Crisis, Subjectivity, and Civic Agency In the Global South: Social Emotions, Meaning-Making, and Democratic Imaginaries

This panel explores how people in the Global South experience political rupture emotionally and cognitively. These political ruptures elicit varied emotions and bring about a sense of urgency in subjects to make sense of what has happened which, in turn, shapes subjectivities, civic agency or helplessness, and (anti)democratic imaginaries. While political ruptures are often examined through their geopolitical, structural, or economic dimensions, less attention has been paid to how individuals and communities interpret and narrate their emotional experience under uncertainty, instability, and disruption.

Bringing together perspectives from social psychology and sociology, the panel focuses on cognitive and affective dimensions of political ruptures. It examines which emotions such as hope, shame, anger, fear, resentment, and solidarity are produced, negotiated, and mobilized in everyday life. Rather than treating political ruptures as merely external events, the panel investigates how they become lived experiences through processes of meaning-making and interpretation.

Particular attention is given to the ways these processes influence civic (dis)engagement and/or (anti)democratic imagination for future politics. Do certain interpretations of political ruptures foster collective action or dispair, resilience or political apathy, and emancipatory or regressive visions of how the future politics should look like? Under what conditions do they lead to withdrawal, self-blame, political cynicism, or social fragmentation?

As an open session, it welcomes theoretical, empirical, and comparative contributions from diverse regional contexts. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates on how people imagine, negotiate, and act upon uncertain futures in times of prolonged crisis.