Mary Holmes
Biographic Data
| ID | 119583 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mary Holmes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mary |
| FAMILY NAME | Holmes |
| SIGNATURE | HOLMES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5217-713X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 453 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Why sociology needs optimism, especially in troubled times
Optimism is vital to doing sociology. I explain how pessimism and optimism have featured as orientations within sociology and argue for the continued importance of a critically optimistic sociology, especially in our troubled times. I propose that insights from the sociology of emotions can help sociologists in doing optimistic sociology by rethinking how to do critique and in understanding how present feelings inform actions that produce futures…
Human Performance in Deepfake Detection: A Systematic Review
Deepfakes refer to a wide range of computer‐generated synthetic media, in which a person’s appearance or likeness is altered to resemble that of another. This systematic review is aimed at providing an overview of the existing research into people’s ability to detect deepfakes. Five databases (IEEE, ProQuest, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus) were searched up to December 2023. Studies were included if they (1) were an original study; (2) were r…
Emotional Imaginaries as a Resource in Navigating Social Change
The novel concept of emotional imaginaries adapts Castoriadis’ theories about social imaginaries, to consider the ways in which we imagine past, present and future feelings, drawing on shared cultural meanings. For instance, people draw on songs, films, nightmares and dystopias to make sense of their emotions, especially in the face of change. This paper uses Mass Observation (MO) directive responses to examine how some British people employed em…
Spotting fakes: How do non-experts approach deepfake video detection
Intervening to bolster human detection of deepfakes has proven difficult. Little is known about the behavioural strategies people employ when attempting to detect deepfakes. This paper reports two studies in which non-experts completed a deepfake detection task. As part of the task, participants were presented with a series of short videos – half of which were deepfakes – and asked to categorise each video as either deepfake or authentic. In Stud…
An emotional world
We are grateful to have such enthusiastic and professional support from Bristol University Press, for our dedicated editorial board, and to all of you who submit your great work for publication.Perhaps most of all, we send a massive thank-you to all our reviewers over the past five volumes.Recruiting reviewers is sometimes hard as it seems the world spins faster and faster, squeezing the 'spare time' that most of us need to keep up with unpaid co…
Being there’: Emotional memories, gatherings of the Emotions Research Network and happy birthdays
Emotions, politics and truth
s Research Network 11: Sociology of Emotions (RN11) through the nomination of the best paper award following the research network's midterm conference in 2020. The winner of the Best Paper Award 2021 and the 300 euro prize provided by RN11 was Yvonne Wechuli (University of Cologne) for her paper 'Between cripping and reclaiming. Epistemological implications for disability studies'. Two other papers were considered to be of high quality: Gzde Cbek…
Emotional reflexivity in the time of Covid-19: Working-class emotional practices
We share findings from a qualitative study on emotions in Scottish working-class households during lockdown. The results challenge existing research focused on emotional capital, which often suggests that working-class people struggle to provide emotional resources to those close to them. Using the concept of emotional reflexivity we show how these household members cared for each other’s feelings, challenging deficit views of working-class emoti…
Unsettling maternal futures in climate crisis: Towards cohabitability
In this article, we explore the emotionally reflexive processes by which some women build maternal futures in the unsettling context of climate change, aiming to contribute to a better understanding of reproductive (and other) future building as aided by emotions. We analyse the online testimonies of an organisation that raises awareness about the interrelationship between climate change and reproductive decision making. The findings illustrate h…
Emotions in Aotearoa New Zealand: Reflexive emotionalisation in a colonised context
Reflexive emotionalisation means increased thinking about and acting on emotional experiences in response to major changes to social life, such as those accompanying colonisation. This article explains and develops this novel concept, assessing its usefulness through an exploratory assessment of reflexive emotionalisation in the formation of Aotearoa New Zealand as a colonised settler state. It is argued that as cultures met and sought to coexist…
