Class Resentment and Leadership: Manipulation of Negative Emotions in Political Leadership Practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.17.2020.68.03Keywords:
political leadership, class resentment, ressentiment, negative emotions, political emotions, collective emotions, collective identity, affective dimension of leadershipAbstract
The aim of this paper is to discuss the emotional plane in the context of the formation of leadership asymmetry, especially the instrumental use of grudge and resentment by a leader in the process of political leadership. The starting point to explaining the instrumentalisation of the affective sphere in politics, interpreted as a source of political leadership, will be the critical argumentation in relation to the assumptions of the theory of rational choice about the stability and predictability of political process. This article attempts a critical look at the rationality of leadership practices in politics, where it is emphasized that the individual and collective structures – including collective identities – of beliefs on which the leadership process is formed, consolidated and based, are not permanent, but increasingly dependent on irrational manipulative strategies. Hence, this paper will analyse the mechanism of creating or reactivating negative emotions by the leader in a given cultural and structural environment as the reasons for the emergence and legitimacy of supra-individual resentment or the functioning of class resentment, which translates into the escalation of hostility in a stratified society, as well as into followers’ receptivity; more broadly – into the form and shape of effective political leadership.
Downloads
PlumX Metrics of this article
References
Allott N., “The Role of Misused Concepts in Manufacturing Consent: A Cognitive Account”, in L. de Saussure, P. Schulz (eds.), Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century.
Google Scholar
Discourse, Language, Mind, Amsterdam–Philadelphia 2005, https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.17.08all.
Google Scholar
Althusser L., For Marx, London–New York 2005, https://doi.org/10.3917/dec.althu.2005.01.
Google Scholar
Andrews J.P., Field R.H.G., “Regrounding the Concept of Leadership”, Leadership and Organization Development Journal, vol. 19, no. 3 (1998), https://doi.org/10.1108/01437739810210176.
Google Scholar
Avery G.C., Understanding Leadership. Paradigms and Cases, London 2004, http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446215487.
Google Scholar
Barbalet J.M., “A Macro Sociology of Emotion: Class Resentment”, Sociological Theory, vol. 10, no. 2 (1992), https://doi.org/10.2307/201956.
Google Scholar
Barbalet J.M., Demertzis N., “Collective Fear and Societal Change”, in N. Demertzis (ed.), Emotions in Politics. The Affect Dimension in Political Tension, London 2013, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025661_9.
Google Scholar
Barbalet J.M., Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure. A Macrosociological Approach, Cambridge 1998, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488740.
Google Scholar
Barrett L.F., “Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 10, no. 1 (2006), https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_2.
Google Scholar
Bar-Tal D., Teichman Y., Stereotypes and Prejudice in Conflict. Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish Society, Cambridge 2005, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511499814.
Google Scholar
Bass B.M., Bass and Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications, New York 1990.
Google Scholar
Bass B.M., R. Bass, The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications, New York 2008.
Google Scholar
Berger P.L., Luckmann T., The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York 1996.
Google Scholar
Brudholm T., Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive, Philadelphia 2008.
Google Scholar
Capriles R., Leadership by Resentment. From ‘Ressentiment’ to Redemption, Cheltenham–Northampton 2012, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781006573.
Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza L.L., Genes, Peoples, and Languages, London 2001.
Google Scholar
Chomsky N., Deterring Democracy, London 1998.
Google Scholar
Dinh J.E., Lord R.G., Hoffman E., “Leadership Perception and Information Processing: Influences of Symbolic, Connectionist, Emotional, and Embodied Architectures”, in D.V. Day (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations, Oxford 2014, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199755615.013.016.
Google Scholar
Edelman M., The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Urbana 1964.
Google Scholar
Ekman P., “Basic emotions”, in T. Dalgleish, M. Power (eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion, Chichester 1999.
Google Scholar
Ekman P., “Biological and Cultural Contributions to Body and Facial Movement in the Expression of Emotions”, in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Explaining Emotions, Berkeley 1980.
