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Passionate Politics

Emotions and Social Movements

Emotions are back. Once at the center of the study of politics, emotions have receded into the shadows during the past three decades, with no place in the rationalistic, structural, and organizational models that dominate academic political analysis.

With this new collection of essays, Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta reverse this trend, reincorporating emotions such as anger, indignation, fear, disgust, joy, and love into research on politics and social protest. The tools of cultural analysis are especially useful for probing the role of emotions in politics, the editors and contributors to Passionate Politics argue. Moral outrage, the shame of spoiled collective identities, or the joy of imagining a new and better society, are not automatic responses to events. Rather, they are related to moral institutions, felt obligations and rights, and information about expected effects, all of which are culturally and historically variable.

With its look at the history of emotions in social thought, examination of the internal dynamics of protest groups, and exploration of the emotional dynamics that arise from interactions and conflicts among political factions and individuals, Passionate Politics will lead the way toward an overdue reconsideration of the role of emotions in social movements and politics generally.

Contributors:
Rebecca Anne Allahyari
Edwin Amenta
Collin Barker
Mabel Berezin
Craig Calhoun
Randall Collins
Frank Dobbin
Jeff Goodwin
Deborah B. Gould
Julian McAllister Groves
James M. Jasper
Anne Kane
Theodore D. Kemper
Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Steven Pfaff
Francesca Polletta
Christian Smith
Arlene Stein
Nancy Whittier
Elisabeth Jean Wood
Michael P. Young

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Emotions Matter
Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta
Part One - Theoretical Perspectives
1. Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional Attention
Randall Collins
2. Putting Emotions in Their Place
Craig Calhoun
3. A Structural Approach to Social Movement Emotions
Theodore Kemper
4. The Business of Social Movements
Frank Dobbin
Part Two - Cultural Contexts
5. Emotions and Political Identity: Mobilizing Affection for the Polity
Mabel Berezin
6. A Revolution of the Soul: Transformative Experiences and Immediate Abolition
Michael P. Young
7. Revenge of the Shamed: The Christian Right’s Emotional Culture War
Arlene Stein
Part Three - Recruitment and Internal Dynamics
8. Rock the Boat, Don’t Rock the Boat, Baby: Ambivalence and the Emergence of Militant AIDS Activism
Deborah Gould
9. The Social Structure of Moral Outrage in Recruitment to the U.S. Central America Peace Movement
Sharon Erickson, Nepstad and Christian Smith
10. Fear, Laughter, and Collective Power: The Making of Solidarity at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdnask, Poland, August 1980
Colin Baker
11. The Felt Politics of Charity: Serving "the Ambassadors of God" and Saving "the Sinking Classes"
Rebecca Anne Allahyari
12. Animal Rights and the Politics of Emotion: Folk Constructions of Emotion in the Animal Rights Movement
Julian McAllister Groves
Part Four - The Emotions of Conflict
13. Emotional Strategies: The Collective Reconstruction and Display of Oppositional Emotions in the Movement against Child Sexual Abuse
Nancy Whittier
14. Finding Emotion in Social Movement Processes: Irish Land Movement Metaphors and Narratives
Anne Kane
15. The Emotional Benefits of Insurgency in El Salvador
Elisabeth Jean Wood
16. Emotion Work in High-Risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the U.S. and East German Civil Rights Movements
Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff
Conclusion: Second That Emotion? Lessons from Once-Novel Concepts in Social Movement Research
Francesca Polletta and Edwin Amenta
List of Contributors
References
Index

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