Emotions and Social Movements

The study of emotions in politics and protest has emerged (or reemerged) in the past decade through a messy inductive process of recognizing the obvious: Emotions of many sorts permeate political action. In grappling with the inadequacies of existing theories of politics, researchers grabbed pieces of emotion theory opportunistically where they could find them. Few existing approaches in the sociology of emotion have been applied systematically, much less compared, in this field, but almost all have found their way into the mix to some degree. This inductive and relatively atheoretical approach may make social movements a useful venue for comparing theories of emotions developed in other settings.