Google Scholar
Elder-Vass D., The Causal Power of Social Structures. Emergence, Structure and Agency, Cambridge 2010, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511761720.
Google Scholar
Epitropaki O., Martin R., Thomas G., “Relational Leadership”, in J. Antonakis, D.V. Day (eds.), The Nature of Leadership, London 2018.
Google Scholar
Ferro M., Resentment in History, Cambridge 2010.
Google Scholar
Freeden M., The Political Theory of Political Thinking. The Anatomy of a Practice, Oxford 2015, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199568031.001.0001.
Google Scholar
Geertz C., “The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind”, in J.M. Scher (ed.), Theories of the Mind, New York 1962.
Google Scholar
Green D.P., Shapiro I., Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science, New Haven 1994.
Google Scholar
Hall S., “The ‘Structured Communication’ of Events”, in Stencilled Occasional Paper, no. 5 (1974).
Google Scholar
Hall S., “The Work of Representation”, in S. Hall (ed.), Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London 2003.
Google Scholar
Härtel C.E.J., Zerbe W.J., Ashkanasy N.M. (eds.), Emotions in Organizational Behavior, Mahwah N.J. 2005, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611895.
Google Scholar
Hatfield E., Cacioppo J.T., Rapson R.L., Emotional Contagion, Cambridge 1994, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139174138.
Google Scholar
Hazy J.K., Goldstein J.A., Lichtenstein B.B. (eds.), Complex Systems Leadership Theory. New Perspectives from Complexity Science on Social and Organizational Effectiveness, Mansfield 2007.
Google Scholar
House R.J. et al. (eds.), Culture, Leadership and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, Thousand Oaks 2004.
Google Scholar
Hutchison E., Affective Communities in World Politics. Collective Emotions after Trauma, Cambridge 2016, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316154670.
Google Scholar
Kaspar R., “A Short Introduction to the Biological Principles of Evolutionary Epistemology”, in F.M. Wuketits (ed.), Concepts and Approaches in Evolutionary Epistemology.
Google Scholar
Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge, Dordrecht 1984, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7127-1_3.
Google Scholar
Lasswell H.D., Psychopathology and Politics, Chicago 1977.
Google Scholar
Leavitt J., “Meaning and Feeling in the Anthropology of Emotions”, American Ethnologist, vol. 23 (1996), https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1996.23.3.02a00040.
Google Scholar
Liden R.C. et al., “Servant Leadership: Antecedents, Consequences, and Contextual Moderators”, in D.V. Day (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations, Oxford 2014.
Google Scholar
Lieberman M.D. et al., “Reflection and Reflexion: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to Attributional Inference”, in M.P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 34 (2002), San Diego–London, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(02)80006-5.
Google Scholar
Lopez J., Scott J., Social Structure, Buckingham 2000.
Google Scholar
Lord R.G., Maher K.J., Leadership and Information Processing: Linking Perceptions and Performance, New York 1993.
Google Scholar
Lutz C., Abu-Lughod L., “Introduction: Emotion, Discourse, and the Politics of Everyday Life”, in Eidem (eds.), Language and the Politics of Emotion, Cambridge 1990.
Google Scholar
Mansbridge J.J. (ed.), Beyond Self-Interest, Chicago 1990.
Google Scholar
Marshall T.H., Class, Citizenship, and Social Development, Westport 1973.
Google Scholar
Mouzelis N., Modern and Postmodern Social Theorizing, Cambridge 2008, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511811418.
Google Scholar
Nietzsche F.W., On the Genealogy of Morals, New York 1989.
Google Scholar
Northouse P.G., Leadership. Theory and Practice, London 2013.
Google Scholar
Nussbaum M.C., Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, New York 2016.
Google Scholar
Ortony A., Clore G.L., Collins A., The Cognitive Structure of Emotions, Cambridge 1988, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511571299.
Google Scholar
Pierzchalski F., Political Leadership in Morphogenetic Perspective, Frankfurt am Main 2017, https://doi.org/10.3726/b10740.
