suicidal ideas or behavior spreads to some individuals exposed to a personal role model's suicidal behavior—for example, a friend or family member. Revisiting Tarde, the article examines why Tarde's theory deserves renewed attention, elucidates what he meant by imitation, and then formalizes his “laws” into testable theses, while suggesting future research questions that would advance the study of suicide, as well as other pathologies. Each “law” is elaborated by considering advances in contemporary social psychology as well as in light of its ability to supplement Durkheim's theory in explaining the “outlier” cases.     

The emotional encounter with child welfare services: the importance of incorporating the emotional perspective in parents' encounters with child welfare workers

The child welfare service (CWS) in Norway represents a growing field. In 2011 about 52,000 children received help. Families mainly received supportive services in their homes while around 8000 children were taken into the custody of the CWS. Although most actions taken by the CWS are deemed to be supportive and have the consent of the parents, many parents find being assessed by the CWS to be distressing, and there is a widespread feeling that there is a stigma attached to receiving help from the CWS. This article discusses the importance of parents' emotions, and how these emotions can influence their cooperation with the CWS by using the concepts of recognition and trust. The data are based on analyses of 385 interviews with parents in which they describe their emotional encounters with the CWS. The results show that certain emotions can create a barrier between the family's need for assistance and the CWS's actions and initiatives. The article concludes by discussing how the emotional encounter challenges child welfare practice.     

清洁精神烛照下的悲悯与神圣——论石舒清文学作品中的宗教情怀

宁夏回族作家石舒清以艺术化的笔触关怀弱势群体的生活处境,思索生死等形而上的终极命题,追寻作为生命本质的个体内在精神。他的文学作品超越了社会人生的世俗功利与现世苦难,流露出强烈的宗教情怀,其宗教情怀基本体现在彼岸意识、清洁精神、悲悯心怀与神圣感四个方面。     

Intimacy,home, and emotions in the era of the pandemic

While much of the sociological scholarship on intimacy has been understood in the normative sense of foregrounding and supporting human closeness, this article points to the role intimacy has as a sociological concept to better understand regulatory ties between the subject and the institution. While subject and institution are treated by modernity as distinct entities, separated by the boundary between private and the public, the article elucidates their mutual engagements by reviewing the work on intimacy in the sociology of emotions. Discussing the scholarship on intimacy from this perspective enables us to understand private suffering as a social problem linked to the collective recognition of subjective feelings. To illustrate the point, the article briefly reflects the public discourse on home upended by world-wide stay-at-home orders to contain the spread of coronavirus disease 2019. While this article neither analyzes these orders, nor judges their legitimacy, it takes the particular situation as a chance to review the sociological discussion on the emotional boundaries of home, foregrounding the concept of intimacy. Intimacy is presented as a key sociological category for understanding collective recognition of people's emotions, which impacts the way emotions are seen as relevant and legitimate in public discussions of social problems.     

My own flesh and blood: stratified parental compassion and law in Korean slavery

This article examines the relationship between human emotions and slavery in Chos?n Korea (1392–1910) by examining legislative processes as well as private practices concerning the status of the offspring of a yangban man and his slave-status concubine. The legislative discussions and decisions on the topic at the royal court often subscribed to the notion that these children were also the yangban’s ‘flesh and blood’ and called for compassion, a Confucian emotional norm expected of parents. When yangban fathers manumitted their slave-status children, they recorded their feelings in the same affective language expressed in the legal discourses. Yet, because slaves were among the yangban’s most valuable possessions and yangban elites regarded the maintenance of social hierarchy as the key for social order, legal paths for manumission were narrowly defined and emotional norms did not always dictate parents’ actions. By investigating the larger legal framework related to slave-status children of yangban elites alongside specific cases, this study seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the historical impact and practices of emotional politics in relation to slavery. It finds that the yangban fathers’ very primordial human emotion towards their own children was stratified by social and economic conditions and selectively applied.     

The effect of mothers’ emotion‐related responses to adolescent disclosures and adolescent perspective taking on the timing of future disclosures

Adolescent disclosure to parents is an important feature of high‐quality parent–adolescent relationships and is associated with positive adolescent adjustment. However, no studies have examined parental emotion‐related responses (ERRs) to disclosures and adolescent dispositional characteristics that may facilitate or inhibit adolescent disclosures during real‐time conversations. The present study tested (a) which maternal ERRs to adolescent disclosures predicted quicker subsequent disclosures during mother–adolescent conversations, and (b) whether adolescent perspective taking moderated these associations. Adolescent disclosures and maternal ERRs were coded moment‐to‐moment during a problem‐solving discussion and adolescents reported on their perspective taking. Multilevel Generalized Linear Mixed‐Effects Models revealed that maternal interest and validation predicted the shortest lag times compared with other maternal ERRs, controlling for adolescent age, gender, total durations of maternal ERRs, and total frequency and duration of adolescent disclosures. Adolescent perspective taking moderated associations between maternal ERRs to adolescent disclosures and lag times. Specifically, adolescents high in perspective taking were most likely to make quicker subsequent disclosures when mothers responded to disclosures with interest. This is the first study to examine how contingent parental responses to adolescent disclosures in real time affect the timing of subsequent disclosures during parent–adolescent conversations.     

论宗璞《红豆》的知识分子题材

在双百方针时期,宗璞的《红豆》被视为文坛上两类实绩之一。作为知识分子题材,以女大学生江枚回忆的方式,展现了在历史抉择面前,知识青年们如何放弃个人情感,投身于革命洪流,为国家、民族的解放献礼。由于作者的女性知识分子身份,作品中描写的人物情感细腻,故事场面真实感人。从而,为我们留下了那个特殊年代的文化人士们不计个人恩怨、勇于奉献的艺术画像。     

析论情感的读者顺应

情感的读者顺应主要依赖言语活动来实现.在交际过程中可以根据语境的不同、考虑受众主客体因素灵活选择语言,达到交际双方心灵的交融,最终诱发读者/听众与作者的顺应与合作,并对读者顺应得当与否进行了论析.     

The Emotional Significance of Affective Inequalities and Why They Are Important to Women in Old Age

Affective inequality is neglected in the study of old age. Using an egalitarian analysis, this article shows how affective inequalities matter to older women. Findings from the first author's PhD study explain the emotional significance of affective inequalities for Irish women. Twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted to obtain data about experiences and perceptions of inequalities and how they had an impact on older women's well-being. Thematic analysis revealed that women experienced inequalities in old age as devaluation, obligations, exclusion, and misrecognition (DOEM), and they experienced injustices in areas of their lives that were largely outside of their control. Affective inequality implications are discussed.