Drawing on research from a range of global contexts, the issue shows how emotional expectations, dispositions and regimes are deeply woven into class societies: they stabilise hierarchies, legitimise privilege, and shape the everyday ways in which people interpret their own and others’ social positions. At the same time, emotions can open cracks in the social order—fueling critique, generating resentment, or producing moments of friction that unsettle established boundaries.

Together, the contributions reveal how class is never just about material resources, but also about affective patterns that structure belonging, mobility and inequality. They offer a conceptual and empirical framework for understanding emotions as social forces: as something that both reflects and makes class relations.