On Regret: A Sociological Intersectional Approach

Maria Madalena D’Avelar

doi:10.3390/socsci11020050

Abstract

Regret is more than just an individual cognitive and emotional phenomenon, and it can, and should, be seen as social and cultural as well. Because of this, regret can tell us a lot, both about someone’s biography, and about the society and culture that shape it. In this brief reflection, the aim is to look at regret as a phenomenon worthy of sociological focus. We focus on three main ways in which regret can be understood as a sociological object: regret as a part of someone’s biography, regret as something that is culturally shaped, and regret as a part of collective memory. We also explore the potentialities of using an intersectional framework to analyze regret in its different forms.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
Regret on the collective level distances itself, in many ways, from biographical regret when we focus on the concepts of responsibility and agency
What we argue is that the rise of regret in contemporary times, and the growing role it plays in collective memory, should be understood using a sociological and historical frame

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Rather than this being a theoretical paper, and even less an empirical one, this text aims to be a brief, yet hopefully thought-provoking, reflection on regret and how we can look at it, making use of a sociological approach, and from an intersectional perspective. We would like to focus on three main ways in which regret can be understood as a sociological object: regret as a part of someone’s biography, regret as something that is culturally shaped, and regret as a part of collective memory These three framings of regret focus on different levels of the experience of regret, from the individual to the social and collective.

Regret as Part of One’s Biography

Regret as Culturally Shaped

Conclusions