Erika Summers-Effler

Building on Erving Goffman and Emile Durkheim, Randall Collins has demonstrated that situations have rules, processes, and constraints that are largely independent of more macro-social dynamics—this realm of action is referred to as the interaction order (Collins 2004; Goffrnan 1983). Collins's and Goffman's work on the interaction order illustrates how situations emerge and then shape and constrain action. We suggest this process of emergence and constraint can be further understood by explaining how action manifests as various types of involvement in situations. Specifically, we suggest that the different types of involvement manifest depending on how we focus our attention within situations. To understand how, why, and when we focus our attention, we must consider how cognition and emotion shape perception. Thus, we build on theories of cognition, emotion, and attention to explain how and when various sorts of social involvement emerge.

In this chapter, we review the study of emotions in social movements. We begin by situating the absence of emotions in Social Movement studies in relation to Sociology as a field more broadly. Then we review how scholars have theorized emotions in relation to social movement mobilization, commitment, and demobilization. Following this, we draw from studies within the field of Social Movements and the field of Sociology of Emotions to provide some useful ways to distinguish emotions analytically. Next, we draw from Cognitive Social Science, particularly literature on grounded cognition, to emphasize the need for situated analyses of emotion. Finally, we close with a few fruitful paths forward in the study of emotion in Social Movements.

Weber's typology of religious orientations is incomplete. Much more attention has been paid to the other-worldly mysticism of monastic or contemplative withdrawal from society than the neglected category of inner-worldly mysticism. In Weber's brief treatment, he concludes that inner-worldly mysticism results in passive acquiescence to social conditions. Alternately, we draw on examples from Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day to demonstrate not only how mysticism can be tightly linked to the social world, but how mystical practices can create meaningful social change. We argue that this change is possible because inner-worldly mysticism holds the potential to generate solidarity across traditional power and status divides. We illustrate how this potential for interaction-level change can spread horizontally; the number of small groups committed to carrying out inner-worldly mystical practices can grow until such groups spread across communities and beyond. In this way, the work of inner-worldly mystics can create meaningful change without ever vying for power on the macro political stage.

How does social organization persist? How does social organization transform? This article proposes that social scientists can begin to answer these questions by considering social organization as the intermittent construction and decay of patterned action, and social actors as centers of organization with the capacity to exert force within some social scene. From this perspective, contexts that shape the dynamics of both actors and scenes could be imagined as turbulent flows that push and pull action into temporary patterns. By viewing social organization as temporary vortexes of involvement within turbulent flows of action, social scientists can focus their attention on the processes at play in the creation, stabilization, and collapse of social organization. Such a perspective corrects some of the limitations in network and field approaches for investigating the fluidity of social organization.

Ritual theories assert that focused interaction, which these theories refer to as ritual, is at the heart of all social dynamics. Rituals generate group emotions that are linked to symbols, forming the basis for beliefs, thinking, morality, and culture. People use the capacity for thought, beliefs, and strategy to create emotion-generating interactions in the future. This cycle, interaction → emotions → symbols → interaction, forms patterns of interaction over time. These patterns are the most basic structural force that organizes society.

When individuals routinely lack access to interactions that build emotional energy (EE), they use indirect routes to maximize EE. They build strategies around attempting to minimize the loss of EE. I refer to these indirect routes as defensive strategies. Defensive strategies reflect what psychologists refer to as an internal locus of control – placing control over one’s circumstances within one’s self rather than outside in one’s environment. While an internal locus of control may help an individual to adapt to their current situation, it also helps to preserve the status quo. I focus on the case of staying with an abusive domestic partner as an illustration of the social dynamics that underlie apparently self-destructive behavior and the preservation of abusive interaction patterns, including: the formation of defensive strategies, the emotional and cognitive implications of relying on defensive strategies, the situations that are likely to lead to the cessation of defensive strategies in favor of proactive strategies, and the social implications of defensive strategies.

This paper uses systems theory to clarify the crucial point that there is a basic, inborn, bodily motivation, and that a social theory of the self cannot simply be a theory of process. By bridging across current neuroscience, cognitive science, and systems theory, I propose a self that is fundamentally emotional energy seeking. There are other bodily needs (food, drink, etc), but these satiate quickly, and although they can override everything else at moments when they are low, they are not the central switching mechanism, the top of the hierarchy in the subsumption architecture of the self. Basing the formation and ongoing processes of the self in the motive to maximize emotional energy can explain the seeming conflict between tendencies towards self-consistency and the potential for creativity and change. It also allows us to detail the mechanisms that underlie the process of individuals drawing on culture as a resource and in turn diffusing new symbols and meanings into the larger culture.

Can one explain both the resilience of the status quo and the possibility for resistance from a subordinate position? This paper aims to resolve these seemingly incompatible perspectives. By extending Randall Collins's interaction ritual theory, and synthesizing it with Norbert Wiley's model of the self, this paper suggests how the emotional dynamics between people and within the self can explain social inertia as well as the possibility for resistance and change. Diverging from literature on the sociology of emotions that has been concerned with individual emotional processes, this paper considers the collective level in order to explore how movement action is motivated. The emotional dynamics of subordinate positioning that limit women's options in face-to-face interactions are examined, as are the social processes of developing feminist consciousness and a willingness to participate in resistance work. Pointing toward empirical applications , I conclude by suggesting conditions where resistance is likely. When considering social change, two realities must be reconciled: social structure is usually reproduced and social change does occasionally happen. A useful theory of social change must be able to explain both actualities. Although central to understanding social movements, this quandary has received little direct attention in the social movements literature. In this paper I attempt to fill this gap and build a theory of consciousness raising and movement participation, in this case feminist resistance. I reveal a new perspective on social movements that avoids many of the problems associated with resource mobilization, new social movements, and cultural approaches to understanding social movements. In the first half of the paper I explain social inertia, in particular the maintenance of women's subordinate positioning. Randall Collins's interaction ritual theory suggests an emotional motivation for action that offers a base for explaining the resilience of power structures as well as the potential for social change. I combine Collins's interaction ritual theory, work in the sociology of emotions, and Wiley's model of the self to suggest how resistance from a subordinate position is possible. I delineate how the emotional dynamics of subordinate positioning operate to limit women's options in face-to-face interactions in such a way that the status quo is usually reproduced. This theory-building is supported by interviews with women about feminism and feminist activism. In the second half of the paper I build on the first half to explain the emotional dynamics that would likely produce critical consciousness and encourage resistance. At the end, I point toward empirical applications by suggesting social conditions that can provide the emotional dynamics necessary for generating efforts to bring about social change from disadvantaged positions.