How is it possible to feel an affinity with a place? What is happening when someone feels almost literally transported to another time by a smell or a texture or a song? Why do striking family resemblances sometimes feel uncanny? In each of these cases a potent connection is being made, involving forces, flows, energies and atmospherics that conventional sociological approaches can find hard to grasp, but that are important nonetheless.
In this innovative book Jennifer Mason argues that these are affinities – potent charges and charismatically lively connections in personal life, that rise up and matter in some way and that enchant or toxify the everyday. She suggests that exploring affinities opens up new possibilities for conceptualizing the experience of living in the world through what she calls the 'socio-atmospherics of everyday life'. This book invites the reader to embrace possibilities and themes that may seem outside the usual range, and to engage in a more open, attentive, inventive and poetic sociological sensibility.
**
Review
" Affinities is a work of profound originality showing us what is to be gained from finding ways to become attuned to the effervescent, atmospheric aspects of social life. Beyond sociological clichés and comfortable academic conventions, this beautiful book is proof that sociology can be magical if we have the courage to believe in that possibility."
Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London
"Jennifer Mason has created a beguiling example of the contemporary sociological imagination at work. She shifts boundaries to incorporate fresh fields of vision, giving new depth to sociological enquiry. Unquestionably a delightful work of perceptive scholarship."
Carol Smart, Professor Emerita, University of Manchester
"This book is a guide for retraining social science's rationalistic or categorical version of reality into a more worldly realism of potencies, energies and sentience. It conjures a world in which affinities matter as a way of conceptualizing how to live."
Kathleen Stewart, The University of Texas at Austin
About the Author
Jennifer Mason is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life, at the University of Manchester

motw/Affinities_ Potent Connections - Jennifer Mason.epub

motw/Affinities_ Potent Connections - Jennifer Mason.pdf

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Mason, Jennifer

John Wiley & Sons

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

1. Auflage, New York, 2018

Cambridge, 2018

1, 01/2018

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 15.0

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

"What does it mean when a life is changed through the serendipity of a chance encounter? How is it that someone can feel an affinity with a place? What is happening when someone feels almost literally transported to another time by a chance encounter with a smell or a texture or a song? In each of these cases a potent connection is being made, involving forces, flows, energies and atmospherics that conventional sociological approaches can find hard to grasp, but that are important nonetheless. In this innovative book Jennifer Mason argues that these are affinities - potent charges and charismatically lively connections in our relationalities, that rise up and matter in some way and that enchant the everyday. She suggests that exploring affinities opens up new possibilities for conceptualizing the experience of living in the world, which she names the socio-atmospherics of everyday life. The book invites the reader to embrace possibilities and themes that may seem outside the usual range of sociology, and to engage in a more open, attentive, inventive and poetic sociological sensibility"-- Provided by publisher

"What does it mean when a life is changed through the serendipity of a chance encounter? How is it that someone can feel an affinity with a place? What is happening when someone feels almost literally transported to another time by a chance encounter with a smell or a texture or a song? In each of these cases a potent connection is being made, involving forces, flows, energies and atmospherics that conventional sociological approaches can find hard to grasp, but that are important nonetheless. In this innovative book Jennifer Mason argues that these areetnbsp;affinitiesetnbsp;-etnbsp;potent charges and charismatically lively connections in our relationalities, that rise up and matter in some way and that enchant the everyday. She suggests that exploring affinities opens up new possibilities for conceptualizing the experience of living in the world, which she names the socio-atmospherics of everyday life. The book invites the reader to embrace possibilities and themes that may seem outside the usual range of sociology, and to engage in a more open, attentive, inventive and poetic sociological sensibility"..

How is it possible to feel an affinity with a place? What is happening when someone feels almost literally transported to another time by a smell or a texture or a song? Why do striking family resemblances sometimes feel uncanny? In each of these cases a potent connection is being made, involving forces, flows, energies and atmospherics that conventional sociological approaches can find hard to grasp, but that are important nonetheless. <br /><br />In this innovative book Jennifer Mason argues that these are affinities - potent charges and charismatically lively connections in personal life, that rise up and matter in some way and that enchant or toxify the everyday. She suggests that exploring affinities opens up new possibilities for conceptualizing the experience of living in the world through what she calls the 'socio-atmospherics of everyday life'. This book invites the reader to embrace possibilities and themes that may seem outside the usual range, and to engage in a more open, attentive, inventive and poetic sociological sensibility.

Affinities 5
Copyright 6
Contents 9
Expanded Contents 10
Acknowledgements 13
Introduction: Affinities as an Invitation to Think Differently 15
PART ONE Sensations of Living 19
Why Sensations? 21
Facets of Sensation 25
Layering the Argument: Sensations of Affinity 53
PART TWO Ineffable Kinship 71
Why Ineffable Kinship? 73
Facets of Ineffable Kinship 77
Layering the Argument: Affinities of Ineffable Kinship 120
PART THREE Ecologies and socio-atmospherics 135
Why Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics? 137
Facets of Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics 140
Layering the Argument: Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics 182
Conclusion: Affinities in Time 200
Notes 217
References 218
Index 228

2025-10-27