“The Regime of Emotions as Strategy?” An Analysis of Economic Subfields – Emotions, Emotional Capital and Gender in the Late Modern World of Work.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Maria Funder
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 432006642

In the late modern age, interest in emotions, feelings and affects has increased. In the social sciences this is reflected in an “emotional turn”, in queer and cultural studies in an “affective turn”. This newly triggered interest in emotions is closely interwoven with the looming transformation of the industrial society towards the late modern age. Thus, the ongoing processes of subjectification, the demand to fully engage in working life as a “whole person” and to develop an “entrepreneurial self”, suggest that emotions – despite digitalization – are still of high relevance in the late modern world of work.Although intensive research has already been conducted on emotions, feelings and affects in the range of service- and knowledge-labor, the field level has remained largely unexplored. And yet it represents an important arena and explanatory reference to get on the track of emotions and emotional capital. This is where the project starts. It is not limited to shedding light on emotions and emotional capital by considering a gender perspective in the late modern world of work, it also tries to figure out whether “regimes of emotions as a strategy” have emerged. In other words, we examine if “regimes of emotions” evolve in the economic field and how. Additionally, we are interested in their characteristics and if they have a strategic quality, as they e.g. contribute to the legitimation of field constellations (i.a. power asymmetries and (gender-) inequalities).In a first step, the project will design a multi-dimensional explanatory heuristic for the analysis of emotions, emotional capital and field-specific “regimes of emotions”. Whether and which “regimes of emotions” emerge is not only a theoretical, but also an empirical question. Based on a qualitative research design (mixed-method-approach), selected economic subfield from the automobile industry (electric automobiles, (partly-) autonomous driving) and the creative industries (advertising/ PR, software/ games) are examined. The findings are intended to provide information on the relevance of emotions and emotional capital in the late modern world of work. The results are supposed to answer the question of whether and how “regimes of emotions as strategies” are empirically demonstrated in the economic field and what effects they have on working and gender relations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants