Early attempts to address the curious absence of theorizing emotions

Emotions have for long played an implicit but important role in international relations. In fact, few realms are more infused with emotion: war and terrorism, for instance, are highly emotional phenomena. Fear and anger play a key role in political realism, from Thucydides to Hobbes and from Morgenthau to Waltz (Robin Reference Robin2004; Ross Reference Ross2013; Linklater Reference Linklater2014, 574–78). Trust has, likewise, been central to liberal visions of a more cooperative international order (Booth and Wheeler Reference Booth and Wheeler2007). However, these and other emotions have rarely been addressed and theorized directly. In most instances, emotions were simply seen as issues or phenomena to which rational decision makers react. The result is a somewhat paradoxical situation where emotions have been implicitly recognized as central but, at the same time, remained largely neglected in scholarly analyses (Crawford Reference Crawford2000, 116, 118).

The historical absence of serious theoretical engagements with emotions is part of a deeper modern attitude that depicts emotions in opposition to reason and rationality (de Sousa Reference de Sousa1987; Elster Reference Elster1999). Emotions have long been portrayed as either irrational responses or purely personal experiences that have no relevance to public life. Political decisions were meant to be free of passion, for giving in to impulsive urges would inevitably lead to irrational acts of violence and harm. It is not surprising, then, that until recently international relations scholarship has largely structured itself, implicitly or explicitly, around rational actor models. This remained the case even at a time when other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, and feminist philosophy, had long started to examine emotions.

Studies in political psychology and foreign policy were among the first international relations approaches to take emotions seriously. Emerging in the 1970s, the respective contributions explored the relationship between emotion and reason in the process of decision making. They opposed the assumption that decisions are taken on the basis of ‘classical rationality’, stressing, instead, that leaders have often no choice but to draw upon ideas and insights that may involve ‘the emotional rather than the calculating part of the brain’ (Hill Reference Hill2003, 116; see also Jervis, Lebow and Stein Reference Jervis, Lebow and Stein1985).

While opening up new ways of understanding emotions, there were also limits to early studies in political psychology. Many approaches, particularly those that deal with psychology and deterrence, still operated within the rational actor paradigm. Emotions were seen as interferences with or deviations from rationality. They were perceived to create ‘misperceptions’ (Jervis Reference Jervis1976) that undermine responsible political analyses and actions. Such positions leave intact the divide between thinking and feeling which, in a highly problematic way, continues to underpin much of international relations research.

The development of emotions research: between cognitive/affective and latent/emergent approaches

Over the past decade, numerous scholars have started to address these and other gaps in understanding. Jonathan Mercer and Neta Crawford were among the first to do so, which is why they are the featured essayists in this Forum. They situated emotions at the very heart of political reasoning. Mercer examined the role of emotions in supposedly ‘rational’ decision-making and collective political processes, such as the construction of inter-group identities (Mercer Reference Mercer2005, Reference Mercer2006, 296–99). He stressed that ‘understanding how rational actors think requires turning to emotions’ (Mercer Reference Mercer2013, 247). Crawford too critiqued traditional models of international political behavior, suggesting that scholars rethink not only rationalist assumptions but also reductionist views of how particular emotions function in world politics (Crawford Reference Crawford2000, Reference Crawford2009).

Mercer’s and Crawford’s work has substantially influenced attempts to theorize emotions in world politics. The need to rethink the dichotomy of emotion and rationality is now well recognized. There are meanwhile countless studies that examine the issues at stake, so much so that surveying them in a short essay is impossible. Where once emotions were neglected or actively demonized they have now become one of the most exciting theoretical and empirical research areas in international relations.

There are numerous ways to make sense of this extensive and rapidly growing body of literature. Classifying is always a process of imposing order on far more complex phenomena and ideas. It inevitably involves choices that conceal as much as they reveal.

Prevailing classifications revolve, not surprisingly, around well accepted psychological categories. They distinguish, for instance, between cognitive and affective, as well as between latent and emergent approaches. Marcus Holmes (Reference Holmes2013) has recently applied such a dual axis in a compelling manner. Cognition oriented scholars consider emotions as a form of knowledge and evaluative thought (Frijda Reference Frijda1986; Nussbaum Reference Nussbaum2001, 1–22; Hutto Reference Hutto2012, 177). Anger, for instance, implies that something thought to be bad or wrong has happened. Emotions are thus seen as both forms of insight and sources for political decision. Opposing such a cognitive stance, another tradition, going back to William James, sees emotions not primarily as thoughts, judgments, and beliefs, but as non-reflective bodily sensations and moods more appropriately captured with the term affect (see, for e.g., Massumi Reference Massumi2002; Thrift Reference Thrift2004; Clore and Huntsinger Reference Clore and Huntsinger2009, 40–44).

