Affect Theory: The Powerful Currents of Emotion and Experience

Affect theory has emerged as a significant framework for comprehending the intricate interplay between emotions, experiences, and social dynamics. This theory is based on the idea that emotions are not only individual feelings but also forces that shape our collective reality. It offers a unique lens through which to examine the undercurrents of human existence.

What is Affect Theory?

The theory of affect criticizes the concept of "Affect" which refers to the pre-emotional and physical sensations that precede conscious feelings. Unlike emotions, whose associations are often culturally and linguistically specific, affects are more primary and immediate, connecting people to their environment in visceral ways. Affect theory seeks to uncover the ways in which these emotional currents shape our experiences, relationships, and broader social structures.

Emotional Intensity and Environment

Affect theory emphasizes the emotional intensity of our environment and its impact on us. Think of a crowded city street during rush hour. The rushing steps, honking sirens, and flashing lights create an atmosphere saturated with emotional intensity. People affected by this environment compete to experience a variety of affects - tension, excitement, stimulation - but may not necessarily recognize specific emotions. The affect account claims that narratives have deep component accounts of our emotions and behaviors and demonstrate how our environment actively shapes our experiences.

Emotional Contagion and Collective Emotion

Affect theory also emphasizes the contagious nature of emotional states. This can be seen in moments of collective emotion, such as a celebratory atmosphere at a sporting event or a somber mood at a memorial service. These shared emotional experiences transcend individual emotions and bind people together in a shared emotional state that shapes their interactions and responses. Affect theory thus emphasizes the emotional currents that flow through groups and communities, giving rise to shared experiences and collective actions.

Digital Culture and Affective Expression

The digital age introduced new avenues for emotional expression and interaction. Social media platforms, for example, provide spaces to convey emotional states quickly through emojis, GIFs, and viral videos. A single expressive tweet can trigger a cascade of emotional reactions, create online movements, and shape public discourse. Affect theory helps us understand how these digital platforms amplify and spread emotional currents across vast networks.

Emotional Politics and Social Change

Affect theory informs our understanding of political mobilization and social change. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo harness emotional energy to raise awareness and inspire action. The visceral impact of identification with the oppressed or anger at injustice fuels these movements, creating emotional bonds that go beyond individual boundaries. Affect theory emphasizes the transformative potential of emotional energies in driving collective action and reshaping social norms.

Challenges and Debates

Critics of affect theory raise concerns in the field about its potential to ignore the role of cognition and Torah in human experience. Additionally, the challenge of assimilating affects can lead to complexities in empirical research. Despite these challenges, affect theory remains an important lens for exploring the uncharted territories of human emotions and their profound impact on both individual lives and collective reality.

In conclusion, describing affect invites us to dive below the surface of emotions and examine the currents that shape our experiences and interactions. By illuminating the pre-emotional and physical sensations that underlie emotions, affect theory reveals the hidden forces that drive our actions and shape our relationships. From the essence of crowds to the digital realm and the heart of political movements, affect theory offers a powerful perspective on the complex dance of our inner emotional states with the outer world.

Structuration Theory (Giddens) defined and explained

Structuration Theory by Anthony Giddens is a social theory on the creation and reproduction of social systems, which is based on analysis of both the structure and the agents involved, without giving priority to any of them.

Giddens in his Structuration Theory shows the duality of structures, explains that the structure enables from resources and limits from rules. In addition, it says that social practices are a condition and result of the social structure, because the actors do not generate their practices, but rather continually recreate them, and the social structure is maintained thanks to the social practices that the actors perform within it . He also used concepts such as reflexivity, what had to do with which actors are aware of their actions and those of others in a given context.

The structuring cycle 

The acting agent 

What Giddens calls the acting self-being stratification model is an interpretation of the human agent that focuses on three processes (1) reflective record of action, 2) rationalization, and 3) motivation of action) and on three layers of consciousness. discursive, 2) practical awareness and 3) unconscious motives / cognition.

Reflective recording of action is a process that 1) archives activities and creates expectations that others will do the same, and 2) records social and physical aspects of the settings in which interactions occur.

