Chapter 1: Introduction: Pandemic-Emotions, Ontologies of Uncertainty and Imagining Emotional Futures

In editing a book including chapters on different emotions from a sociological perspective, we want to be clear how emotions are conceptualised in sociology. Each one of the chapters does a much more thorough job than us, but it is important to outline some of the conceptual terrain that underpins the whole book. We will not cover the broad literature on the emotions, since they have been covered elsewhere. There are numerous texts which outline the general sociology of the emotions (Burkitt, 2014; Denzin, 1984; Turner, 2007, 2009), the historical development of ideas about emotions (Frevert et al., 2014), as well as the ways in which emotions impact on and are impacted by social structure (Barbalet, 1998; Bendelow & Williams, 1998; von Scheve, 2013). We hope to situate our book at the same intersection: somewhere between emotions, people, history and social life.