Emotions and Social Structures develops the argument that emotions play a key role in linking individual social action and the emergence and reproduction of social order. To do so, this book integrates theoretical models and empirical evidence from a wide range of disciplines, in particular psychology, cognitive science, and social and affective neuroscience. Christian von Scheve investigates the ways in which social structures serve as a basis for explaining the elicitation and experience of emotions, as well as how emotions influence social action and ensuing social structural dynamics.

Introduction. 1. Self, Society and Emotion 2. Socially Structured Emotions 3. The Affective Structure of Social Action 4. The Affective Structure of Social Interaction. Concluding Remarks. References

Christian von Scheve is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and the Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion," Freie Universität Berlin. His research focuses on the sociology of emotion, culture and cognition, social inequality, and social psychology.