Emotions in Politics: The Affect Dimension in Political Tension

Prompted by the 'affective turn' within the entire spectrum of the social sciences, this books brings together the twin disciplines of political psychology and the political sociology of emotions to explore the complex relationship between politics and emotion at both the mass and individual level with special focus on cases of political tension.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Oct 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781137025661

Book preview

Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology series

The Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology book series profiles a range of innovative contributions that investigate the leading political issues and perspectives of our time. The academic field of political psychology has been developing for almost fifty years and is now a well-established subfield of enquiry in the North American academy. In the context of new global forces of political challenge and change as well as rapidly evolving political practices and political identities, Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology builds upon the North American foundations through profiling studies from Europe and the broader global context. From a theoretical perspective, the series incorporates constructionist, historical, (post)structuralist, and postcolonial analyses. Methodologically, the series is open to a range of approaches to political psychology. Psychoanalytic approaches, critical social psychology, critical discourse analysis, Social Identity Theory, rhetorical analysis, social representations, and a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies exemplify the range of approaches to the empirical world welcomed in the series. The series integrates approaches to political psychology that address matters of urgency and concern from a global perspective, including theories and perspectives on world politics and a range of international issues: the rise of social protest movements for democratic change, notably in the Global South and the Middle East; the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and its broader implications; patterns of global migration and associated challenges of integration and religious accommodation; the formation and deformation of political, economic, and strategic transnational entities such as the European Union; conflicts and violence resulting from local and regional nationalisms; emerging political movements of the new left and the new right; ethnic violence; legacies of war and colonization; and class conflict.

Series editors

Tereza Capelos is Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey, UK, vice-president of the International Society of Political Psychology, co-chair of the ECPR Political Psychology Standing Group, and Director of the International Society of Political Psychology Summer Academy (ISPP-SA).

Henk Dekker is Professor of Political Socialization and Integration at the Graduate School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science, and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Leiden University. He is a recipient of the Nevitt Sanford Award from the International Society of Political Psychology.

Catarina Kinnvall is Professor at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden and former Vice-President of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP).

Paul Nesbitt-Larking is Professor of Political Science at Huron University College, Canada and Visiting Professor, School of Health and Human Sciences, University of Huddersfield, UK. He is currently President-elect of the International Society of Political Psychology.

Titles include:

Nicolas Demertzis (editor)

EMOTIONS IN POLITICS

The Affect Dimension in Political Tension

Lisa Strombom

ISRAELI IDENTITY, THICK RECOGNITION AND CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION

Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology series Series

Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–03466–3 (hardback) and 978–1–137–03467–0 (paperback)

You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBNs quoted above.

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Emotions in Politics

The Affect Dimension in Political Tension

Edited by

Nicolas Demertzis

Professor, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Selection, introduction, conclusion and editorial matter © Nicolas Demertzis 2013

All remaining chapters © Their respective authors 2013

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2013 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978–1–137–02565–4

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

  1  Introduction: Theorizing the Emotions–Politics Nexus

Nicolas Demertzis

  2  The Theory of Affective Intelligence and Liberal Politics

George E. Marcus

  3  Understanding Anxiety and Aversion: The Origins and Consequences of Affectivity in Political Campaigns

Tereza Capelos

  4  Inside Stories: Oscar Wilde, Jean Améry, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi

Dennis Smith

  5  Repression of Emotion: A Danger to Modern Societies?

Thomas Scheff

  6  Feeling the Greek Financial Crisis

Bettina Davou and Nicolas Demertzis

  7  Extreme Nationalism and the Hatred of the Liberal State

Barry Richards

  8  Trauma and the Politics of Fear: Europe at the Crossroads

Catarina Kinnvall

  9  Collective Fear and Societal Change

Jack Barbalet and Nicolas Demertzis

10  Emotions of Protest

Dunya van Troost, Jacquelien van Stekelenburg and Bert Klandermans

11  Revolutionary Potential under Soviet-Type Regimes: The Role of Emotions in Explaining Transitions and Non-Transitions

Steven Saxonberg

12  Affects in the Arab Uprisings

Wendy Pearlman

13  Emotions and Nationalism: A Reappraisal

Jonathan Heaney

Conclusion

Nicolas Demertzis

References

Index

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

  2.1    Affective processing in temporal location with conscious awareness

  6.1    Styles of agency as a result of the interaction of hope and political efficacy

  6.2    Styles of agency of the ‘Indignati’

10.1    Model of the socio-political context, emotions and protest behaviour

Tables

  2.1    Processing capacities of preconscious systems and conscious awareness

  2.2    Contrasting conceptions of citizenship

  3.1    Experimental conditions and leader evaluations

  3.2    Experimental conditions and emotional reactions

  3.3    Trait manipulations and party identification as determinants of uneasiness and aversion

  3.4    Trait assessments and party agreement as determinants of uneasiness and aversion

  3.5    Uneasiness and aversion as determinants of political decision-making

  6.1    Trust in political institutions and business

  6.2    Economic insecurity and life dissatisfaction

10.1    Protest emotions and their appraisals

11.1    Components of potential transition, failed uprisings and non-transitions

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following persons who, in different but important ways, have contributed to the inception of the idea of this book and to its making: Helena Flam, Charlotte Bloch, Jack Barbalet, Chris Kyriakides, Yannis Stavrakakis, Alexandros Kyrtsis and Lila Roussou.

Notes on Contributors

Jack Barbalet is Professor and Head of the Sociology Department at Hong Kong Baptist University. He has previously held chief positions in sociology in Europe and Australia. Over the past 15 years he has made substantial contributions to the sociology of emotions. Currently, he is interested in economic sociology. His publications include Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure (1998) and Weber, Passion and Profits: ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ in Context (2008). He edited the Emotions and Sociology (2002) and co-edited the Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology (2011). His articles have been published extensively in sociological reviews and collected volumes.

Tereza Capelos is Senior Lecturer in Political Psychology, Electoral Behaviour and Public Opinion at the University of Surrey, School of Politics. She held positions as an assistant professor at Leiden University, postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Survey Research at Stony Brook University (USA) and visiting lecturer at the Cyprus University of Technology. Her current research examines the determinants of candidate evaluations and impression formation, reputation management, political scandals and accountability, the role of affect and emotions in politics, political tolerance, political knowledge, mass media and civic competence. She is the Co-chair of the ECPR Political Psychology Section, Vice President of the International Society of Political Psychology and Director of the International Society of Political Psychology Summer Academy (ISPP-SA).

Bettina Davou is Professor of Psychology and director of the Laboratory for Psychological Applications and Communication Planning at the National and Kopodistrian University of Athens, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies. She is a chartered psychologist and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. Amongst her published books are: Feeling, Communicating and Thinking Readings on the Emotional and Communicational Aspects of Learning (1998), Thought Processes in the Age of Information: Issues on Cognitive Psychology and Communication (2000) and Children and Media: Transformations of the Childhood Condition (2005). Her current research interests include media psychology and the psychology of emotions.

Nicolas Demertzis is Professor at the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and a founding member of the Research Network of the Sociology of Emotions at the ESA. His current research interests focus on political sociology, political communication and the sociology of emotions. His major works are Cultural Theory and Political Culture: New Directions and Proposals (1985); Culture, Modernity, Political Culture (1989); Essay on Ideology: A Dialogue between Social Theory and Psychoanalysis (1994 co-authored); Local Publicity and the Press in Greece (1996); The Nationalist Discourse: Ambivalent Semantic Field and Contemporary Tendencies (1996); Political Communication: Risk, Publicity and the Internet (2002) and Envy and Ressentiment: The Passions of the Soul and the Closed Society (2006, co-authored). He edited The Greek Political Culture Today (1994) and the Political Communication in Greece (2002). He also co-edited Religions and Politics in Modernity (2002) and Youth: The sleazy factor? (2008).

Jonathan G. Heaney is a PhD candidate at the School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway. He was twice awarded the title ‘University Scholar’ as an undergraduate. His current project, which looks at human emotions and social change in the Republic of Ireland, is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and supported by the Social Science Research Centre, NUI Galway. Recently he published the article ‘Emotions & Power: Reconciling Conceptual Twins’ in the Journal of Political Power (2011).

Bert Klandermans is Professor in Applied Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on political protest, social movements and labour unions. He is the editor of the ‘Social Movements, Protest and Contention’ book series (University of Minnesota Press) and Sociopedia.isa as well as co-editor of Blackwell/Wiley’s Encyclopedia of Social Movements. He was President of the Collective Behavior and Social Movement Section of the American Sociological Association, Vice-President of the International Sociological Association and vice-president of the International Society of Political Psychology. Among his numerous publications are the Social Psychology of Protest (1997) and Extreme Right Activists in Europe (2006). He co-edited the Handbook of Social Movements Across Disciplines (2007).

George Marcus is Professor of Political Science at Williams College. He is expert in public opinion, political behaviour and political psychology and is regarded among the very few academic and research leaders in political neuroscience. His research interests include democratic theory, electoral behaviour in democratic societies, political psychology with special interest on the role of emotions in politics, philosophies of science and methodology, as well as political tolerance, appraisal of candidates and dynamics of electoral campaigns. His articles are published widely in the major journals of political science and recent books include The Sentimental Citizen (2002) and The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior (2007, co-editor).

Wendy Pearlman is Assistant Professor of Political Science and the Crown Junior Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University. Her first book, Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (2003), was a Boston Globe and Washington Post bestseller. Her second book is Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (2011). She holds a BA from Brown University and a PhD from Harvard University. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Spain and a postdoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was also the winner of the 2011 Deborah Gerner Grant for Professional Development.

Barry Richards is Professor of Public Communication and Head of research at the Media School of Bournemouth University. His research interests are media, politics and culture, politics and emotions, news media and terrorism. Apart from numerous published articles, amongst his earlier books are Disciplines of Delight: The Psychoanalysis of Popular Culture (1994), Images of Freud (1989) and The Dynamics of Advertising (Richards et al., 2000). In 2007 he published the Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror. He is a founding editor of the journal Media, War and Conflict (Sage) and is on the editorial board of Psychoanalysis and Culture. He is a trained clinical psychologist.

Steven Saxonberg is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at Masaryk University. He has been guest professor and research associate in many European universities. His research interests are welfare and family policy, gender attitudes, welfare attitudes, comparative social policy; democratization, collapse of communism, social movements, democratic consolidation; music and identity, national identity. He is an expert in East European and Soviet-type societies and has published extensively in English and Czech sociological reviews. Among his most recent published works are Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam (2012) ‘Eastern Europe’ in The Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State (2012).

Thomas Scheff is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is among the founders of the sociology of emotions in the United States and his work is internationally acknowledged. He is past president of the Pacific Sociological Association and past chair of the Emotions Section of the American Sociological Association. His fields of research are social psychology, emotions, mental illness and new approaches to theory-method. Publications include Emotions, the Social Bond, and Human Reality: Part/Whole Analysis (1997) Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War (2000) and Goffman Unbound!: A New Paradigm (2006).

Dennis Smith is Emeritus Professor of Historical Sociology at Loughborough University and the author of several books including Globalization: The Hidden Agenda (2006), Norbert Elias and Modern Social Theory (2001), Zygmunt Bauman: Prophet of Postmodernity (1999), Barrington Moore: Violence, Morality and Political Change (1983). He has been editor of Current Sociology and co-editor of Sociological Review. He has held visiting appointments at Shandong University (China), Harvard University (USA), University of KwaZuluNatal (South Africa), University of Silesia (Poland), Gothenburg University (Sweden), University of Zaragoza (Spain), the Institute of Sociology at Graz University (Austria) and the National Research University/Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

Jacquelien van Stekelenburg is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, VU University, Amsterdam. She studies the social psychological dynamics of protest participation with a special interest in group identification, emotions and ideologies as motivators for action. Recently (2009–2013) she conducted an international comparative study on protest together with Bert Klandermans (VU University) and Stefaan Walgrave (Antwerp University), awarded by the European Science Foundation (‘Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation’; www.protestsurvey.eu). Her work appears in book chapters and international refereed articles.

Dunya van Troost is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, VU University, Amsterdam. In her current work (2009–2013) she studies large demonstrations in Europe and explores how emotions are related to protest issues and how they originate in socio-political factors of the national and mobilizing context of demonstrations. Previously she worked on emotions, political attitudes and perceptions of threat. She holds an MA in political science and MSc in social psychology; both degrees were obtained at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

1

Introduction: Theorizing the Emotions–Politics Nexus

Nicolas Demertzis

Prompted by interdisciplinary work on emotions, this book critically addresses the politics-emotions nexus at both a mass and an individual level with a specific focus on cases of political tension. Substantive areas of interest include transitions to post-communism, the ‘Arab Spring’, the Greek crisis and nationalist and xenophobic practices in different EU countries. In addition, the book is concerned with the variety of ways emotions shape, and are shaped by, social movement actors, the contested nature of civil society and public opinion, the potential protest created by humiliation and shame and the management of emotions practiced by key figures in international politics.

Had this book been published a decade or so ago, the authors would have found themselves in the position of having to justify their conceptualizations to most of the academic community. Scholarly political analysis had, for a long time, underemphasized the role of affect in civic action and the organization of public power. Although politics, be it democratic or not, is by definition explicitly emotional, ‘emotions-proof’ political sociological research, reflective of a ‘non-emotions period of sociology’ (Barbalet, 1998, p. 19), dominated for many decades. The marginalization of emotions in political analysis was to a large degree owed to: (a) the stripping of the dimension of passion from the political because it was associated with romantic and utopian conceptions unrelated to the modern public sphere as well as because of the more or less instrumental and neutral-procedural conception of politics, a popular view at the end of the 1960s as well as today (Habermas, 1970; Mouffe, 2000); (b) the supremacy of ‘interest’ as opposed to ‘passion’ as an explaining factor of political action, already in effect from the middle of the 18th century (Hirschman, 1977); (c) the dominance for many years of the rational choice paradigm across a very large number of political science departments in the United States and Europe, in the context of which emotions are either conceived as irrational elements or are taken as objective traits which do not affect the actor’s, by definition, ‘rational’ thinking (Barbalet, 1998, p. 29ff; Williams, 2001, pp. 15–16).

This book signals an understanding that ‘emotions-proof’ research can no longer be sustained. The development of the sociology of emotions on both sides of the Atlantic, the growing body of political neuroscience research and the attention given by political psychologists to the affective dimension of political thinking, opinion and action, steer us away from the dominance of behaviourism and cognitivism. The demarcation between emotion and reason in analysing politics is a thing of the past.

The subfield of the sociology of emotions seems to be on its way to becoming a ‘normal’ paradigm. In 1986 a special section on the sociology of emotions was set up within the American Sociological Association. The European Sociological Association has had its own Research Network on Emotions since 2004 (http://socemot.com/) which has been growing at a fast and steady pace. This is symptomatic of a much wider ‘turn’ towards emotions which has taken place in the entirety of social studies and humanities over the last two decades or so (Clough and Halley, 2007). Evidence of this emotional or affective turn or movement can be found within philosophy (Solomon, 2003, 2004; Nussbaum, 2001; Knuuttila, 2004), social theory (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010), psychology (Lewis and Haviland-Jones, 2004), geography (Davidson et al., 2005), history (Reddy, 2009), economic sociology (Pixley, 2002, 2012; Berezin, 2009; Haussoun, 2005), law (Cropanzano et al., 2011), organization (Sieben and Wettegren, 2010; Fineman, 2008) and media (Ben-Ze’ev, 2004; Demertzis, 2009, 2011) among others. In a more comprehensive and multidisciplinary manner, this turn has been signalled in the handbook edited by Davidson et al. (2003).

Despite this growth in the sociology of emotions as a generic field of study, a robust political sociology of emotions has not yet been established. Academics have only recently come to realize the importance of affect as a microfoundation of political action and macropolitical institutionalization, and the necessity of studying the politics–emotion nexus in a rigorous way. Nevertheless, although the term ‘political sociology of emotions’ is rarely used (Berezin, 2002; Demertzis, 2006) one could viably argue that a number of scholars have already carved out a space for the advent of this subfield (Goodwin et al., 2001; Ost, 2004; Flam and King, 2005; Clarke et al., 2006). Moreover, political psychology (or more accurately political psychologies, as there is no single and unified field) could not be excluded from this turn. The establishment of political psychology as a subdiscipline qua the International Society of Political Psychology founded in 1978, in itself reflects this affective turn. Remarkable contributions have forged a compelling discussion and analysis of the politics–emotions nexus, including the seminal handbook of Sears et al. (2003), as well as, inter alia, the work of Marcus (2002), Redlawsk (2006), Neuman et al. (2007) and Capelos (2002).

The political sociology of emotions and emotions-driven political psychology are two different perspectives of the politics–emotion analytical nexus. Broadly speaking, the political sociology of emotions perspective employs historical, cultural and socio-psychological conceptualizations and sets its conclusions on a more or less macro level. The political psychology of emotion as well as the political neuroscience of emotion point to a more individual-level analysis of the processes of opinionation and electoral choice, and the micro-analytical level. It would not be too much to say that these two perspectives have been growing past each other by developing their own theoretical repertoires and research agendas. Inspired by the published work of the members of the Research Network on the Sociology of Emotions (Hopkins et al., 2009; Sieben and Wettegren, 2010; Holmes and Greco, 2011), this book aims to bring the two perspectives together.

Our aim in presenting these two orientations is not premised on the introduction of a common, overarching theoretical framework, nor should one seek here some kind of unitary conceptual ground. It might be true that, as a response to pluralistic hyper-differentiation, a general trend in social studies and humanities toward de-differentiation and disciplinary coalescence has emerged (Crook et al., 1992, pp. 197–239).Yet, this trend is not to be deemed as the desire for a ‘grand design’ of the Social – or the Political for that matter. In this respect, what this book purports to do is to offer complementary theoretical and methodological accounts of the impetus of affect during political tensions and transitional periods. This is all the more crucial as the current socio-economic crisis in many European countries leads to contentious political actions which in most cases are, to a considerable degree, emotionally driven. Nevertheless, over and above the understanding of the affective dimensions of political tensions, any account of the emotions-politics nexus is destined to linger over two perennial and cognate issues: the very notion of emotion, on one hand, and the micro–macro link, on the other.

Emotion terms: Lost in translation?

Since 1884, William James’s question ‘what is an emotion?’ has haunted any single endeavour to theorize emotion, be it of a philosophical, sociological or psychological nature. Despite the ‘emotionology’ of our times, a generally accepted definition of emotion and a universally accepted typology are not currently available. With regards only to the psychological literature as the original source of systematic conceptualization of emotion in modern times, in their much-quoted article Paul Kleinginna and Anne Kleinginna (1981) pointed to 92 different terms related to emotion, which they classified into 11 categories based on the dominant characteristic each time attributed to ‘emotion’ (affective, cognitive, external motivational stimuli, physiological, expressive, disruptive, adaptive, multi-aspect, restrictive, motivational and sceptical). Nor is there, from the social neuroscience perspective, a ‘satisfactory common thread available that draws the myriad cultural emotional differentiations into one definitional basket’ (Franks, 2006, p. 60). As this definitional problem jumps from the psychological to the sociological literature, Turner and Stets (2005, p. 2), together with a host of other scholars, are hesitant to offer any precise definition (Elster, 1999, p. 241; Barbalet, 1998, p. 26; Ben-Ze’ev, 2000, p. 12; Turner and Stets, 2005, p. 2).

Despite Paul Griffiths’ proposal that the category ‘emotion’ be eliminated from the academic vocabulary (Griffiths, 1997, pp. 14, 241–2), it seems that among a good many sociologists there exists a consensus over the assumption that emotions per se are not of autonomic and innate biological nature but mediate between physiological reactions and cultural norms.¹ According to a ‘mild’ constructionist approach, it could be claimed that while emotions are not reducible to biology, not everything is a construction or is constructible with regard to emotions. Beyond the biological substratum which simply cannot be denied, emotions themselves are extremely plastic, subject to historical variability (Thoits, 1989, p. 319; Rosenwein, 2001, p. 231). Whether approached as an intrapersonal state, process, cultural construct, phenomenon, subjective experience, syndrome or disposition, emotion is thought to be composed of five elements: (1) activation of key body systems and action readiness towards something , (2) appraisal of situational stimuli, relational contexts and objects, (3) overt, free or inhibited, expression through facial, vocal and paralinguistic movement, (4) culturally provided linguistic labels of one or more of the first three elements, (5) socially constructed rules on which emotions should be experienced and expressed (Thoits, 1989, p. 318; Gordon, 1990, pp. 147, 151–2; Turner and Stets, 2005, p. 9; Sieben and Wettegren, 2010).² Despite there being no consensus on how they are related to each other, all five elements need not be present simultaneously for an emotion to exist or to be recognized by others. Nor is it necessary that all these elements are consciously experienced. In this respect, emotion can be viewed as a ‘multi-component phenomenon’ (Frijda, 2004a, p. 60) and as an ‘open system’ (Gordon, 1981).

