media, populism, and global politics
My current book project aims to understand how social media, mobile devices, and geolocation technologies are supplying both new vehicles for political participation and sometimes anti-democratic forms of political authority in international and global politics. In human rights and humanitarianism, formal campaigns and institutional interventions increasingly co-mingle with the informal contributions of everyday followers. The rarefied field of diplomatic communication is now peppered with populist performances and conspiratorial speculation. And protest activities and violent conflict are mediated by shifting constellations of local actors, citizen-journalists, and online viewers. Everyday Media and Popular Global Politics sets out to understand this changing landscape of digitally mediated international and global politics.
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I have several recent publications related to Everyday Media. "The Power of Viral Expression in World Politics" investigates digital diplomacy as a site of distinctively expressive forms of political action. I draw from the work of Stanley Cavell and Brian Massumi to theorize the distinctive qualities of impassioned utterances sustained by social media. This piece is published in the volume The Power of Emotions in World Politics, ed. Simon Koschut (New York: Routledge, 2020).
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The second, "Mediated Humanitarian Affect," theorizes the way in which humanitarian sentiment becomes captured in social configurations of authority and power through emerging forms of digital mediation. The piece is published in the volume Affective Transformations: Politics, Algorithms, Media, ed. Bernd Bösel and Serjoscha Weimer (Lüneburg: Meson Press, 2020).
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populism and popular emotion
The media project has also taken me into the study of populism and the relationship between emotion, media, and populist politics. A short piece "Representation and Mediation in World Politics" (Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2018) offers some reflections on these themes.
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On the politicized construction of collective emotion, "Re-thinking Affective Experience and Popular Emotion: World War I and the Construction of Group Emotion in International Relations" (Political Psychology, 2019; co-authored with Todd Hall) draws from recent historical research on popular demonstrations during July 1914 in order to re-assess the politics surrounding "war enthusiasm." We use the case of WWI to reflect on the political and cultural significance of attributing patterns of emotional response to members of an aspirational group.
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An older piece, "Why They Don't Hate Us: Emotion, Agency, and the Politics of 'Anti-Americanism" (Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2010), examines the cultural political discourse on so-called anti-American hatred to show that the affective basis for public protest activities is fluid, variable, and frequently not aligned with identity categories.
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the affective politics of humanitarianism
I have several essays on the role of emotion and affect in sociolegal and cultural practices associated with humanitarianism.
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"Beyond Empathy and Compassion: Genocide and The Emotional Complexities of Humanitarian Politics" examines the cultural politics of genocide within global humanitarianism. I show that that humanitarian sentiments give rise to a multiplicity of emotions, from feelings of pride and tonalities of urgency to anger and disgust toward perpetrators. I then suggest that humanitarian sentiments are not naturally tied to humanitarian politics and that the slack between sentiments and emotions allows humanitarian symbols to bolster sometimes non-humanitarian practices such as gun rights advocacy and military intervention. This essay is published in: Emotions and Mass Atrocity: Philosophical and Theoretical Explorations, edited by Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
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Finally, "Emotions and Ethics in International Relations" reflects on the analytical importance of emotions as markers of both the moral aspirations and cultural blindspots behind practices of international ethics and global humanitarianism. This piece was published in: The Routledge Handbook to Rethinking Ethics in International Relations, ed. Birgit Schippers, (New York: Routledge, 2020).
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emotion, affect, and IR theory
My first research contributions seek to understand the complex and poorly understood role of emotions in international politics. I draw from research in microsociology, neuroscience, and cultural theory to develop a new and interdisciplinary understanding of emotions as “circulations of affect”—contagious and creative social forces that start locally and propagate to larger scales.
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My book, Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict (Chicago, 2014), applies and refines this framework through studies of counterterrorism policies, nationalist mobilization, and transitional justice. The book revisits familiar cases—from conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia to the terrorist attacks on New York and Madrid—in order to showcase the creative effects of human emotion on political discourse and action. Mixed Emotions is among the first book-length studies on the topic of emotion in IR theory. It has been reviewed in various journals, including International Studies Review, International Affairs, Perspectives on Politics, and Political Science Quarterly.
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Complementing the work in Mixed Emotions, I have three articles that assess the challenge emotions present for traditional approaches in IR theory. The first, “Coming in from The Cold: Constructivism and Emotions,” (European Journal of International Relations, 2006) shows how and why constructivist theories in IR are not especially hospitable to the study of emotions. I argue that prevailing frameworks rely on assumptions regarding the ontological separation of mind and body and the centrality of intentional agency, both of which obscure the multidimensional quality of human emotion and its creative role in political processes
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The second, “Classical Realism, Emotion, and Dynamic Allegiances,” (International Theory, 2013) approaches classical realists as under-appreciated theorists of political emotion. I appeal in particular to Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr for an account of the intimate connection between emotion and change. By tracing the way these early realists used this conceptualization to make sense of communism and liberal internationalism, I distill useful insights into the affective dimensions of several forms of contemporary transnationalism.
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"Affective Politics after 9/11," (International Organization, 2015; co-authored with Todd Hall) develops a conceptual toolbox for the study of emotion in international relations. The piece draws from current research in psychology, sociology, and some neuroscience to show that emotions are both individual and collective--and that both create the conditions of possibility for distinct forms of strategic political behavior. We use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to demonstrate the benefits of incorporating affective dynamics into political analysis.
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methodology
"Emotion and Experience in International Relations" seizes on the study of emotions as an analytical opportunity to interrogate the terms on which we investigate “experience.” Drawing from the work of John Dewey and William James, I argue that part of the reason emotions confound the ontologies and methodologies of IR is that they implicate aspects of experience—such as memory, narrative, spirituality, or aesthetic practice—not generally considered to yield reliable empirical data. Appealing to feminist epistemologies, I then suggest that the study of emotions is necessarily circumscribed by the frames that generate, in advance of empirical investigation, the boundaries of intelligible human experience. The piece is published in: Parsing the Passions: Methodology and the Study of Emotion in World Politics, eds. Eric Van Rythoven and Mira Sucharov (New York: Routledge, 2019).
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