10. Religion and Emotions:
Organizational and Communal Viewpoints.
This session focuses on the intricate entanglements of religion and emotions. Recent research on religion and emotions has focused too exclusively on individuals. Themes of religion and spirituality are thus excluded in most of the recent sociological research on emotions. Accordingly, this session will open the discussion towards analyzing communities, organizations, and organizing.
Our interests also lies in analyzing the effects of emotions and emotional energy – both positive and negative – in binding and unbinding social relationships in religious organizations and in other religious and religion-related social interaction. Emotional energy is here understood as a product of the successful exchange between participants that facilitates stable social bonds: The greater the amount of emotional energy produced from an interaction, the stronger the bond.
We welcome papers of every stage of research, from planning to finalizing. We particularly welcome papers exploring the multifaceted dimensions of emotions (e.g., cohesion vs conflict, positive vs negative emotions) and the contagious nature of emotions in religious organizations. We also encourage conceptual, theoretical, and methodological debate on religion and emotions.
Session chairperson
Anne Birgitta Pessi & Maija Penttilä
Contact
Anne Birgitta Pessi
anne.b.pessi@helsinki.fi