Blackwell Reference Online

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Emotions are a part of all social action, yet they have been given little or no place in most social-scientific theories. They have been considered too personal, too idiosyncratic, too inchoate, or too irrational to be modeled or measured properly. This neglect has characterized the study of social movements since the 1970s. In the structural and organizational paradigm that has dominated research, emotions have been dismissed as unimportant, epiphenomenal, or invariable, providing little explanatory power. Even cultural analysts of movements have largely ignored emotions. Since the 1990s, however, the silence has been broken by a rising chorus of researchers describing emotions in protest, social movements, and political conflict (Taylor 1995; Groves 1997; Fernández 2000; Aminzade and McAdam 2001; Goodwin et al. 2001; Petersen 2002).Emotions have been inadequately studied for several reasons. For one, the term and concept emotion has been used to cover a number of distinct entities, which have different sources and affect action differently (Griffiths 1997). For this reason, we have structured this chapter to highlight the different types of emotions. The reflex fear of being struck has little in common with the love one feels for family or nation or with moods such as resignation or joy. We distinguish between immediate reflex emotions, longer-term affective commitments, moods, ... log in or subscribe to read full text