The Emotions in the Classics of Sociology

A Study in Social Theory

Massimo Cerulo, Adrian Scribano, Massimo Cerulo, Adrian Scribano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000442731
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

The Emotions in the Classics of Sociology stands as an innovative sociological research that introduces the study of emotions through a detailed examination of the theories and concepts of the classical authors of discipline.

Sociology plays a crucial role emphasizing how much emotional expressions affect social dynamics, thus focusing on the ways in which subjects show (or decide to show) a specific emotional behaviour based on the social and historical context in which they act. This book focuses the attention on the individual emotions that are theorized and studied as forms of communication between subjects as well as magnifying glasses to understand the processes of change in the communities. This volume, therefore, guides the readers through an in-depth overview of the main turning points in the social theory of the classical authors of sociology highlighting the constant interaction between emotional, social and cultural elements. Thus, demonstrating how the attention of the emotional way of acting of the single subject was already present in the classics of the discipline.

The book is suitable for an audience of undergraduate, postgraduate students and researchers in sociology, sociology of emotions, sociology of culture, social theory and other related fields.

Chapter 1 Harriet Martineau

Angélica De Sena

1.1 Introduction

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a founder of social criticism in the UK. Feminist, sociologist, economist, and writer are just some of the characteristics of a woman who fought against loneliness, illnesses, and misunderstanding.

This chapter seeks to emphasize Harriet Martineau’s role as the founding mother of sociology and a classic contributor to the study of emotions and sensibilities as axes of social analysis.

This is a book [chapter] about social theory and about the history of sociology. It makes three claims: that women have always been significantly involved in creating sociology; that women have always made distinctive and important contributions to social theory; and that women´s contributions to sociology and social theory have been written out of the record of the discipline’s history.

(Madoo Lengermann and Niebrugge, 1998)

Harriet Martineau’s work was a tribute to the Victorian moral context, to the critical situation of the “social question” in the United Kingdom, and the new movements and ideas such as anti-slavery, feminism, and social criticism in general. This is the context from which it is not possible to forget the emergence of the “autonomy” of the social sciences, especially political economy, and sociology.

The chapter is organized in the following way: first, a schematic biography of the author will be presented; second, it is pointed out how emotions play a preponderant role in her most recognized texts; third, fourth and fifth place emphasis is placed in the importance of emotions and sensibilities in three of her most influential books. The chapter ends by reconstructing the arguments used to show the centrality of the author for sociology in general, as well as the sociology of emotions in particular.

1.2 Harriet Martineau: An introductory biography

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876), born in Norwich into a middle-class family and attending a Unitarian school for girls, was one of the most outstanding intellectuals of her time. A tireless writer, she made the figure of the traveller the starting point to investigate, describe, and explain the social world, making important contributions to political economy, sociological theory, and political analysis.

She was interested in the question of the “condition of England” and the debates on the question of women in the Victorian era. Martineau received a better formal education than most women of her time and, after the death of her father, a textile manufacturer, she decided to pursue a career as a writer, one of the few legitimate occupations open to women in Victorian England.

Martineau, who endured a series of physical ailments, became deaf at the age of 12 and had to use a trumpet for the rest of her life. She also suffered from a loss of taste and smell. At thirty she was bed-bound for more than five years; when doctors described her illness as incurable, she decided to opt for mesmerism. Despite all the prognoses, after a few months she managed to improve and described her case in “Life in the Sick Room: Essays by an Invalid” (1844) and “Letters on Mesmerism” (1845). She openly discussed her own illnesses and started a public debate about illness, cures, and the status of the disabled in society.

Towards the end of the 1820s, she wrote a series of educational treatises, dealing with industrial development, anticipating her most popular publication, Illustrations of Political Economy. After her initial success as a journalist and social commentator, Martineau moved to London, where she met the most eminent writers, intellectuals, and scholars of her time, including William Wordsworth, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Malthus, Robert Owen, and Charles Babbage.

Martineau’s popularity crossed the Atlantic and in 1832–1834 she visited the United States. After her return, she published Society in America (1837) and two novels, Deerbrook (1839) and The Hour and Man (1841).

She propped up the Radical Reform Movement because she believed its members advocated economic and social progress. Martineau exerted a great influence on social thought in England through her critical analyses, her views on current affairs, and her fictional narratives.

Our author was in favour of a deterministic doctrine of causality, derived from John Locke and popularized by Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), who held that everything was a consequence of what had preceded it. There is no free will or free human action; a person is a creature of circumstances. She argued that the universe, in general, and society, in particular, operate according to certain natural laws that can be understood through science and education. In this context, she sought to convince both capitalists and workers that they should accept economic laws and work in harmony with them in an ordinary way.

When visiting the United States, she met some abolitionist leaders with whom she shared some common causes (e.g. the end of slavery), becoming a fervent defender of this movement, when it was still unpopular. Martineau wrote anti-slavery diatribes in the Daily News, stimulating the radical and progressive thinking of her day. She ironically argued that the slaveholders appreciated their horses more than their slaves since they did not sexually abuse them. And she, at the same time, explained that the abuse of the slaves was not only due to physical passion, but also due to the economic gains that the children who were born through said abuse implied.