As in the psychology of emotions, particular theoretical directions in the sociology of emotions prioritize different research agendas with regards to the aforementioned elements (Frijda, 2004a). For instance, affect control theory singles out affective appraisal, interaction theories centre on cultural norms, labelling and emotional culture, whereas ritual theories give prominence to the expression of emotional states and processes. A possible way out of the definitional labyrinth is to differentiate between ‘emotion’ as a large, generic category remaining at a higher level of abstraction, and specific emotions like fear, joy, hatred, resentment, hope, shame, pride and so on.³ As amorphous as it may be, emotion in the singular is a thought category or a hypothetical construct which provides in perspective a common thread among the internal shadings of emotions (in the plural) which are actually experienced by people (Barbalet, 1998, pp. 26, 80) and ‘merge endlessly into each other’ (James, 1931/1890, p. 448).⁴ A further question is raised as to whether or not a generic notion of emotion would be of ‘common’ or ’typical’ character.⁵ Even if a generic concept of emotion is described by the five components referred to above, it is unclear if its property is ‘common’ or ‘typical’. In the first case one would risk ‘over-inclusivity’ (Dixon, 2003, pp. 244–7) and/or a definitional over-extension (Sartori, 1984) which could render the notion redundant. The second implies a warrant denotative understanding through which one may determine the referents of the concept and lessen equivocation. There is no simple way to differentiate between a ‘common’ and ‘typical’ conceptualization of emotion.

Although overtly or covertly the contributors to this volume agree over valence, combination, hierarchy and duration as properties characterizing the mode of existence of emotions, there is no unanimity as to the definitional criteria of ‘emotion’, and the cognate notions of ‘affect’ and ‘sentiment’, using ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’ interchangeably. Thomas Scheff and Dennis Smith deal with specific emotions such as grief, shame, humiliation, revenge, resentment, anger, fear and sorrow and the ways these emotions are elicited in pressing political situations. Jack Barbalet and Nicolas Demertzis are interested more in the anatomy of fear as a distinct emotion rather than an overall definitional clarification of emotional semantics in general. Similarly, in their contributions Catarina Kinnvall and Barry Richards steer clear from conceptual or taxonomic concerns with regards to ‘emotion’.

Contrariwise, in their analysis Bettina Davou and Nicolas Demertzis refer to several definitional traits of emotion emphasizing the link between emotion, motivation and action. Along the tenets of the sociology of collective action, Wendy Pearlman is careful enough to distinguish ‘affects’ – her major concept – from sentiments, moods and reflex emotions. Affects are deemed as lasting evaluative orientations toward objects, ideas or persons, what several psychologists would name ‘feelings’ or ‘emotions’. In contrast, George Marcus systematically refers to ‘affect’ as a general subconscious category vis-a-vis cognition which appears to be the functional equivalent of ‘automatic’ versus ‘extended’ appraisal employed by appraisal theorists of emotion. Measuring the bidirectional link between emotional and cognitive considerations in political decision-making, in a strict psychological way Tereza Capelos defines emotion as a brief, distinct physical and mental reaction to stimuli consequential for the individual’s goals. In her analysis she groups negative emotions into two broad categories, ‘aversive affectivity’ and ‘anxious affectivity’. Analysing social movements, Steven Saxonberg regards emotion as a sort of social relation, adopting a macrosociological perspective, while van Troost, van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, based on appraisal theories of emotions, distinguish emotions from ‘mere’ feelings or moods by their relation to a specific object or idea. Finally, Jonathan Heaney approaches emotion in an apophatic manner, namely he argues as to what emotion is not.

