Mediating shame and pride: countermedia coverage of Independence Day in Poland and the US

This article adopts a comparative qualitative approach to studying the rhetoric of injured pride in the coverage of Independence Day celebrations by the right-wing countermedia in Poland (wPolityce.pl) and the US (Breitbart News) from 2012 to 2018. In both countries, the number of countermedia articles on Independence Day proliferated in the aftermath of the election of the Law and Justice party (2015) and Donald Trump (2016). Based on the analysis of the narrative strategy for affective polarisation, we argue that the countermedia mobilise support from an electorate of ‘the disenfranchised’ by strategically invoking emotions of shame and pride. By positioning the radical right as a political force that shields ‘patriots’ from the leftist ‘pedagogy of shame’, the outlets instrumentalise the mobilising potential of shame by transforming it into righteous anger and pride. This strategy results in a mediated ‘emotional regime’ that offers guidelines for an acceptable emotional repertoire for the members of the nationally bound in-group.

Understanding Collective Pride and Group Identity: New Directions in Emotion Theory, Research and Practice

Gavin Brent Sullivan (ed.) (2014)<br />Understanding Collective Pride and Group Identity:New Directions in Emotion Theory, Research and Practice<br />Routledge<br />ISBN 978-0-415-62895-2<br />£52.00 (hardcover)<br />216 pp

Affective meanings and social relations: identities and positions in the social space

Ever since Georg Simmel’s seminal works, social relations have been a central building block of sociological theory. In relational sociology, social identities are an essential concept and supposed to emerge in close interaction with other identities, discourses and objects. To assess this kind of relationality, existing research capitalises on patterns of meaning making that are constitutive for identities. These patterns are often understood as forms of declarative knowledge and are reconstructed, using qualitative methods, from denotative meanings as they surface: for example, in stories and narratives. We argue that this approach to some extent privileges explicit and conceptual knowledge over tacit and non-conceptual forms of knowledge. We suggest that affect is a concept that can adequately account for such implicit and bodily meanings, even when measured on the level of linguistic concepts. We draw on affect control theory (ACT) and related methods to investigate the affective meanings of concepts (lexemes) denoting identities in a large survey. We demonstrate that even though these meanings are widely shared across respondents, they nevertheless show systematic variation reflecting respondents’ positions within the social space and the typical interaction experiences associated with their identities. In line with ACT, we show, first, that the affective relations between exemplary identities mirror their prototypical, culturally circumscribed and institutionalised relations (for example, between role identities). Second, we show that there are systematic differences in these affective relations across gender, occupational status and regional culture, which we interpret as reflecting respondents’ subjective positioning and experience vis-à-vis a shared cultural reality.

Emotional styles in Russian maternity hospitals: juggling between khamstvo and smiling

This article explores emotional styles of Russian maternity hospitals and their recent changes. We focus on two emotional practices that characterise different emotional styles: the Soviet-associated emotional practice of khamstvo (rudeness) and the post-Soviet neoliberal practice of smiling. Emotional styles in healthcare in Russia have been transformed under childbearing women’s consumer demands and new professional standards. However, maternity care in Russia has not been changed entirely into a neoliberal capitalist one. It is ruled by both bureaucratic paternalist (including direct state control) and consumerist logics simultaneously. The hybridisation of these logics has led to numerous problems in the coordination of institutional inconsistencies, which in turn cause emotional dissatisfaction of healthcare recipients. Doctors and midwives are expected to cope with these interactional and institutional challenges and consequences. They juggle emotional practices that refer to repertoires of different emotional styles, performing one or another according to their reading of the situation and type of patient (‘extra demanding and aggressive’, ‘miserable’, ‘ignorant and noncompliant’, ‘service-oriented’). We argue that the shift from one emotional style to another is nonlinear and leads to the appearance of a hybrid form that makes both emotional practices of khamstvo and smiling coexist in maternity care.

Governing Affects: Neoliberalism, Neo-Bureaucracies, and Service Work

Otto Penz and Birgit Sauer (2020)<br />Governing Affects: Neoliberalism, Neo-Bureaucracies, and Service Work<br />Routledge<br />ISBN: 978-1-0320-8233-2<br />£35 (paperback)<br />186 pp

The politics of emotion in a parenting support programme for refugees in Norway

Enhancing social skills among citizens who are considered at risk is one of the ways in which a welfare state handles marginalised groups (Prieur et al, 2020). Universalised programmes represent a common way of strengthening the social capabilities of groups deemed in need of such skills (for example, Pettersvold and Østrem, 2019). In this article, we show that emotions perform a political role in such programmes. We proffer our arguments on the basis of data from five training sessions in the International Child Development Programme (ICDP) in a mid-sized Norwegian municipality. Mentors who are teaching the ICDP course use emotions to signal the superiority of the ICDP as a parenting ideal in the Norwegian welfare context. Positive other-emotions are used to signal equality and to welcome the refugees to take part in the ICDP. The mentors also control the balance of emotional energy and display sympathy. The emotions displayed by mentors underline the ICDP values as superior. Our analysis draws on the theoretical perspectives of emotions as place claims by Candace Clark (1990; 2007) and the cultural politics of emotion by Sarah Ahmed (2014). With the help of these perspectives, we suggest that the performativity of emotions during ICDP training aligns with broader political processes that imply that refugees are welcomed on the premise that they adapt to parenting practices that are acceptable in the new welfare-state context in which they are situated.

Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology

Phillips, J., Westaby, C., Fowler, A. and Waters, J. (eds) (2020)<br />Emotional Labour in Criminal Justice and Criminology<br />Routledge<br />ISBN: 978-0-3671-5201-7 £120<br />280 pp

The Politics of Compassion: Immigration and Asylum Policy (Global Migration and Social Change series)

Ala Sirriyeh (2018)<br />The Politics of Compassion: Immigration and Asylum Policy (Global Migration and Social Change series)<br />Bristol University Press<br />ISBN 978-1-529-20042-3<br />£75 (hardcover)<br />224 pp