Whereas in modern society the view of emotions was the opposition to culturally highly valued rationality dominated, today emotions are seen as having a very important funciton in human communication both in private and public sphere. The paper outlines the centrality of emotions to a range of key phenomena and processes in contemporary social life: the transformation of intimacy, consumerism and changing styles of work, the appearence of cyberspace, the movement of holistic medical treatment. On the one hand, there is a chance and pressure to pay attention to and cultivate one's own emotions. On the other hand, chiefly as the consequence of the expansion and transformation of the service sector in late capitalist societies emotions are generally shallow, mechanical and standardized.
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