The micro–macro mediation

That the individual is the locus of emotions and that few would doubt emotions have a biological basis has led psychologists and sociologists to assume that any analysis of affective phenomena necessarily remains at the micro level. In this respect, emotions are supposed to provide the ‘microfoundation’ of politics. Yet, this is not actually the case because, if anything, the constitution of emotion is not reducible to simple biological processes as individuals are always embedded in social contexts. Variably but crucially, these contexts determine ‘which emotions are likely to be expressed when and where, on what grounds and for what reasons, by what modes of expression, by whom’ (Kemper, 2004, p. 46). They do not emanate within the individual as much as between the individuals and ‘the interaction between individuals and their social situations’ (Barbalet, 1998, p. 67). The likelihood is that only a stronghold ‘organismic’ conceptualization of emotions would place and lock them at the micro level but such a conceptualization is more or less obsolete. From an evolutionary psychological standpoint, emotions make for the ‘deep sociality’ of humans since they function as the main mode of communication among our immediate ancestors (Turner and Stets, 2005, p. 263). Also, from a non-evolutionary psychological viewpoint, emotions are processes which establish, maintain, change or terminate the relation between the person and the environment, providing the infrastructure for social life while ‘the plans they prompt are largely plans that involve others’ (Oatley and Jenkins, 1996, p. 122, 124, 130). Finally, from a psycho-philosophical perspective, ‘emotions are a very important glue that links us to others’ (Ben-Ze’ev, 2000, p. 23).

So far, so good. Yet one might still claim that, as essentially individual properties, emotions connect rather than articulate our microworlds and macroworlds. That instead of coalescing these two worlds, emotions bring together the microworld and macroworld as two pre-constituted self-contained entities. One might press the point further and argue that the macrostructure is ultimately invisible, and is in fact an aggregate of microstructures and therefore emotions are exhausted at the individual level. In the first case the micro–macro clash remains unchallenged while in the second we are faced with a strong solipsistic constructivism. Most importantly, though, either case is not plausible due to two reasons. First, at the epistemological level, the sharp micro–macro distinction loses force because microtheories invariably involve some assumptions about the macrocontext where interaction occurs and vice versa (Münch and Smelser, 1987, p. 357). Second, as an analytical perspective, methodological dualism should be distinguished from philosophical or ontological dualism. Methodological dualism, in our case the micro–macro distinction in understanding the ‘emotional man’, is an analytic tool that helps us ‘to view the same social processes or social practices both from the point of view of actors and from that of systems’ (Mouzelis, 2008, pp. 226–7). Philosophical dualism assumes a radical and essentialist externality between structure and action, emotion and reason, body and mind. Whereas the first stands for a division of academic labour, the second entails a deep theoretical schism.

If methodological and philosophical dualism are not conflated then the micro–macro distinction becomes one of scale and ration (Ellis, 1999, p. 34). The confrontation between microreality and macroreality is characterized by Giddens (1984, p. 139) as ‘a phoney war if ever there was one’. On the same count, a good many social theorists have attempted to connect them in more ways than one. Many years ago, Alexander and Giesen (1987, p. 14) commented on five different modalities of the micro–macro link espoused by different, albeit intersecting, sociological, anthropological and psychological theories. More recently, researchers from mathematical sociology and socionics⁶ have developed models and assumptions about the problem of cooperation, heterogeneity of actors, structural balance, opinion formation, knowledge acquisition and memory, perception and problem solving, as well as the function of emotion in relation to norms, both in natural and artificial societies (Staller and Petta, 2001; von Scheve et al., 2006; Buskens et al., 2011). Not infrequently, political sociologists and sociologists of emotions have argued for a methodological distinction/relation between micro, meso and macro level of analysis (Girvin, 1990, pp. 34–6; Charalambis and Demertzis, 1993; von Scheve and von Luede, 2005; Turner and Stets, 2005, pp. 312–13). With regard to the analysis of emotions, the micro level concerns the intrapersonal dimensions of emotive life, the meso level corresponds to social interaction in groups, institutions, everyday encounters and the emotional dynamic therein, whereas the macro level entails norms, rules, law, traditions and socio-economic structures which provide the ‘path dependency’ for emotional cultures and social emotions to be formed. As precise as it may be, usually this triple analytical distinction is either taken for granted or falls by the wayside as the meso level is subsumed within the macro.

The relation between norms or rules and emotions is a privileged domain where the micro–macro interconnection is well documented within the wider debate over the role of emotion in social action (Flam, 1990; Barbalet, 2002b). Research has shown that social norms constrain actions by denoting some options for action as more adequate than others, imputing negative and positive emotions in cases of sanctions and rewards (for example, Conte and Castelfranchi, 1995; Turner and Stets, 2005, pp. 179–84; von Scheve et al., 2006). It has been documented that alongside social exchange normative behaviour is guided by emotions, and that the maintenance and enforcement of norms is strongly tied to emotions. The most crucial emotion therein seems to be shame (Elster, 1999, p. 146). Thus norms elicit emotions and are supported by emotions. As they are distributed in time and space, norms function as an instance of the macro reality; internalized by the subjects qua beliefs and goals they are rendered an instance of microreality.

