The sociology of emotions has recently undergone a renaissance, raising new questions for the social sciences: How should we define and study emotions? How are emotions related to perennial sociological debates about structure, power, and agency? Emotions Matter brings together leading international scholars to build on and extend sociological understandings of emotions.

Moving beyond reductionist approaches that frame emotions as idiosyncratic states of mind, the scholars in this collection conceptualize emotions as the experience of social relations. Empirical and theoretical chapters demonstrate how emotions relate to sociological theories of interaction, the body, gender, and communication. Pushing the boundaries of sociology and stimulating debate for related fields, Emotions Matter offers diverse relational approaches that illustrate the crucial importance of emotions to the sociological imagination.

Dale Spencer is a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta.

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Kevin Walby is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg. He has authored or co-authored articles in British Journal of Criminology, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Research, Punishment & Society, Antipode, Policing and Society, Urban Studies, Surveillance and Society, Media, Culture, and Society, Sociology, Current Sociology, International Sociology, Social Movement Studies, and more. He is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (2012, University of Chicago Press). He is co-editor of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada with M. Larsen (2012, UBC Press). He is co-author with R. Lippert of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (2015, Routledge). He has co-edited with R. Lippert Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in the 21st Century (2013, Routledge) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (2014, Palgrave). He is co-editor of Access to Information and Social Justice with J. Brownlee (2015, ARP Books) and The Handbook of Prison Tourism with J. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, and J. Piche (2017, Palgrave). He is co-editor of Corporatizing Canada: Making Business Out of Public Service with Jamie Brownlee and Chris Hurl (2018, Between the Lines Press). He is co-editor of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

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Alan Hunt is Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University.

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‘Highly recommended.’

Choice Magazine, vol50:02:2012