Emotions in Social Movements

Ness, Justin Van; Summers-Effler, Erika

doi:10.1002/9781119168577.ch23

Cited by 25 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 88 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our finding that hyper-negative emotions (such as the feelings of betrayal, extreme disappointment and disenchantment) acted as a strong driving force for the next step resonates with a body of social movement studies that shed light on the role of emotions, which is largely neglected in industrial relations literature. A series of studies (Koopmans, 1997; Snow and Moss, 2014; Van Ness and Summers-Effler, 2018) have indicated that emotions play an important role in enabling or inhibiting mobilization. For instance, anger arising from interaction inconsistency or ambiguity and the feelings of injustice from social disorder or unjust experiences act as a key trigger for unplanned and spontaneous collective actions that often mobilize previously uninvolved actors.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling the crunch mode: the rise of an enterprise union in South Korea's game industry

Chung

Kwon

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThe present study seeks to trace the unionization process of a global top 10 video game company (Company N) in which workers formed the first enterprise union in South Korea's game sector. Drawing upon the analytical framework of Kelly's (1998) mobilization theory, the authors investigated what motivated workers to form a union and what factors facilitated unionization.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a qualitative research method on a single case study basis. The authors collected 41 in-depth interviews with game developers, full-time union staff from the case company and union leaders in their affiliated union, as well as game journalists, labour attorneys, and human resource professionals in the video game industry. The authors had their original data supplemented and triangulated by archival data including union letters and other documents and media reports. They analysed the data using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS).FindingsThere are three key findings. First, in the game sector, a high barrier against unionization exists, arising from industry characteristics such as a project-based work system, high mobility, reputation-based hiring, meritocracy, and a continuous influx of game-loving young developers. Hence, although the time was ripe for worker activism, latent grievances failed to be converted into real collective mobilization, resulting in non-organized workplaces for the past decades. Second, the mandatory labour-management negotiations arising from a legal change acted as a key catalyst for unionization at Company N. The newly elected three employee representatives came to identify and develop their own collective interests through the direct experience of negotiations, which greatly augmented their negative emotions and improved their legal consciousness. These three representatives could identify numerous deep-rooted problems, attribute these problems to their employer, and realize that they are ordinary salaried workers different from their employer. Going through the three-month negotiation and post-negotiation period, a set of ordinary game developers transformed themselves into natural union leaders who started a union in the game industry, which was traditionally non-organized. Third, various layers of external factors, such as a sister union, the upper umbrella union, the changed socio-political atmosphere following the candlelight protests for presidential impeachment, and the improved union image facilitated the unionization at Company N.Practical implicationsThis study offers practical implications to governments, union activists, and employers in the game sector and more broadly in the tech industry, where labour-management conflicts are escalating across the globe.Originality/valueOur study of a rare unionization event in the difficult game sector offers a nuanced understanding of mobilization and its process. Theoretically, by introducing the dynamic process of natural leader emergence and spontaneous union formation in a young industry where neither pre-existing leadership nor extant union influence exists, this study suggests that the mobilization process is more complex and variegated than suggested by Kelly's study and subsequent studies. Therefore, this study can advance the current discussion of mobilization mechanisms in the field of industrial relations. Our study also contributes to current research by introducing collective mobilization in a new context, i.e. the young, dynamic game industry in a non-Western country, which is a context that has been under-studied thus far.

show abstract

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tackling the crunch mode: the rise of an enterprise union in South Korea's game industry

Chung

Kwon

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Like feminist theories, social movement theory understands emotion as shaped by social structures. Emotions are crucial to the emergence and maintenance of activism (Van, Ness, Summers, and Effler, 2018;Yang, 2000). As Poma and Gravante (2017a: 901) put it, 'emotional liberation .…”

Section: Feminist and Social Movement Theories Of Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This feeling of belonging with coalition partners develops through interaction (Jasper, 2011;Poma and Gravante, 2016;Van, Ness, Summers, and Effler, 2018). By participating in joint collective action, participants show that they are 'emotionally invested' in the coalition (Gawerc, 2021:8).…”

Section: Emergent Feelings In Collective Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How emotions shape feminist coalitions

Whittier

2021

European Journal of Women's Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article develops a framework for conceptualizing the emotional dimensions of coalitions, with particular focus on how power operates through emotion in different varieties of feminist coalitions. The article proposes three interrelated areas in which emotion shapes feminist coalitions: (1) Feelings towards coalition partners: feelings of mistrust, anger, fear, or their reverse grow from histories of interaction and unequal power. These make up the emotional landscape of intersectional coalitions, which operate through a tension between negative emotions and attempts at empathy or mutual acceptance; (2) Shared feelings: feminist coalitions build on shared fear of threat or anger at a common enemy; and (3) emergent emotions in collective action. Coalition partners possess distinct emotion cultures. Joint collective action can cement bonds when all participants’ emotion cultures are reflected, or weaken coalitions when the reverse is true. In all three of these areas, organizers engage in emotional labour in order to create or maintain coalitions. These three dynamics are illustrated with examples from intersectional feminist coalitions, the Women’s Marches, and interactions between feminists and conservatives opposed to pornography.

show abstract

“…After a period of social movement scholarship that pejoratively saw irrational emotion as central to political action outside of institutions (Hobsbawm, 1971), emotion largely dropped out of social movement studies, which became focused on structural and rationalistic explanations. Over the past decades, more analysts have attended to emotion’s role in movements, including the processes that lead people to participate, sustain their commitment and become demobilized (for a recent review, Van Ness and Summers-Effler, 2019). Emotion has been analyzed in studies on frames (Gamson, 1992), collective identity (Taylor, 1996; Whittier, 2009) and social networks (Bosco, 2006) in movements.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional configurations of politicization in social justice movements

Curnow

Vea

2020

ILS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose This paper aims to trace how emotion shapes the sense that is made of politics and how politicization can remake and re-mark emotion, giving it new meaning in context. This paper brings together theories of politicization and emotional configurations in learning to interrogate the role emotion plays in the learning of social justice activists. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on sociocultural learning perspectives, the paper traces politicization processes across the youth climate movement (using video-based interaction analysis) and the animal rights movement (using ethnographic interviews and participant observation). Findings Emotional configurations significantly impacted activists’ politicization in terms of what was learned conceptually, the kinds of practices – including emotional practices – that were taken up collectively, the epistemologies that framed social justice work, and the identities that were made salient in collective action. In turn, politicization reshaped how social justice activists made sense of emotion in the course of activist practice. Social implications This study is valuable for theorizing social justice learning, so social movement facilitators and educators might design spaces where learning about gender, racialization, colonialism and/or human/more-than-human relations can thrive. By attending to emotional configurations, this study can help facilitate a design that supports and sustains learning for justice. Originality/value Emotion remains under-theorized and under-analyzed in the learning sciences, despite indications that emotion enables and constrains particular learning opportunities. This paper proposes new ways of understanding emotion and politicization as co-constitutive processes for learning scientists interested in politics and social justice.

show abstract

Emotions in Social Movements

Cited by 25 publications

References 88 publications

Tackling the crunch mode: the rise of an enterprise union in South Korea's game industry

Tackling the crunch mode: the rise of an enterprise union in South Korea's game industry

How emotions shape feminist coalitions

Emotional configurations of politicization in social justice movements

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About