The rationalization of action is a process by which agents routinely and almost effortlessly have a 'theoretical understanding' of the foundations of their activities.

The motivation of the action is not directly linked to the continuity of an action like the other two constituent elements. It denotes more an action potential based on general plans or programs (projects in Schutz terms) within which a spectrum of behavior is staged.

Work 

According to a very generalized view of structuration theory, human action is defined only by reference to its intentions. This means that action can only be considered if there is an intention to do so, since otherwise it would be a mere reactive response. However, most of the acts do not have this characteristic. Many philosophers and sociologists have endeavored to understand the naturalization of intentional activity. For the theory of structuring the interest is not in the intention of the action, but in the unintended consequences of the action.

Giddens considers that a more precise definition of acting is one that does not highlight intentions but rather their ability to do things (which implies power ). Acting is defined as the events of which an individual is the author and which would not have taken place if the agent had not intervened. There is also the case of 'doing something without intention', which is pursuing a specific goal and making other things happen along the way regardless of whether the initial goal has been met. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between what the agent 'does' and what is 'sought'.

Unintentional doings can be conceptually distinguished from unintended consequences of doing. Seemingly trivial acts can trigger events far removed from him in time and space. The further in time and space the consequences of an act are from the original context of the act, the less likely it is that those consequences have been intentional and this is seen both by the scope of knowing that the actors possess and by the power they are capable of. mobilize.

In this way, acting (situated in time and space) has unintended consequences of action that can be systematically fed back to become inadvertent conditions of action . The classic analysis of the unintended consequences of action is carried out by Merton in the subchapter “latent and manifest functions” of his book social theory and structure. But Merton then associates the unintended consequences of action with functional analysis, a step that Giddens rejects.

According to Giddens, there are three major research contexts - distinguishable only analytically - they derive from the connection between the unintended consequences of action and institutionalized practices (social systems).

1) The interest in accumulating events derived from an initiating circumstance without such accumulation not having occurred. It attends to a chain or sequence of events, reconstructed and analyzed in a counterfactual way.

2) Interest in multiple individual activities that are interwoven to result in a pattern of consequences. At this point there is a "composition effect" as a result of the summation of acts, each of which is carried out intentionally but the final result was not sought or desired by anyone.

3) Interest in the mechanisms of reproduction of institutionalized practices. In this case, the unintended consequences of the action offer the inadvertent conditions of a later action within a non-reflective feedback loop (causal ties).

How does it happen that cycles of unintended consequences feed back to promote social reproduction for long periods of time? In general, the way in which the unintended consequences of the action are connected with institutionalized practices that promote social reproduction for long periods of time is through repetitive activities, located in a context of time and space that consequently regularize those activities. for a distant space-time. Then, what happens in this second part of contexts influences -directly or indirectly- on the subsequent conditions of an action in the original context.

see also: Double Hermeneutics

Action Theory explained simply

The theory of action or Action Theory is a sociological perspective that focuses on the individual as a subject and sees social actions as deliberately designed in the context to which meaning is given. The theory of action is based on the assumption that: 1) the actor is able to act with a conscious goal; 2) the actor is able to control, influence or act with his body; 3) the individual actor is independent of other actors and the environment.

The origins of the theory of action can be traced back to the end of the 19th century. The first concepts were defined by Max Weber . They were later developed by sociologists Talcott Parsons, George Herbert Mead , Alfred Schutz and others. Developments took place in various directions - mainly in sociology , philosophy and psychology. As a result, two approaches emerged: rational and normative. One of the most outstanding contemporary authors is Hans Joas, who offers a third approach to the theory of action - its main emphasis is on the creativity of human activity. Joass emphasizes that the assumptions discussed above are not always observed in everyday life, and this is a fact that even the founders of the first concepts of the theory succumb to. Thus, he analyzes the problems of these assumptions, expressing them as follows - intention, corporeality, sociality.