Future Building and Emotional Reflexivity: Gendered or Queered Navigations of Agency in Non-Normative Relationships
This article sets out a conceptual framework for examining future building as an emotionally reflexive practice of intimacy and gendered agency. Emotionally reflexive future building is a relational activity, subject to gendering but open to queering. We illustrate this by drawing on cases taken from three qualitative studies that deal with the future building of women in relationships that do not conform to norms around having and rearing childr…
Political economies of emotion
Emotions in the pandemic: Crises and politics of change
Into the 21st century
Relational happiness through recognition and redistribution: Emotion and inequality
This article develops a model of relational happiness that challenges popular individualized definitions and emphasizes how it can enhance the sociological analysis of inequality. Many studies of happiness suggest that social inequalities are closely associated with distributions of happiness at the national level, but happiness research continues to favour individual-level analyses. Limited attention has been given to the intersubjective aspects…
Social forms of care: Changing relationships of support
Heterodoxy: Challenging orthodoxies about heterosexuality
The intention of this article is to challenge orthodoxies regarding heterosexuality, which have tended to constitute it as a static monolith and queer as the only potential site for a less oppressive sexuality. By contrast, we consider heterodox possibilities for pleasure and change within the realm of the dominant. We examine three examples – divergence, transgression and subversion – and then consider some terminologies that might flesh out exp…
Introduction to the special section: Challenging heterodoxies
Couples Living Apart Together
The term “Living Apart Together” (LAT) refers to heterosexual or same‐sex couples who have an ongoing self‐defined couple relationship without cohabiting. Some couples keep separate residences, even though they both live within the same locale. Irene Levin (2004) argues that the dual‐residence aspect of LAT couples distinguishes them from a commuter marriage where there is one main household and just a second apartment for when one partner is awa…
Men's Emotions: Heteromasculinity, Emotional Reflexivity, and Intimate Relationships
This article focuses on the underresearched topic of how masculinity relates to emotional forms of caring within heterosexual relationships. Both scholarly and common sense thinking, often present heterosexual male partners as unable and/or unwilling to do emotion work, leaving women burdened with this task. However, contemporary relational complexity increasingly requires emotional reflexivity. Such reflexivity entails interpretations of one's o…
Distance Relationships: Intimacy and Emotions Amongst Academics and Their Partners in Dual-Locations
Drawing on interviews with UK couples in distance relationships, this book seeks to explain, evaluate and advance sociological debates about intimate life. It provides a rich and human perspective on
Emotions and social relations
Common sense and scholarly conceptions of emotions tend to make us think of feelings as interior to individuals and as somehow beyond the social. Ian Burkitt's new book is a marvellous antidote to
Political Emotions: A Role for Feelings of Affinity in Citizens' (Dis)Engagements with Electoral Politics
This article develops the concept of affinity as one means available in understanding how citizens make, or fail to make, connections with politics and politicians. It is argued that the disappearance of class from much political discourse has led to more emotional ways of relating to politics. We claim that the reflexivity involved in political deliberation must take account of people's emotional responses to the political. We argue that one key…
He's snooty 'im: Exploring 'White Working Class' Political Disengagement
Using a small pilot qualitative study conducted in the North of England prior to the 2010 general election, we seek to understand why our respondents might feel actively disengaged from mainstream politics. It is argued that one major reason is because politicians are seen as lacking understanding of the local contexts in which these low-wage workers live. The gulf between represented and representative is widened if politicians fail to communica…
Them That Runs the Country Don't Know What They're Doing: Political Dissatisfaction Amongst Members of the White Working Class
There are signs that a significant number of British people do not feel that their concerns are being addressed by the mainstream parties or the political system. This paper attends to the quality of that political dissatisfaction amongst members of 'the white working classes'. There is a need to extend typical concerns about youth disengagement to adults and to consider the role that class plays. Lower participation in formal democratic processe…
