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Tracing emotions across work, leisure, social media, and politics, Marci D. Cottingham and shows how emotions are key resources for tackling individual and collective challenges. Looking at nurses, sport fans, social media users, and political actors during public health threats, Cottingham shows the possibilities that emerge when we take emotions seriously as practical resources for navigating social life.
List of contents
- Introduction: Practical Emotions, Emotion Practices
- Chapter 1: Toward an Emotion Practice Approach
- Chapter 2: Nurses: Juggling and Embodying Complex Emotions
- Chapter 3: Sports Fans: The Feel of Fandom in and Beyond Peak Emotions
- Chapter 4: #Ebola: Practical Feelings in Digital Spaces
- Chapter 5: Viral Fear: Emotion as Barrier or Resource in Facing Collective Challenges
- Conclusion: Practical Emotions For A Changing Social World
- Methodological Appendix: Capturing Emotions
- References
- Index
About the author
Marci D. Cottingham is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, Senior Researcher at the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality, and a former fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany.
Summary
Tracing emotions across work, leisure, social media, and politics, Practical Feelings counters old myths and shows how emotions are practical resources for tackling individual and collective challenges.
We do not usually think of our emotions as practical — often they are nuisances to overcome, momentary mysteries to solve, or fleeting sensations to savor before getting back to the business of living. But emotions interlace the practical elements of daily life. In Practical Feelings, Marci D. Cottingham develops a theory of emotion as practical resources. By integrating the sociology of emotion with practice theory, Cottingham covers diverse areas of social life to show the range of an emotion practice approach and trace how emotions are put to use in divergent domains. Spanning work, leisure, digital interactions, and the political sphere, Cottingham portrays nurses, sports fans, social media users, and political actors in more complex, holistic ways. Practical Feelings provides the conceptual tools needed to examine emotions as effort, energy, and embodied resources that calibrate us to the social world.
Additional text
Cottingham enhances the sociology of emotions by arguing that emotions are practical resources. She creates a mature dialogue with perspectives on emotion work and emotional energy. These ideas are brought to life through vivid and varied examples of how people use emotions as resources to meet the challenges of living." -Mary Holmes, University of Edinburgh