Intention 

First of all, it is intentionality - the actor does not always act, being aware of the purpose of the action and choosing the appropriate means to achieve it. Rather, they become concrete during the action, with the actor embracing the available resources. Consequently, Joass argues that the situation is important because it creates circumstances that require specific action by the actor. In turn, it is the actor's choice of how he will perform his actions, and it will be influenced by his values ​​and beliefs. At this point, Joass sees us expressing our creativity.

Corporeality 

Secondly, it is corporeality - in contrast to the rational theory of action, which views the actor's body as an instrument that is disciplined, Joass argues that there are circumstances in which control of the body simply disappears. For example, Passive intentionality, when the actor gradually loses consciousness until he falls asleep. Or a justified loss of consciousness (Meaningful loss of intentionality), when under the influence of the situation the actor loses control over his body and escapes uncontrollable laughter or tears.

Social 

Third, Joas reviews primary sociality. If the previous founders of the theory believed that the actor is individual and able to make decisions independently of the surrounding actors, then Joas argues that sociality is the reason for the actor's actions. We do not live on a lonely island, where the only processes that take place are those that I cause. In everyday life, we are faced with many different situations, actors who guide our actions, forcing us to give up something, set new goals or choose other means to achieve the intended one.

We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour

Actor-Network Theory Explained

The actor-network theory  (ANT)  is a sociological approach developed at from the 1980s by Michel Callon , Bruno Latour , Madeleine Akrich and other researchers from the Center for Sociology of Innovation at Mines ParisTech . 

This approach differs from classic sociological theories because it takes into account in its analysis, beyond humans, (“ non-human  ”) objects  and discourses. The latter are also considered as “  actors  ” or “  actants  ”, according to a concept borrowed from AJ Greimas who thus designates any entity without ontological distinction entering into a semiotic process .

Originally, Callon and Latour were interested in the conditions of production of science and, in particular, in the construction of scientific facts in the laboratory. Their epistemological position is radical: they reject externalist , rationalist positions , naturalization ( realism ), sociologization (the scientific fact understood in particular as the result of power games and social factors, a position supported by the Strong Program ( David Bloor , Barry Barnes ) or by Harry Collinsand representatives of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK)). They also distance themselves from postmodernism and deconstruction (the relativism arising from the illusion of the speaker and language games ). By moving away from these positions, they want to put an end to the compartmentalization and reconsider the scientific and human fact according to the multiplicity of the relations which constitute it (relativism known as "relationist"). This conception leads them to reject the approaches which separate the "human" from the "non-human", and consequently, those which separate politics and science (and technologies ) or more broadly nature and society.

For these theorists, the world should not be thought of in terms of social groups, but in terms of a network (in a precise sense which in no way corresponds to that of the Internet network). What makes the social is “association”, the formation of “collectives” and the set of relationships and mediations that hold them together. This conception is intended to be “symmetrical” and everything is then of equal importance for the analysis, whether it is a question of organizational, cognitive, discursive factors or, more generally, of the “non-human” entities which enter into the composition of the collectives. .

These relationships are established through an operation of "translation" or chains of translations (successive transformations) by which the actors (individual or collective) pose as spokespersons and translate the will of collectives, also attempting to enlist new ones. actors. Likewise, a scientific fact results from a series of translations (instruments necessary for its realization, scientific articles, laboratory materials, grants, etc.) which also reveal the network in which it takes on meaning and is stabilized. Knowledge circulates by successive “translations”, which does not introduce any discontinuity in the social space, but rather a progressive adaptation of knowledge, the certainty of which can always be called into question by controversies.

In this way, the social is understood as being an effect caused by the successive interactions of heterogeneous actors, that is to say of the actor-network. Every actor is a network and vice versa. The action of an entity of the network entails the modification of the latter; any action involving the entire network has an impact on the components of the network. Consequently, the action does not have a precise source, it always involves a series of entities and mobilizes the collective force that they represent. The relative stability of an actor-network can collapse at any time if certain actants are removed from the network. For example, if we remove the phone or the banks in question, the result will be a destabilization of the network. Likewise, the actor-network is both local and global, depending on its size or length; it can be both a micro and a macro-actor since its size varies over time and depends on the translation operations of its spokespersons.