From affective polarization and outrage politics to infrastructures of feeling and institutional affect, the volume introduces new key concepts that serve both as diagnostic tools and as theoretical interventions. It addresses scholars across disciplines including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, media studies, political science, and religious and theological studies.

Against the backdrop of global crises, polarized publics, and media-saturated environments, the book argues that affect is not an add-on to discourse or rationality, but the connective tissue between self and society, intimacy and institution.

One of the volume’s chief editors, Jan Slaby, says:

“When we published the first volume of this series a few years ago, the world already felt tense — but since then, tensions have escalated: the pandemic, the rise of far-right movements even in stable democracies, the intensifying climate crisis, and new wars that shake entire regions. In 2025, the sense of crisis is stronger than ever — as are the emotions that accompany it: fear, anger, exhaustion, hope.

This new volume is therefore remarkably timely. It demonstrates how deeply emotions and affects shape our political and social worlds — from populist movements and online outrage to the emotional burdens of inequality and precarity. At the CRC we have spent the past decade studying exactly these entanglements of the personal and the political. This book brings together our insights and shows why understanding emotion is essential for understanding the world today.”

By bridging affect theory with empirical inquiry, the volume shows how affect and emotion are central to how we relate, resist, inhabit, and imagine contemporary worlds. It will appeal to scholars and students interested in the affective and emotional foundations of social and political life.