The Missing Dimension: Emotions in the Social Sciences

Abstract

There can be no academic discipline or research programme in psychosocial studies that does not take account of the emotions, and their central place in individual and social life. Yet the social sciences — including, perhaps surprisingly, psychology — seem to have found difficulty in dealing with emotions, until the last three or four decades. This chapter explores the reasons for this, and the ways in which emotions are now being ‘brought back in' to a more inclusive understanding of human affairs. I suggest fields for investigation and research which this new recognition of the emotions now makes possible, as a significant element of psychosocial studies.