Analyzing Affective Societies

Methods and Methodologies

Antje Kahl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367671082
• eBook ISBN: 9780429754777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In recent years, research in the social sciences and cultural studies has increasingly paid attention to the generative power of emotions and affects; that is, to the questions of how far they shape social and cultural processes while being simultaneously shaped by them. However, the literature on the methodological implications of researching affects and emotions remains rather limited.

As a collective outcome of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Affective Societies at Freie Universität Berlin, Analyzing Affective Societies introduces procedures and methodologies applied by researchers of the CRC for investigating societies as affective societies. Presenting scholarly research practices by means of concrete examples and case studies, the book does not contain any conclusive methodological advice, but rather engages in illustrative descriptions of the authors' research practices.

Analyzing Affective Societies unveils different research approaches, procedures and practices of a variety of disciplines from the humanities, arts and social sciences. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Qualitative Research Methods, Emotions, Affect, Cultural Studies and Social Sciences.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Analyzing affective societies

Antje Kahl

1. Researching the dynamic sociality of affect and emotion: a major challenge

Affect and emotion are fundamental to human sociality. This observation has increasingly been a focus of research in the social and behavioral sciences as well as in the humanities and cultural studies. These disciplines offer conceptual and empirical approaches to examining the role of affect and emotion in social life, ranging from general social and cultural theories of affect and emotion to applications of affect and emotion analyses in research about historically and culturally distinct societies.

Taking a broader view of the central developments in affect and emotion research over the preceding two or three decades reveals the emergence of a new general framework that foregrounds the sociality, relationality and situatedness of affect and emotion (Parkinson, Fisher, & Manstead, 2005; Greco & Stenner, 2008, Gregg & Seigworth, 2010; Burkitt, 2014; von Scheve & Salmela, 2014; von Scheve, 2017; Röttger-Rössler & Slaby, 2018). This new framework firmly reverses older approaches to affect and emotion, which were largely focused on human individuals and their psychological and biological properties (e.g., Izard, 1991; Lazarus, 1991; Panksepp, 1998). By contrast, at present, the sociality and dynamic relationality of affective and emotional phenomena is no longer a matter of much controversy in the social and human sciences.

However, it is one thing to proclaim a general theoretical and conceptual shift towards social-relational perspectives. It is quite another matter to equip this transformed conceptual terrain with feasible tools, methodological orientations and research methods. Whereas a growing field of research has begun to develop methodologies and techniques for investigating emotions in social and cultural contexts (e.g., Flam & Kleres, 2015 Holmes, 2014, 2015; Katz, 2004; Beatty, 2005; Kleres, 2011), scholarship on the methodological implications of researching affect, in particular, has remained rather limited (see Knudsen & Stage, 2015, for a promising start). This is certainly due to the practical challenges of researching relational and phenomenological issues more generally: how can we go about analyzing subtle affective and, to a lesser extent, emotional dynamics through social and cultural research that is empirical and that relies heavily on what can be observed, described or imagined? Affect is a particularly challenging category for this sort of research to address. Unlike emotions, affect is not restricted to specific observable forms of action, bodily behavior or even to discursive and language-based modes of articulation and enunciation. Instead, affect is often understood to elude and bypass these modes of accessibility (Blackman, 2012). A further methodological challenge lies in affect theory’s grounding in process and relational ontology. Social research methods have not been developed for relational ontology in the way they have for more traditional ontologies, such as methodological individualism or holism. Finally, affect (and emotion) research is a transdisciplinary endeavor that encompasses a number of different methodological traditions and scientific paradigms. Hence, methods that would be considered adequate in one discipline might be less ideal in another field. However, this diversity is also a source of inspiration in that methods considered to be amongst the standard repertoire of a particular discipline might be adopted and lead to innovation in another discipline.

Given these challenges, how can affect – as a situated and relational dynamic – be meaningfully operationalized, observed and described in empirical research? Given their profound and constitutive entanglement with corporeality, discourse, media, materiality, space and technology, how can interpersonal affective dynamics be reconstructed and interpreted in ways that are meaningful beyond the individual researcher and across different cases? To put it more provocatively, how can we know that the phenomenon we conceptualize as affect exists in the first place? Is affect merely a tool for thought and analysis rather than a bodily force with causal repercussions? Which general methodological paradigms and approaches are viable for affective analysis, and how would we need to amend existing methods and techniques of data collection and analysis in order to successfully “capture” affect (and emotion) in their situational, material and discursive entanglements? Judging from this list of questions, it almost seems that the methodological challenges of researching the dynamic sociality of affect encapsulates many of the major challenges of cultural and social research at large. Obviously, then, the bar is set rather high for workable methodological approaches to advance affect and emotion research.

