Till Örebro universitet

The experience of public distrust towards science-based risk assessments and regulatory proposals have resulted in proposals for context-sensitive risk communication, transparency in decision processes, public inclusion in regulatory work and new contracts between science and citizens. This is the point of departure for this study; however, rather than focusing on strategies to achieve public trust, this study focuses on the very meaning of trust, that is, its prerequisites and character. By drawing on recent discussions in science and technology studies and social psychology, a perspective is elaborated upon that concerns the relational and emotional characteristics of trust. It is argued that trust is a modality of action motivated by the ego’s emotional apprehension of a certain form of double-confidence, that is, the ego’s confidence in the outer world or the future actions of the alter ego and the ego’s confidence in its own understanding and judgment of the outer world or the alter ego. This means that trust does not develop through information and the uptake of knowledge but through active involvement and sense-making.

This collaborative paper examines the visual rhetoric of mannequins: the embodied media representation of the future consumer. Citing material evidence from Sweden, the USA, Egypt, Singapore, and China, the paper explores the visual arguments of mannequins as they embody female and male con-structions of identity, position, and power, both reflecting and shaping social doxa with regard to gender norms, sexuality, religious behavior, end even nationality.

Sociology arose around 1900 as a response to the general need to understand the ongoing transition from 'traditional' to 'modern' society and the many social problems (anomie, alienation, disenchantment, inequality, exclusion, etc) which had their base in this groundbreaking transformation. While the distinction between 'tradition' and 'modernity' was fundamental for early sociology as a discipline, a number of contemporary social scientists question the sufficiency of such a distinction. One problem is that the distinction implies that the last major transformation of Western societies occurred some hundred years ago and that subsequent social change has only been a question of gradual modifications.

These contemporary scholars suggest instead that transformations of social institutions and of cognitive and normative convictions within modernity are so fundamental that the history of modern societies itself must be divided into different epochs. Today, distinctions such as between 'early' and 'late' (or 'high') modernity (Giddens), modern and 'postmodern' society (Lyotard), 'first' and 'second modernity' (Beck), 'solid' and 'liquid' modernity (Bauman) have become widespread. Recently it has also been argued that the history of modernity should been divided into three rather than two epochs (Wagner, Boltanski & Chiapello).

In our paper we develop a three part model of structural transformation within modern society on a micro-level. The central aim of the paper is to apply this model on the social significance of self-realization. This includes an investigation of the meaning of failed self-realization in the three different epochs of modernity. We understand alienation here as failed self-realization and thus conceptualize three modern forms of self-alienation as counterparts to the three different forms of self-realization. 

I Konsten att vara sig själv resonerar Emma Engdahl på ett vetenskapligt och personligt sätt kring vad det innebär att vara sig själv och vilken betydelse andra människor, kulturen och samhället har för självförverkligande. Hon diskuterar även vad det innebär att förverkliga sig själv i dagens västvärld – en tid och ett samhälle som både ger möjligheter till och ställer krav på att vi ska lyckas med konsten att vara oss själva.

Among the classics in symbolic interactionism we find A. Smith, C. H. Cooley and G. H. Mead. Smith is commonly remembered for his idea of the invisible hand, rather than his ideas on sympathy or moral sentiments; Cooley for his idea of the looking-glass self, in the sense of self-reflection, rather than self-feeling; and Mead for how we through attitude-taking become selves with minds, rather than with emotions. In this paper Mead’s thinking on self-identity is perceived from a perspective that focuses on emotion. Especially, Mead’s idea on emotional experiences as felt inhibitions of our interchanges with others is examined. As a result, a systematization of the logic behind Mead’s theory of the evolving self is presented. Three distinct forms of Mead’s most well-known notion – taking the attitude or role of the other – come to the forefront: (1) bodily identification, (2) self-feeling, and (3) self-reflection. Examining Mead’s symbolic interactionism from a perspective that focuses on emotion, especially, emotional experience, I whish to bring the body and the emotions back into the field of symbolic interactionsim. More importantly, the aim is to suggest an understanding of body and emotion as social. 

In this dissertation, two fundamental questions are posed: (1) what is emotion, and (2) what part does it play in the social processes of self-formation and self-realization? How do we as behaving beings, who experience sensations, become interacting beings, who experience emotions? And, how are our emotional experiences related to who we are and our ability to acquire a positive relation to ourselves? By attempting to answer these questions I point out the social conditions that are necessary to enable emotional experiences, and in turn self-formation and self-realization. The focus is on the form, rather than on the content of the emotional self. From the developed neo-Meadian perspective on the emotional self, emotion is understood as a phenomenon linked to both mind and body, without being explained as a mind-body combination. It is argued that emotional experiences are (1) corporal evaluations of our interchanges with the outer world, especially, the other, and (2) crucial to who we are or want to be. An introduction to the neo-Meadian theory of the emotional self is presented in a general manner by including notions of the social self and emotion as social. In the first part of the dissertation, I suggest that diverse phenomena in the social process of self-formation and self-realization is explained by a view that has its roots in the classic social psychology of Adam Smith, Charles Horton Cooley, and, especially, George Herbert Mead. The view consists of three salient ideas: (1) the self does not emerge without the other or society, (2) it is from the point of view of the other or society that the self develops, and (3) self-realization involves a need for recognition. In the second part of the dissertation, I expand the view on emotion as social that is incorporated in the classic social psychology by investigating the recently established field of the sociology of emotions. Once the general structure of the notion of the social self and emotion as social is shown and provided with a preliminary defense, different modifications are considered. In the third part of the dissertation, both the classic social psychology and the sociology of emotions are modified to become more accurate. I elaborate on Mead’s distinction between social behavior, in the form of (1) functional identification, and social interaction, in form of (2) attitude taking of the thing from which he means that self-feeling arises, and (3) attitude taking of the other from which he means that self-reflexion arises.

Many social researchers mistakenly think that Mead had no interest in the body and the emotions of the human being. They seem to think that his social philosophy of the act is all about her mind. This is unfortunate since his idea of the significance of the body and emotions for the emergence and development of the self is of great relevance to the contemporary interest in the subject matter. First, this article presents Mead’s contribution to the area. Especially it considers his idea of emotions as a form of intersubjective corporeality.  econdly, to better fulfil Mead’s own wish to transcend the Cartesian mind-body dualism it reconstructs his idea of emotions by relating them not only to the social body of the human being, but also the structures of norms and values embodied in social life. In that way it becomes evident that not only mind but also the social body and the emotions of the human being is of great significance for her selfrealisation.