Re-Reading Sociology via the Emotions: Karl Marx's Theory of Human Nature and Estrangement

Abstract

Marx's conception of human nature includes human "passions" and "emotions" as fundamental, integrative aspects of our social nature and our human capacity for "free conscious activity." However, "emotion" has been largely excluded from the sociological lexicon and the capacity far conscious action has often been viewed at the level of the individual actor and, moreover, in overly "cognitive" and "rational" terms. As a result, the very reading of classic texts'has been historically biased against the seeing af emotion, even when it is addressed. What difference does the inclusion of emotion in hAarx's conception of human nature make for our understanding of both his theory of estrangement and related work today?

Employees’ Managed Resentment: Public Procurement and the Part of Emotions in Social Change

“…Connecting Hochschild’s insights with Turner’s (2014) conceptualization of resentment, that follows the general guideline of Elias’s civilization process, suggests relevance to the call to explore the relations of various emotions with Marx’s notion of estrangement (Weyher 2012). Estrangement is also highly relevant to the discussion of transitions in entitlements and may extend its meaning accordingly, indicating the possibility that it may result from managed responses and isolation.…”

“…When critical theorists discuss emotion and social change, they emphasize employees’ agency—the power to resist estrangement, to “keep free of the emotional grip of the social structure” (Sennett and Cobb 1972:258; cf. Weyher 2012). In the context of polarized power relations within current labor fragmentation (Vosko 2010), the association between emotion and social change may need to be examined somewhat less optimistically.…”

“…In the context of the current, polarized power relations (Vosko 2010) typical of workplaces, engendered by outsourcing and contracting-out procedures (Sack and Sarter, forthcoming), formal replacement of past entitlements could have had one of three implications for employees’ emotional response. First, entitlement could have disappeared: Estrangement, a form of alienation that hinders one’s ability to experience the full range of human feelings, leading to partial functioning (Weyher 2012), could have signaled a sharp turning point at which employees accept their new, deprived situation and their low levels of remuneration and participation. Second, entitlement could have been transformed: Resentment, an emotional response to deprived entitlement and lack of recognition of one’s value and the worth of one’s contribution, could indicate employees’ refusal to accept the situation created by their structural weakness.…”

(Self-)Confidence, Migration, and the State: A Study of Emigration from Latvia

“…The Russian-speaking woman quoted above articulates this well by emphasizing that, in England, migrants “do not want to sit, [they] work” because they feel protected by the state. In contrast, the inability to protest unfair treatment or worse, to sustain a life in one’s own country, are profound forms of alienation (Garni and Weyher 2013; Weyher 2012).…”

Shame and (“managed”) resentment: Emotion and entitlement among Israeli mothers living in poverty

“…Because TP articulates a constant struggle against exclusionary social processes, it connects to classed studies of emotions (Sayer, 2005; Turner, 2014; Weyher, 2012). Even if the struggles of those living in poverty, dependency, insecurity, and vulnerability, are not expected to take collective forms, the emotions of struggling individually against the shaming efforts of those who question their entitlement, practically hollowing their citizenship (Jamal, 2007), are central.…”