Neuroscientific discoveries have meanwhile validated a more integrated ‘hybrid’ approach, suggesting that emotions arise from a combination of both conscious and unconscious as well as cognitive and bodily perceptions (Jeffery Reference Jeffery2011, 144; see also Jeffery 2014; LeDoux Reference LeDoux1995; Cunningham, Dunfield, and Stillman Reference Cunningham, Dunfield and Stillman2013). This is, in fact, why neuroscience is so important and will be extensively debated in this Forum: it provides concrete evidence for the idea that decisions and judgments are fundamentally imbued with emotion. Emotions are thus an intrinsic part of how politics is conducted, perceived, and evaluated.

The distinction between latent and emergent models adds an extra layer of interpretation. Latent models assume emotions are always already present. Fear, for instance, precedes or perhaps even causes political behavior. Emotions are said to precipitate physiological change and cognitive recognition. Emergent models do not necessarily claim the opposite, but, rather, argue for a deeper understanding of the complex links and interrelated nature of cognition, feeling, emotions, and actions. Rather than forming a pre-existing background, emotions here are seen as ‘emergent properties’ of an interactive body–mind system (Coan Reference Coan2010, 278), which itself has been constituted over time through socially and cultural conditioned forms of perception and experience (see also Holmes Reference Holmes2013).

Toward an alternative conceptualization: between macro and micro approaches

We opt for an alternative way of making sense of emotions research, one that revolves around a macro/micro distinction. We do so not because such an approach is more accurate than either a cognitive/affective or a latent/emergent classification, but because it offers us an ideal way to synthesize existing emotions research and identify a coherent theoretical path forward. Our conception aims not to preference one theoretical account of emotions over others (such as cognitive vs. affective), but to subordinate such debates to what we see as the key challenge facing international relations’ emotions scholars: understanding the concrete processes through which seemingly individual emotions either become or are at once public, social, collective, and political.

At its most basic distinction, macro approaches devise general theories of how emotions matter in world politics while micro studies focus on how specific emotions gain resonance in particular political circumstances. However, there are also numerous important similarities between macro and micro approaches. Both seek to capture what emotions are and how they function in world politics. Both agree that emotions are more than just individual and private phenomena and, as such, require wider political theorization. The respective contributions draw from different disciplines and chart different paths, yet taken together these inquiries examine how emotions help to constitute the social realm in ways that mediate political identities, communities, and ensuing behaviors.

Let us now consider the macro/micro distinction in more detail. Both Mercer and Crawford are important contributors to both macro and micro approaches, thus revealing how a combination of them is possible. In this Forum, Crawford offers generalizable macro propositions about the institutionalization of two particular emotions, fear and empathy. Mercer, by contrast, develops a macro model for understanding state-based emotions. Other scholars build on Mercer’s earlier work that explores the link between emotions, beliefs, and identity. Brent Sasley, for instance, uses inter-group emotions research to theorize how emotions can converge in a group as large as a state (Sasley Reference Sasley2011).

These and numerous other macro approaches are both crucial and convincing. They highlight the need for abstraction, for distilling generalizable properties about the politics of emotions. Examples here includes work on the relationship between emotions and reason or the manner in which this relationship influences political issues, from nationalist attitudes and state behavior to identity, sovereignty, and power.

However, macro approaches also face conceptual challenges. While they theoretically recognize links between culture and emotions, these models have, by definition, difficulties actually accounting for the content of these links. Expressed in other words, macro models run the risk of homogenizing emotions, of lumping together emotional phenomena that are, in reality, far more complex and diverse. Consider how Andrew Linklater (Reference Linklater2014, 574–78) outlines that anger varies greatly from one cultural and political context to another: how the United States used anger to legitimize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is completely different from how it manifested in the streets of Athens or Madrid during the global financial crisis, or from how certain Islamic radicals channeled this particular emotion to rally behind threats against them. Is it desirable − or even possible − to develop models that seek to subsume all of these different emotional phenomena under one conceptual umbrella? Can macro models ever account for how specific emotions acquire different meanings and credence in different contexts?

