Frontstage and backstage emotion management in civil resistance

Abstract

Civil resistance requires significant forms of emotion management by activists. In this paper, we distinguish between the different foci of emotion management carried out frontstage and backstage – the frontstage focus is typically oriented to influencing the emotions of onlookers, opponents and other targets, the backstage focus is typically concerned with managing the emotions of the activists themselves in preparation for their frontstage performances. Of course, in any particular resistance activity the two dimensions of emotion management interact more or less continuously. Activists need to continually engage in impression-management to ensure they are maintaining their display of the appropriate emotions intended to evoke the desired emotional response in the targets of their performance.

Keywords:

• Emotions
• social movements
• civil resistance
• frontstage
• backstage

Notes

1. The international symposium was held at Coventry University 10–13 April 2012. More than 40 academics, researchers and activists from over 20 countries participated. The discussions and work-groups were held under ‘Chatham House rules’: participants were free to share the information, but not the identity or affiliation of the speaker. The proceedings were recorded and transcriptions made available to the participants. We have retained the anonymity of all speakers, and therefore see no ethical problems in using the quotes from the symposium. See Rai (2012).

2. The growing awareness of the socio-political significance of emotions is evidenced by the establishment of the new research programme on the history of emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. See https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/en (Accessed 28 September 2016).

3. ‘Dilemma actions’ are significant in nonviolent resistance when they create ‘response challenges’ for authorities. For an exploration of this dimension of civilian resistance see Sørensen and Martin (2014).

4. For a discussion of how Gandhi’s ideas regarding the constructive programme relates to the field of resistance studies and studies of prefigurative politics, see Sørensen (2016a).