Power and Emotion

This collection is concerned with two fundamental concepts of social science– power and emotion. Power permeates all human relationships and is constitutive of social, economic, and political life. It stands at the centre of social and political theorizing, and its study has enriched scholarship within a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, philosophy, and anthropology. The conceptual cluster of emotion, by contrast, had a more troubled time within these same disciplines. However, since the 1970’s and the advent of the ‘emotional turn’, there has been a widespread re-evaluation of emotion in and for our shared social existence and, today, emotions research is at forefront of contemporary social science. Yet, although both concepts are now widely seen as fundamental, research on these two phenomena has tended to run in parallel.

This collection, featuring leading international scholars, seeks to unite and deploy both concepts, emotion and power, in a variety of ways, and on a diverse array of topics such as: education, organizations, social movements, politics, ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, rhetoric and in comparative intellectual history. The results are at the bleeding edge of scholarship on these concepts, and will make important reading for practitioners and students working in the sociology of emotions, social and political power, political sociology, organization studies, and for sociological and political theory more generally.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Power.

Jonathan G. Heaney has recently completed a PhD in the School of Political Science and Sociology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland. His thesis examined emotions and social change in the Republic of Ireland. He is a member of the European Sociological Association Emotions Research Network (RN11) and the International Political Science Association Research Committee (RC36) on Political Power.

Helena Flam received her Fil. Kand in Sweden and her PhD from Columbia University, USA. She has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, since 1993. She has published widely on emotions, social movements and work organizations, and is co-founder and member of the ESA Emotions Network (RN11).