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ABSTRACT
The negative aim of this paper is to identify shortcomings in received theories. First, we criticize approaching audiences, and large gatherings more general, in categories revolving around the notion of the crowd. Second, we show how leading paradigms in emotion research restrict research on the social-relational dynamics of emotions by reducing them to physiological processes like emotional contagion or to cognitive processes like social appraisal. Our positive aim is to offer an alternative proposal for conceptualizing emotional dynamics in audiences. First, we offer a notion of emotional sharing for studying the social-relational dynamics of emotions. Second, we propose a working concept of audience as a dynamic and dispersed social collective. Finally, we bring these elements together in the description of two scenes of jubilation.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The paper is co-authored by a philosopher with a background in existential phenomenology and a sociologist with a background in sociology of knowledge. While there is a link between our theoretical backgrounds via phenomenological sociology (Alfred Schutz), there are also theoretical and methodological differences that had to be negotiated in the research process – a negotiation we experienced as highly productive. Our work has been part of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1171 Affective Societies, which develops an approach to the study of contemporary societies built on a social-relational and situated understanding of affect and emotion. Michael Wetzels’ work on this paper was part of the research activities of subproject C02 of the CRC. Gerhard Thonhauser’s work on this paper was part of a project associated with the CRC and funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): J 4055-G24. We take this paper to show the merits of true interdisciplinary cooperation.
2. This interest was supposedly linked to the catastrophes in Hillsborough (Sheffield) and the Heysel stadium (Brussels), where many people died before and during a football game because of a so called ‘mass panic’.
3. It is difficult to determine exactly what Gilbert has to say about crowds, as she reports Weber’s distinction between crowd behavior and social action and then waives the issue of crowds as too complex to be further discussed in the context of her argument.
4. According to this theory, emotions can be seen as making manifest what is relevant and valuable to us. We develop this theory against the background of an understanding of affectivity (Befindlichkeit) as letting things appear as relevant, making us care, opening up a meaningful world in which things are experienced as valuable and worth caring about (Heidegger Citation1996, Sánchez Guerrero Citation2016).
5. We want to suggest that even a phenomenon like ‘basking in reflected glory’ (Cialdini and Bordon Citation1976) requires public appearance and visibility for others, and thus at least a minimal form of interaction, for example being seen by others as wearing the jersey of the team.
6. The analyses of these scenes were done through a hermeneutical understanding by the method of videography, a combination of ‘focused ethnography’ and ‘video analysis’ (Knoblauch and Schnettler Citation2012).
7. It is interesting to mention here that another project of the CRC Affective Societies, focusing on transnational emotional repertoires in reality TV-shows (‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’), found similar results. Lünenborg and Maier (Citation2019) showed that their observed persons were expecting certain expressions before they were shown on screen. Of course, individual and collective forms differ from another, but the processes were the same: people do not follow an ‘inner’ basic emotion; they expect something to happen, even before it happens, as a form of sequential knowledge.