LEARNING TO FEEL - THE NEGLECTED SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIAL-MOVEMENTS

This paper discusses the experience and ideology of emotions among ani mal rights activists, and more broadly, the applicability of the socio logy of emotions to the field of social movements. I examine the case of a social movement which relies heavily on empathy in its initial re cruitment, and which has been derisively labeled by outsiders as 'emot ional'. I explain recruitment to animal rights activism by showing how activists develop a 'vocabulary of emotions' to rationalize their par ticipation to others and themselves, along with managing the emotional tone of the movement by limiting the kinds of people who can take par t in debates about animal cruelty. The interactive nature in which emo tions develop in social movements is stressed over previous approaches to emotions in the social movement literature, which treat emotions a s impulsive or irrational.