Seth AbrutynJan 26, 2024

While Goffman often made it appear as though the self was nothing w/o the situation, we show that in places Goffman wasnt interested in the positive attributes of self, but rather where things he took for granted as "normal" attributes of the self were stripped from them, forcibly or through cultural beliefs, we can see the outlines of an affectually motivated self.

#sociology #affect #emotion #SymbolicInteractionism
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07352751231223203
@[email protected] @sociology

Show threadMark Igra
@sethabrutyn Very interesting read. Question: in my head, practice theory makes sense because practice shapes the moral and affective self. Is that an unjustified invention on my part to make the theory fit my taken-for-granted acceptance of a moral and affective self?
Jan 27, 2024 at 9:07pmWeb
Show threadMark IgraJan 27, 2024
@sethabrutyn Also, I recently stumbled on Benjamin Enke’s work. https://benjamin-enke.com/ There’s an in-progress paper there on “Values as a luxury good” that is interesting evidence for the moral self, and the Structure of Ideology paper also has evidence along the same lines.
Benjamin Enke | Homepage

Show threadSeth AbrutynJan 28, 2024
@markigra Practice theory, depending on whose, is one piece of the puzzle. I don't have much interest in Bourdieu's version, because it remains too interested in class dispositions, class interests, and strategic action. Wacquant, though, gets closer with a sensuous practice theory. Where they all stop short, is taking affect seriously. Like embodiment is getting so close, but it still feels indebted to a cognitive phenomenology. I may be wrong, I'm def no expert. My read is it is cognitivist
Show threadSeth AbrutynJan 28, 2024
@markigra Further, it isn't practice that makes affect or morality, but affect allows for the acquisition of procedural knowledge. It motivates and rewards it. It maintains the habit through rewards. And it becomes moral because it is affectual, and because others around us share in these feelings, practices, and beliefs. Affect is the mechanism of practice and it is also the signal of importance that, once collectivized, becomes morality. I'm spitballing, though, and have more to say than this.
Show threadMark IgraJan 28, 2024
@sethabrutyn I'm out of my depth, but that's an intriguing approach. Centering affect makes early enculturation, embodiment & moral motivation easier to understand. I suspect my misapprehension of Bourdieu comes from reading in my own meanings. What is Taste if not affect? And what is a "disposition" if not an affectual pattern? But even if that's right (not sure it is), for him they aren't fundamentally products of emotional life, which seems wrong.