Micro approaches provide some clues to answering these questions. They investigate how specific emotions are constituted by and function in particular cultural and political environments. They address, head on, the very challenges faced by macro models, particularly the risk of homogenizing emotions. Micro approaches focus less on establishing generalizable principles and more on analyzing the unique ways and mechanisms through which emotions exist and, in turn, become socially and politically significant. Examples here include studies that examine how emotions associated with humiliation and dishonor constitute communities (Callahan Reference Callahan2004; Fattah and Fierke Reference Fattah and Fierke2009) or generate antagonistic political practices (Tuathail Reference Tuathail2003; Saurette Reference Saurette2006; Löwenheim and Heimann Reference Löwenheim and Heimann2008). Others investigate how the emotional dimensions of trauma and memory shape the constitution of modern statehood (Edkins Reference Edkins2003; Fierke Reference Fierke2004; Zehfuss Reference Zehfuss2007) or how emotions associated with trust, friendship, and honor (or, by contrast, anxiety, suspicion, and anger) influence diplomatic negotiations, alliances, and defense policies (Lebow Reference Lebow2006; Ruzicka and Wheeler Reference Ruzicka and Wheeler2010; Sasley Reference Sasley2010; Eznack Reference Eznack2011; Hall Reference Hall2011). Others again study the emotional foundations of ethnic conflict (Petersen Reference Petersen2002), humanitarian intervention (Pupavac Reference Pupavac2004), development (Wright Reference Wright2012), and political economy (Gammon Reference Gammon2008; Widmaier Reference Widmaier2010).

Debating the nature, function, and significance of particular emotions is one of the issues at stake in micro studies. In this Forum, for instance, both Mercer and Crawford engage empathy but do so from different perspectives. Some of the commentators, such as McDermott, extend these debates or even question whether or not empathy actually is an emotion. She further critiques that distinct emotions, such as anger, are too often lumped together in broad categories that wrongly assign either positive or negative value to emotional experiences.

Micro approaches offer exceptionally rich insights but they too face conceptual challenges. To be convincing, they explore the unique cultural meaning of the emotions they investigate. But how can we extrapolate from this appreciation the broader insight needed for the establishment of theoretical propositions? Does the attempt of doing so inevitably produce a grand narrative that does injustice to the unique context within which emotions emerge? While some have started to address these issues (Fattah and Fierke Reference Fattah and Fierke2009; Bially Mattern Reference Bially Mattern2011; Fierke Reference Fierke2013), there is still a long way to go until we know exactly what the contextually bound nature of emotions tell us about the prospects of theorizing emotions in world politics. Needed are more inquiries that explore how micro-political processes can be understood in a more macro-political frame. The ultimate objective here, we suggest, is to avoid either a totalizing grand theory or a form of cultural relativism that eschews larger theoretical propositions.

The key challenge: how do individual emotions become collective and political?

Because of the ability to highlight the interaction between different levels of analysis, a micro/macro framework is ideally suited to address what we believe is the most important challenge in political research on emotions, or at least the one that precedes all others: to theorize the processes that turn individual emotions collective, social, public, and, thus, political. Unless one can show that emotions matter beyond a purely individual and private level, there is no ground to examine their relevance for global politics. Both macro and micro approaches tackle this task, but they do so in different ways.

Even though there is broad agreement that emotions are shaped by society and culture and are, as such, more than individual and private, scholars continue to question how to best conceptualize and empirically investigate emotions as shared, collective phenomena. Doing so is seen as critical: understanding and theorizing the role emotions play in shaping and motivating political communities cuts to the core of why international relations scholars should care about emotions in the first place.

The key, we argue, lies in theorizing the actual processes that render emotions political. Focusing on the specific mechanisms through which emotions are socially embedded and can, in particular circumstances, become collective enables us to theorize the politics of emotion in a manner that reduces the risk of homogenizing them. Conceived of in this way, through the mechanisms that enable emotions to become meaningful within particular contexts, the culturally and historically specific nature of emotions remains intact while at the same time enabling understandings of the wider conceptual processes through which emotions play a role in world politics. The ultimate objective of such an approach, which is far beyond the task of a short essay, would be a model through which emotions − both in terms of specific emotions and in a general sense – can be theorized in a non-essentialist manner (see Lutz Reference Lutz1988, 5). Of course, the middle ground between micro and macro approaches that we suggest here cannot entirely sidestep the dangers of homogenizing emotions. Any theoretical model risks doing so. However, the ensuing consequences can be mitigated by a careful articulation of the processes that link micro and macro approaches.

Thus far explorations of the links between individual and collective emotions have taken shape, not surprisingly, predominantly at the level of the state. This is the case in this Forum as well as in other research (e.g. Löwenheim and Heimann Reference Löwenheim and Heimann2008; Eznack Reference Eznack2011). Theorizing the state as an emotional actor, scholars tends to draw links between emotions and the type of factors that bind individuals together. The more people associate with common beliefs or identities the more they may share emotions, these studies contend, even at the broad level of the state (Mercer Reference Mercer2010, Reference Mercer2014, 515–35; Sasley Reference Sasley2011). This is how and why, for these and like-minded scholars, a state may experience emotions insofar that the state is essentially a group constituted by individuals that cultivate, share, and identify with each other emotionally.