The Emotionalization of Reflexivity
Reflexivity refers to the practices of altering one's life as a response to knowledge about one's circumstances. While theories of reflexivity have not entirely ignored emotions, attention to them has been insufficient. These theories need emotionalizing and this article proposes that emotions have become central to a subjectivity and sociality that is relationally constructed. The emotionalization of reflexivity not only refers to a theoretical …
Men's Emotions: Heteromasculinity, Emotional Reflexivity, and Intimate Relationships
This article focuses on the underresearched topic of how masculinity relates to emotional forms of caring within heterosexual relationships. Both scholarly and common sense thinking, often present heterosexual male partners as unable and/or unwilling to do emotion work, leaving women burdened with this task. However, contemporary relational complexity increasingly requires emotional reflexivity. Such reflexivity entails interpretations of one's o…
Feeling Beyond Rules: Politicizing the Sociology of Emotion and Anger in Feminist Politics
The part anger plays in motivating political action is frequently noted, but less is said about ways in which anger continues to be a part of how people do politics. This article critically assesses approaches to emotions that emphasize managing anger in accordance with 'feeling rules'. It reflects on the utility of Marxist notions of conflict as the engine of change for the understanding of how anger operates in political life. This involves und…
An Equal Distance? Individualisation, Gender and Intimacy in Distance Relationships
Intimacy is usually thought to require physical proximity as a prerequisite, so how are intimate relationships maintained when partners do not live their daily lives in the same place? Couples who are frequently apart are not an entirely new phenomenon, but the dual-career, dual-household couples examined in this pilot study of contemporary distance relationships illustrate new ways of relating. This paper will explore these new ways of relating …
Highland and other haunts
Toiletry Time: Defecation, Temporal Strategies and the Dilemmas of Modernity
The rhythms of human bodies are profoundly implicated with the time regimes that are dominant in different societies. This article seeks to explicate the relations between the temporal dispositions of one aspect of the body, its defecatory capacities, and the chronological and spatial categorizations of modernity. This latter configuration is understood variously as being characterized by: the social relations of the `civilizing process' (Elias);…
Emotions and social relations
Common sense and scholarly conceptions of emotions tend to make us think of feelings as interior to individuals and as somehow beyond the social. Ian Burkitt's new book is a marvellous antidote to
Emotional Reflexivity in Contemporary Friendships: Understanding it Using Elias and Facebook Etiquette
The popular social networking site Facebook has become a part of millions of people's everyday lives. In order to help people navigate the friendships they form and maintain on Facebook there are many websites offering advice about etiquette. This advice, and responses to it, can help reveal how contemporary emotional expression is organised, especially as it relates to friendship. This paper critically adapts the approach of other sociologists s…
Love Lives at a Distance: Distance Relationships over the Lifecourse
Distance relationships may be increasingly undertaken by dual-career couples at some point in their life course. Although this can make it difficult to quantitatively measure the extent of distance relating, qualitative analysis of distance relationships promises to give considerable insight into the changing nature of intimate lives across the life course. This paper indicates the kind of insights offered via analysis of exploratory research int…
Political Emotions: A Role for Feelings of Affinity in Citizens' (Dis)Engagements with Electoral Politics
This article develops the concept of affinity as one means available in understanding how citizens make, or fail to make, connections with politics and politicians. It is argued that the disappearance of class from much political discourse has led to more emotional ways of relating to politics. We claim that the reflexivity involved in political deliberation must take account of people's emotional responses to the political. We argue that one key…
He's snooty 'im: Exploring 'White Working Class' Political Disengagement
