Introduction – welcome to the world of emotions

In this introductory chapter, the editor presents the purpose and outlines the content of the book. There is specific focus on showing – with examples from research and social life – how emotions are important in understanding and analysing culture and everyday life, perhaps particularly in our contemporary ‘age of emotions’. Moreover, the introduction presents and discusses some of the different ways that emotions may be conceptualised, analysed and studied by different branches of social research, before presenting the content of the book.