However, not all scholars are convinced by the apparent leap from individual to state emotions. States, some argue, are ‘ontologically incapable of having feelings’ (Digeser Reference Digeser2009, 327). This is not to deny that emotions and affective dispositions play an important role at the level of collectives. Communities are key to how emotions attain meaning and are interpreted (Fierke Reference Fierke2014, 563–67; see also Lutz Reference Lutz1988; Ahmed Reference Ahmed2004). However, difficult questions that may enable the theorization of emotions at a level as vast as the state remain largely unanswered. Who is a state and how exactly are its emotions formed and expressed? Whose emotional attachments are representative of the state? What are the emotional links or breaks between states and governments, nations, or various sub-state groups? And how do we, as Ling and Crawford ask in this Forum, theorize how emotions are embodied in actors and actions that transgress and challenge states, from social movements to transnational institutions?

The task ahead therefore lies in translating a commonsensical position on the importance of collective emotions into a more thorough understanding of how exactly emotions matter at the level of world politics. We now identify four issues that are crucial to this process: definitions, the body, representations, and power. While they are not the only issues that international relations emotions researchers face, they offer a starting point from which a more rigorous and reflective theorizing of emotions becomes possible.

Conceptualizing emotion, feeling, and affect

Just as complex as emotions is the language used to make sense of them. Most international relations scholars use the term emotion loosely, as a broad umbrella term to denote a range of different phenomena. We too do so in this essay. Yet, at the same time we recognize the importance of numerous phenomenological distinctions, such as between emotions, feeling, and affect; and there are yet other terms too, including passions (Crawford Reference Crawford2000, Reference Crawford2014, 535–57) and alief (Holmes Reference Holmes2013) to describe very specific aspects of emotions.

We now define the main terms used in emotions research. We do so to provide a conceptual roadmap for readers who are new to this topic. Mostly, however, we show that debates over definitions go to the very core of how to theorize links between private and collective emotions.

Although the terms emotions and feelings are used interchangeably in everyday language, there is meanwhile an extensive history of distinguishing between them. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (Reference Damasio2000), for instance, sees feelings as the physiological – or somatic – manifestation of emotional change. When we are afraid of something, our hearts begin to race and our muscles tense. This reaction occurs automatically and almost unconsciously. By contrast, specific emotions, such as fear, only arise after we have become aware of our physical changes; there is an element of information processing to an emotion (see also Scherer Reference Scherer2005, 697–98).

Mercer and Crawford engage these definitional disputes in a way that illustrates their political consequences. Following Damasio’s definition, Mercer (Reference Mercer2014, 515–35) refers to feelings as ‘a conscious awareness that one is experiencing an emotion’. Crawford (Reference Crawford2000, 125) too sees emotions as ‘inner states that individuals describe to others as feeling’. But both Mercer and Crawford go further and stress the need to capture the social dimensions at stake. This is why Crawford (Reference Crawford2014, 535–57) highlights how emotions – individual and subjective as they might be – are also always intertwined with pre-existing social, cultural, and political contexts. Mercer’s very notion of ‘social emotion’ underlines this point too, for it captures how emotions become intersubjective when they relate to something social that people care about, whether it is power, status, or justice.

Reflecting on the distinction between emotions and feelings might therefore help us appreciate the connections between bodily based phenomena and the processes through which emotions are communicated to others. While feelings may emerge from within the body, they are at the same time what is at stake in the politics of emotions. Feelings are internal in that they are felt within bodies, yet they are in a sense external as well in so far that through particular social processes they bridge the divide between and connect individuals and collectives. Central here is that the specific forms feelings take − why we feel in the ways we do − are constituted at least in part through the social and cultural processes through which emotions are shaped in the first place.

The distinction between emotions and affect goes one step further. In some disciplines, such as geography, this distinction is so intensely debated that scholars differentiate between ‘emotional geography’ and ‘affective geography’ (see Thrift Reference Thrift2004; Thien Reference Thien2005). Emotions are seen as personal and often conscious feelings that have social meaning and political consequences. Related phenomena can in this way be identified and assessed. Affective dynamics, by contrast, are seen to lie beyond representation. They are viewed as much broader phenomena that exist both before and beyond consciousness; they are a wide range of non-reflective and subconscious bodily sensations, such as mood, intuition, temperament, attachment, disposition, and even memory (in international relations see Ross Reference Ross2006, 199; Sasley Reference Sasley2010; Eznack Reference Eznack2011, Reference Eznack2013; Holmes Reference Holmes2013).

There is no space here to enter the highly complex and deeply contested exchange between emotions and affect scholars (see Leys Reference Leys2011). However, we would like to note that, for us, the respective distinction is not as clear-cut and as mutually exclusive as some scholars maintain. We emphasize the similarities, rather than the differences between these two traditions. Affect and emotions can be seen as intrinsically linked, for affective states are subconscious factors that can frame and influence our more conscious emotional evaluations of the social world.

