Åsa Wettergren

The emotional labour of gaining and maintaining access to the field

The role of emotions in qualitative research receives increasing attention. We argue for an active rather than a reactive approach towards emotions to improve the quality of research; emotions are a vital source of information and researchers use emotions strategically. Analysing the emotion work of researchers in the process of gaining, securing and maintaining access to the Swedish judiciary, we propose that the emotion work involved is a type of emotional labour, required by the researcher in order to successfully collect data. The particular case of researching elites is highlighted. Emotional labour is analysed along three dimensions: 1. Strategic emotion work – building trust outwards and self-confidence inwards; 2. Emotional reflexivity – attentiveness to emotional signals monitoring one’s position and actions in the field; and 3. Emotion work to cope with emotive dissonance – inward-directed emotion work to deal with the potentially alienating effects of strategic emotion work.

A Sociological Perspective on Emotions in the Judiciary

Introducing a sociological perspective on judicial emotions, we argue that previous studies underemphasize structural and interactional dimensions. Through key concepts in the sociology of emotions we relate professional court actors’ emotion management to the emotional regime of the judiciary. Examples from the Swedish judiciary illustrate three main arguments: (a) The idea of rational justice as nonemotional must be investigated as a joint accomplishment including collective emotion management; (b) Judicial objectivity requires situated emotion management and empathy, orientated by emotions of pride/shame; (c) The structural dimensions of power/status mitigate feeling and display rules. The situated power of the judge is upheld by ritual deference from other court professionals. Concluding, we suggest topics to develop structural and interactional perspectives on judicial emotion.

Emotionalizing Organizations and Organizing Emotions — Our Research Agenda

Organizations and organizing constitute a field of research where sociologists and social scientists from business and management schools typically meet for a fruitful exchange (e.g. Clegg et al. 2006; Adler 2009). This observation may be echoed for the study of emotion in organizations, and has inspired the conception of this volume.

Emotions, Power and Space in the Discourse of ’People of the Real World’

The article investigates the discursive trope of ‘People of the Real World’ (PRW) as it was launched by the leader of the Swedish Christian Democrats, Göran Hägglund, during a political campaign week on the Island of Gotland in 2009. Sociological and cultural theories of local vs. cosmopolitan identity, of emotions, and of space, are used to analyse the speech and a selection of newspaper articles from 2009. The PRW discourse defends local, sedentary communities against globalization and cosmopolitanization. It draws on the collective emotional resources of ‘normals’ as they feel threatened by the social and political advancement of previously marginalized groups, undermining the former group’s power to define social space. It thus contributes to the social and political cultivation of resentment among those who identify with conservative, anti-cosmopolitan values.

Empathy and objectivity in the legal procedure: the case of Swedish prosecutors

Abstract The role of empathy, the capacity to read someone else’s emotions, in the legal context has previously been studied in relation to primarily judges’ decision-making, often with a concern for objectivity. Our purpose is to study professional emotion management in the legal process through an analysis of Swedish prosecutors’ use of empathy. An ethnographic data collection took place between 2012 and 2015, including shadowing, observations and interviews with 36 prosecutors from 3 prosecution offices. The analysis shows that during the investigation, empathy helps identify the prerequisites of a crime and deciding if and how to prosecute. When preparing for trial, empathy is used to anticipate the situation in court. During the trial, the empathic process includes management of the emotions of others in order to stage credible testimonies, convince the judge and calm victims. The empathic process is oriented and restricted by the emotive–cognitive judicial frame through which prosecutors are rewarded by emotions of comfort and pride in demonstrating expertise of legal coding. We conclude that empathy is integral to prosecutors’ professional performance, including the requirement to be objective. The study points to the problems with silencing emotions and maintaining a positivist notion of objectivity in the legal system.

