Methods of Exploring Emotions

Gathering scholars from different disciplines, this book is the first on how to study emotions using sociological, historical, linguistic, anthropological, psychological, cultural, and mixed approaches. Bringing together the emerging lines of inquiry, it lays foundations for an overdue methodological debate.

The volume offers entrancing short essays, richly illustrated with examples and anecdotes, that provide basic knowledge about how to pursue emotions in texts, interviews, observations, spoken language, visuals, historical documents, and surveys. The contributors are respectful of those being researched and are mindful of the effects of their own feelings on the conclusions. The book thus touches upon the ethics of research in vivid first person accounts.

Methods are notoriously difficult to teach―this collection fills the gap between dry methods books and students’ need to know more about the actual research practice.

Helena Flam received Fil.Kand. from Lunds Universitet, Sweden, and her PhD in Sociology from Columbia University, US. Since 1993 she has been an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Leipzig, Germany. She has published on emotions, social movements, organizations, and discrimination. She is a founder and a past convener of the European Research Network on Emotions affiliated with the European Sociological Association.

Jochen Kleres, PhD, has used emotions analysis in his research on civil society, AIDS, migration, and organizations. He is currently pursuing a post-doctoral project at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Presently serving as the convener of the European Research Network on Emotions, he is the author of the very first methods text discussing how to identify and analyze emotions in autobiographic narratives.