Emotions, Mobilisations and South Asian Politics

Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal editor Amelie Blom editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:11th Jul '19

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Emotions, Mobilisations and South Asian Politics cover

This book highlights the role of emotions in the contentious politics of modern South Asia. It brings new methodological, theoretical and empirical insights to the mutual constitution of emotions and mobilisations in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. As such, it addresses three distinct but related questions: what do emotions do to mobilisations? What do mobilisations do to emotions? Further, what does studying emotions in mobilisations reveal about the political culture of protest in South Asia?

The chapters in this volume emphasise that emotions are significant in politics because they have the power to mobilise. They explore a variety of emotions including anger, resentment, humiliation, hurt, despair, and nostalgia, and also enchantment, humour, pleasure, hope and enthusiasm. The interdisciplinary research presented here shows that integrating emotions improves our understanding of South Asian politics while, conversely, focusing on South Asia helps retool current thinking on the emotional dynamics of political mobilisations. The book offers contextual analyses of how emotions are publicly represented, expressed and felt, thus shedding light on the complex nature of protests, power relations, identity politics, and the political culture of South Asia.

This cutting-edge research volume intersects South Asian studies, emotion studies and social movement studies, and will greatly interest scholars and students of political science, anthropology, sociology, history and cultural studies, and the informed general reader interested in South Asian politics.

‘This remarkable volume brings together the best recent developments in the humanistic social sciences on affect, embodiment and politics. In addition, its authors provide brilliant ethnographies of a wide range of movements which exemplify the centrality of the emotions to mobilisation of every type in South Asia.’

Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, USA

‘This collection of essays offers a coherent and comprehensive analysis of the role of emotion in South Asian politics and its methodological ramifications. Case studies and theoretical chapters explain the power of emotions in the making of collective action as well as individual trajectories on the basis of psychological and sociological considerations, which are neither culturalist, nor divorced from culture. This is one of the finest attempts at understanding one of the most complex objects of social sciences.’

Christophe Jaffrelot,CNRS Senior Researcher, CERI-Sciences Po, Paris, France

‘What moves social movements? When and how do movements move us? In offering us a beautifully curated set of reflections on emotion in South Asian public life, Blom and Tawa Lama-Rewal at the same time enrich our understanding of democracy as a global project.’

William Mazarella, Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, University of Chicago, USA


‘This remarkable volume brings together the best recent developments in the humanistic social sciences on affect, embodiment and politics. In addition, its authors provide brilliant ethnographies of a wide range of movements which exemplify the centrality of the emotions to mobilisation of every type in South Asia.’

Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, USA

‘This collection of essays offers a coherent and comprehensive analysis of the role of emotion in South Asian politics and its methodological ramifications. Case studies and theoretical chapters explain the power of emotions in the making of collective action as well as individual trajectories on the basis of psychological and sociological considerations, which are neither culturalist, nor divorced from culture. This is one of the finest attempts at understanding one of the most complex objects of social sciences.’

Christophe Jaffrelot,CNRS Senior Researcher, CERI-Sciences Po, Paris, France

‘What moves social movements? When and how do movements move us? In offering us a beautifully curated set of reflections on emotion in South Asian public life, Blom and Tawa Lama-Rewal at the same time enrich our understanding of democracy as a global project.’

William Mazarrella, Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, University of Chicago, USA

ISBN: 9781138282261

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 453g

290 pages