Abstract
In the Social Sciences there is a long history that connects violence and emotions. Although through controversial and very different approaches this has been present since the first reflections on individual and collective behavior, such as those of Le Bon and Tarde, and Canetti. Often, proximity with disciplines such as psychology, sociology and social psychology has characterized the discussion of the connections between violence and emotions. Yet, a focus on the historical, social, and structural premises of violent behavior has often characterized more recent discussions. For example, the feminist scholar Sara Hamed (2001) has shown how it is inappropriate to understand hate as a psychological disposition and suggests that hate works to align individual and collective bodies through the very intensity of its attachments and therefore that hate does not reside in a subject, object, or body individually.
This special issue would like to situate such important and complex traditions of studies in the current contexts of our societies, in different areas of the world and in different cultural environments. It is intended to open a space for discussion that reflects, once again, on what kind of connections exist between violence and emotions, with the aim of advancing on the belief that emotions “generate” violence or vice versa in a simplistic and linear way.
The aim is to highlight how violent behavior—particularly in the form of interpersonal violence—is related to emotional states of fear, rage, resignation, and frustration of self-focused practices in different situations of everyday life. However, the special issue is interested in highlighting as well the way in which past forms of interpersonal violence and emotions are re-interpreted today. We are interested in focalizing on phenomena as varied as the escalation of femicidal violence, the violence of local organized crime, violence among very young people at school or in playground areas, the forms of political violence in democratic contexts, and so on. We are as well interested in the forms of intensified violence of social interaction, where fury, revenge, and brutality emerge from new forms of legitimization, and the loss of proportionality of the act that involves an “emotional ecology” such as the interruption of enjoyment, and the disconnection with the other as triggers and accelerators of the spiral of interpersonal violence.
In this framework, we invite to send a proposal included in this broad framework of investigation, especially but not only referred to: • Violence and Emotions: theoretical approaches • Violence against women, masculinity, and emotions • Collective action and various forms of violence • Political violence • Violence, media, and emotions • Violence and youth: school, leisure time, and youth cultures • Public policies and institutional forms of violence • Historical examples of emotions and violence relation.