This paper discusses the experience and ideology of emotions among animal rights activists, and more broadly, the applicability of the sociology of emotions to the field of social movements. I examine the case of a social movement which relies heavily on empathy in its initial recruitment, and which has been derisively labeled by outsiders as ‘emotional’. I explain recruitment to animal rights activism by showing how activists develop a ‘vocabulary of emotions’ to rationalize their participation to others and themselves, along with managing the emotional tone of the movement by limiting the kinds of people who can take part in debates about animal cruelty. The interactive nature in which emotions develop in social movements is stressed over previous approaches to emotions in the social movement literature, which treat emotions as impulsive or irrational.

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Based on in-depth interviews with 24 working couples who hire domestic helpers in Hong Kong, this article examines the hiring of help as an instance of unequal social exchange in which mothers are expected to give up more than fathers. Men view hiring help as a contractual service and as a 'gift' to their wives that allows them to 'buy out' of housework and childcare. Women, however, are likely to supplement their helper's contributions with their own labour since they view hired help as 'less-than-optimal' childcare. They also feel responsible for the supervision and emotional needs of their helpers by treating them as 'part of the family'. By examining the gendered meanings attached to paid domestic help, we show how men and women reproduce the traditional division of labour in the home when hiring domestic helpers, rather than relieving the tensions that working mothers face between paid employment and childcare.