Using a small pilot qualitative study conducted in the North of England prior to the 2010 general election, we seek to understand why our respondents might feel actively disengaged from mainstream politics. It is argued that one major reason is because politicians are seen as lacking understanding of the local contexts in which these low-wage workers live. The gulf between represented and representative is widened if politicians fail to communica…
Ping‐pong poms: Emotional reflexivity in contemporary return migration from Australia to the United Kingdom
About 20,000 people from the United Kingdom emigrate to Australia each year. Of these, a significant number return to the United Kingdom, and some return again to Australia. Studies of such patterns of migration and return (and return again) were quite common a few decades ago, but are now rare. This paper makes use of a contemporary data source – an Internet‐mediated discussion forum – to explore the experiences of modern ‘ping‐pong poms’. A pic…
Future Building and Emotional Reflexivity: Gendered or Queered Navigations of Agency in Non-Normative Relationships
This article sets out a conceptual framework for examining future building as an emotionally reflexive practice of intimacy and gendered agency. Emotionally reflexive future building is a relational activity, subject to gendering but open to queering. We illustrate this by drawing on cases taken from three qualitative studies that deal with the future building of women in relationships that do not conform to norms around having and rearing childr…
Introduction: Friendship and Emotions
[No abstract]
Them That Runs the Country Don't Know What They're Doing: Political Dissatisfaction Amongst Members of the White Working Class
There are signs that a significant number of British people do not feel that their concerns are being addressed by the mainstream parties or the political system. This paper attends to the quality of that political dissatisfaction amongst members of 'the white working classes'. There is a need to extend typical concerns about youth disengagement to adults and to consider the role that class plays. Lower participation in formal democratic processe…
Something old, something new, something borrowed: Rerepresentations of anarchy in International Relations theory
There are many stories to be told regarding the development of International Relations (IR) theory in the United States over the last century. Some have pointed out IR's evolutionary properties, emphasizing the debates that have produced fitter theory with empirical reality. Others have argued that the development has been largely scientific with knowledge built hierarchically through time. In this article, I propose an alternative view of Americ…
Second-wave feminism and the politics of relationships
Emotions in Aotearoa New Zealand: Reflexive emotionalisation in a colonised context
Reflexive emotionalisation means increased thinking about and acting on emotional experiences in response to major changes to social life, such as those accompanying colonisation. This article explains and develops this novel concept, assessing its usefulness through an exploratory assessment of reflexive emotionalisation in the formation of Aotearoa New Zealand as a colonised settler state. It is argued that as cultures met and sought to coexist…
Into the 21st century
Guest Editorial: Heterosexuality
Intimacy, Distance Relationships and Emotional Care
The social changes surrounding individualisation and globalization impact upon our emotional and intimate lives. Geographical mobility is especially significant and its effects on relationships much debated. Distance relationships are one example of how people respond to such changes. This paper is based on an ESRC funded qualitative study of couples in distance relationships. The argument is that such forms of loving are not all about self-satis…
Relational happiness through recognition and redistribution: Emotion and inequality
This article develops a model of relational happiness that challenges popular individualized definitions and emphasizes how it can enhance the sociological analysis of inequality. Many studies of happiness suggest that social inequalities are closely associated with distributions of happiness at the national level, but happiness research continues to favour individual-level analyses. Limited attention has been given to the intersubjective aspects…
I'm not dieting, 'I'm doing it for science: Masculinities and the experience of dieting
Despite heightened concerns about levels of obesity and overweight in Western societies, there is a relative absence of sociological research into the subjective experience of dieting, especially for men. This paper focuses on findings related to the male participants from a qualitative study of fourteen volunteers (six female and eight male) drawn from a larger clinical trial comparing two diet conditions. Semi-structured interviews were conduct…
The Precariousness of Choice in the New Sentimental Order: A Response to Bawin-Legros
