Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France.
Disability studies is an academic discipline that examines the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability. Initially, the field focused on the division between "impairment" and "disability", where impairment was an impairment of an individual's mind or body, while disability was considered a social construct. This premise gave rise to two distinct models of disability: the social and medical models of disability. In 1999 the social model was universally accepted as the model preferred by the field.
Performativity is the concept that language can function as a form of social action and have the effect of change. The concept has multiple applications in diverse fields such as anthropology, social and cultural geography, economics, gender studies, law, linguistics, performance studies, history, management studies and philosophy.
Affect theory is a theory that seeks to organize affects, sometimes used interchangeably with emotions or subjectively experienced feelings, into discrete categories and to typify their physiological, social, interpersonal, and internalized manifestations. The conversation about affect theory has been taken up in psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, medicine, interpersonal communication, literary theory, critical theory, media studies, and gender studies, among other fields. Hence, affect theory is defined in different ways, depending on the discipline.
Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society. Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.
Fat feminism, often associated with "body-positivity", is a social movement that incorporates feminist themes of equality, social justice, and cultural analysis based on the weight of a woman or a non-binary feminine person. This branch of feminism intersects misogyny and sexism with anti-fat bias. Fat feminists advocate body-positive acceptance for all bodies, regardless of their weight, as well as eliminating biases experienced directly or indirectly by fat people. Fat feminists originated during third-wave feminism and is aligned with the fat acceptance movement. A significant portion of body positivity in the third-wave focused on embracing and reclaiming femininity, such as wearing makeup and high heels, even though the second-wave fought against these things. Contemporary western fat feminism works to dismantle oppressive power structures which disproportionately affect fat, queer, non-white, disabled, and other non-hegemonic bodies. It covers a wide range of topics such as diet culture, fat-phobia, representation in media, ableism, and employment discrimination.
The Sociology of emotions applies a sociological lens to the topic of emotions. The discipline of Sociology, which falls within the social sciences, is focused on understanding both the mind and society, studying the dynamics of the self, interaction, social structure, and culture. While the topic of emotions can be found in early classic sociological theories, sociologists began a more systematic study of emotions in the 1970s when scholars in the discipline were particularly interested in how emotions influenced the self, how they shaped the flow of interactions, how people developed emotional attachments to social structures and cultural symbols, and how social structures and cultural symbols constrained the experience and expression of emotions. Sociologists have focused on how emotions are present in the creation of social structures and systems of cultural symbols, and how they can also play a role in deconstructing social structures and challenging cultural traditions. In this case, in order to understand the mind, affect and rational thought must be considered since humans find motivation among non-rational factors such as levels of emotional commitment to norms, values, and beliefs. Within sociology, emotions can be seen as social constructs that are fabricated by interaction and collaboration between human beings. Emotions are a part of the human experience, and they gain their meaning from a given society's forms of knowledge.
Feminist theory in composition studies examines how gender, language, and cultural studies affect the teaching and practice of writing. It challenges the traditional assumptions and methods of composition studies and proposes alternative approaches that are informed by feminist perspectives. Feminist theory in composition studies covers a range of topics, such as the history and development of women's writing, the role of gender in rhetorical situations, the representation and identity of writers, and the pedagogical implications of feminist theory for writing instruction. Feminist theory in composition studies also explores how writing can be used as a tool for empowerment, resistance, and social change. Feminist theory in composition studies emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a response to the male-dominated field of composition and rhetoric. It has been influenced by various feminist movements and disciplines, such as second-wave feminism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, and queer theory. Feminist theory in composition studies has contributed to the revision of traditional rhetorical concepts, the recognition of diverse voices and genres, the promotion of collaborative and ethical communication, and the integration of personal and political issues in writing.
Beverley Skeggs is a British sociologist, noted as one of the foremost feminist sociologists in the world. Currently, she works as a "Distinguished Professor" in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, developing a Center for Social Inequalities in the North West of England. She continues to run the "Economics of Care" theme at the International Inequalities centre at the London School of Economics (LSE) and is a visiting professor at Goldsmiths University. She has been the head of two of the UK's leading Sociology Departments, at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, as well as co-director of Lancaster's Women's Studies. In addition, she played a part in transforming Britain's oldest sociology journal, The Sociological Review, into an independent foundation devoted to opening up critical social science and supporting social scientists.
Practice theory is a body of social theory within anthropology and sociology that explains society and culture as the result of structure and individual agency. Practice theory emerged in the late 20th century and was first outlined in the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.
