Emotions In Contention: Affective Repertoires, Moral Shocks and Collective Action

This joint session between RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change and RC58 Society and Emotions invites submissions that examine the emotional dynamics of contentious politics. Social movement research has long analyzed repertoires of contention, framing, identities, organizations, and political opportunities, while the sociology of emotions has shown that emotions are central to mobilization, persistence, collective meaning-making, and conflict. This session brings these perspectives together by asking how emotions shape the forms, intensities, trajectories, and effects of collective action.

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions on emotional and affective repertoires across a wide range of collective actors, including progressive, conservative, reactionary, populist, and grassroots movements. Papers may examine emotions such as anger, hope, fear, grief, pride, joy, shame, resentment, care, and solidarity, as well as broader affective processes through which emotions are produced, circulated, transformed, and contested within movements. Contributions may also explore how emotional dynamics are shaped by gender, sexuality, race, class, age, disability, and queer/LGBTIQ+ politics, including struggles over recognition, intimacy, violence, stigma, mourning, care, and public visibility.

Attention may be given to the circulation of emotions across digital platforms, transnational networks, and hybrid online-offline forms of activism. The session is also interested in methodological innovations for studying emotions in protest, including interviews, ethnography, visual and audiovisual analysis, digital traces, archival materials, comparative research, and reflexive approaches.

By connecting social movement studies with the sociology of emotions, this session aims to advance debate on how emotions actively constitute protest repertoires, solidarities, conflicts, meanings, and political consequences.