There exists a wall of personhood within sociological and anthropological literature which is rarely breached. It is the wall transcended when Max Weber lets his depression slip into his words. It is the wall torn down when Renato Rosaldo reconsidered grief amongst the Ilongot after experiencing the tragic death of his own wife. And it is the challenge to scale this wall which Linda Woodhead and Ole Riis have successfully tasked themselves with in A Sociology of Religious Emotion (2009).

For those who professionally dwell in the emotional world – clergy, counsellors, chaplains, etc. – the subject of this work will appear quite obvious. Those who have been the object of a bereaved mourner's anguish, the dance partner of a new mother-in-law and the confidant of a parishioner in a quiet confession know intimately that in these moments complex selves are negotiating, creating and experiencing emotions within society. And yet Riis and Woodhead's efforts here are essential for a field of study which has all too often trivialised the role of emotions in religious belief in an effort to understand society without the reflexivity and depth due unto persons.

Two purposes drive this text. The first is a polemic exhorting the field of sociology to the emotional world as matter of serious inquiry. The authors extensively explore the cause of this academic dearth, chiefly resolving around a claim that the ephemeral and at times uncomfortable realm of emotions does not lend itself to the positivistic tools which the sociological industry has crafted for itself. The second is to examine what tools may exist, from a diverse selection of tangentially related topics and sources, so as to bricolage them into a reconsidered mode of study – namely, Riis and Woodhead's concept of an ‘emotional regime’.

For those readers steeped in recent literature from anthropological and political writers on emotions this phrase ‘emotional regime’ will not come as a surprise. It is borrowed from William Reddy's widely read work on the history of emotions. For readers new to this conversation the term ‘regime’ may appear as a heavy-handed weight of institutional religion upon the emotions of persons. In some sense this characterisation is apt as ‘there are inducements to conform, and sanctions for non-compliance . . . emotional dissidents are sanctioned and castigated as “Scrooges”, “bah humbugs”, and general miseries’ (pp. 10–11). And yet, in the concluding chapters of the text, when Riis and Woodhead explore a loosened modern society, one gets the sense that ‘emotional regimes’ are something more like a kid-in-a-candy-shop whereby ‘religious emotions . . . may float free of religious communities’ (p. 202). Riis and Woodhead's chosen metaphor for this is an orchestra whereby one may play any number of instruments and, in doing so, both involve themselves in a regime and effect the playing of a regime in a dialectical negotiation or feedback (p. 118), between oneself and one's society. By being among the first to take up what it means to be an emotional self in modernity, the latter chapters of this text are an important addition to the understanding of selves in a ‘Secular Age’.

While the tool of religious ‘emotional regimes’ provides a good deal of flexibility, varying self and systems orientations and – to a degree – a proposition of how one may study social breakdown (or regime imbalances), there is a clear indebtedness to something of a post-Durkheimian view of religion as a collection of symbols and often an established institution. Following this, the limitations of the tools Riis and Woodhead provide are the same boundaries which are inherent within any study of symbols and institutions. They may find difficulty speaking of a charismatic impasse where words are yet to have meaning. There may be limitations in understanding the depth of revolutionary sentiments. And moments which people may very well call sacred in hindsight, moments where the world is crafted anew, may be characterised as simply ‘disordering’ or ‘confusing’, which can miss their ecstatic, ephemeral and reorientating nature.

In no way should such a caveat to a small section of this text dissuade potential readers from exploring its usefulness. As these authors note, tools always have their limits. Even in a time where there is a budding reconsideration of emotions, many in the sociological community still subtly regard the subject-matter as an unspoken taboo. Further, within religious studies and theological communities, the very term ‘emotion’ is often treated at best as a bad word and at worse as a qualifier used to demean ‘low church’ religion. From this context, Riis and Woodhead stake out an important and highly recommended path for what will hopefully be a renewed interest in ‘A Sociology of Religious Emotion’.