Emotions in Meaning‐Making: Toward a Sociological Theory of Cathexis

ABSTRACT The role of emotion in meaning‐making remains undertheorized in cultural sociology. This article argues that emotions and affect are intrinsic to meaning‐making and proposes cathexis —the attachment of emotions generated in social interaction to objects, symbols, and ideas—as the fundamental mechanism by which emotions co‐constitute cultural meanings. Durkheim implied this constitutive role of affect in his theory of collective emotions and model of collective effervescence, but left it unnamed, obscuring the emotional dimension of culture in later research. To address this gap, I reinterpret Freud's concept of cathexis within a Durkheimian framework, reengaging cultural sociology with this crucial insight. Recognizing cathexis as inherent to meaning‐making moves us beyond the linear subject‐object framework toward understanding meaning‐making as extended and enacted within its environments, animated by cathected objects of diverse kinds. I then outline cathexis's key features and their consequences—persistence, thresholds of intensity, boundary‐making and surface creation, spontaneity, and the mutual enactment of cathexis and affordances—each offering tools and strategies for future research. Consolidating these insights, the theory culminates in a research program on the “energetic” architecture of environments of action, laying the foundation for a more emotionally attuned cultural sociology.