Emotion, Ritual and Rules of Feeling in the Study of Digital Religion

Hutchings, Tim

Abstract

This chapter will attempt to encourage greater engagement with emotion among scholars of digital religion by introducing two theoretical approaches. In the first half of the chapter, we will consider the place of emotion in the study of ritual, beginning with the work of Emile Durkheim on the origins ofthe sacred (1912) and Randall Collins’ theory of interaction rituals (2004). We will use these ideas to analyse online religious ritual and the circulations of re-ligious content through social media. In the second half, we will turn our attention to the social rules that govern how emotion is felt and expressed,considering Arlie Hochschild’s ‘feeling rules’ (1983) and the concept of religious ‘emotional regimes’ developed by Ole Riis and Linda Woodhead (2010). We will apply these ideas to the rules and norms of online religious communities, including the breaking of those norms by trolls and protestors.

Citation

Hutchings, T. (2019). Emotion, Ritual and Rules of Feeling in the Study of Digital Religion. In A. Possamai-Inesedy, & A. Nixon (Eds.), The Digital Social. Berlin: De Gruyter

• Online Publication Date: Oct 1, 2019
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Aug 20, 2019
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Series Title: Religion and society
• Series Number: 69
• Book Title: The Digital Social
• Chapter Number: 5
• ISBN: 9783110499872
• Keywords: emotion; ritual; digital religion
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2452332
• Related Public URLs: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/476842
• Contract Date: Aug 5, 2019