FONTES DE INSPIRAÇÃO
António Damásio
Bruno Latour
Gregory Bateson
Norbert Elias
Paul Diel
Pierre Bourdieu
Philip Lombardo
René Girard
Professor de sociologia aposentado, é um activista contra a guerra, um
adepto da cooperação epistemológica da sociologia e da psicologia numa única
ciência, proponente de uma segunda etapa metodológica intermédia entre as
clássicas etapas exploratórias (mais qualitativas) e de verificação (mais
quantitativas): morfologia das partes e do todo, referência fundadora das
teorias sociais sobre emoções, em especial sobre o papel da vergonha no
estabelecimento de relações sociais. O seu último trabalho (2009) é sobre o
amor.
Lançamos ao Professor algumas perguntas e também uma explicação sobre o
nosso interesse pelo seu trabalho. Essa explicação fica
aqui. As perguntas seguem depois, juntamente com os links para os textos
que nos enviou como resposta.
I did
propose the concept of state-of-spirit, an instable pattern of motion for
human beings use (I found three: the prohibitionist spirit (as a prison
guard need to develop, or as George W. Bush did socialize everywhere in the
world) the submission spirit (as immigrants develop when they look for
"better" countries to start new lives, as well as entire country's public
opinion change to support war when it shows up as a fact) and marginal
spirit (when people decide to avoid status quo and choose to accept, as
their own identity, to stay against prohibitionism-submissive normal
relationship: it challenge the social secrets and taboos for that purpose).
I need to understand how emotions work and what
they are because I think emotions as catalytic elements that support the
stability and the changing processes of state-of-spirit adopted by each
social actor (person, institution, all people, all humanity) facing each
occasion. Reading your paper seems to confirm my intuitions and it
represents a added value for my studies. Your ideas and proposals mean, as
well, the need to learn how to bring together emotions and stat-of-spirit in
methodological and empirical grounds. Thank you very much: I will digest it
for a long time.
Sociological
interviews
Excuse me my poor English, Professor Thomas Scheff. Please accept to answer
these few questions addressed from other culture (Lisbon, Portugal, Europe)
other generation (I was born 1956), that will presented in a proper webpage
to share with sociology students.
1.
There is almost 20 years you presented the part/hole morphology as your
interdisciplinary theory/method to applied in between qualitative
(exploratory) and quantitative (extensive) methods. Today, can you mention
simple and good raisons to confirm your proud presentation of the proposal
of yours?
2. In
the sociology of emotions community you are known for stressing the
importance of pride and shame for the building of social bonds. One can
figure that your pride in your own innovative sociological perspective is
only one side of the raisons which brought you to find other ways of doing
sociology. What kind of shameful situations help you to develop the will to
build your sociological approach? Are there “academic gangs” experiences
involved on it?
3.
Your part/hole way of doing sociology claim the need to converge micro and
macro analysis, studying systematically many singular cases and comparing
them in order to find what is common between them all. Take, for instance,
shame emotion. Is it the same kind of social phenomena the shame an
individual can feel during a constringing situation and the shame French
people felt in between the 1871 German-French war and the World War I?
Structural social phenomena stable for decades can compare with short
face-to-face social interactive episodes?
4.
You said that exchange is the basic molecule of social behaviour. For that
to happen there would be a response of a person to an action of other
person. Do you think, as Francesco Alberoni do in his study Genesis on
social movements, that the minor social relation need to presence of two
people? Sociology has nothing to say whenever a person is alone – working,
depressing, ill, whatever? Loneliness is it a social emotion? Are lonely
people a legitimate sociological study subject?
5.
You mention interdisciplinary social and humanistic work as a need to do
good sociology (and psychology). In practice, did you notice any changes in
the centripetal trends sociology is done the last decades? What can you
comment on that?
ANSWER
To answer your questions about my
work on emotions, part/whole, and my own life, here is a compromise
response.
I have included the file on my
favorite emotions article, about the deference/emotion system. This update
has just been published in a essp volume edited by Debra and Helmut. I have
also attached a recent draft on part/whole. Finally, you might want to look
at the memoire section of a book I recently published, Easy Rider.
SHAME AND CONFORMITY:
THE DEFERENCE-EMOTION SYSTEM
Concrete Instances for Grounding Theories: Parts
and Wholes
(ou como a teoria social pode ter efeitos terapêuticos)
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