Theoretical and Empirical Research on the Emotion Control and its Social Norm

I summarize the results of this research by three points below. First, theoretical explorations of frameworks concerning "sociology of emotion". I compare the research framework of Norbert Elias, who referred to the emotion control emerged in relations of people as "civilizing process", and that of Michel Foucault, who emphasized discipline by minute power apparatus that can be called "civilizing offensive". I also comment on Emmanuel Todd's theory dealing with the diversity of emotions towards "difference" in European societies, which mentioned the types of families as its "anthropological bases". Second, theoretical analyses of the transformation of emotion control in the transition of "modernity". I point out the "detachment" (Elias) or "reflexivity" (Anthony Giddens) of modern self, and its consequences as "the fall of absorption" or "existential anxiety". In addition, I suggest the emergence of a mode of people's connection by "compassion", which gives birth to an "unmediated" communication, and its problems. At this point, the way of conducting a "mediated communication" is considered to be crucial. Third, empirical researches of emotion control, which somehow cover the point just above. These researches are discussed in a research group, whose members are Toshihiko Ogura, Tatsuhiko Sakursi and Yuka Omura. Ogura's research explores the "idealism" and "agony" of youth in Taisho era, and Skurai's picks up the transformation of interpersonal sensitivity in the modernizing process of Japan. Trying to analyze a kind of phobia in this period, they both suggest the importance of "style" in communication. Omura's investigation by interviews to case workers in contemporary Japan shows a contradiction between the norms of compassion and detachment, which they are forced to follow in their work. These results give us a clue to the modes of emotion control in "mediated communication", which should be explored in the next step of my research.