Emotions, Politics, and Social Change

The study of the theoretical and political relevance of emotions has gained a particular importance in the last decades, with scholars increasingly recognising the explanatory and structuring role of emotions (Barbalet 2001, Cerulo 2015, Clarke et al. 2006, Demertzis 2013, Hochschild 2024, Marcus 2000, Massumi 2015, Pratesi 2026, Wodak 2015). Such relevance is particularly evident within the areas of political sciences and politics in general, where the key, influential role of emotions emerges in electoral campaigns, several types of political protest and mobilisation (Jasper 2018), and mediatic discourses. It is indeed now ascertained that the achievement of political consensus relies primarily, if not at times entirely, on emotional appeals. In this contribution, I examine some of the most relevant contributions addressing the complex connection between emotions and politics with a specific (but not exclusive) focus on Randall Collins’ IR model (2004) and its usefulness to interpret and understand current emotional dynamics at the national and international level. A specific attention is devoted to those authors (Ahmed 2004, Collins 2004, Hutchison and Bleiker 2014, Jasper 2006, Scheff 2019) who managed to overcome a whole series of misleading dichotomies (individual and society, micro and macro, emotions and rational action, positivism and interpretivism, etc.) as well as to show the possibilities for a politics of love and hope that may stimulate and foster solidarity, emancipation, and collective participation (Ferguson 2017, García-Andrade et al. 2018, Grossi and West 2017, hooks 2000, Jónasdóttir and Ferguson 2014). How can emotions help us interpret and understand contemporary sociological and political phenomena? How do emotions highlight the link between affective dynamics that unfold at the micro level and their broader implications that solidify at the macro level? How do emotions intersect new forms of communication and new types of public sphere? Starting from questions like these, I will discuss the heuristic value of emotions to understand the nature and the multiple implications of emerging social phenomena. Such questions will be addressed by contextualising the sociological and political significance of emotions in specific empirical contexts and in different research areas.