Affect can then provide the conceptual tools to understand how a broad range of psycho-social predispositions produce or mediate political emotions. Recent research by Lucile Eznack (Reference Eznack2013) illustrates the issues at stake. She shows how historically cultivated affective dispositions – both positive and negative – can temper or exacerbate hostilities between nation states and in doing so influence the nature of ensuing state behavior. Juxtaposing US anger toward Britain in the 1956 Suez Crisis with that focused toward the Soviet Union during the 1979–80 Afghanistan intervention, Eznack shows how anger at an ally/friend and an adversary/enemy alters according to the pre-existing affective dimensions of their relations.

To use the term affect is thus to make a shift from isolating specific micro-based emotions to the more general macro-level recognition that emotion, feeling, and sensations combined generate often unconscious and unreflective affective dispositions that connect and transcend individuals (Massumi Reference Massumi2002, 27–28, 217; Thrift Reference Thrift2004, 60). This position also reverberates with new international relations research. For Janice Bially Mattern (Reference Bially Mattern2014, 589–94), the task of singling out certain emotions becomes problematic as soon as one recognizes, as most scholars meanwhile do, that emotions and cognition are intrinsically interwoven and thus, by extension, hard to conceptually separate. For Ross too (Reference Ross2014, 2, 17–19), anger, fear, or other emotions are socially constructed and somewhat arbitrary categories that are not really able to capture the rich complexities of how affective energies work and circulate between political actors and communities.

Definitional disputes can never be settled, nor can concepts ever capture the far more elusive realities they seek to define. This is why we consciously use the broad term ‘emotion’ in this essay. However, conceptual disputes provide a way into understanding the substantive issues we investigate, particularly the processes through which feelings, emotions, and affect are both individual and collective: affective phenomena are historically and contextually conditioned to act upon both individuals and collectives, in turn implicating particular feelings and emotions that then enact and transform particular socio-political norms and behaviors.

Emotions and the body

Emotions cannot be understood without theorizing the role of the body. Indeed, emotions are intrinsically linked to bodies. Mercer (Reference Mercer2014, 515–35) speaks of the ‘no body, no emotions problem’. If emotions are tied to our physicality, how exactly can they become collective and acquire political significance? Mercer’s answer is seemingly straightforward: that bodies cause emotions but emotions cannot be ontologically reduced to the body. Articulating the implications of such a position is, however, far more difficult. A state, for instance, does not have a physical body. It cannot possibly have emotions. Do politicians and diplomats experience emotions on behalf of the state? Or is it that emotions are attributed to states? Or that they are embodied in larger discursive forces that constitute the state and its meaning?

There is little scholarly agreement on this issue. At one end of the spectrum are positions that stress how emotions are experienced first and foremost in people’s bodies. McDermott’s (Reference McDermott2014, 557–62) work exemplifies the primacy of the body in emotions theorizing. For her, a focus on physicality is essential, for ‘emotion must necessarily be grounded in somatic experience in the physical body or it would not exist at all’. In this understanding, emotions are seen to arise from a synthesis of bodily experiences, even though the meanings attached to the respective emotions are culturally determined. The body, in other words, is where emotions begin. To divorce the body from accounts of emotion would therefore be to erase the origin and meaning of feelings. In this type of somatic account, the body is so central to emotion that attempts to theorize the collective and political nature of emotions must be approached with a great deal of caution.

On the other side of the spectrum are scholars who insist that emotions should not – and cannot – be reduced to bodies. L.H.M. Ling (Reference Ling2014, 579–83) even stresses that emotions have normative and spiritual dimensions that actually ‘do not require embodiment’. Karin Fierke (Reference Fierke2014, 563–67), likewise, recognizes the importance of physiological and neurological studies, but stresses that related insights ‘should not ultimately be the focus of social and political analysis at the international level’. This is the case, she argues, because individual emotions are less significant for understanding global politics than the emotions that surround political phenomena.

These juxtaposing positions represent the tension between bodily based micro approaches and more macro level attempts to theorize international relations. However, despite their diverging views, all of these scholars are convinced that emotions matter in world politics. The question is how exactly and to what extent we can understand the issues at stake. Is it possible that emotions can transcend bodies? Do emotions even need to transcend bodies to be politically significant? And, if emotions do play a role in social and political life, how does this shift from individual to collective occur?

