Emotion and politics is the study of the non‐cognitive core of politics. Emotion and politics presents its own special set of difficulties. First, emotions are experienced individually but politics is by definition a collective phenomena. This means that the social analyst has to attempt to understand how an individual micro‐level instinct, an emotion, contributes to collective macro‐level processes and outcomes. Second, emotions are ontologically in the moment. Emotions and sound have similar properties. Music or noise either soothes or jars the central nervous system. Emotions too affect the central nervous system and even social scientists have begun to acknowledge the relevance of neurobiology to their studies. The physicality of emotion suggests that a robust analysis of emotion demands a multi‐disciplinary approach, and not that emotions are outside of the purview of the social sciences. This chapter begins from the position that much theoretical, analytic and empirical work remains to be done in the study of politics and emotions. It represents a first attempt to explore, from multiple angles, how emotions matter to politics. The chapter proceeds on four levels: first, it develops the concepts secure state and community of feeling as analytic frames that unite politics and emotion; second, it explores how emotions are embedded in political institutions; third, it takes up the issue of emotion and collective action; and lastly, it suggests the conceptual issues that a political sociology of emotions might address.

In the past few years, the area of politics and culture has moved from the margins of cultural inquiry to its center as evidenced by the number of persons who identify themselves as working within the area and by its growing institutionalization within sociology. “Politics and culture” suggests that each term constitutes an autonomous social realm; whereas “political culture” suggests the boundaries of cultural action within which ordinary politics occurs. Bourdieu's emphasis on boundary making, Foucault's disciplinary mechanisms, and Habermas's conception of the public are setting the research agenda of scholars who focus on macro-level social change. Interdisciplinary dialogues are emerging, conducted on a landscape of historical and contemporary empirical research. Four sub-areas have crystallized: first, political culture, which focuses on problems of democratization and civil society; second, institutions, which includes law, religion, the state, and citizenship; third, political communication and meaning; and fourth, cultural approaches to collective action. Promising directions for future work are historical ethnographies, participant observation and interview studies of political communication, and studies of political mobilization that examine how emotion operates in politics. Paradigms are not yet firm within this area, suggesting that politics and culture is a disciplinary site of theoretical, methodological, and empirical innovation.

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