Professor Todd Hall, Tutor in Politics and Associate Professor of International Relations
The International Politics of Emotion: Who Gets To Feel What and Whose Feelings Matter in International Relations
Date: Wednesday 7th May 2025
Time: 5.30pm in the Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre
A large literature within the field of international relations has now explored both how emotions can shape political perceptions and behavior and how international actors may seek to manipulate, harness, or deploy emotions and emotional displays for political ends. Less attention, however, has been paid to how political struggles can also centre upon issues of who can or should feel what emotion and whose feelings matter. Precisely, this talk introduces how the politics of emotion can manifest in three general forms, all of which have their own properties and logics of contestation. The first centres on emotional obligations, understood as an actor’s duties to feel and express specific emotions. The second concerns emotional entitlements, or the rights an actor enjoys to either feel or not feel certain emotions. And the third involves hierarchies of emotional deference, that is, the varying degrees of priority accorded to different actors’ feelings. The talk will then illustrate how the politics of emotions can unfold on the international stage by looking at developments in the so-called “history problem” within Sino-Japanese relations.
For more information and to book, please email Development.Events@St-Annes.ox.ac.uk