ABSTRACT

The aim of the project Emotions in Court (2012–2016), on which this book is based, was to study emotions and emotion management in Swedish courts. Departing from the theoretical distinction between background and foreground emotions, we wanted to find out not whether, but in which ways, emotions are active and acted upon in legal practice. In this chapter, we first present the background and the overall argument of this book, along with its theoretical problem area – emotion and rationality – that we locate in relation to the developing academic field of law and emotion. Thereafter follows a crash course in the Swedish judicial system, to enable a better understanding of the empirical settings. Next, we proceed to explicate the perspectives and key concepts of our sociological approach to emotions. This theoretical section is followed by a discussion of analytical generalization, in general, and of the analytical generalizability of our findings in particular. While noting certain specificities in different legal systems, we argue for the general relevance, at least in the countries of the Western world, of the analysis and results presented in this book. The chapter ends with an overview of the remaining contents of the book.