The aim of the present volume is to make focused advances in this novel terrain. The chapters bring together methodological inquiries, as well as specific methods and analytical techniques that are carried out in the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Affective Societies, a research initiative based at Freie Universität Berlin that includes affect and emotion researchers from 11 disciplines across the social sciences, cultural and media studies, arts and humanities. Tightly interlocking different disciplinary orientations, the Center’s researchers work collaboratively on grounded approaches capable of illuminating the affective dynamics of social coexistence within a range of salient domains of life in contemporary societies. This research initiative is the exemplary terrain on which the present volume draws for its contributions. This interdisciplinary context in itself provides a challenge as well as a source of potential innovation. One of the central assumptions of the CRC is that Affective Societies can only be understood in a comprehensive fashion when researchers simultaneously account for the social and cultural constitution of affect and emotion. This often requires finding a common ground from which exchange and mutual inspiration becomes possible, not only in terms of theories and concepts, but also regarding the fundamental methodological orientation of research. As a starting point, this common ground has been found in a methodological orientation that implies an inductive and interpretative-hermeneutic approach to empirical research – an approach that is well established in both the social sciences and cultural studies. Workable solutions to the challenges of researching affect and emotion can thus draw on the existing repertoires of methods in these different disciplines. Nevertheless, there is also a clear need to adapt and further develop these methods in new directions, so as to tackle the research questions through a shared transdisciplinary conceptual framework firmly anchored in social and cultural theory.¹

More generally, it is vital that the development of methods proceeds in-step with the conceptual and theoretical elaboration of the phenomena under study. Concepts are the building blocks on which any empirical research, no matter what methodological orientation it subscribes to, rests. The present volume is therefore complemented by another book entitled Affective Societies: Key Concepts (Slaby & von Scheve, 2019), which appears in the same Routledge Studies in Affective Societies book series. In an expanded glossary and review article–style format, this other book presents 29 working concepts that comprise the theoretical and conceptual core of the Affective Societies initiative. The particular approach to concepts reflected in that volume is research-oriented, pragmatic and grounded in specific domains, instead of offering detached and abstract “theory” in the classical sense. The present volume, in turn, orients its methodological and methods-based elucidations closely to the conceptual perspective explicated in the Key Concepts book. Thus, these two works function as “sister volumes”, offering complementary perspectives. While they can of course be used independently of each other, they may be read together for a fuller picture of the Affective Societies perspective and its methodological and conceptual advances as well as challenges.

In this introduction, I will undertake the following tasks: I will first provide an overview and commentary of Affective Societies as the designator of an inter- and trans-disciplinary research perspective (section 2). I will then introduce the specific methodological and methods-based approaches collected in this volume, with particular emphasis on the methodological challenge posed by “affective relationality” (section 3). Finally, I will present overviews of the four parts of the book, the 16 separate chapters and the rationale of arranging them in this particular manner (section 4).

2. Affective societies: theoretical outlook

Affective Societies is more than just the title and general theme of the Berlin-based interdisciplinary research initiative. It is also, and predominantly, a general designator of a theoretical and diagnostic approach to affect and emotion research. This approach centers on a social-relational and situated understanding of affect and emotion and their foundational – both constructive and disruptive – involvement in the social fabric of contemporary societies. The contributors to this volume and other researchers at the CRC use the title to focus on the affective dynamics that circulate within and underpin contemporary societies in both a theoretical and a diagnostic perspective. As a theoretical orientation, Affective Societies draws on a basic theory of sociality centered on embodied affective relations, affective situatedness, performativity and collective agency, and combines that theory of sociality with approaches that theorize societies along the lines of particular historical exemplars. These latter approaches analyze concrete societal formations under a specific “optic” focusing on a salient element or development that is characteristic of the formation in question (as, for example, “post-industrial society”, “knowledge society”, “risk society”). The two orientations – a social theory perspective and a more diagnostic and critical theories of societies perspective – are often undertaken as separate endeavors with only partial overlap. This is different in the case of Affective Societies. Here, sociality as such and the broader outlook on society at large are theorized in terms of affectivity. Accordingly, the social theory perspective on relational affect is tightly interwoven with the broader diagnostic angle on contemporary societies – that is, societies characterized by an intensification and acceleration of affective modes of address and relatedness. This adds complexity to the overall picture but makes for a richer and more timely outlook on affect and emotion compared to theories that focus on affect and emotion in isolation from their embeddedness within extant social, cultural and political life. I will now briefly consider both dimensions of the approach separately, beginning with the understanding of relational affectivity as a central category of social theory.

Relational affect in social theory

The first thing to note about contemporary theories of affect and emotion is that the long-standing assumption of a sharp opposition between affectivity and rationality is now decidedly outdated. The dichotomy between emotion and reason has given way to views that emphasize their entanglement and co-dependence. Even fields that have little in common and are rarely in agreement, such as social philosophy, cognitive psychology and the affective neurosciences, share the same basic assumption that affectivity is an indispensable dimension of human world-relatedness. Affective and emotional processes are vital for assessments of relevance, for the formation of value and valuation, and for keeping social practices focused on what is ultimately at stake in them. Without affectivity, evaluation and decision-making would not be possible – whether at the individual or the collective level. This is not merely an add-on view that loosely joins separable affective and rational “components”, but an integrated perspective that posits the inextricable entanglement of affective, cognitive and volitional elements. Based on this new consensus across fields, a number of key points have been emphasized and theoretically elaborated. These include the social situatedness of affect and emotion, the dynamic relationality of affective processes, their embodied and intercorporeal character, and in particular, their efficaciousness as drivers of social relations and collective action in various local and trans-local contexts. With these characteristics, relational affect is a central force of social connectedness, ranging from face-to-face encounters to various interactive dynamics between individuals and collectives as well as inter- and intra-group relations. All these points give shape to the foundational involvement of affect and emotion among the processes that enable, create, sustain – but also threaten or disrupt – human social and societal life.

