1,721,937 research outputs found
Freedom – Feeling Free in an (Un)Free World
Full text linkThis chapter explores what it means and how feels like to be free in social life. Despite current collectivist backlashes from both the political right (neo-nationalism) and left (identity-politics), individual freedom is still probably the ‘ultimate value’ (Talcott Parsons) of contemporary liberal democracies. Whereas economists, political scientists and political philosophers discuss freedom in the context of markets, the state and legal rights, and whilst philosophers discuss the metaphysical question of ‘free will’, in what follows we take a different approach and look at freedom from a social and sociological perspective, that is, freedom as a social phenomenon, social relation and a social emotion. Our basic idea is that individual freedom to a large extent is created, sustained, obstructed, destroyed and experienced in social relations. The first part of the chapter explores what it means to be free and examines different conceptions of freedom in social theory and sociology. The second part of the chapter brings in the social dimension. Starting from Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between ‘negative freedom’ and ‘positive freedom’ and Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of ‘freedom as a social relation’, we look at important ways in which social relations both enable and constrain freedom. In the final part of the chapter, we address the topic of this book, namely how it feels to be free. In this connection, we show that in addition to its many positive emotional consequences (such as happiness, joy and emotional surplus), freedom also causes much emotional frustration and distress – both when we are allowed to choose freely but cannot decide what to choose, and also when we sense that our freedom is limited and unable to live up to its potential. A basic overall lesson from the chapter is that to be free is to be pulled in many directions at the same time: from the competing and sometimes incompatible dimensions of freedom; from the enabling and constraining mechanisms of society; and from the positive and negative emotional consequences of freedom
Beyond Bauman:Critical Engagements and Creative Excursions with a Contemporary Sociological Icon(oclast)
No full textDisgust - Reflections on the nauseating feeling of revulsion and repulsion
No full textContrary to so many other emotions, disgust is not an emotion that so far seems to have attracted much attention among sociologists studying emotions. This chapter seeks to rectify this general sociological neglect of or disinterest in the emotion of disgust. Disgust – despite often being associated with bodily or biological reactions like repulsion and revulsion – also contains a lot of social and cultural information, informing us about what is considered appropriate/inappropriate actions, good taste/bad taste and acceptable/unacceptable identities. This obviously differs from one time period to the next and from one cultural context to the other. In the chapter, we shall explore several different dimensions of disgust as a cultural and everyday emotion. First, we will deal with the different meanings and reactions associated with disgust, looking also at how what we regard as disgusting has changed over time. Then we shall look at some of the different forms that disgust may take – physiological, moral and social (although there are some considerable overlaps between them). Following this, we will move on to an exploration and exemplification of various sources of disgust: disgusting objects, disgusting practices and disgusting subjects. The purpose of the chapter is thus to provide an initial overview of some forms, sources and expressions of disgust in a cultural and everyday context intended for further theoretical elaboration and empirical exploration within a sociological context
Introduktion: Metoder i studiet af kriminalitet – konturerne af kriminologiens teorihistorie, metodespor og anvendelsesmuligheder
No full text
Redaktørens forord:(til bogen Introduktion til Praktisk statistik ved Sanne Lund Clement og Jan Holm Ingemann)
No full text
- …
