ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s the sociology of emotions in mainstream sociology, anthropology and organisation studies has shifted from discussions on whether emotions are physiological (‘wired in’), to debates on the extent to which emotions are socially constructed (Editorial 1988; Radley 1988). Perhaps most critical for medical sociology, recognition has grown that the emotions are experienced and expressed through a social body which is constituted in society and which contains society (Freund 1982; ScheperHughes and Lock 1987). Emotions are thus social, interactive and a reciprocal link between the individual and social life (Radley 1988:5; Freund 1990):
Bodily being and experience are always social, always a function of persons in relation. Emotion is thus an aspect of being in the world. Although it includes bodily components, emotion takes us beyond both individual and bodily domains and shows how the social is implicated in everyday life.
