The effects of affect: the place of emotions in the mobilizations of 2011
- Autores: Tova Benski, Lauren Langman
- Localización: Global movements, national grievances: mobilizing for "real democracy" and social justice / Benjamín Tejerina Montaña (ed. lit.), Ignacia Perugorría (ed. lit.), 2012, ISBN 978-84-9860-768-0, págs. 68-78
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Throughout the world we have seen the proliferation of a variety of progressive, democratic social movements in which vast numbers of people have challenged neo liberal globalization. In this paper we offer a theoretical frame for the analysis of the most recent challenges posed to neo liberal social and economic policies as they were shaped in late capitalism.
We focus on the emotional aspect that is vital to mobilization. We lean on Habermas' thesis of the crisis of Legitimacy at the Macro and Micro levels, translating the cognitive processes into their emotional counterparts.
To do this we draw on theoretical frames from the Sociology of Social Movements and the sociology of emotions. More particularly we see the process of "emotional liberation" as the equivalent of McAdam's "cognitive liberation" and both as part of the process of subjectivation as put forward by Touraine.
These formulations have led up to look for the emotions that tie people to authorities in order to understand which are the emotions that need to evolve in order to liberate people from their loyalty to authorities. We found a constellation of non – congruent emotions such as distrust and disrespect of authorities/elites or their perceived agents, indignation and righteous anger, humiliation and hope. The value of our proposed structure of argumentation is in the powerful combination of macro and micro processes and the combination of cognition and emotions.
