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First funding period: Political Participation, Emotion and Affect in the Context of Socio-Political Transformations – The Cases of “Tahrir” and “Taksim”

With July 2019 the CRC started its second funding period and therfore initialized a shift and development in its research focus. The last four years this project concentrated on slightly different topics.

C01: Political Participation, Emotion and Affect in the Context of Socio-Political Transformations

C01: Political Participation, Emotion and Affect in the Context of Socio-Political Transformations
Image Credit: CC by Jonathan Rashad/ Flickr

This project examines the role of emotions and affect for political participation and transformation processes in the MENA region by analyzing the cases of Egypt and Turkey. The ‘Tahrir’ and ‘Taksim’ squares are two recent examples of mass mobilization whose affective dynamics received worldwide media attention. Euphoria, anger, fear or joy were frequently mentioned, yet understudied emotions that accompanied the emergent political practices on the squares. The project asks whether the affective dynamics of the square can reach beyond the political centers and thereby lead to new forms of political participation at the local level. So far, it is unclear if and how these affective collective experiences travel beyond the “square moments” in spatial and temporal distance. The comparison between the two square moments allows for the identification of context-specific as well as  similar emotive repertoires. This yields important findings to for the question about the transformative power of affective and emotional dynamics in political processes.