The Significance of Social Movements to Human Rights and Global Solidarity

The role of social movements in social change is the underlying theme of both Neil Stammers’s account of movement struggles for human rights and of Håkan Thörn’s analysis of the transnational anti-apartheid movement. Both authors emphasize that social movements are intimately intertwined with social change in complex ways, in its causes as well as its effects. A social movement is here seen as a process and an emergent social space that spans the cultural, economic and political spheres of society. It is an experimental laboratory where regimes of knowledge (and, I would add, emotions) and with them forms of action and interaction, collective imaginations and self-reflection are shaped and dispersed to the wider society. Collective and individual identities are thereby invented, moulded and dispersed to wider society. It follows that organizations and institutions may participate in social movements, but no movement can be reduced to its organizations. A movement is a bottom-up phenomenon; it begins with the people and ends at the point of institutionalization of its goals and objectives. Stammers argues that, while a social movement may not be targeting power over it still struggles to expand and secure power to. Paradoxically success often also means power over and thereby, perhaps unavoidably, new forms of exclusion. What we have here is a paradox created when a successful social movement sees its goals institutionalized in social change. Stammers

Fear, hope, anger, and guilt in climate activism

Abstract Analyzing fear, hope, anger, and guilt in climate activism, we consider these pivotal emotions to climate activists. The way they are managed affects activists’ motivations and mobilizing strategies. This argument builds on the theoretical premise that emotions energize and orient all actions. Qualitative interviews were carried out with climate activists in Denmark, Sweden, and at two UNFCCC Conferences of Youth. Our analysis shows that fear motivates action by raising awareness of the threat of climate catastrophe. The paralyzing potential of fear is mediated by hope: Hope propels action while (collective) action generates hope and manages fear. The danger-alerting capacity of fear is embraced ‘internally’, but rejected as an effective emotion in mobilization. Instead, a hopeful ‘positive message’ is emphasized by activists from the Global North. Anger is treated cautiously as an emotion to be pacified/transformed and guilt/blaming is largely rejected too. There is a different pattern in the southern narratives. Here hope, guilt, and anger combine to manage acute fear. Hope lies in collective action but also in the angry ascription of responsibility to the North. Contrasting the North, acute fear is thus managed by anger. Different patterns of emotion management derive from different political and socio-material contexts/experiences.

Observing judicial work and emotions: using two researchers

Observation is an important component of research to examine complex social settings and is well-established for studying courtroom dynamics and judicial behaviour. However, the many activities occurring at once and the multiple participants, lay and professional, make it impossible for a sole researcher to observe and understand everything occurring in the courtroom. This article reports on the use of two researchers to undertake court observations, in two different studies, each nested in a different research design. The social nature of data collection and the value of dialogue between the two researchers in interpreting observed events, especially when studying emotion, are readily apparent in both studies.

Humour in the Swedish Court: Managing Emotions, Status and Power

This chapter analyses humour from an emotion sociological perspective, linking humour to power, status, and group solidarity. It draws from about 300 observed trials and interviews with 43 judges and 41 prosecutors from four Swedish district courts. Humour is sometimes skilfully used as a strategy to ease tension, relieve boredom or to reprimand. It is initiated/allowed by the judge, but high-status lawyers or prosecutors may take the initiative. Judges may use humour to uphold an effective and smooth procedure, attenuating their own power. It is generally unacceptable to laugh at the expense of lay- (low-power) people present in court. Inter-professional humour takes place in intermissions during the hearings, while trials running over several days may include the defendants in the semi-backstage inter-professional joking. Most in-court humorous incidents are unintended, where laughter is suppressed or released depending on the judge. Humour has different functions and expressions frontstage (in court) and backstage (office, lunch room). Observation of both arenas reveal its shame-management function in inter-professional relations. While the judges’ backstage area teems with jokes about embarrassing procedural mistakes, prosecutors’ backstage humour more often deals with the foulness and tragedy of criminals and crimes.

Cultural Sociology in Scandinavia

In this chapter, we emphasize the diversity and complexity of cultural sociology in Scandinavia. We begin with brief ‘entries’ that narrate our own encounters with cultural sociology and illustrate the multiplicity of theories, methods, and areas of research. We then briefly sketch accounts of cultural sociology in Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway and Denmark), highlighting the main debates and issues. Institutional contexts and cultural politics influence the conditions for, and emergence of, cultural sociologists. Our accounts of the three countries are not comprehensive and do not do full justice to their particular national research traditions. Our aim is to highlight bits and pieces that appear to be characteristic of each country. Together, these aspects construct a mosaic of traditions and new trends that we find represented in all three countries. In the conclusion, we sum up and broaden the scope to place Scandinavian cultural sociology in an international context.