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Introduction -- part I. An idea of love -- On love: between a social bond and an emotion -- Love as a second-order form -- part II. A myth of love -- Why and how could love become the predominant form of the second order? -- How did love become the predominant form of the second order? -- part III. An experience of love -- On rituals of the second order, second-order myths and love rituals as a special version -- Love : enchanting master emotion and durability-providing form -- Conclusion

This article aims to provide a contribution to the debate about concepts that describe the empirically rich phenomenon 'romantic love'. The great variety of different facets of romantic love that exist and that we encountered in over 100 qualitative interviews and 4 focus group discussions carried out in Spain (Barcelona) and Germany (Leipzig) have inspired us to rethink existing definitions of romantic love. Rather than emotion or bond, the concept 'linking emotion' might help to capture usually rather unconsidered dimensions of romantic love. In order to discuss the value of defining love as linking emotion, this article will point at the 4 most important dimensions of love that we encountered in the analysis of our interviews. Results of our analysis will be compared with existing definitions of love, the usefulness of different concepts in order to define love will be questioned. Our empirically driven bottom-up approach will allow to discuss the usefulness of defining love as linking emotion.

The objective of this article is to analyse the social relationships within online communities of anorectics, their bonds, their emotions and friendships, and their subsequent relation to anorexia nervosa. The research has focused on their blogs and their forums, which create a space in which they share their experiences, and sometimes encourage each other not to give up on their eating disorder – which they view as an illness, but an illness that has become their lifestyle, and their attitude towards life. Within the article an analysis of the special bonds of friendship that tie the members of the online community together will be presented. Special attention will be paid to the similarities between secret societies and friendship bonds within pro-ana communities.

This article introduces a relational approach to studying imaginaries of the future, emphasising their significance in comprehending present realities and the ongoing processes that interweave our social fabric. It posits 'imaginaries of the future' as a pivotal sociological concept for understanding the reciprocal social influences and uneven structural dynamics shaping the present. This work engages in a theoretical discourse, spotlighting the role of the future in contemporary social landscapes, while endorsing the suitability of the concept of imaginaries to elucidate how we collectively interlace our present through implicit dialogues with latent, emergent futures and glimpses of radical imagination. In this article, we advocate for sociological research on 'imaginaries', discussing the concept's relevance to sociological theory and research. In addition, we make a case for examining futures as a subject of sociological research. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework for analysing imaginaries of the future from a relational sociological perspective, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue.

This article sheds light on the experience which we share in the one and a half hours which we spend in the cinema. It discusses the experiences that are framed between the opening and the closing of the curtain that covers the screen. Thereby it reflects on the reasons for the success and importance of the cinema in modern and especially late modern society, on its meaning for us as individuals and for the webbing of our social bonds. By discussing texts of Simmel, Turner, Sennett and Benjamin, and relating them with each other, we have tried to analyse critically the changes that might have happened to actors and audiences when the stage became a screen, and the actor part of an imaged story. As a result we have identified the cinematic experience as a new kind of ritual that fits with the needs and conditions of late modern society, a ritual wherein emotions play the central role.

This article deals with the future as a crucial element for the webbing of our individual and social life. In accordance with Simmel's reflections on the apriorities for the very possibility of society, the authors maintain that the webbing of society as we know it would not be possible without its members imagining at least some kind of future. To illustrate the importance of the future for webbing any kind of social relationship, and in order to analyse the possibilities of creating different imaginaries of the future, the authors present a case study of 60 autobiographic interviews of men and women from different class contexts collected in Germany and Spain. The authors look for what they call the images, figures and imaginaries of the future – images as the concrete objects, moments or relationships that are expected, feared, or hoped for in the future, figures as the archetypes that give meaning, inform and shape the contours of our future imaginations, and imaginaries as the webbing together of the figures and images in a narration in the future tense of our own life story, relating this imaginary to other cultural practices. The results of this research show how deep the certainty of a future, and the concrete imaginaries of the future to come, mould and shape who we are, and the directions in which we wish, can and will go.

This article focuses on the fundamental role that emotion memories play in constructing autobiographical narrations. It suggests that the analysis of emotion memories can provide a deep insight into a variety of processes and fields of individual and social life (Cavarero, 2000). Based on the analysis of emotion memories in life-story interviews, this article will show the deep-rooted interrelatedness between the self and its social environment with emotion memories as an influential element. This article aims to show that strong emotional experiences mould the interviewees' narrations because they penetrate and shape the remembered past and anticipated future by enhancing, suppressing and hence shaping past and future experiences. If turned into emotion memories, these experiences allow the channelling, taming and/or evoking of emotions. This practice relates different memories and life-story moments with each other and puts them into a new context. This article claims that emotion memories have therefore a crucial structuring effect for autobiographical narrations and are therefore also a valuable element of analysis of interviews. We claim that emotion memories become visible and therefore analysable as emotional expressions or emotives, as emotion performances intentionally performed or accidentally caused (Austin, 1975; Reddy, 2001).

