This volume explores the nature of nostalgia as an important emotion in contemporary society and social theory. Situated between the 'sociology of emotions' and 'nostalgia studies', it considers the reasons for which nostalgia appears to be becoming an increasingly significant and debated emotion in late-modern culture.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen is Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the editor of The Contemporary Goffman, The Poetics of Crime, Postmortal Society and Critical and Cultural Interactionism, and co-editor of The Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman, Encountering the Everyday, The Transformation of Modernity, Utopia: Social Theory and the Future, Liquid Criminology, Imaginative Methodologies: The Poetic Imagination in the Social Sciences, Emotions and Crime: Towards a Criminology of Emotions, Exploring Grief: Towards a Sociology of Sorrow and Death in Contemporary Popular Culture.

Introduction: in times of nostalgia: the brave new world of a grand old emotion Part 1: Conceptual and theoretical perspectives on nostalgia 1. Nostalgia: the paradoxical bittersweet emotion 2. The psychology of nostalgia: delineating the emotion's nature and functions 3. Future imaginings: nostalgia for unrealized possible selves 4. Retrotopia rising: the topics of utopia, retrotopia and nostalgia in the sociology of Zygmunt Bauman Part 2: Memory, politics and social critique in a mediatised era 5. Dangerous memories: nostalgia and the historical sublime 6. The dilemmas of radical nostalgia: acknowledging the power of the past in the politics of the Left 7. The political staging of nostalgia: neo-Ottomanism in contemporary Turkey 8. The future of nostalgia is inevitable: reflections on mediated nostalgia Part 3: Consumerism, migration and everyday life 9. The dark side of nostalgic bonds: moral motivators of consumer identities, decisions and behaviours 10. Transmigratory nostalgia: sentimentality and everyday life on the Japan Exchange and Teaching programme 11. Living in nostalgia: exploring expatriate experiences of everyday nostalgia in Pattaya