Developed in this way, the relational understanding of affect rivals other prominent concepts in social theory that provide a focused outlook on central dimensions of sociality, such as agency, reciprocity, interaction, communication or intention in earlier approaches. It is a central theoretical aim of the Affective Societies initiative to develop and solidify this perspective and demonstrate its value in various areas of research.

Relational affect as a diagnostic notion

In addition to its role as a conceptual anchor for social theory, relational affect – along with related relational approaches to emotion² – have diagnostic purchase with regard to contemporary societies. Here, the Affective Societies perspective resembles diagnostic “theories of societies” that are prominent in the German tradition of sociology and social analysis (i.e., Gesellschaftstheorie). Such theories circumscribe specific and historically situated societal formations, often drawing on modern Western nation-states as prime examples. Drawing on assumptions and concepts from general social theory, these theories often combine a range of concepts and approaches to phenomena that scholars deem important for a specific local or historical societal formation, such as the risk society (Beck, 1992) or the information and network society (e.g., Castells, 2010). Loosely in line with these earlier approaches, but with a significantly different organizing idea, the Affective Societies initiative considers affect and emotion to be a signature feature of contemporary social and societal life. In particular, the assumption is that recent developments signal a tipping point when it comes to manifestations of affect in public discourse, in mediatized social interactions, and in broader efforts at managing, controlling and governing affect and emotion.

To note just one significant dimension of this trend, consider how recent political events and developments have managed to transform public communication and global politics in a matter of just a few years. Thanks to the new possibilities brought on by social media, political movements emerge and rally around salient issues with increased speed and a much broader reach than ever before. Relatedly, spontaneous, highly sensuous modes of affective associations are high in demand, resulting in transient collectives or affective communities that can make their presence felt rapidly within a thoroughly reformatted public realm. At the same time, one cannot fail to notice the widespread emergence, public appeal and sustained success of right-wing populist parties across Europe and the world, and their reliance on – and, one must admit, increasing mastery of – affective modes of communication. All this has led to a substantially altered political climate, evidenced by the increasingly divisive nature of political debate and practices in the context of the so-called European “refugee crisis” since 2015. This trend has many facets – one of them directly pertaining to the public production and dissemination of knowledge. In times where it seems that what “feels true” wins the day over knowledge claims grounded in evidence, including those brought forth by acknowledged experts, acclaimed scientists or members of the intellectual establishment, the whole epistemic fabric of society seems to be at risk. Given these developments, it is urgent to find ways to diagnose with precision what is going on, and to come up with conceptual and methodological tools that are effective in highlighting what is new amidst a complex confluence of factors that make up the present conjuncture.

“Affective societies” in this respect functions as a sensitizing concept that helps to direct attention to the increasing intensification and reflexivity of affective modes of interaction and communication within the fragmented domain of contemporary public spheres. Affective modes of address have risen to unprecedented prominence, often to the detriment of other forms and styles of interaction. But which precise forms of sociality and modes of political participation will consolidate in this reformatted and contested public landscape remains an open question and a pressing issue for current research.

Beyond the relevance of affect and emotion for general social theory, Affective Societies also designates a historical formation of a specific and unprecedented kind: societies whose modes of operation and means of integration increasingly involve efforts and new techniques to mobilize and strategically deploy affect and emotion in a highly intensified and often one-sided manner. These novel and much intensified modes of affective communication and affective relatedness require powerful new research tools, concepts and methods. These new research tools must be designed to capture the energies and impulses of contemporary affect within highly complex and rapidly changing mediatized publics, or within institutions and organizations that have come under pressure recently (such as, for example, mainstream journalism, establishment politics, certain religious congregations or parts of the educational sector). It is the aim of the present volume to supply such tools.

However, the diagnostic perspective outlined here can only succeed if it is grounded in historical and theoretical knowledge of the structure, development and modes of operation of contemporary societies, as well as on sophisticated scholarship on affect and emotion. Such a perspective must be able to draw on an understanding of the manner and extent to which affective processes have always been a central element in the functioning of societies or social formations at various scales of development, to distinguish what is truly new from a background of the familiar. Above all, this perspective requires methods and methodologies capable of elucidating the intricacies of affective dynamics that operate at various levels of contemporary social life. Ideally, thes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: analyzing affective societies
• 2 Concepts as methodology: a plea for arrangement thinking in the study of affect
• Part I Textualities
• Part II Audiovisualities
• Part III Performativities
• Part IV Reflexivities