Transformation of Law in the Era of Emotion

Abstract

Emotion is taken seriously in recent academic works as well as in our everyday life. As traditional system of social organization like social stratification, family or local community lose their power of social ordering and construction of stable identity of each individuals, society needs to manage people's emotion directly and develop a discursive technology concerning emotion management skills. The discourse of law also takes part in this emotion management project. This paper examines the changing relationships between law and emotion as a reaction to the transformation of social ordering technology from traditional social organization to discursive emotion management, based on works in the field of sociology of emotion.