Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Affinities as an Invitation to Think Differently 1 Part One: Sensations of Living Why Sensations? 7 Facets of Sensation 11 1. Ashes, ghosts and the ‘sense of presence’ 11 2. ‘Grandma’s Hands’ by Bill Withers (version by Gil ScottHeron) 17 3. The sensations of others: children’s perspectives 18 Looks 21 Voices, volume and imitation 22 Size, height, weight, growing 24 Play fighting and real fighting 26 Bodily proximity with others 27 Relational traces and bodily inscriptions 27 4. The sensory-kinaesthetic intimacies of violence 29 5. Becky Tipper’s creaturely ‘moments of being’ 31 6. Meat, ‘food-animals’ and Rhoda Wilkie’s ‘sentient commodities’ 33 Layering the Argument: Sensations of Affinity 39 Life is full of sensory-kinaesthetics 40 Sensations are multiple and atmospheric, emanating in encounters 42 Sensations as sensations: not representations, adjuncts or qualities 46 A sensory-kinaesthetic attunement reveals characters 50 Affinities are charged with the energies of fascination, wondering and discordance 54 Part Two: Ineffable Kinship Why Ineffable Kinship? 59 Facets of Ineffable Kinship 63 1. Family resemblances in literature and art 63 2. Resemblance interactions 68 A familiar conversation topic and form 70 Resemblances as striking, fleeting and capricious 71 Negotiating and ‘settling’ resemblances 72 An uneasy combination of the potent and the trivial 74 3. Resemblance stories 74 4. The still-beating heart 89 5. Nordqvist and Smart’s donors as ‘enigmatic presences’ 93 6. Konrad’s ‘nameless relations’ and ‘transilience’ 97 7. Super-donors and dubious progeniture 101 8. ‘The Seed’ by The Roots, featuring Cody Chesnutt 104 Layering the Argument: Affinities of Ineffable Kinship 106 Metaphors of genetics and heritability 106 Poetics and the ‘frisson’ of ineffability 111 Wondering about what is circulating and relating 114 Part Three: Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics Why Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics? 123 Facets of Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics 126 1. Animate places and things in literature 126 Nan Shepherd’s ‘living mountain’ 126 Jon McGregor’s city that ‘sings’ 127 Haruki Murakami’s ‘pulsing’ city 129 Barbara Kingsolver’s Africa as an ‘attendance in my soul’ 130 2. Atmospheric memories of animate places and things 131 The atmospherics of a teenager’s city 131 Anat Hecht’s ‘tangible memories’ of home 133 Karin Widerberg’s atmospheric memories of ‘the homes of others’ 135 3. Animate technologies, vehicles and journeys 137 Phone feelings 137 The threaded worlds of train travel 140 Mimi Sheller’s ‘automotive emotions’ and ‘feeling the car’ 143 Lynne Pearce’s ‘autopia’ of driving and thinking 146 4. Weathery weather in social science and literature 148 5. Writing weather stories 152 6. Socio-atmospherics and the time of the floods 154 Shock: the power and magnitude of water 155 Bearing witness and being in touch 156 An atmosphere of ‘getting on with it’ 158 Legacies of the floods 159 7. Weather poetics 164 Layering the Argument: Ecologies and SocioAtmospherics 168 Ecologies as convivialities, assemblages, happenings and animated space 169 The feel of places, things, journeys and technologies 175 Enigmatic ecologies and the socio-atmospherics of living 178 From what is connected to the dynamics of connection 180 Ecological poetics 184 Conclusion: Affinities in Time 186 Three layers of the argument 187 Time: a final layering 188 Time and sensations 190 Time and ineffable kinship 193 Time, ecologies and socio-atmospherics 196 Accepting the invitation of affinities 200 Notes 203 References 204 Index 000

"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

Expanded Contents viii Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Affinities as an Invitation to Think Differently 1 Part One: Sensations of Living 5 Part Two: Ineffable Kinship 57 Part Three: Ecologies and Socio-Atmospherics 121 Conclusion: Affinities in Time 186 Notes 203 References 204 Index 214