Reply to Erickson and Schwalbe

Schwalbe objects to the concept of emotion al energy on the grounds that it is merely a metaphor. True, most words are metaphori cal to some degree, but if we mean by metaphor that the analogy is patently artifi cial and for rhetorical purposes only, then emotional energy is not at that end of the continuum. It is true also that the word ener gy is vague in certain respects, but all words are merely pointers in a certain direction. One of the tasks of theorizing is to develop our vocabulary so that it conveys an ever more adequate and revealing set of meanings as to how the world operates. Erickson use fully points to Steve Gordon's argument that the concept of sentiments is more sociologi cally useful than emotions because senti ments are more long-term orientations to wards social action; I could have adopted the term sentiments instead of emotional energy, but the penumbra of meanings carried by that term takes us into associations with "sen timental" and with an 18th century tradition (Adam Smith et al.); that is not what I want to develop. Instead, I chose emotional ener gy, because its associations are with Durkheim, who interchangeably used "moral energy," "moral force," "moral sentiments" along with "sacredness" and "collective effer vescence." The penumbra of meanings for energy makes us think in terms of a quantity that can shift situationally between high and low; as Durkheim observed, what rituals pump peo ple up with also fades away over time if the rituals are not repeated. And energy is a pal pable phenomenon of human experience. At its high point, it is the excitement of collec tive effervescence. It bridges the subjective and the objective, the two aspects of empiri cal observation (the word empirical derives from the Greek word for experience). Hu man energy is bodily; we can observe it in other people's bodies, and feel it in one's own. Emotional energy bridges the physi cal/physiological and the mental realms-an other reason the concept points us in the right direction for theory and research. Schwalbe suggests that the more appro priate term should be self-efficacy and points to the body of research in this area. I appre ciate this work done along parallel lines. I prefer the meaning resonances of the term emotional energy because it broadens from the cognitive focus of self-concept and be cause it points to the interactional situation as the unit of analysis rather than the self. It is situations, first of all, that generate collective emotion, which is then carried away for a time by individuals. One aspect of what they carry away with them is a sense of self-effi cacy. The literature that Schwalbe cites bears usefully on this point; I am remiss in not cit ing more of it. Similarly, Tom Scheff has an alyzed interactions which drive changes in pride and shame; this is a continuum which corresponds to high and low emotional ener gy, but in the aspect which focuses on the self. Emotional energy infuses the self, but it is more than that. Although Schwalbe thinks it makes no sense to regard symbols as charged up with emotional energy, that is literally what we observe if we study empirically the process of thinking (as in Norbert Wiley's research on the internal conversation): some ideas jump easily into one's chain of thoughts, others are hard to think (some are literally blocked from memory). And since theoretical concepts show their worth pragmatically by what we can do with them, I would point to my work on the social construction of thinking by philosophers in networks. By analyzing their positions in the core or periphery of social networks that give them high or low emo tional energy, we can understand how new ideas are dialectically constructed out of old ones by making coalitions in the mind. As I argued in The Sociology of Philosophies, more creative thinkers win out over less creative ones because they are faster; instead of labo riously and consciously putting together con clusions from existing materials, their minds are loaded with symbols of intellectual group memberships which leap into combinations through their emotional loadings without having to self-consciously think about it. The