Emotion Seminar at Gothenburg University (EMOGU)

EMOGU Seminarier 2025

Alla seminarier hålls på engelska om inte annat anges. Om du planerar att delta online, kontakta arrangören. 

26 September 13.15-15.30 in Dragonen (Please note time and place!)

The seminar is organised in collaboration between the EMOGU, Criminology and FEMSEM research networks at the Department of Sociology and Work Science.

Book Launch:
Åsa Wettergren, Moa Bladini & Sara Uhnoo: Challenging Legal Core Values: Consent-Based Rape Legislation in Practice.

This book offers an empirically grounded qualitative analysis of the 2018 Swedish consent-based rape law, and its implementation by legal professional actors. The theoretical framework combines feminist jurisprudence and the sociology of emotions, contributing to the fields of law and emotions and feminist rape research. The study followed 18 rape cases through observations of trials in districts and appeals courts and interviews with the legal professionals. Modern law and its notion of the rule of law are founded on a patriarchal point of view, which becomes particularly evident in gendered crimes like rape. The results demonstrate how legal professionals’ conventional understanding and practice of the core legal values of rationality, autonomy and objectivity obstruct effective implementation of the law. Conventional practice aligns legal logics with male common sense or hissense. Emphasizing the mutuality of the sex act and the active party’s responsibility to ascertain voluntariness/consent, the 2018 rape law open to legitimate alignment between hersense and legal logics. The dominant pattern in the results was to overlook this potential, hence a failure to achieve the objectives of the law. A few cases did showcase changed practice. Based on these, the book suggests concrete adaptations of professional roles and their collaborative doing of justice. Changed practice would achieve a more fair and just trial procedure; benefit the development of the legal system in democratic society; and strengthen the core legal values.

Bristol University Press Open Access: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/challenging-judicial-core-values

24 October 13.15–15.00 in F417

Veronica Flyman, PhD Candidate, University of Gothenburg

Title: Reflexive work: a gendered contradiction in contemporary intimate life

Abstract: This article introduces reflexive work—the ability to think about and communicate emotions—as a key concept for feminist analysis and critique of contemporary intimate life. On the one hand, contemporary intimacy is premised on mutual reflexive engagement as an expression of gender equality; on the other, it is structured by a patriarchal logic. Communicative and cognitive processes surrounding emotions are consistently feminised, devalued, and undermined, rendering them inherently contradictory. Moreover, the concept of reflexive work underscores how reflexivity fosters emotional connection, thereby challenging the patriarchal dichotomy between feeling and thought and extending sociological theorisation on the relationship between emotion and reflexivity. Drawing on Anthony Giddens’ and Jürgen Habermas’ frameworks on intimate reflexivity and communicative action, respectively, this article argues that reflexive work as a communicative ideal is normatively underpinned by equality, mutuality, honesty, and sincerity, and is key for authentic, emotional bonds grounded in trust. From a Meadian framework it is further posited that this kind of work is vital for emotional role-taking. However, being feminised and devalued, reflexive work facilitates asymmetrical role-taking. In this dynamic, women become more emotionally self-conscious than men and are disproportionately burdened with reflexive responsibility. By such means, women become more emotionally involved in intimate relationships, simultaneously rendering men more emotionally detached. This imbalance silences emotions, hinders sincerity, fosters distrust, and causes deficient self-formation. Empirical examples from a research project on single life and intimacy in contemporary Sweden—based on accounts from 22 self-defined singles—illustrate the arguments.

28 November 13.15–15-00 in F417

Victoria Colesnic, PhD Candidate, Södertörn University

Title: Feel the fear and do it anyway: Mapping the emotional labor of Romanian investigative journalists

Abstract: My dissertation examines the specific emotions Romanian investigative journalists experience at work and the emotional labor they perform in their everyday activities. The study is theoretically grounded in the work of sociologists of emotions, utilizing concepts like emotional labor, surface/deep acting, and emotion regulation (Hayward & Tuckey, 2011; Hochschild, 1983). The data consist of 12 semi-structured interviews with Romanian investigative journalists and a month-long participant observation conducted at an investigative media outlet in Bucharest. Preliminary findings show that participants experience a range of emotions in their investigative work, with fear, anger, and joy as dominant feelings. The study also reveals that emotional labor permeates all stages of production, with confrontation being the peak moment. It happens when a reporter, having gathered enough evidence, approaches the subject of their investigation (accused of wrongdoing) to ask for their reaction. This moment requires significant surface acting, as the reporter must conceal genuine emotions of fear or joy in exposing “the bad guy” and instead project calmness and determination. Lastly, the study identifies a range of emotion regulation strategies, including avoidance, detachment, and attentional deployment, among others.

19 December 13.15–15.00 in F417

TBA

23 January 2026, 13.15–15.00 in F417

The seminar is organised in collaboration between the EMOGU, Criminology and FEMSEM research networks at the Department of Sociology and Work Science.

Hanna Feige, PhD Candidate, University of Gothenburg

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA