At the CRC 1171 Affetive Societies, researchers from ten different disciplines across the social sciences and the humanities investigate affect and emotion in their respective role for social cohesion, be it in the arts, in politics, with regard to migration or dealing with new media technology.

During the first funding period (2015-2019), CRC researchers developed an empirically grounded relational theory of affect and emotion by investigating key areas of social and communal life. Now in its second funding period, (2019-2023) the research program focuses on societal change, as a consequence of mobilities, in light of migration, inequality, political polarization, and new media technologies. Established norms and procedures are challenged as anchors of political and social stability, as much as informal rules and routines of key social institutions are called into question. We want to find out which affective and emotional processes drive and result from such changes, and an important goal of the research is not only to sharpen our knowledge of these changes and the tensions that arise from them, but to find out how to deal with them.