Where the field of psychology has continued to be the main authority on the nature of one’s inner world – thoughts, feelings and anything concerning the subjective inner-psyche, there seems in recent years to be an awakening of a new cultural sociology of emotions. While perhaps not as statistically and empirically rigorous as the psychological…
Category: Sociology
The Three Motivations For Love: The Hidden Negative Effects of Authenticity and Choice
Introduction: In this essay, I will argue that the current neo-liberal psychotherapeutic discourse on autonomy and self-fulfillment has invaded popular culture so pervasively as to become indistinguishable from daily-ethical “common sense”. In the realm of romantic relationships, this shift in focus promoting allegedly desired states of “authenticity”, “happiness” and “relationship health” have come to obscure…
Dark Humor – Multifaceted Nature of Comedy in the Social Context Surrounding Death
In this essay the main subject of inquiry will be humor and its relation to death. Specifically I am interested to investigate “How is the subject of death discussed and understood in the social context of ‘dark humor’? what makes a joke funny, and what does it reveal about modern conceptions of death?”. By first…
Utopian Communes – The Case of Rajneeshpuram and the Israeli Kibbutz
Introduction: The goal of this analysis is to inspect how religious and nationalistic symbolic language is used to either reject or integrate utopian communes within a given democratic society. Based on previous social psychological research, I expect to find that labeling a commune as an “out-group” will be quicker when it is religiously affiliated, as…