We suggest that an appreciation of micro–macro linkages reveals how internal − bodily based − emotions become socio-politically significant. Even though we experience emotion emerging from our bodies, feelings are formed and structured within particular social and cultural environments. They are constituted in relation to culturally specific traditions, such as language, habits, and memories. This is to say that specific social and cultural surroundings influence how individuals gain an understanding of what it means to feel (Harré Reference Harré1986; Lutz Reference Lutz1998, 5). Some scholars even argue that in this way emotions are ‘cultural products’, ‘reproduced in individuals through embodied experience’ (Abu-Lughod and Lutz Reference Abu-Lughod and Lutz1990, 12). Emotions always have a history. How we feel in response to particular political events depends on how society suggests we should feel. To experience feelings such as anger, fear, trust, or empathy is dependent on a specific cultural context that renders such emotions meaningful and acceptable.

Insights into the social character of emotion reveal an important recognition: bodies are more than autonomous and atavistic physical entities that operate independently of their environment. Bially-Mattern (Reference Bially Mattern2011, 66, 76) convincingly demonstrates how individual emotions are always also collective. For her, bodies do not possess innate emotions. Rather, emotions are capabilities that bodies acquire through the contextually bound interplay of biological and social forces. They emerge from a complex combination of conscious feelings, cognition, and subconscious affect. Fierke (Reference Fierke2013) nicely illustrates the issues at stake through a study on political self-sacrifice, such as suicide terrorism or civil disobedience. She shows how dying or injured bodies evoke certain emotions and how these emotions in turn become political by reaching and relating to various audiences. She highlights how this circulation of emotion is shaping collective identities. The body, then, is viewed not as an anatomical object or something that is distinct from the mind, but as a more complex mechanism that fuses physical and emotional features with culture and history. In this Forum Fierke underscores the cultural dimensions of what may seem ‘natural’ bodily emotions by turning to the issue of intentionality. How individuals interpret other’s actions is determined through the complex interplay of processes of communication and abstraction. Whatever the political content of these interactions are, emotions ‘attach’ us to each other in ways that either push or pull bodies together (see Ahmed Reference Ahmed2004).

In short, neither the body nor the social realm can be privileged over the other. To elevate the body above all would be to neglect that the seemingly internal feelings invoked within bodies are constituted by external, socio-political forces. However, to deny the significance of the body would be to neglect that the body is not only the key sight of emotional experience but also that it can, through the very socially constituted feelings it embodies and performs, transgress and transform prevailing constellations of emotions, and thus politics. It is therefore imperative that political theorizations position emotions within the human body while, at the same time, recognize that emotions are far from innate or ‘natural’. What people feel physiologically as emotions is the product of social and cultural encounters and of how individuals have been socialized into managing their emotions through and within such encounters.

Representation as a key link between individual and collective emotions

Representation lies at the heart of understanding the processes that link individual and collective emotions. Two reasons stand out (see Bleiker and Hutchison Reference Bleiker and Hutchison2008, Hutchison Reference Hutchison2014).

First, representations are, in some sense, all we have when it comes to understanding emotions. Even though emotions have social origins and can resonate collectively, emotions are inherently internal. One person can never really know how another person feels. All one can understand is the manner in which emotions are expressed and communicated; whether this is done through touch, gestures, speech, sounds, or images; whether it is from one person to others or in response to events that trigger emotional responses; and whether this event is experienced directly or at a distance through media and other representations. There is always a layer of interpretation, even in neuroscientific studies of brain stimuli.

Second, and more importantly, representation is the process through which individual emotions become collective and political. For some, such as Bryce Huebner (Reference Huebner2011, 89, 93), this process is very direct. He argues that social representations are crucial because they work comparably to ‘representations in an individual mind’, thus creating substantial conceptual support for the existence of collective emotions.

There are countless less indirect but equally crucial ways in which representations link individual and collective emotions. Consider how televised depictions of a terrorist attack set in place socially embedded emotional processes that shape not only direct survivors but also a much larger community of people. Representations can occur through images and narratives, by word of mouth, via old and new media sources, through the countless stories that societies tell about themselves and others. Ross (Reference Ross2014) writes of the ‘circulation of affect’; of how emotions are consciously and unconsciously diffused in numerous ways, including through their public display. For him, we can only conceive of group level emotions through the types of meaning that are manifested in the expression of emotions. This is why he urges scholars to investigate how identities are being constituted through narratives, images, and other representations (Ross Reference Ross2006, 201). These are the processes through which emotions become manifest and defined. They shape identities, attachments, attitudes, behaviors, communities and, in doing so, establish the emotional fabric that binds people together (see Abu-Lughod and Lutz Reference Abu-Lughod and Lutz1990, 13–16; Scheff Reference Scheff1990; Lutz Reference Lutz1988). There are already several studies that explicitly or implicitly turn to representational-based research to explore the consequences of how collective emotions are evoked (Fierke Reference Fierke2002; Ross Reference Ross2006; Saurette Reference Saurette2006; Löwenheim and Heimann Reference Löwenheim and Heimann2008; Fattah and Fierke Reference Fattah and Fierke2009; Solomon Reference Solomon2012; Fierke Reference Fierke2013).

