Commentary
Social structural positions, cultural meanings of those positions, and interactional situations that evoke them, influence the personal experience of emotion. This chapter highlights the interactional imbeddedness of emotional experience and attempts to describe the structural patterning of the interactional environment. A commentary is made on the position of status and power in the sociology of emotions. Status and power are the core of the sociological study of emotion. These relational features affect emotional responses that lead individuals to support or change social structures. Encounters that occur in dyadic relationships or small groups evoke emotions that depend on the groups' status and power structures. Actors experience emotions that are typical of their structural positions. Those emotions vary when there is loss or gain in status or power. Even the most structured of interactions evokes emotional responses that complicate and enrich group processes. Emotions are also involved in maintaining social order when people occupy different positions within the stratification system.