Este artículo, fruto de una investigación sobre los "Imaginarios de futuro de los jóvenes", se centra en los futuros que los jóvenes no desean tener que vivir. El objetivo del presente texto es, por tanto, un análisis de los futuros (explícitamente) no deseados. Para realizar esta investigación y elaborar un mapa relacional de los futuros no deseados de los jóvenes entre 15 y 18 años, hemos trabajado colaborativamente con tres centros de enseñanza pública secundaria de la provincia de Barcelona (uno de ellos en la misma Barcelona capital y dos en poblaciones de entre 6000 y 10000 habitantes). En este artículo nos centramos en las respuestas de los jóvenes a la pregunta, vehiculada en el aula por sus propios profesores, sobre qué no les gustaría que (les) pasase en el futuro. Estas respuestas se han recogido de forma anonimizada y codificado en Atlas.ti, siguiendo las tres fases de codificación especificadas por Strauss y Corbin (1997). Finalmente, hemos trazado relacionalmente un mapa de futuros no deseados que nos servirá de guía y base para el análisis en el que diferenciamos los imaginarios individuales de fracaso de los imaginarios colectivos de pérdida.

This article sheds light on the experience which we share in the one and a half hours which we spend in the cinema. It discusses the experiences that are framed between the opening and the closing of the curtain that covers the screen. Thereby it reflects on the reasons for the success and importance of the cinema in modern and especially late modern society, on its meaning for us as individuals and for the webbing of our social bonds. By discussing texts of Simmel, Turner, Sennett and Benjamin, and relating them with each other, we have tried to analyse critically the changes that might have happened to actors and audiences when the stage became a screen, and the actor part of an imaged story. As a result we have identified the cinematic experience as a new kind of ritual that fits with the needs and conditions of late modern society, a ritual wherein emotions play the central role.

This article focuses on the analysis of daydreams and fantasies people have regarding their partnerships in 'non-moments', moments in which we have time to take a break or to daydream. This article makes a strong case for the relevance of the shift from the isolation experienced within these 'non-moments' towards an altered experience of this isolation, which has been moulded and partially broken by the possibility to share our dreams in real time, and communicate with our significant others (here, partners), while tearing us further apart from those who share with us these moments in the same place. The analysis of such non-moments will help us to shed light on how our intimate relationships are woven on a daily basis, and how electronic communication is part of a differentiation process in which we can share our imaginaries just as we produce them.