Representations are neither authentic nor passive. There is always a level of interpretation involved or, to express it differently, there is always a gap between a representation and what is represented therewith. This aesthetic gap is in many ways the source of politics for it contains and often masks the power to depict the world from a particular perspective (see Bleiker Reference Bleiker2009). The literature on enactivism is particularly pertinent here. It shows how we can never represent emotions authentically for we do not have access to another person’s mind. However, we can understand emotional responses by analyzing behavior and action (Gallagher and Varga Reference Gallagher and Varga2014). By focusing on perception as an actively lived experience that is part of how we enact and make sense of the social world, this body of literature offers opportunities to understand how emotions transgress embodiment and take on public and political dimensions (see Caracciolo Reference Caracciolo2012, 381; Hutto Reference Hutto2012).

In lieu of conclusion: emotions, power, and international relations theory

Few realms are more emotional than that of world politics. Politicians intuitively know how to tap into the emotions of their electorates. Fear drives and surrounds war, terrorism and the construction of strategy and security. Diplomatic negotiations could not be pursued without a basic level of trust. Empathy is central to successful peacebuilding processes. The list of examples is endless; and although present in many theories, from realism to liberalism, emotions were mostly taken for granted. They were seen as phenomena that rational policy makers deal with or react against. It is only over the last decade that emotions have come to be seen as significant, at times critical, forces in world politics. Scholars now increasingly turn to emotions. They do so for different reasons, with different theoretical assumptions and using different methods.

In their very diversity, these approaches make a simple but important point: emotions play a significant role in world politics, shaping how individuals and collectives are socialized and interact with each other. However, numerous key issues remain unanswered, not least because this new body of literature on emotions remains relatively disparate. Its numerous contributors have not been able to build on each other as effectively as they could, nor have they been able to shape the prevailing debates in international relations scholarship.

This brief survey essay has thought to identify a path forward. We searched for a middle ground between two opposing poles: marco approaches that identify generalizable propositions about the nature and function of political emotions and micro approaches that examine how specific collective emotions have political significance in specific situations. Even though macro and micro approaches are often seen as incompatible, we argued that combining them offers ideal opportunities to address what we believe is the key challenge in emotions research: to understand how individual emotions can become collective and political. We then illustrated the issues at stake through the role of the body, the significance of representation and the substantive consequences of how emotions are defined.

Once the collective dimensions of emotions are appreciated an additional topic inevitably becomes central: the links between emotions and power. Surprisingly, few scholars in international relations have so far taken on the respective issues. Ling’s commentary in this Forum is an exception. She highlights the gendered and colonial dimensions of anti-emotional international relations research. Others have shown how emotions are part of how we present, constitute, legitimize, and enact politics views and politics (see Edkins Reference Edkins2003; Zehfuss Reference Zehfuss2007; Steele Reference Steele2010; Fierke Reference Fierke2013; Koschut Reference Koschut2014). However, so far it has been mostly sociologists and anthropologists who investigated the issues at stake. They suggest that to ‘talk about emotions is simultaneously to talk about society − about power and politics… about normality and deviance’ (Lutz Reference Lutz1998, 6). Power, then, is central to the constitution of emotional subjectivity; power relations play a key role in determining what can, cannot, should, or even must be said about the self and one’s emotions (see also Rosaldo Reference Rosaldo1980; Abu-Lughod and Lutz Reference Abu-Lughod and Lutz1990, 10, 14–15; Svašek Reference Svašek2005, 8–10). Arlie Hochschild (Reference Hochschild1979) writes of ‘feeling rules’, of the normative expectations of how to feel in different social contexts. Such rules determine how individuals should feel in certain circumstances, at say, the birth of a child, the death of a grandparent, or the loss of a job (see also Barbalet Reference Barbalet2001).

These links between power and emotion are, of course, rather different from how power has customarily been theorized in international relations. It is neither hard nor soft, neither imposed by military force nor coerced through economic pressure or diplomatic initiatives. Emotional power works discursively, diffused through norms, moral values, and other assumptions that stipulate − often inaudibly − how individuals and communities ought to feel and what kind of ensuing behavior is appropriate and legitimate in certain situations.

An appreciation of the links between emotions and power highlights that even if they are individual, emotions are always also collective and political. They frame what is and is not possible in politics. They reveal and conceal, enable and disable. They do so in ways that are inaudible and seemingly apolitical, which is precisely how they become political in the most profound and enduring manner: links between emotions and power shape the contours and content of world politics all while erasing the traces of doing so. The task of international relations scholars is to locate, redraw, and expose these traces.

