Session 1. The role of emotions in sociological research on health and medicine

Hochschild’s work on emotional labour has been acknowledged as an important landmark for understanding the emotionality of the health care encounter. Since then the relation between emotions and health behaviour and/or health outcomes has been well documented by the social sciences. In the field of sociology, it is recognised that the display of feelings also plays a role in the illness experience, namely when analysing the patient’s need to cope with a clinical diagnosis, decision-making, therapeutic adherence, or disease disclosure. Indeed, emotional labour has been increasingly accepted as part of health care and professional practice, despite being recently challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the replacement of face-to-face encounters by telemedicine. By acknowledging the vulnerabilities of both patients and healthcare workers, we have to bear in mind that the latter may also have to cope with the emotional implications of their professional activities in collectively regulated settings. While emotional labour has been extensively researched in the field of health and illness, few studies to date have discussed the emotional experiences of health care professionals and the social regulation of feelings at critical health care encounters. There is limited information available on the way in which cultural and contextual aspects, as well as the individual agency, impact this regulation. The purpose of the present session is to discuss the interplay between patients and health care professionals as well as between the latter, and the emotionally of the health care encounter, particularly in critical situations, from a sociological perspective. This session not only intends to discuss these matters but also to reflect on the different methodological strategies that researchers can use to capture this emotional dimension. We welcome either empirical or theoretical papers that explore the emotional dimension for analysing health and medicine as a research topic and/or as a methodological approach.

Catarina Delaunay is a Research Fellow at CICS.NOVA - Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH), Lisbon. She coordinates Research Group 5: Health, Population and Well-being, CICS.NOVA, and the working group “Health Regulation”, NOVAsaúde Health Systems and Policies. Her individual research on fertility preservation in cancer patients is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the Stimulus of Scientific Employment 2017. She is also the principal investigator of a 4-year project (2018-2022) on the plural meanings of IVF embryos, funded by the FCT. Her research focuses on the controversies around assisted reproductive technologies, crossing Sociology of Health & Medicine with Science & Technology Studies.

Ana Patrícia Hilário is a Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. She was co-coordinator of the Sociology of Health and Illness section of the European Sociological Association. Her main areas of interest are Sociology of Health and Illness, Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Children, Research Methods and Techniques, Research with Vulnerable Subjects and on Sensitive Topics.