Dmitry Kurakin's paper «Emotional dimension of culture: toward a sociological theory of cathexis» at Yale Cultural Sociology Center Workshop

On 20th of November Dmitry has presented his most recent theoretical developments in studying emotional foundations of culture to the audience of the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology Workshop members.
As a system of symbolic distinctions, culture is fundamentally dependent on emotions. Emotions are what makes culture so similar to a landscape with its various surfaces, highs and lows. In its turn, this emotional foundation is what allows cultural structure to inspire or discourage, make some things attractive, while leaving other repuslive. In his work, Dmitry is developing a new theory of cathexis, enriching this notion, which has a long and winding history in behavioral sciences, with sociological meaning. Sociological theory of cathexis will allow to solve conceptual problems of cultural sociology, that came to the front of the scholarly effort in recent years in view of impetuos development of cognitive and neuro sciences.