Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2026, 18:10–
Venue: Mita Campus, Graduate School Building, 5th Floor, Room 351Ahttps://www.keio.ac.jp/en/maps/mita.html
Speaker: Christian von Scheve (Professor, Free University of Berlin; Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University; JSPS Fellow)
Contact: Takemitsu Morikawa (Professor, Faculty of Letters / Committee Member, Graduate School of Human Relations) morikawa@flet.keio.ac.jp: Registration required in advance
Date and Time: Tuesday, April 21, 2026, 18:10-
Venue: Mita Campus, Graduate School Building, 5th Floor, Room 351Ahttps://www.keio.ac.jp/en/maps/mita.html
Speaker: Christian von Scheve (Professor at Free University of Berlin; Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University; JSPS Fellow)
Contact: Takemitsu Morikawa (Professor in Sociology, Faculty of Letters / Graduate School of Human Relations); morikawa@flet.keio.ac.jp. Registration is required in advance.
Emotions in Politics: Everyday Interactions, Polarized Relations, and the Contestation of Emotions Christian von Scheve
Sociological accounts of political conflict have long attended to structural divisions and ideological cleavages while treating emotions as secondary phenomena. This talk proposes an alternative: a systematic account of the role of emotions in political life that spans everyday interaction, intergroup dynamics, and the discursive contestation of affect itself. According to this view, emotions are not just powerful forces in political life, but are, in themselves, essentially political. Drawing on Interaction Ritual Theory, I first examine the microfoundations of political discourse, arguing that everyday political conversations are best understood not as episodes of deliberation, but as interaction rituals whose affective outcomesshape the social ecology of political talk. Evidence from an experience sampling study illustrates how the situational and relational context of political encounters systematically conditions their emotional quality, with important consequences for social cohesion and sorting. I then extend this argument to the level of intergroup relations, presenting evidence that issue-based affective polarization involves not only evaluative differentiation between political camps but perceived emotional alignment within them, a mechanism that strengthens group entitativity and may deepen boundaries across groups.
Finally, I develop and illustrate the concept of contested emotions, which captures the observation that emotions, their appropriateness, intensity, and meaning, have become objects of normative dispute in contemporary political conflicts. I examine the formal, social, and cultural grounds of emotional contestation and trace conditions under which this form of political conflict has become possible and prevalent. I conclude by emphasizing how emotions shape interactions, relations, and debates--and are themselves deeply political.