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`Capitalising' on Emotions? Rethinking the Inequalities in Health Debate

Simon J. Williams

How does society affect health deep within the recesses of the human body? What role do emotions play in these processes, and what light does this shed on the relationship between biology and the social patterning of disease? Taking as its point of departure the `epidemiological transition' and the shift from direct material to indirect psychosocial pathways to disease, this paper explores the centrality of emotions to the relationship between social structure and health. In doing so, it aims to bring the health inequalities and the life-events literature into a new theoretical alignment through a sociological focus on `emotional capital' and the micro-macro links this provides between the private realm of `personal troubles' and broader `public issues' of power and status, domination and control. A key analytical distinction is drawn here between `psycho-neuro-immunological adaptation', psycho-social coping', and `socio-political praxis' in theorising these links between `distressful' feelings, the emotionally reflexive body', and health. Finally, the paper concludes with a broader set of reflections on emotions and distributive justice, together with the role of the `biological' in social explanation (i.e. the need for a non-reductionist, socially `pliable' biology).

Key Words: The body • emotions • health • inequalities • life-events • psychosocial

Sociology, Vol. 32, No. 1, 121-139 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038598032001008
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