Theories without Heart

摘要

In general, sociological theories are, or at least seem, to be without heart. However many fundamental sociological notions such as solidarity, social cohesion and identity are highly emotional. In the field of information and communication technologies studies there is a specific theory, that of domestication (Silverstone and Hirsch [58], Silverstone and Haddon [59], Haddon and Silverstone [31]), inside which several research studies on the emotional relationship with ICTs have flourished (Fortunati [19], [20]; Vincent [63]). In this paper I will focus on this theory, which is one of the frameworks most commonly applied to understand the integration of ICTs into everyday life. I argue that emotion empowers sociological theories when its analysis is integrated into them. To conclude, I will discuss the seminal idea proposed by Star and Bowker [62] to consider emotion as an infrastructure of body-to-body communication.