It is easy to overlook the dramatic progress in the study of social emotions in three decades since the sociology of emotion became a recognized field. We know a great deal about how the physiology of emotion, the cultural forms that shape it, and the interactional situations that evoke it are intertwined, but there has not been one place to go to contemplate this accumulation of knowledge. In its early days, the field was integrated by a fierce debate between social constructionists and positivists. After that controversy lost its fire, however, theorists mainly started to develop their separate strands, often becoming so immersed in developments in areas like the study of gender effects, group processes, and sociobiology that they failed to see the whole picture. Indeed, some pessimists believed that the sociology of emotion had ceased to be a distinctive body of knowledge.

To any of us who lost the intellectual fire that was present in the late 1970s, this remarkable volume will be a useful rekindling. I approached the volume expecting a cogent review of the major theories in the field. I found that and much more. This book is not just an encyclopedic review of major theoretical frameworks, although it could serve that function admirably for a graduate course. Instead it is a creative, thoughtful development of the science of the sociology of emotion.