Adopting the vocabulary of structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), we can argue that norms as macrostructures are instantiated through their emotional-practical enactment. This is most clearly revealed in emotion cultures and the feeling rules therein. Emotion cultures contain rules as to what people are supposed to feel in certain types of situations (Hochschild, 1979). The very conceptual essence of emotion implies that socially constructed rules define what emotions should be experienced and expressed in specific situations. As Elster (1999, p. 262) writes, culture ‘acts as a modifier – whether as amplifier or as brake – of the emotions’. Hence, although not conflated with or reduced to the macroreality of emotion culture, the emotional micro-experience is inexorably linked to and mediated by it. The micro–macro link in emotions resembles the way Israel (1977) and Giesen (1987) approach constitutive rules of language and society; constitutive rules are categorical imperatives for interaction, they are norms which prescribe and describe action and by doing so they determine it. In order for someone to speak and pass one’s message one must follow rules of language that are not invented individually, in other words one is subjected to the macro social world; yet in specific language games and speech acts, one has to be sufficiently skilful to instantiate these rules and accommodate them in various everyday circumstances. Voting can be seen in the same way: as an institutionalized political practice structured by constitutive rules, and as an individual political action conveyed by subjective traits such as interest, motivation or preference. All in all then, institutionalized feeling rules and experience or even expression of emotion are not extrinsic to each other; on the contrary they make for the articulation and mediation of macro and micro in the realm of social-emotional life. As Karin Knorr-Cetina argues from a methodological point of view, the macro is not to be seen as a particular layer of social reality on top of micro-episodes but as residing ‘within these micro-episodes where it results from the structuring practices of agents’ (Knorr-Cetina, 1981, p. 34).

Thomas Scheff is among the first and the very few scholars⁷ of emotions who have placed much effort in developing socio-psychological analyses that tie together the micro and macro perspectives. Reviewing an array of cases from international relations, nationalism, psycho-therapeutic settings, literature and, of course, emotions, he formulates a ‘part-whole’ morphological method where the molecular of social life is embedded in larger contexts in a methodical and abducting manner (Scheff, 1990, 1997, 1994). Scheff’s insistence that shame is the master emotion of our time is one of his most influential contributions in the (political) sociology of emotion, as he illuminates how this emotion can have a crucial impact in inter-group political tensions. The part-whole methodology is covertly present in his chapter in the present volume, resonating the analytic style of Elias’s The Civilizing Process as well as his theorizing (1991) on the relationship between individual and society.

In one way or another, the micro–macro mediation permeates all chapters in this book. For example, setting out from ‘relational sociology’, Jonathan Heaney advocates the notion of ‘national habitus’ as a theoretical tool which articulates individual emotional states (micro) and structural configurations of power (macro). In their contribution, van Troost, van Stekelenburg and Klandermans are quite clear that through group identification and group-based appraisals individual emotions turn into group-based emotions. Naturally, as the focus of analysis and the gravity of argumentation vary in the contributions to follow, apart from criss-crossing thematizations, some chapters lean more to the micro analytical style whereas others do so to a lesser degree.

Political settings with affective charge

The chapters of this book combine theory-building with empirical ‘lived examples’ while straddling American and European research and theoretical profiles. In Chapter 2, George Marcus elaborates his seminal theory of ‘affective intelligence’, perhaps the most prominent current input of political neuroscience. It has emerged as the principal theory of preconscious affective appraisal systems, and Marcus combines rather than contrasts the deliberative and the partisan model of citizenship. As the ‘public good’ is necessarily a fallible and contested fabrication, the challenge for antagonists and for bystanders is to control the agenda precisely because the contested issues are far too numerous for anyone to attend to. Partisan antagonists act on the grounds of the ‘disposition system’ exhibiting unwavering habitual attachment to their causes and ideas. Sophisticated and interested bystanders are likely to be stimulated by the ‘surveillance system’ as they try to test