Charlotte Bloch

Managing the emotions of competition and recognition in Academia

In the sociology of science, social relations have been discussed in terms of competition and recognition. The purpose of this chapter is to enlarge our understanding of the social relations of Academia by incorporating the emotional dimensions of these relations into our discussion. To this purpose the results of an empirical study of emotions and emotional culture in Academia is presented. These results are based on analytical distinctions between the structural conditions of emotions, the emotional culture of Academia, lived or felt emotions and the management of emotions. Within this analytical framework different ways of managing the emotions of uncertainty, shame, anger and pride are identified and presented. It is shown how these feelings emerged from the structural conditions of the social relations and it is shown how persons try to manage the mentioned emotions according to the tacit rules of feelings of Academia. The study shows how these emotions are managed according to the representative feelings of Academia. It is also shown, however, how these emotions and their management relate to damaged social bonds. These unintended consequences of the emotions and the emotional culture of Academia are interpreted as emotional fuel to the prevalent basic moods of academic departments and their research environment.

Moods and Quality of Life

In modern society, flow and stress are well-known terms in the theoretical discussions of the good life, subjective well-being and quality of life. The purpose of this article is to present the results of a phenomenological analysis of flow and stress experiences in everyday life. The analysis yielded a distinction between different phenomenological dimensions identified as arising in different combinations within concrete experience of flow and stress. These different dimensions were characterised by different feelings, different experiences of time and different experiences of the world. The results are discussed and interpreted in the light of Martin Heideggers, Otto Friedrich Bollnows and F.C.J. Buytendijks theories of moods and feelings. Flow and stress experiences are phenomenologically interpreted as moods and classified as a modern version of basic polarities of moods as described by Bollnow and Buytendijk. Lastly, the concept of mood is emphasised as a specific entrance to the subjective and experienced dimensions involved in the complex concepts of quality of life, the good life and happiness.

How do perpetrators experience bullying at the workplace

Research on workplace bullying has primarily been carried out on the basis of the experiences and perspective of the victim. The objective of the present paper is to explore perpetrators’ experiences. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with perpetrators and on theories of interaction and emotions. Four analytical themes are identified: moral classification of victims, emotions, actions and moral justification. The analysis shows how perpetrators classify the victims as violators of basic norms of the work community, how these experienced violations trigger moral emotions such as contempt, anger, vengeance and disgust, and how these emotions are converted into negative actions. The analysis also shows how perpetrators use different types of justification-seeking practice. The results are discussed in relation to the current research. The paper concludes by summing up the results and places them within the interactional dynamics between victims, witnesses and perpetrators, which is the breeding ground of bullying.

Everyday life, sensuality, and body culture

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to elucidate two kinds of sensuality, a dominant one and a concealed one, both viewed in the perspective of our everyday lives. My point of departure is the assumption that the interweaving of social power, the body and sensuality is constituted at the level of everyday life, just as sensual resistance arises from this level. Proceeding from a view of womens everyday life, current contradictions, which leave room for a hitherto concealed sensuality will be outlined. In order to elucidate these contradictory trends as well as traces of another sensuality, I shall present an empirical study of women whose everyday lives were radically disrupted. Finally, recent trends in body culture will be discussed and evaluated from a feminist point of view. Thus, viewed from the perspective of sport, the purpose of this essay is to offer new approaches to the subject of sport by drawing attention away from the more conspicuous stage-settings that athletics supplies for our bodies, and focus on the less noticed stage-settings with which we are presented in our everyday life.

Sympathy and misery in families with drinking problems

Sympathy is an emotion that connects people in trouble with those around them. This paper uses Candace Clark’s sociological theory on sympathy-giving to explore the emotional relationships between adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) and their parents. Three dimensions are singled out as being central to sympathy-giving. We show, first, that the ‘sympathy accounts’ of alcoholic parents are related to the degree to which they live up to standardized parental obligations. Second, ACOAs’ sympathy investment in their parents is associated with the parents’ reciprocation – in terms of returning the sympathy, showing gratitude and/or acknowledging their problems and trying to solve them. Third, the interviewees’ sympathy-giving is related to the moral status they ascribe to problem drinkers, and especially their conceptions of alcohol problems as being self-inflicted or caused by circumstances the drinker cannot control. The paper is based on qualitative interviews with 25 ACOAs recruited through a survey in Denmark.

Caring collectives and other forms of bystander helping behavior in violent situations

Social science research has traditionally described bystanders in violent emergencies as being passive. Recent evidence, however, stresses that bystanders typically intervene proactively and successfully in violent, dangerous emergencies. This article examines the multiple ways bystanders act in situations of violence, with the aim of moving beyond the understanding of bystanders as being either passive or active. Based on a qualitative analysis of surveillance camera recordings of urban public assaults, the study maps different types of bystander behaviors as they unfold in real-life violent events. The first part of the analysis is summarized in a typology that covers three types of bystander action: distancing, ambivalence, and involvement. The second part shows that the involvement action also unfolds through coordinated interactions between the bystanders, what the article characterizes as a ‘caring collective.’ This interactional aspect of bystander involvement has rarely been examined in the bystander literature, which tends to focus on individual bystander actions and motivations.

Negative Acts and Bullying: Face-Threatening Acts, Social Bonds and Social Place

Modern working life is characterized by growing individualization and by increasing demands for flexibility These trends nourish ambiguity about where we stand in relation to others and encourage individualized jockeying for position. In the last decades increased attention has been given to the question of bullying at the workplace (Adams 1992; Keashly 1998; Rainer 1998). So-called ‘negative acts’ constitute a central concept in this research. In the literature negative acts are defined as ‘acts that are unwanted by the target that may be carried out deliberately or unconsciously but clearly cause humiliation, offence and distress’ (Einarsen 2003: 6). Such acts include common sense categories of social behaviour such as being laughed at, screamed at, ignored, threatened with sacking, maliciously teased, repeatedly criticized for one’s work, subjected to excessive surveillance, etc. Individual negative acts as such do not necessarily constitute bullying. However, in quantitative approaches bullying is defined in terms of frequency and duration of exposure to negative acts.1