Emotions and Civil Society

This book explores how sensibilities are cultivated through civic action. It traces the conditions under which they flourish, circulate and shape collective life. Moving beyond episodic and exceptionalist understandings of crises, it examines how intertwined social, political and ecological issues nurture both personal experience and collective ways of feeling.

Drawing on pragmatist sociology, this book develops a novel account of emotions as (an)aesthetic attunements to problematic situations and introduces the concept of civic aesthetics to investigate how emotions leave lasting effects through civic action on what people learn to perceive, value and feel. Through four ethnographic studies of refugee hospitality, climate activism, environmental conflict and multispecies solidarity, it shows how citizens not only respond to social problems but also make them perceptible, meaningful and collectively felt. In doing so, they contribute to the creation of new forms of democratic life while exposing the tensions, ambivalences and unintended consequences that accompany civic engagement.

Addressed to scholars and students of the sociology of emotions, political science, migration and environmental studies, as well as to activists and practitioners, this book offers a distinctive contribution to contemporary debates on emotions, democracy and crisis. More broadly, it speaks to anyone interested in understanding how we learn to feel and act together in uncertain times.