Rethinking Affective Experience and Popular Emotion: World War I and the Construction of Group Emotion in International Relations

Abstract

Research in International Relations (IR) frequently confronts claims about the emotions shared by members of a group. While much attention has been devoted to the potential for affective and emotional experience beyond the individual level, IR scholars have said less about the politics of invoking popular emotion. This article addresses that gap. Specifically, we argue that between individual-and even shared-affective experience on the one hand and group-based "popular emotion" on the other exists not mechanisms of aggregation but rather processes of framing, projection, and propagation that are deeply political. We distinguish between two tropes that commonly structure references to popular emotion: communal emotion, the idealized attribution of an authentic, unifying emotional response of "the people," and mass emotion, a volatile and potentially dangerous mob-like reaction, but one also susceptible to manipulation. Using the outbreak of World War I as a showcase, we demonstrate the political significance of popular emotion, including its enduring relevance for understanding contemporary populism.

Making Human Rights Emotional: A Research Agenda to Recover Shame in “Naming and Shaming”

“…Nor do we know if there are emotional considerations to their selection of causes or whether they are cognizant of the emotional appeal of some issues over others, adding another dimension to Bob's work () on the market for NGO attention. Further, emotions are not just reactions, that is, something that is felt but can also constitute goals—something that is sought, as Hall and Ross argue here (Hall & Ross, ). Thus, what do NGOs intend to achieve with what we assume are naming and shaming tactics?…”

“…The emotional turn in IR largely focuses its lens on collective entities such as states and, to some extent, individuals. Scholars have shown persuasively that collective entities like states and nations are capable of experiencing emotions (whether sincere or instrumentally adopted) and that these emotions can undergird interactions in international politics and result in domestic and foreign policy choices (Hall, ; Hall & Ross, ; Mercer, ; Sasley, ). Scholars of state identity also demonstrate how narratives and practices construct or destabilize states' ontological and emotional security (Epstein, ; Mitzen, ; Steele, ; Subotic & Zarakol, ).…”

“…For instance, Hall () defines emotional diplomacy as “coordinated state ‐level behavior that explicitly and officially projects the image of a particular emotional response toward other states ” (p. 2, our emphasis). Even this special issue, with its eclectic and wide range of topics, retains a primarily state‐ and leadership‐centric focus while extending to examining collective emotions at the communal level (Edney‐Browne, ; Hall & Ross, ).…”

Studying Emotions in Security and Diplomacy: Where We Are Now and Challenges Ahead

“…The theme of shared emotions by members of a group reappeared in the contribution by Hall and Ross () who critically examined claims about “popular emotion”—referring to specific emotions purported to characterize a group—to argue that these are not innocent descriptors but products of often intensely political processes of framing, projection, and propagation. They illustrated the analytical value of this approach for studying popular emotion by examining a paradigmatic twentieth‐century case, namely, the “mood of 1914” and “war enthusiasm” on the eve of World War I.…”

“…In other words, traumatized individuals go back and forth in time. This is useful and important for us to think about and analyze how political actors (e.g., in our contemporary political context, far‐right populist parties) generate and capitalize upon emotions about the “past”—which is now either long gone or did not ever exist—with the promise that the future of “the self” is in this past that is loved, missed, and longed for (Ariely, ; Hall & Ross, ; van Hoef & O'Connor, ). Similarly, fears and anxieties about the past can be instrumentalized for shaping the present and future of the collective self (Adisonmez, ; Eberle & Daniel, ) and what is legitimate to do in order to secure “the self” (Houck et al, ).…”