5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Research on subjectivity in social movements has provided various evidence for the impact of social movement experience on activists' lives. These experiences influence, for example, their biographical trajectories, their choice of friendships, their choice of partners, their studies, their jobs, their political views and the way they see the world. Within this perspective, studies on emotions in social movements have gained prominence in recent decades. While the identification and classification of emotions have taken an important place, there are critical views that invite the study of emotions from other approaches and methodologies to understand the most intimate emotional experiences of activists -for example those that only appear after some time since the lived experience-, as well as their temporality and their modes of politicisation.

In this joint session we invite you to present papers around three axes. The first one invites to present findings that question the hierarchisation and classification of emotions derived from statistical models of "normality" (e.g. how do activists describe the experience of feeling contradictory emotions in a single moment?). Second, to allow for the complexification of current definitions of the types of emotions in activism, taking into account intersectionality, subjective experiences and cultural frameworks of belonging (e.g. how does the expression of emotions vary according to the culture of belonging?). And third, to address methodological innovations for the study of emotions in different contexts of activism, whether democratic or authoritarian (e.g. What methodological innovations are most appropriate for studying emotions in different contexts?)