The contention made by Giddens, among others, that intimacy has transformed due to processes of individualization is appraised in this article. With a specific emphasis on the degree of choice now said to be inherent in intimate relationships, consideration is given to the gendered nature of negotiating choice and how gendered inequality is often reproduced as a result. This is illustrated by research on distance relationships
Emotional reflexivity in the time of Covid-19: Working-class emotional practices
We share findings from a qualitative study on emotions in Scottish working-class households during lockdown. The results challenge existing research focused on emotional capital, which often suggests that working-class people struggle to provide emotional resources to those close to them. Using the concept of emotional reflexivity we show how these household members cared for each other’s feelings, challenging deficit views of working-class emoti…
Second-wave feminism and the politics of relationships
Toiletry Time: Defecation, Temporal Strategies and the Dilemmas of Modernity
The rhythms of human bodies are profoundly implicated with the time regimes that are dominant in different societies. This article seeks to explicate the relations between the temporal dispositions of one aspect of the body, its defecatory capacities, and the chronological and spatial categorizations of modernity. This latter configuration is understood variously as being characterized by: the social relations of the `civilizing process' (Elias);…
When Is the Personal Political? The President's Penis and Other Stories
The boundary between the personal and the political is contested. Feminist interventions in this contest since 1970 have been particularly significant. A brief discussion of how feminists have theorised the personal/political division serves as an introduction to my analysis of current struggles over that division in Western liberal democracies. My analysis focuses on the workings of representative processes. Efforts to represent interests are st…
Highland and other haunts
Selling the Spectre: Ghost Stories and Tourism in Modern Scotland
For a long time, Scotland has been associated in the international imaginary with ghosts, ghouls and other forms of spectral phenomena. To a large extent, tourism has been responsible for the development of a set of images of Scotland which emphasise the mysterious and numinous aspects of the country's terrain. This paper traces out the ways in which tourism and the ghostly have been inextricably interwoven in Scotland over the last two hundred a…
The Precariousness of Choice in the New Sentimental Order: A Response to Bawin-Legros
The contention made by Giddens, among others, that intimacy has transformed due to processes of individualization is appraised in this article. With a specific emphasis on the degree of choice now said to be inherent in intimate relationships, consideration is given to the gendered nature of negotiating choice and how gendered inequality is often reproduced as a result. This is illustrated by research on distance relationships
An Equal Distance? Individualisation, Gender and Intimacy in Distance Relationships
Intimacy is usually thought to require physical proximity as a prerequisite, so how are intimate relationships maintained when partners do not live their daily lives in the same place? Couples who are frequently apart are not an entirely new phenomenon, but the dual-career, dual-household couples examined in this pilot study of contemporary distance relationships illustrate new ways of relating. This paper will explore these new ways of relating …
Feeling Beyond Rules: Politicizing the Sociology of Emotion and Anger in Feminist Politics
The part anger plays in motivating political action is frequently noted, but less is said about ways in which anger continues to be a part of how people do politics. This article critically assesses approaches to emotions that emphasize managing anger in accordance with 'feeling rules'. It reflects on the utility of Marxist notions of conflict as the engine of change for the understanding of how anger operates in political life. This involves und…
Love Lives at a Distance: Distance Relationships over the Lifecourse
Distance relationships may be increasingly undertaken by dual-career couples at some point in their life course. Although this can make it difficult to quantitatively measure the extent of distance relating, qualitative analysis of distance relationships promises to give considerable insight into the changing nature of intimate lives across the life course. This paper indicates the kind of insights offered via analysis of exploratory research int…
What is Gender?: Sociological Approaches: Sociological Approaches
Introduction to the sociology of gender How different are women and men? Is gender something that we do? How can gender best be explained? Is gender about bodies? What are the politics of gender? How is gender intertwined with class? How is gender intertwined with 'race'? Conclusion: So what is gender?
