The emotional face and the sociology of instability

1st World Congress on Facial Expression of Emotion

António Pedro Dores (Oct. 2014)

No faces in society

Faces out of society

WHAT FOR

DO YOU NEED SOCIOLOGY

HERE?

Argument

• There is a problem with social sciences disciplines: they do not communicate to each other (and beyond)

• The problem´s name – centripetal policy

• There is the time to reverse it – we need centrifugal social sciences policies

Two parts

I - What are sciences useful for?

II – A sociological contribution for

emotions conceptualization

Cartesian social utopia

society

psycho-biology

deity - normsGod facefaces down

People´s multiple facesface up

communities´s facesface up

Political facefaces down

Is there society at all?

“There is no such thing as society!”

Mrs. Thatcher

What is the use of sociology (and humanities, and social sciences)?

Is not it economics enough? Weak forces that happens to reveal strength?

Social sciences division

Socio-economics

Psychology – techno-sciences

Political science – International relations

Damasio´s critique

The thinking habit of conceive unity on tissues should be compatible with the autonomy of cells

Social critique to biology

Tissues and organs struggle for life as much as societies do.

“O povo unido jamais será vencido”“United, no one ever defeat us”

Difficult it is, life depends on unity. Still, one lives. How it happens?

Physics critique on sociology

Instable non living societal organizations of matter (cybernetics;artificial intelligence )

Be it micro, meso or cosmic dimensions (weak are strong)

What is social instability?

• 1st (weak) consciousness built by instability find it self hoping for (strong) stability

• 2nd to face auto instability claims for a lot of energy

• 3rd saving self energy can spend a lot of other´s energy (from society, slaves, nature)

• 4th to face instability becomed a evolutio-nary cognitive need (global warming; w(a)r-rying)

What do we need?

Weak and strong energy from cosmos:

a) strong inspiration – to protect us from ourselves;

b) weak effort – to claim from out of the humans whatever energy is needed to organize better life.

We need moral-ecological inspiration for our sciences. Should we look for it?

Out of centripetal policy• Along with hipper specialization draw by

state-corporate labeling interests, one need to develop a transversal treadmill across sciences and humanities for social sciences survival sake

• That is the time for centrifugal sciences and crossing concepts (such as weak and strong; emotions and bonds)

Sciences Social sciences

Weak force (inner atoms)

Emotions (secret and changing

forces)

Agents

Strong force (matter centrifuging)

Bonds(power and conservative

forces)

Structures

II PartSocial sciences contributions

Thomas Scheff definition of social emotion:

1. Bodies feel deep inside threatens to the social bonds

2. Bodies produce shame emotions to deal with social threats to their social bonds

Enlargement of the concept

Societies Pre-modern Modern

Main emotion

Fear Shame

Definition Risk for life (body

reproduction)

Risk for social bond

(status)

Emotions signal the need for social change

Freezing individual fear Freezing individual shame

Modes of behavior: civilized and violent

Politics Culture

Economics SocietyShame

Capitalism Industrialism

War Social Control (security)

Fear

Comm

uni-

catio

n

Physic

al

Actio

n

Social discrimination

Who is struggling for life?Who can communicate?

The nature of human sociability

Done Said

Being

Well being

Fear Shameof breaking the lawof social isolation

shame and fear of bad shape (death)

Sociology of instability• Different social situations claim for different

faces on the same person (characters)• Historical situations claim for different faces

of the same society (norms)

• Crossing norms and characters regarding different situations make our lives instable: that´s the source of all emotions

The endhttp://iscte.pt/~apad

http://iscte.pt/~apad/estesp

http://prezi.com/nquya3t7_bwf/espirito-e-sociedade

Dinâmicas Sociais e Modernização

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