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Affective Neuroscience as Sociological Inquiry?

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The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society

Abstract

In this chapter I discuss the ways in which a particular area of neuroscientific research, affective neuroscience, may inform sociological approaches to affect and emotion and social inquiry more generally. Taking a decidedly micro-sociological perspective, I argue that findings from affective neuroscience may shed light, in particular, on the bodily dimensions of affect and emotion that are often highlighted in sociology, yet hardly ever conceptualized in more detail. These dimensions are discussed in view of the generation of affect and emotion and their role in decision-making and social interaction. Finally, I contextualize these issues and the status of knowledge produced in the field of affective neuroscience in a broader biosocial perspective.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, Volz and Hertwig (2016) for a recent discussion of the epistemological fallacies of this “reverse inference” account.

  2. 2.

    With this I do not mean, of course, that the research discussed can provide some kind of “ultimate” truth. On the contrary, many of the authors I discuss take great care in explicitly declaring that they provide sets of empirically testable hypotheses rather than a comprehensive theory that makes claims for some ultimate truth value.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by a grant by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the Collaborative Research Center 1171 ‘Affective Societies’ at Freie Universität Berlin.

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  1. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Christian von Scheve

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  1. Christian von Scheve
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  1. Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Maurizio Meloni

  2. School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    John Cromby

  3. Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Des Fitzgerald

  4. Department of Anthropology, Laval University, Québec, Canada

    Stephanie Lloyd

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von Scheve, C. (2018). Affective Neuroscience as Sociological Inquiry?. In: Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D., Lloyd, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52879-7_17

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