Couples Living Apart Together
Living apart together (LAT) broadly refers to couples, heterosexual or homosexual, who have an ongoing self‐defined couple relationship without cohabiting. Some couples keep separate residences, even though they both live within the same locale. Levin (2004) has suggested that the dual‐residence aspect of LAT couples distinguishes them from a commuter marriage where there is one main household and just a second apartment for when one partner is a…
What is Gender: Sociological Approaches
Gender and Everyday Life (New Sociology)
The Loves of Others: Autoethnography and Reflexivity in Researching Distance Relationships
Reflexive accounts of research are important, but they should include attention to a wider range of relations than those between researcher and participant. The researcher’s position in relation to the participants does merit discussion, especially when there is an element of autoethnography involved. However, assistants in the research such as transcribers, can play a role in accounting for the research. The relationships participants have with …
I'm not dieting, 'I'm doing it for science: Masculinities and the experience of dieting
Despite heightened concerns about levels of obesity and overweight in Western societies, there is a relative absence of sociological research into the subjective experience of dieting, especially for men. This paper focuses on findings related to the male participants from a qualitative study of fourteen volunteers (six female and eight male) drawn from a larger clinical trial comparing two diet conditions. Semi-structured interviews were conduct…
Intimacy, Distance Relationships and Emotional Care
The social changes surrounding individualisation and globalization impact upon our emotional and intimate lives. Geographical mobility is especially significant and its effects on relationships much debated. Distance relationships are one example of how people respond to such changes. This paper is based on an ESRC funded qualitative study of couples in distance relationships. The argument is that such forms of loving are not all about self-satis…
The Emotionalization of Reflexivity
Reflexivity refers to the practices of altering one's life as a response to knowledge about one's circumstances. While theories of reflexivity have not entirely ignored emotions, attention to them has been insufficient. These theories need emotionalizing and this article proposes that emotions have become central to a subjectivity and sociality that is relationally constructed. The emotionalization of reflexivity not only refers to a theoretical …
Something old, something new, something borrowed: Rerepresentations of anarchy in International Relations theory
There are many stories to be told regarding the development of International Relations (IR) theory in the United States over the last century. Some have pointed out IR's evolutionary properties, emphasizing the debates that have produced fitter theory with empirical reality. Others have argued that the development has been largely scientific with knowledge built hierarchically through time. In this article, I propose an alternative view of Americ…
Epistles to Emails: Letters, Relationship Building and the Virtual Age
Until the late twentieth century the letter was still a central form of communication within the private and public spheres and across their somewhat fluid boundary. Not all letters survive but they do have a tangible form and even the epistles of the very ordinary can turn up in a descendant's attic, ripe for socio-historical analysis. This paper explores the shift away from letters and towards email and mobile phone messaging as forms of commun…
Guest Editorial: Heterosexuality
Introduction: Friendship and Emotions
[No abstract]
Emotional Reflexivity in Contemporary Friendships: Understanding it Using Elias and Facebook Etiquette
The popular social networking site Facebook has become a part of millions of people's everyday lives. In order to help people navigate the friendships they form and maintain on Facebook there are many websites offering advice about etiquette. This advice, and responses to it, can help reveal how contemporary emotional expression is organised, especially as it relates to friendship. This paper critically adapts the approach of other sociologists s…
Ping‐pong poms: Emotional reflexivity in contemporary return migration from Australia to the United Kingdom
About 20,000 people from the United Kingdom emigrate to Australia each year. Of these, a significant number return to the United Kingdom, and some return again to Australia. Studies of such patterns of migration and return (and return again) were quite common a few decades ago, but are now rare. This paper makes use of a contemporary data source – an Internet‐mediated discussion forum – to explore the experiences of modern ‘ping‐pong poms’. A pic…
He's snooty 'im: Exploring 'White Working Class' Political Disengagement
Using a small pilot qualitative study conducted in the North of England prior to the 2010 general election, we seek to understand why our respondents might feel actively disengaged from mainstream politics. It is argued that one major reason is because politicians are seen as lacking understanding of the local contexts in which these low-wage workers live. The gulf between represented and representative is widened if politicians fail to communica…
Them That Runs the Country Don't Know What They're Doing: Political Dissatisfaction Amongst Members of the White Working Class
There are signs that a significant number of British people do not feel that their concerns are being addressed by the mainstream parties or the political system. This paper attends to the quality of that political dissatisfaction amongst members of 'the white working classes'. There is a need to extend typical concerns about youth disengagement to adults and to consider the role that class plays. Lower participation in formal democratic processe…
Sociology (34 works) · Psychology (26 works) · Political science (22 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Social science (15 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Reflexivity (12 works)