Affective Neuroscience and Sociology of Emotions: Renewed Possibilities of Interaction

• In Event: 3262 - Current Trends in the Sociology of Emotions

Abstract

This paper suggests that a moment has emerged that presents new possibilities for collaboration between sociology of emotions and affective neuroscience. These possibilities have to do with a recent tendency in affective neuroscience to take societal influences into account. Whereas previous theorizations in the field excluded society from emotional processes or included it only as context (e.g. basic emotions approach), this paper shows how society is included in two influential contemporary neuroscientific theorizations of emotion, those of Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux. The inclusion of society as a factor in emotional processes is visible in two analytical moments: the perception of the emotional stimulus, and the experience of emotion. In both moments, sociological analysis can be linked to affective neuroscience. For example, in the case of emotional perception, the concepts of somatic markers (Damasio) and implicit memory (LeDoux) have elective affinities with the notion of habitus (Bourdieu). Further, emotional experience is possible thanks to semantic and episodic memory (LeDoux), concepts which have elective affinities with the notion of structure as memory traces (Giddens). The selection and analysis of these authors (Damasio and LeDoux) were guided by the sociology of science perspective, and by the work of other sociologists interested in the relationship between Neuroscience and Sociology (David Franks and Christian von Scheve).

Author

• Adriana García-Andrade, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana