Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements

Passionate Politics Passionate Politics Emotions and Social Movements Edited by Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London Jeff Goodwin is associate professor of sociology at New York University and author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991. James M. Jasper is an independent scholar and the author of Restless Nation and The Art of Moral Protest. Francesca Polletta is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, and the author of Free- dom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (forthcoming). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 2001 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2001 Printed in the United States of America 10987654321 54321 ISBN (cloth): 0-226-30398-5 ISBN (paper): 0-226-30399-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Passionate politics : emotions and social movements / edited by Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-30398-5 (cloth) — ISBN 0-226-30399-3 (pbk.) 1. Social movements. 2. Emotions. 3. Political science. I. Goodwin, Jeff. II. Jasper, James M., 1957–. III. Polletta, Francesca. HM881 .P38 2001 303.48′4—dc21 2001000938 ᭺∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. To all those who have pursued social justice with passion Contents Preface and Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Why Emotions Matter Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta 1 Part One Theoretical Perspectives 1 Social Movements and the Focus of Emotional Attention Randall Collins 27 2 Putting Emotions in Their Place Craig Calhoun 45 3 A Structural Approach to Social Movement Emotions Theodore Kemper 58 4 The Business of Social Movements Frank Dobbin 74 Part Two Cultural Contexts 5 Emotions and Political Identity: Mobilizing Affection for the Polity Mabel Berezin 83 6 A Revolution of the Soul: Transformative Experiences and Immediate Abolition Michael P. Young 99 7 Revenge of the Shamed: The Christian Right’s Emotional Culture War Arlene Stein 115 vii viii Contents Part Three Recruitment and Internal Dynamics 8 Rock the Boat, Don’t Rock the Boat, Baby: AmbivalenceandtheEmergenceof Militant AIDS Activism Deborah Gould 135 9 The Social Structure of Moral Outrage in Recruitment to the U.S. Central America Peace Movement Sharon Erickson Nepstad and Christian Smith 158 10 Fear, Laughter, and Collective Power: The Making of Solidarity at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdnask, Poland, August 1980 Colin Barker 175 11 The Felt Politics of Charity: Serving ‘‘the Ambassadors of God’’ and Saving ‘‘the Sinking Classes’’ Rebecca Anne Allahyari 195 12 Animal Rights and the Politics of Emotion: Folk Constructions of Emotion in the Animal Rights Movement Julian McAllister Groves 212 Part Four The Emotions of Conflict 13 Emotional Strategies: The Collective Reconstruction and Display of Oppositional Emotions in the Movement against Child Sexual Abuse Nancy Whittier 233 14 Finding Emotion in Social Movement Processes: Irish Land Movement Metaphors and Narratives Anne Kane 251 15 The Emotional Benefits of Insurgency in El Salvador Elisabeth Jean Wood 267 Contents ix 16 Emotion Work in High-Risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the U.S. and East German Civil Rights Movements Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff 282 Conclusion: Second That Emotion? Lessons from Once-Novel Concepts in Social Movement Research FrancescaPollettaandEdwinAmenta 303 List of Contributors 317 References 321 Index 353 Preface and Acknowledgments Like many edited volumes, this one began life as a grant pro- posal, evolved into a conference, and finally blossomed into a book. Our own research on social movements and political conflict had made us dissatisfied with the reigning paradigms for studying these, and we tried to break loose by turning to culture, psychology, and agency as other guiding impulses. Exploring the emotions of protest seemed like a way to develop a more multifaceted image of political actors, with a broader range of goals and motivations, tastes and styles, pains and pleasures, than were commonly recognized in the academic literature. Although much work remains, we hope this volume is the first step toward a richer view of political action. For the conference, we received a grant from the American Socio- logical Association and the National Science Foundation through their Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD). Craig Calhoun, then chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University, provided matching funds from that institution. In February 1999, we were able to convene a small conference in New York. Attended by roughly one hun- dred people over the course of three days, almost thirty scholars presented their insights into emotions, politics, social movements, and social theory. Given the lack of attention to emotions and politics in recent decades, we were surprised—and of course gratified—by the interest and enthusiasm of all the participants. Thomas Lynch, Barbara Gribbins, and Merna xi xii Preface and Acknowledgments Raymond of NYU’s Department of Sociology helped enormously with the organization and logistics of the conference, which proved to be one of the most stimulating and pleasurable we have attended. Because we feel that the subfields of sociology have become too ingrown, unable or unwilling to learn much from one another, we invited a number of people to participate in the conference who are not known primarily or at all for research on social movements and politics, in- cluding Randall Collins, Theodore Kemper, Frank Dobbin, and Patri- cia Clough. Charles Tilly and Edwin Amenta, well-known experts on social movements, but from more structural perspectives, sought to bridge different traditions within the field of social movements. For a variety of reasons, we were able to include only about half the conference papers and comments in the present book. We would like to thank those conference participants whose work is not represented in this volume, but who enriched everyone’s thinking about emotions and politics: Leo d’Anjou, Lynn Chancer, Patricia Clough, Helena Flam, Deb- orah Gerson, Linda Klouzal, John van Male, Doyle McCarthy, Kelly Moore, Jean-Pierre Reed, Charles Tilly, and Guobin Yang. Contributors followed a fairly quick timetable in going through a number of revisions, responding to several rounds of comments from the editors and others. Two anonymous reviewers provided sound guidance and suggestions. At the press, Doug Mitchell’s enthusiasm was inspiring, perfectly backed up by Robert Devens’s flawless attention to details. We would also like to thank Saran Ghatak of NYU’s Department of Sociology for his editorial assistance. Royalties from this volume will be contributed to the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta Introduction Why Emotions Matter Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres— Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision and feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. —T. S. Eliot, “East Coker” Once at the center of the study of politics, emotions have led a shadow existence for the last three decades, with no place in the rational- istic, structural, and organizational models that dominate academic political analysis. Social scientists portray humans as rational and instrumen- tal, traits which are oddly assumed to preclude any emotions. Even the recent rediscovery of culture has taken a cognitive form, as though political participants were computers mechanically processing symbols. Some- how, academic observers have managed to ignore the swirl of passions all around them in political life. With this volume, we hope to reverse 1 2 Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta this trend, reincorporating emotions such as anger and indignation, fear and disgust, joy and love, into research on politics and protest. Emotions, properly understood, may prove once again to be a central concern of political analysis. Max Weber, more than anyone, set social scientists down the road of associating emotions with irrationality. Unlike “logical” action, he claimed, we understand emotion-laden action through empathy, or at least some of us do: “The more we ourselves are susceptible to such emotional reactions as anxiety, anger, ambition, envy, jealousy, love, enthusiasm, pride, vengefulness, loyalty, devotion, and appetites of all sorts, and to the ‘irrational’ conduct which grows out of them, the more readily we can empathize with them. For the purposes of a typological scientific analysis it is convenient to treat all irrational, affectually determined ele- ments of behavior as factors of deviation from a conceptually pure type of rational action” (1978 [1922]: 6). This places emotional action in a similar category as “traditional” action, in a gray zone “between mean- ingful and merely reactive behavior.” Of course, Weber recognized the possibility of “mixed” types of action, but he generally assumed that rational action could not be emotional, and vice versa. Social scientists have been traveling down this road ever since. Until the 1960s emotions were considered a key—for some, the key—to understanding virtually all political action that occurred outside familiar political institutions. In nineteenth-century images of the mob, normal individuals were thought to be transformed mysteriously in the presence of a crowd, prone to anger and violence, and easily manipulated by demagogues.

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