Dark Emotions: Difficult Emotional Experiences in Social and Everyday Life

Dark Emotions is a book about a range of emotional experiences that are often regarded or characterized as ’negative’, ’disturbing’ or ’dark’ as contrasted with emotions that are ’positive’, ’pleasant’ or ’light’.

Each chapter in the book is devoted to introducing different ’dark emotions’ such as disappointment, betrayal, worry, regret, resentment and alienation and seeks to show - through conceptual, theoretical and empirical examples - how these emotions influence peoples’ lives and their relations to self, others and society. The book thus provides an overview of some dark emotions that are recognizable in our everyday lives and culture. It contains accessible introductions and relevant theoretical and empirical research on 12 different kinds of ’dark emotions’. The chapters are highly useful for teaching sessions and research contexts. Additionally, they provide extensive lists of references for further reading.

The book will be particularly useful for students or scholars with an interest in emotion research or related areas, and the book may inspire further investigation of the often- overlooked emotions presented in this volume.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research is concerned with topics such as crime, utopia, ethics, death and dying, palliative care, qualitative methods and social theory. His recent publications include Emotions, Everyday Life and Sociology, Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life, Postmortal Society, The Interactionist Imagination and The Age of Spectacular Death.