Jordan J McKenzie

Recognizing decentered intersubjectivity in social experience

This article will argue that a decentering process occurs in the intersubjective connections between individuals, and that through the acknowledgement of this process researchers can better understand the potential for distortions to occur in the development of self-understanding. The concept of decentered intersubjectivity discussed in this article is the result of prior research on happiness and contentment, yet a range of emotions such as trust, guilt, shame, and disappointment could also be considered. In each case, the concept of a decentered intersubjectivity can connect the personal and emotional experiences of the individual, with a shared social experience that is deeply sociological in nature.

The sociology of emotions: A meta-reflexive review of a theoretical tradition in flux

Based in a novel ‘meta-reflexive’ review of sociology of emotions (SoE) articles, we suggest that there are two primary SoE theoretical traditions that function within geographic silos: the USA is distinctly social psychological, while in the UK and Australia, SoE is more aligned with the humanities. In both traditions, parallel calls are emerging for interdisciplinarity and further engagement with physiological and pre-personal elements of emotion. Based in Archer’s and Bourdieu’s concepts of reflexivity, we assert the merits of reflexively examining SoE, and then identify key changes in SoE that have emerged across time and geography. Using Kuhn’s work on paradigm shifts, we conclude that SoE is entering a stage of growth and change, and raise important questions about the subdiscipline’s future direction.

Friendship and Happiness from a Sociological Perspective

Sociological approaches to friendship and happiness focus on how broader social and cultural conditions influence friendship and happiness. Long-standing debates about the ‘good life’ on which sociological theory draws, include some attention to friendship as an important intimate relationship in promoting well-being. Sociologists note that friends confer social and emotional capital that has the potential to enhance happiness, offering opportunities to network, as well as emotional support, information, trust, financial support, and influence. Sociological perspectives examine the changing historical definitions of happiness and friendship and critically evaluate whether friendship and happiness contribute to individual subjective well-being or are used in social control. Sociological attention to friendship and happiness also debates their contribution to social cohesion versus the ways in which they may exacerbate social inequalities. What a sociological contribution to happiness and friendship can offer is further illustrated using two examples of friendship and happiness in different social spheres; one taken from a study of friendships at work and the other from research into how friendships are navigated through online social media like Facebook.

Daniel Bell’s ‘disjunction of the realms’ On the importance of unfashionable sociology

Daniel Bell’s multidimensional view of modern social life as a disjunction of differing realms provides an effective example of a sociological analysis that defies typical notions of Left/Right and radical/conservative. Within this framework, Bell moves between traditional alliances, and his unwillingness to take sides makes it difficult to place him within traditional categories. Using Bell as an example, this paper will question the relevance of Right and Left in sociological discourse, and suggest that the distinction between conservative and radical is more substantive.

Relational happiness through recognition and redistribution: Emotion and inequality

This article develops a model of relational happiness that challenges popular individualized definitions and emphasizes how it can enhance the sociological analysis of inequality. Many studies of happiness suggest that social inequalities are closely associated with distributions of happiness at the national level, but happiness research continues to favour individual-level analyses. Limited attention has been given to the intersubjective aspects of happiness and the correlations between it and higher social equality. Conversely, key theoretical debates about inequalities, such as Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser’s exchanges, have only indirectly touched on happiness. A relational approach to happiness is not new, but what this article offers is a new combination of a relational understanding of happiness as an intersubjectively, culturally experienced complex of emotions with discussions about recognition of marginalized groups and redistribution of material resources. This combined approach can further debates about understanding and remedying social inequalities. It argues that theories and measurements of happiness must consider how it can be achieved collectively through working at mutual respect as well as greater material equality.

Political Ambivalence as Praxis: The Limits of Consensus in Habermas's Theory of the Public Sphere

ABSTRACT This paper argues that ambivalence can serve as a proxy for consensus-based debates in public discourse as it allows for individuals to maintain flexible and analytic perspectives on matters that otherwise appear contradictory. In particular, an affirmative understanding of ambivalence will be presented to supplement the highly influential Habermasian approach by drawing from sociological theories of ambivalence found in the work of Simmel, Bauman and Kołakowski. While the theme of ambivalence is not completely absent from Habermas’s work on the public sphere, it is typically described as a structural consequence of contradiction rather than a form of action that is capable of working with and around inconsistencies in ethics, knowledge and social values. This allows for participation to be sustained through contradiction, rather than being withdrawn in frustration, while also encouraging open-minded judgements capable of avoiding forms of fanaticism.

Is there such a thing as happiness in the present? Happiness and temporality

While the pursuit of happiness in the present pervades popular narratives of happiness and the good life, the work of Adorno and Arendt casts doubt on the possibility of this lucrative goal. For Adorno, happiness occurs only in memory, while Arendt is sceptical about the possibility of experience between past and future and uses happiness to demonstrate her suspicion. Meanwhile, GH Mead offers an alternative that rejects these counter-intuitive perspectives by reaffirming that all experiences necessarily take place in the present. This article will assess each of these claims alongside the view that contemporary happiness discourse favours the pragmatic notion of happiness in the present. The article will then conclude by considering the potential for Simmel’s transcending theory of experience – set out in his final major work View of Life (1918) – to resolve these tensions and support a theory of time, experience, emotion and knowledge that is capable of responding to the challenges set out by Adorno, Arendt and Mead.

Book review: Peter Wagner, Modernity: Understanding the Present

that, in nature and extent, there has been something of shift. The spread of industrialism, capitalism, political ideologies and scientific technique has given way to ‘a growing volume of exchanges of cultural products’, the emergence of ‘culture industries’ and ‘the apparent ubiquity of Western popular culture’. This can either be read as an expansion of American cultural hegemony or as an increasing hybridization of culture as people across the globe appropriate diverse cultural products and signs in their own particularly local ways. El-Ojeili concludes that both arguments hold some degree of merit, while seeking to emphasize the economic transformations present underneath these phenomena, namely globalization as a symptom of attempts to ‘fix’ the economy in the face of economic turbulence since the 1970s. By casting such a wide net, this book necessarily sacrifices the details, such that there is often a nagging concern about the level of theoretical distillation going on. Viewed in another light, though, this book is an insightful and expansive theoretical overview (something of a handbook) from the perspective of a systematic Marxism that avoids either cynical dogmatism or dilution to the point of languid impotence. Indeed, if the spectre of Marx is to live to haunt the 21st century, it would do well to follow El-Ojeili’s intellectual example. In the end, what was most enjoyable for this reader was the sense of modest optimism. El-Ojeili casts an eye over the last decade or so and sees not merely a cultural wasteland under the throes of neoliberal domination – he also sees a multiplicity of fledgling potentialities for a better future. Social science has a role to play here, and it is dialectical in the best sense. For El-Ojeili, socialism is neither dead and buried, nor pre-written as the last word of history. It lives on, in various forms, through the diversity of movements that challenge the hegemony of neoliberal globalization. This dialectical movement owes more to Castoriadis than to Lenin: Socialism shapes the way our world is critiqued, while at the same time social science contributes to the ways in which socialism is re-imagined. This makes utopia always up for renegotiation.