Queer heterosexuality is heterosexual practice or identity that is also controversially called queer. "Queer heterosexuality" is argued to consist of heterosexual, cisgender, and allosexual persons who show nontraditional gender expressions, or who adopt gender roles that differ from the hegemonic masculinity and femininity of their particular culture.
Sara Ahmed is a British-Australian writer and scholar whose area of study includes the intersection of feminist theory, lesbian feminism, queer theory, affect theory, critical race theory and postcolonialism. Her foundational work, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, in which she explores the social dimension and circulation of emotions, is recognized as a foundational text in the nascent field of affect theory.
Bounded emotionality is a communications studies approach to dealing with emotional control in the workplace. Emotional control simply refers to how employers and employees handle the range of emotions that naturally occur in the workplace. These emotions can occur because of work, or they can be brought into work from an employee's home life. Bounded emotionality was proposed by Dennis K. Mumby and Linda Putnam.
Symbolic violence is a term coined by Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent 20th-century French sociologist, and appears in his works as early as the 1970s. Symbolic violence describes a type of non-physical violence manifested in the power differential between social groups. It is often unconsciously agreed upon by both parties and is manifested in an imposition of the norms of the group possessing greater social power on those of the subordinate group. Symbolic violence can be manifested across different social domains such as nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic identity.
Ann Luja Cvetkovich is a Professor and former Director of the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University in Ottawa. Until 2019, she was the Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she had been the founding director of the LGBTQ Studies Program, launched in 2017. She has published three books: Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism (1992); An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (2003); and Depression: A Public Feeling (2012). She has also co-edited Articulating the Global and Local: Globalization and Cultural Studies (1996) with Douglas Kellner, as well as Political Emotions: New Agendas in Communication (2010) with Janet Staiger and Ann Reynolds. Furthermore, Cvetkovich has co-edited a special issue of Scholar and Feminist Online, entitled "Public Sentiments" with Ann Pellegrini. She is also a former co-editor of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies with Annamarie Jagose.
Feminist rhetoric emphasizes the narratives of all demographics, including women and other marginalized groups, into the consideration or practice of rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric does not focus exclusively on the rhetoric of women or feminists but instead prioritizes the feminist principles of inclusivity, community, and equality over the classic, patriarchal model of persuasion that ultimately separates people from their own experience. Seen as the act of producing or the study of feminist discourses, feminist rhetoric emphasizes and supports the lived experiences and histories of all human beings in all manner of experiences. It also redefines traditional delivery sites to include non-traditional locations such as demonstrations, letter writing, and digital processes, and alternative practices such as rhetorical listening and productive silence. In her book, Rhetorical Feminism and This Thing Called Hope (2018), Cheryl Glenn describes rhetorical feminism as, "a set of tactics that multiplies rhetorical opportunities in terms of who counts as a rhetor, who can inhabit an audience, and what those audiences can do." Rhetorical feminism is a strategy that counters traditional forms of rhetoric, favoring dialogue over monologue and seeking to redefine the way audiences view rhetorical appeals.
Tony D. Sampson is a British academic author who writes about philosophies of affect, digital media cultures and labour, marketing power, design/brand thinking, social and immersive user experiences and neurocultures. He is best known for his widely cited and debated academic publications on virality, network contagion and neuroculture. This work is influenced by the 19th century French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde and concerns contemporary analyses of viral phenomena and affective and emotional contagion on the Internet. In 2017 Sampson published The Assemblage Brain, a book about the culture of the affective brain explored through digital media, the neurosciences, business (marketing), cybernetics and political power. His most recent publication, A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media (2020), explores the power dynamic of a post-Cambridge Analytica social media environment wherein the marketing logic of virality/growth helps to inflame contagions of race hate, posing a threat to democracy.
Internalized ableism is a phenomenon where disabled individuals absorb and enact negative beliefs and prejudiced values about disability that are prevalent in society. Internalized ableism is a form of discrimination against oneself and others with disabilities, rooted in the view that disability is a source of shame, should be concealed, or warrants refusal of support or accessibility. This internal conflict can stem from continuous exposure to negative social attitudes and a lack of adequate support for disabled people's needs, which contributes to a cycle of rejecting their identity to align with ableist "norms." Ableism encompasses more than just ignorance around disability leading to negative attitudes towards disabled people; it also includes unrealistic ideals of perfection and ingrained beliefs about bodies, promoting the idea that disability is inherently negative or unwanted.
Across LGBTQ communication studies, there are many fields that research and teach about LGBTQ+ communication. LGBTQ+ communication studies researches have examined sex, sexuality, and gender identity across interpersonal relationships, families, small groups, organizations, intercultural and international contexts, rhetoric and society, performance studies and narratives, and media studies.