L'objectiu d'aquest article és explorar la relació associativa entre epidèmia, falta d'higiene i el fet d'ésser estranger que ha fet repetidament el poble alemany, els seus polítics i la seva premsa durant la recent onada de migració des de Síria cap a Alemanya. Especialment té com a objectiu investigar les emocions de por i enuig i de l'odi resultant que no només fa que aquestes emocions s'uneixin, sinó que implica que el fet d'ésser un risc per a la salut i, a més, ésser un estrany es combinin, de manera que es crea un cercle viciós en el qual un perpetua l'altre i es crea una condició en la qual un serveix sempre com a justificació per a l'altre.Es presentaran empíricament les relacions entre la por, l'enuig i l'odi a través d'algunes entrevistes realitzades a Alemanya, tres articles de premsa i els comentaris de la gent a la premsa, al Facebook i en altres mitjans de comunicació que han sorgit després del petit brot de sarna en un camp de refugiats a Jenfelder Moorpark a Hamburg. El brot no va ser ni significatiu des del punt de vista mèdic ni causat per la falta d'higiene dels refugiats, sinó més aviat conseqüència de les condicions higièniques dolentes que van trobar als camps de refugiats provisionals. Tanmateix, aquesta breu però crucial notícia realment mai no va anar més enllà en debats públics. Això va ser en part perquè la premsa alemanya local només es va centrar en el brot per si mateix, més que en les seves causes; en part perquè el context social actual ha fet que la societat civil no tingui confiança en la premsa. En comptes d'una reflexió crítica sobre les causes i els contextos, la majoria dels lectors que hi van comentar van posar de manifest públicament l'enllaç imaginat entre les seves pors envers els estrangers i l'epidèmia; van utilitzar la història com una manera d'establir un vincle, permetent-los de crear una reacció emocional col·lectiva amb altres basada en les seves pors projectades. En aquest procés de projecció col·lectiva, la por es va convertir en enuig, com una forma col·lectiva d'enfrontar-se a la por individualitzada, la qual cosa va donar lloc a una sensació de necessitat d'autodefensa col·lectiva, la sensació que cal defendre la seva societat (Society Must be Defended, Foucault, 2003). ; This article wants to explore the associative relationship between epidemics, lack of hygiene and foreignness that German people, politicians and the German press have made repeatedly during the recent wave of migration from Syria to Germany. It wants to especially look at the emotions of fear, anger and the resulting hate that not only pull these two things together but that combine being a health risk and being a stranger in a way that they create a vicious circle in which one perpetuates the other and creates a condition in which one always serves as a justification for the other.We will present the relationships among fear, anger, and hate empirically by reflecting on a few interviews carried out in Germany, three press articles and people's comments in the press, on Facebook and other social media that have surfaced after a small outbreak of scabies in a refugee camp in the Jenfelder Moorpark in Hamburg. The outbreak was neither medically meaningful nor caused by a lack of the refugees' hygiene, but rather as a consequence of the bad hygienic conditions that were to be found in the provisional refugee camp. However, this little but crucial part of information never really entered into the wider public debate—partly because the local German press only focused on the outbreak itself rather than on its causes and partly because the current social context has created a lack of confidence in the press, from both sides of civil society. Instead of critical reflections on causes and backgrounds, the majority of commenting readers pronounced publically the hypothetical link between their fears of both foreigners and epidemics and used the story as a bond-maker, allowing them to create a collective emotional reaction with others based on their projected fears. Within this process of collective projection fear turned into anger, as a collective form to face individual fear, resulting in the sensation of a need for collective self-defence, a sensation that their Society Must be Defended (Foucault, 2003). ; El objetivo de este artículo es explorar la relación asociativa entre epidemia, falta de higiene y el hecho de ser extranjero que ha sido hecha repetidamente por parte del pueblo alemán, sus políticos y su prensa durante la reciente ola de migración de Siria a Alemania. Especialmente, tiene como objetivo investigar las emociones de miedo y enfado y del odio resultante que no sólo hace que éstas se unan, sino que hace que el hecho de ser un riesgo para la salud y además ser un extraño se combinen, de manera que se crea un círculo vicioso en el que uno perpetúa al otro y se crea una condición en la que uno sirve siempre como justificación para el otro.Se presentarán empíricamente las relaciones entre el miedo, el enfado y el odio a través de algunas entrevistas llevadas a cabo en Alemania, tres artículos de prensa y los comentarios de la gente en la prensa, en Facebook y en otros medios de comunicación que han surgido después del pequeño brote de sarna en un campo de refugiados en Jenfelder Moorpark en Hamburgo. El brote no fue ni médicamente significativo ni causado por la falta de higiene de los refugiados, sino más bien consecuencia de las malas condiciones higiénicas que hallaron en los provisionales campos de refugiados. Sin embargo, esta corta pero crucial noticia realmente nunca fue más allá en debates públicos. Esto fue en parte debido a que la prensa alemana local sólo se centró en el brote en sí más que en sus causas y en parte debido a que el contexto social actual ha hecho que la sociedad civil carezca de confianza en la prensa. En lugar de una reflexión crítica sobre las causas y contextos, la mayoría de los lectores que comentaron pusieron de manifiesto públicamente el enlace imaginado entre sus miedos hacia los extranjeros y la epidemia; usaron la historia como una manera de crear un vínculo, permitiéndoles crear una reacción emocional colectiva con otros basada en sus miedos proyectados. En este proceso de proyección colectiva, el miedo se convirtió en enfado, como una forma colectiva de enfrentarse al miedo individualizado, lo cual resultó en una sensación de necesidad de autodefensa colectiva, la sensación de que su sociedad debe ser defendida (Society Must be Defended, Foucault, 2003).

Elders are an important part of this society and a group for which ICTs might provide useful answers to existing problems and needs. However, elders and their interests with regard to ICTs have been largely ignored due to a presupposed missing ability to use, a general disinterest in, and a lack of will to learn about ICT developments. This article wants to contribute to the debate about elders and their abilities to use and interests in ICTs. We analysed how elders in focus groups in Spain use mobile ICT applications, how they experiment with them and why they decide to use or not to use them. In our research, we have used apps as an example for ICTs because apps are considered to be flagships for technological innovation, and because, in contrast to call and messenger functions of mobile phones, the motivation for using apps has to come from the individual that uses them. Findings from 4 focus group discussions with elders from Spain suggest that age does not directly influence the perception of, experience with, and evaluation of newest technological developments. Instead past experiences and social contexts in which the technology is introduced play a role. Our results point at the need to find new formulas for introducing, and teaching ICTs to elders, and underline the need to take elders' emotions with regard to ICTs into consideration when evaluating elders' ICT uses.