It is in this context that Martineau asks the now-well-known question: “Why would a man pay for a woman every time he goes to bed with her when he can buy her for life, sleep with her whenever he wants …?”. For our author, women and slaves suffered similar domination. In both cases, condescension was practiced as a substitute for justice, and she concluded that both are key factors in defining the moral condition of North American society.

As she herself argued:

In discussing the subject of Female Education, it is not so much my object to inquire whether the natural powers of women be equal to those men, as to shew the expediency of giving proper scope and employment to the powers which they do possess.

(in Yates, 1985: 88)

Martineau has been nominated as “the first female sociologist”. Martineau’s writings on political economy and scientific methods, her comparative study of American societies, and her knowledge of the subordination of women in American society in the 1830s has received unanimous recognition. Martineau’s main achievements can be recognized as follows: (1) writing the first book on sociological methodology, (2) completing an in-depth and methodologically advanced analysis of American society, and (3) translating and condensing Comte’s fundamental work (Deegan, 2003). In this context, it should be noted that Martineau wrote The Rules of the Sociological Method sixty years before Durkheim with similar content.

Martineau criticizes the popular notion of the moral sense, the view that moral principles are “fixed and immutable” so everyone must agree on what counts as sin and virtue in every case. The moral adherent to a rigid doctrine sees “sin” where there is only “difference” and suffers the “agitation of being shocked and alarmed” at strange sights instead of preserving “calm”, “hope” and “sympathy”. The problem with the moral sense, for Martineau, is that, in proposing a universal and absolute system of moral principles, it does not take into account the wide range of differences across historical ages and cultures, thus blinding the observer by forcing him to disapprove of behaviour that is alien to his experience rather than trying to understand it (Pace Vetter, 2008).

For Shulamit Reinharz (1992) the work done by Harriet Martineau in Society in America is the clear beginning of a feminist ethnography. In her Introduction, she explains that the duty of the researcher is to provide detailed observations and data so that readers can make their own judgements.

It is within the framework of this life of commitment and reflection that we see Harriet Martineau’s journey from journalism, through social criticism, to her status as the ‘founding mother’ of sociology in a combination of social conscience and scientific rigor.

In the next section we will briefly review how sensations, emotions, and sensibilities are a crucial element in her most outstanding works.

1.3 Emotions, senses, and sensibilities as a starting point

Our author’s work was deeply connected to her interest in having emotions, senses, and sensibilities at the center of her analyses. Her book Household Education begins with reflection on happiness and the importance of it for relations with others as the constitutive axis of society:

Household Education is a subject so important in its bearings on every one’s happiness, and so inexhaustible in itself, that I do not see how any person whatever can undertake to lecture upon it authoritatively, as if it was a matter completely known and entirely settled. It seems to me that all that we can do is to reflect, and say what we think, and learn of one another. This is, at least, all that I venture to offer. I propose to say, in a series of chapters, what I have observed and thought on the subject of Life at Home, during upwards of twenty years’ study of domestic life in great variety.

(Martineau, 1843: 1)

In her famous book Morals and Manners, considered one of the founding books on the methodology of social research, she first considers the sensations:

There is no department of inquiry in which it is not full as easy to miss truth as to find it, even when the materials from which truth is to be drawn are actually present to our senses. A child does not catch a goldfish in water at the first trial, however good his eyes may be, and however clear the water; knowledge and method are necessary to enable him to take what is actually before his eyes and under his hand.

(Martineau, 1838: 1)

It is clear that, for our author, political economy is structured around the enjoyment of life, giving rise to comfort, pleasure, and harmony:

Political Economy treats of the Production, Distribution and Consumption of Wealth; by which term is meant whatever material objects contribute to the support and enjoyment of life. Domestic economy is an interesting subject to those who view it as a whole; who observe how, by good management in every department, all the members of a family have their proper business appointed them, their portion of leisure secured to them, their wants supplied, their comforts promoted, their pleasures cared for; how harmony is preserved within doors by the absence of all causes of jealousy; how good will prevail towards all abroad through the absence of all causes of quarrel.

(Martineau, 1832: a3)

In the Preface to the book, while discussing the observations made on her trip to the United States, she clearly states her criticism of a science erected as a measure of a policy of specific sensibilities and following what she prescribed in Moral and Manners:

I am not finding fault with the Americans, as for falling behind the English, or the French, or any other nation. I decline the office of censor altogether. I dare not undertake it. Nor will my readers, I trust, regard the subject otherwise than as a compound of philosophy and fact. If we can all, for once, allay our personal feelings, dismiss our too great regard to mutual opinion, and put praise and blame as nearly as possible out of the question, more that is advantageous to us may perhaps be learned than by any invidious comparisons and proud judgments that were ever instituted and pronounced.

(Ma...