Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T12:39:41.650Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - Emotional Gifts and “You First” Micropolitics

Niceness in the Socioemotional Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Candace Clark
Edited by
Antony S. R. Manstead ,
Nico Frijda  and
Agneta Fischer
Candace Clark
Affiliation:
Montclair State University
Antony S. R. Manstead
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Nico Frijda
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Agneta Fischer
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

ABSTRACT

Patterned exchanges of emotions in everyday life help build walls of indifference or enmity and webs of affiliation. Interview and observational data show that the “nice” person and the “micro-hero” give emotional gifts and use a variety of “you first” strategies to safeguard others' emotions and micropolitical places.

INTRODUCTION

Whether people are aware of it or not, human emotionality is an ongoing stream, and what Westerners refer to as emotions – the bits of experience from this stream that a given culture has recognized, labeled, and scripted – pervade every aspect of social life. As more recent evidence bears out (see, e.g., Sally, 2000, p. 579; Scheff, 1990; Wentworth & Ryan, 1992; Wentworth & Yardley, 1994; and Zajonc, 1998), the words that Hume wrote in 1740 were quite apt: “no object is presented to the senses, nor image form'd in the fancy, but what is accompany'd with some emotion or movement of spirits proportion'd to it … however custom may make us insensible of this sensation, and cause us to confound it with the object or idea …” ([1740] 1978, p. 373). If we think about it, we realize that even seemingly routine cognitive and physical tasks such as reading a term paper, balancing the checkbook, glancing at a stranger walking down the street, or doing laundry are accompanied by emotions, be they strong or weak. If our attention is caught in the action, our emotions concern it; if our attention wanders from the task, our emotions stray elsewhere.

Type
Chapter
Information
Feelings and Emotions
The Amsterdam Symposium
 , pp. 402 - 421
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. New York: Doubleday
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In John G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–58). New York: Greenwood Press
Brennan, K. M., and London, A. S. (2001). Are religious people nice people? Religiosity, race, interview dynamics, and perceived cooperativeness. Sociological Inquiry, 71(2), 129–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cahill, S. E. (1987). Children and civility: Ceremonial deviance and the acquisition of ritual competence. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 312–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, C. (1990). Emotions and micropolitics in everyday life: Some patterns and paradoxes of ‘place.’ In Theodore D. Kemper (Ed.), Research agendas in the sociology of emotion (pp. 305–333). Stony Brook: SUNY Press, 1990
Clark, C. (1997). Misery and company: Sympathy in everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, R. (1987). Interaction ritual chains, power, and property: The micro-macro connection as an empirically-based theoretical problem. In Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. (Eds.), The micro-macro problem. Berkeley: University of California Press
Collins, R. (1990). Stratification, emotional energy, and the transient emotions. In Theodor H. Kemper (Ed.), Research agendas in the sociology of emotions (pp. 27–57). Stony Brook: SUNY Press, 1990
Cooley, C. H. (1983 [1902]). Human nature and the social order. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Davis, A.; Gardner, B. B.; and Gardner, M. R. (1941). Deep South: A social anthropological analysis of caste and class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Dodd, D. J. (1987). Feelings as capital: The existential world of black Americans. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, GA
Dressel, P. (1989). Exchange rules and the sociology of emotions. Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Southern Sociological Society, Norfolk, VA
Elias, N. (1978 [1939]). The Civilizing Process. Vol. 1: The history of manners. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge: Polity
Goffman, E. (1951). Symbols of class status. British Journal of Sociology, 2, 294–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, NY: Doubleday
Gouldner, A. (1973). For sociology. New York: Basic Books
Harris, R. (1997). Status inequality and close relationships: An integrative typology of bond-saving strategies. Symbolic Interaction, 20, 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: The commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press
Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the revolution at home. New York: Viking Penguin
Hume, D. (1978 [1740]). A treatise of human nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Kemper, T. D. (1978). A social interactional theory of emotions. New York: Wiley
Kravanja, M. E. (1991). Temporary isles: Cognition in pick-up games. Unpublished paper, Rutgers University
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969). The elementary structures of kinship. Trans. by James Harle Bell, John Richard von Sturmer, and Rodney Needham. Ed. Rodney Needham
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1974). Reciprocity, the essence of social life. In Rose L. Coser (Ed.), The family: Its structures and functions (pp. 3–12). New York: St. Martin's
Mauss, M. (1954 [1925]). The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. Trans. Ian Cunnison. Glencoe, IL: Free Press
Mead, G. H. (1962 [1934]). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Ed. by Charles W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Pitt-Rivers, J. (1966). Honour and social status. In John G. Peristiany (Ed.), Honour and shame (pp. 19–78). Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Price, R. (2001). Conversations from the new New York. New York Times Magazine, Internet ed., November 11
Sally, D. (2000). A general theory of sympathy, mind-reading, and social interactions, with an application to the prisoners' dilemma. Social Science Information, 39(4), 567–634CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheff, T. J. (1990). Microsociology: Discourse, emotions, and social structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Scheff, T. J., & Retzinger, S. M. (1991). Emotions and violence: Shame and rage in destructive conflicts. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books
Schwartz, B. (1967). The social psychology of the gift. American Journal of Sociology, 73, 1–11CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simmel, G. (1978). The philosophy of money. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Stauth, G., and Turner, B. S. (1988). Nietzsche's dance: Resentment, reciprocity, and resistance in social life. Oxford and New York: Blackwell
Wentworth, W. M., & Ryan, J. (1992). Balancing body, mind, and culture: The place of emotion in social life. In David D. Franks and Victor Gecas (Eds.), Social perspectives on emotions (Vol. 1, pp. 25–44). Greenwich, CT, and London: JAI Press
Wentworth, W. M., & Yardley, D. (1994). Deep sociality: A bioevolutionary perspective on the sociology of human emotions. In William M. Wentworth and John Ryan (Eds.), Social perspectives on emotions (Vol. 2, pp. 21–55). Greenwich, CT, and London: JAI Press
Wiseman, J. P. (1979). Stations of the lost: The treatment of Skid-Row alcoholics. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Wuthnow, R. (1991). Acts of compassion: Caring for others and helping ourselves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Zajonc, R. B. (1998). Emotions. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindsey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., pp. 591–632). Boston: McGraw-Hill

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×