A focus on power offers emotions researchers an ideal way to enter into a dialogue with more established international relations theories. This is not merely because of the centrality of power to all forms of international relations research, but also because it provides a place to begin to appreciate the ‘work’ emotions do: how emotions function in often unseen and invisible ways to grant (and withhold) authority and in doing so enable (and also limit) political circumstances. Indeed, an attentiveness to the intersection between emotions, power, and world politics enables a more complete appreciation of how political viewpoints are constituted and can, in particular situations, be resisted and even transformed. Examining the links between emotions and power would entail compromises and consequences on both sides. Emotions scholars would need to engage more seriously with the debates on the nature of power, including those linked to social identity, nationalism, alliances, regimes, or institutions. More conventional scholars must, in return, start considering the far-reaching implications that accompany the knowledge that emotions are, indeed, everywhere. Of course, once one does so the foundations of many international relations theories start to crumble. Rational actor models – in all their various guises – will look far less reliable, as will previous attempts to explain decision-making, crisis diplomacy, or the very logic of anarchy. To challenge rational actor paradigms is not to replace them with emotional models (see Wolf Reference Wolf2012). The point, rather, is to overcome this false dichotomy and to acknowledge that rationality always includes emotion just as thinking always includes feeling.

The structure of this Forum

All contributors to this Forum focus on theorizing the processes through which individual emotions become collective. They employ a macro or a micro perspective or a combination thereof.

Lead essays by Jonathan Mercer and Neta Crawford tackle the issue of collective emotions head-on. Mercer develops psychologically based macro model that articulates a series of links between individual emotions and group emotions. Showing that emotions are more than a sum of the bodily feelings they emerge from, he turns to beliefs and identities as sources of emotional attribution. Feelings can in this way, for Mercer, be sources of identification at the state level, even though states themselves do not possess physical bodies (see also Mercer 1996, Reference Mercer2005, Reference Mercer2006, 2012, Reference Mercer2013). Crawford renders the issues more concrete by theorizing the institutionalization of two particular emotions: fear and empathy. Combining macro and micro approaches, she seeks to understand how states and other institutions internalize particular emotional regimes and how, in turn, such emotional predispositions make particular political outlooks possible (see also Crawford Reference Crawford2000, Reference Crawford2009).

Seven Forum commentators then engage and expand on these attempts to theorize the links between private and collective emotions. Rose McDermott defends a somatic approach that locates emotions in physical bodies. For her, a focus on socio-political factors that ignores physical ones offers, at the very least, an incomplete and problematic take on emotions. However, her challenge to the other contributors is more fundamental: if emotions are irreducibly linked to bodies how exactly can they become collective and political? Karin Fierke focuses on the links between emotions and intentions which, too, are considered inside the mind of individuals (see also Fierke Reference Fierke2013). However, she shows at the same time that emotions and intentions are always also constituted by and embedded in collective socio-political forces. Christian Reus-Smit then engages Mercer and Crawford in detail by scrutinizing how they theorize social emotions. He argues, in particular, for the need to distinguish between different types of groups and the emotional attachments associated with them. Families, social movements, nations, governments, states, or transnational institutions are all collectives, but they are not the same type of actors or structures, nor are the emotional processes that define them necessarily comparable.

Andrew Linklater’s contribution further explores these micro–macro links by observing how collective emotions shift over time. Using process-sociology he shows how in classical antiquity anger was largely seen in positive ways but then acquired increasingly negative connotations as societies came to exert greater control over emotions that were deemed to contradict the prevailing self-image of a pacified civilization (see also Linklater Reference Linklater2011, 154–231). L.H.M. Ling engages the very same civilizational traditions, but detects in them colonial residues hidden behind an anti-emotional stand that denigrates all and everyone different from the rational European core. She then advocates an emancipatory model that appreciates not only multiple emotional worlds but also the cross-national links that inevitably intertwine them.

At this stage, Renée Jeffery contemplates how to supplement these macro-political insights into political emotions with more specific micro studies. As others in this Forum, she returns to neuroscience and explores both the potential and the limits of employing experiments. The most crucial challenge she identifies lies in how to articulate and methodologically evaluate the links between private and collective emotions. Janice Bially Mattern takes this approach one step further and asks: if emotion and reason are indeed as intertwined − or even as indistinguishable − as neuroscientists believe, then how can we actually study emotions? How can they be singled out as identifiable factors that shape international politics? Bially Mattern has no easy solutions, but finds hope in that emotions are no more elusive than many well studied political phenomena, from interests to power and anarchy. The concept of affect, in particular, offers potential for theory building for it shows how emotions exist before and beyond feelings, cognition, and judgment. These links between emotional and affective phenomena lie at the heart of what we seek to capture through our micro–macro framework and what is at stake in theorizing the processes that render individual emotions collective.