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- Convenor:
-
Patricia G Steinhoff
(University of Hawaii)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Barbara Holthus
(University of Vienna)
- Stream:
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Location:
- Bloco 1, Piso 1, Sala 1.11
- Sessions:
- Saturday 2 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
The panel examines research in which emotion plays an important role. Sensitivity to emotion becomes the foundation for analyzing the emotional dynamics of social interaction. The studies concern emotions such as fear, shame, and anger that are evoked in specific cultural and social contexts.
Long Abstract:
This panel examines field research on social movements in which the researcher's sensitivity to affect and emotion becomes the foundation for analysis of emotional dynamics in social interaction. Affect is expressed and perceived through body posture, body tension, gestures, facial expressions, speech style, language usage, code switching, and nonverbal cues. A researcher sensitive to such clues may observe and elicit further evidence of emotional dimensions that underlie the participants' perspectives on the situation. Affect can be missed completely by a researcher who is not able to perceive it or is focusing on other elements. Conversely, affect can be felt and noticed but not pursued further because the study follows a different research question and theoretical framework. Following affect clues once they are noticed is a choice that a researcher makes, which can lead to deeper analysis of interaction in specific contexts and new research perspectives.
Three papers will consider how the researcher perceives affect in the field situation, how it is explored further, and then how it becomes a key part of the analysis. Kotona Motoyama's paper examines the emotional dynamics of "coming out" as family members of a gay or lesbian person in public (soto) versus private (uchi) settings. Yūki Asahina's paper analyzes the fear and sense of threat that underlies contemporary radical right activism in Japan, and links it to both a broader discourse in Japan and to similar phenomena in other countries. Patricia Steinhoff examines the social and emotional costs of providing social support to political prisoners in Japan, focusing both on interactions with the prisoner and the supporter's broader social milieu. The discussion will examine correspondences among the papers and bring out methodological and analytical issues involved in doing such research.
This panel will emphasize how sensitivity to affect and emotion may lead the researcher in new directions. One further aim is to give researchers the confidence to explore the elusive clues of affect and emotion and to see how they can contribute to creative new analyses.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 2 September, 2017, -Kotona Motoyama
Paper short abstract:
This paper explicates the emotional dynamics of "coming out" as families of a LGB member in interior and exterior zones. The families' struggles were strongly affected by interaction norms in the interior zone. This paper claims to redefine what "coming out" means.
Paper long abstract:
Accepting one of a family members is a non-heterosexual (e.g. LGBT) is challenging for many family members, especially for parents. Research on parents of a LGB child has developed mostly in the Western psychoanalysis. They demonstrate the processes of parents' emotional and behavioral changes leading term to finally "accept" their children (LaSala 2010). Once parents accept their children, they start coming out as the parents of a LGB child. Parents' coming out is highly encouraged though this is a long-slow and step-by-step process for them (Griffin et al. 1996).
Interviews with family members in Japan were conducted between 2012 and 2015. They revealed that the most respondents went through emotional and behavioral changes to accept a non-heterosexual member like their US counterparts. The family members, however, struggled even after they accepted a LGB member because they were afraid of the eyes of others. This paper examines the causes of the families' struggles over coming out on behalf of a LGB member. In Japan, people are expected to behave appropriate to situations that requires them to negotiate according to whom they interact with, persons in uchi or soto zone. For the respondents, talking about a LGB member to others in uchi zone was more stressful. Some of them, however, did not hesitate talking about it in soto zone that they even attended a pride parade with a banner that makes the families visible in public. In the Western perspective, being visible in a public sphere could be considered more important than private one for both non-heterosexual individuals and their families to achieve equality. This paper claims that coming out in a uchi zone is even more important in the Japanese context to overcome homophobic and heteronormative environments. This concludes that the definition of "coming out" needs to be redefined.
Yuki Asahina (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the process through which politically disinterested individuals become right-wing citizens in contemporary Japan. It explores how individual-level emotions are translated into collective grievances and they are embodied through everyday practices.
Paper long abstract:
How do politically disinterested individuals become right-wing citizens? Despite a number of empirical works in Hate speech activities in contemporary Japan, existing literature tends to reduce this problem to the efforts of collective framing by social movement organizations. The result is tenuous understanding of the role of individual's agency. Combining insights from the sociology of emotion and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice, this paper sees political conversion as the transformation of moral selfhood -a set of dispositions about what is right and wrong-, which requires individuals' active commitments. Drawing on original and secondary interview data, ethnographic observation of activities by right-wing citizens, as well as the analysis of conservative magazines, I examine how individual-level emotions are translated into collective grievances and they are embodied through everyday practices. I demonstrate how such practices as the internet surfing, street protests, and denial of their political views in daily lives turned politically disinterested individuals to right-wing citizens.
Patricia G Steinhoff (University of Hawaii)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the social and emotional costs of providing social support to political prisoners in Japan. Using data from long-term fieldwork (participant observation and interviews), it focuses both on interactions with prisoners and on the influence of the supporter's broader social milieu.
Paper long abstract:
One side effect of the escalating protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s was the arrest and prosecution of several thousand university students for both misdemeanors and felonies. The students were charged with ordinary criminal offenses, which they had committed for political reasons. While some family members rejected their imprisoned kin, other family members, personal friends, and political sympathizers provided support to them, often as a form of social movement activity. In addition to providing immediate support to counter the confession pressures of interrogation, they helped defendants survive the severe isolation of unconvicted detention, supported them through long trials, and then continued to maintain contact through lengthy prison sentences.
This paper examines the social and emotional costs of providing social support to political prisoners in Japan. It encompasses the whole range of people around the imprisoned students, including close kin who rejected the prisoner because the social and emotional costs were too high to bear. The study documents some researcher-informant interactions that revealed these emotional dimensions, and then pursues them through additional forms of evidence. It analyzes two different sets of social interactions.
First, the emotional dynamic of the relationship of supporters with prisoners changes over time. Because of the severe isolation of the prisoners, whose only outside contact may be intermittent communication and visits with one person, the loyal supporter eventually becomes the target of the frustration and anger of the prisoner. Supporters may suffer from caregiver burnout and withdraw from the relationship or find excuses to avoid it. Conversely, continuing unconditional support from someone who listens without judging may provide space for the prisoner to entertain doubts and disengage from the movement.
Second, the relation of potential supporters with their broader social milieu may either reinforce the commitment to provide social support as a political act, or deter a parent from maintaining any relationship at all with an imprisoned child. In some cases the stigma of the child's politically-motivated crime causes the breakup of a sibling's marriage, and it is this broader damage to the family that the parent cannot forgive.