Google Scholar
Protevi J., “Political Emotion”, in C. von Scheve, M. Salmela (eds.), Collective Emotions. Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology, Oxford 2014.
Google Scholar
Reddy W.M., The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions, Cambridge 2004, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511512001.
Google Scholar
Richerson P.J., Boyd R., Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, Chicago 2005, https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226712130.001.0001.
Google Scholar
Runciman W.G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century England, Harmondsworth 1972.
Google Scholar
Russell J.A., “Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion”, Psychological Review, vol. 110, no. 1 (2003), https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.145.
Google Scholar
Sander D., “Models of Emotion: The Affective Neuroscience Approach”, in J.L. Armony, P. Vuilleumier (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Human Affective Neuroscience, Cambridge 2013.
Google Scholar
Scarantino A., “Basic Emotions, Psychological Construction, and the Problem od Variability”, in L. Feldman Barrett, J.A. Russell (eds.), The Psychological Construction of Emotion, New York–London 2015.
Google Scholar
Scheff T.J., Microsociology: Discourse, Emotion, and Social Structure, Chicago 1990.
Google Scholar
Scheler M., Ressentiment, Milwaukee 2007.
Google Scholar
Scherer K.R., “Psychological Models of Emotion”, in J.C. Borod (ed.), The Neuropsychology of Emotion, New York–Oxford 2000.
Google Scholar
Scherer K.R., Wallbott H.G., “Evidence for Universality and Cultural Variation of Differential Emotion Response Patterning”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 66 (1994), https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.66.2.310.
Google Scholar
Schoeck H., Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour, Indianapolis 1987.
Google Scholar
Schönpflug U., “Cultural Transmission: Psychological, Developmental, Social and Methodological Aspects”, in U. Schönpflug (ed.), Theory and Research in Cultural Transmission, Cambridge 2009, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511804670.
Google Scholar
Self P., Government by the Market? The Politics of Public Choice, London 1993.
Google Scholar
Sennett R., Cobb J., The Hidden Injuries of Class, New York 1983.
Google Scholar
Shepsle K.A., Bonchek M.S., Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behavior and Institutions, New York 1997.
Google Scholar
Solomon R., A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract, New York 1991.
Google Scholar
Solomon R., “The Politics of Emotion”, in R. Kingston, L. Ferry (eds.), Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy, Vancouver 2008.
Google Scholar
Strawson P.F., Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, London–New York 2008, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203882566.
Google Scholar
Strongman K.T., The Psychology of Emotion. From Everyday Life to Theory, Chichester 2003.
Google Scholar
Ścigaj P., “Od osobowości autorytarnej do uzasadnienia systemu. Elementy teorii krytycznej w psychologicznych koncepcjach wyjaśniających wrogość międzygrupową”, Teoria Polityki, vol. 2 (2018).
Google Scholar
TenHouten W., A General Theory of Emotions and Social Life, London–New York 2007, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203013441.
Google Scholar
Thamm R.A., “The Classification of Emotions”, in J.E. Stets, J.H. Turner (eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions, New York 2006.
Google Scholar
Tomelleri S., “The Sociology of Resentment”, in B. Fantini, D.M. Moruno, J. Moscoso (eds.), On Resentment: Past and Present, Newcastle 2013.
Google Scholar
Uhl-Bien M., Marion R., McKelvey B., “Complexity Leadership Theory: Shifting Leadership from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Era”, in M. Uhl-Bien, R. Marion (eds.), Complexity Leadership. Part I: Conceptual Foundations, Charlotte 2008, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.04.002.
Google Scholar
Wang M., Zhou L., Liu S., “Multilevel Issues in Leadership Research”, in D.V. Day (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations, Oxford 2014, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199755615.013.009.
Google Scholar
Ward H., “Rational Choice”, in D. Marsh, G. Stocker (eds.), Theory and Methods in Political Science, Basingstoke 2002.
Google Scholar
Ziółkowski J., Syndrom oblężonej twierdzy, Warszawa 2019.
Google Scholar
Ziółkowski J., “Syndrom oblężonej twierdzy jako mechanizm socjotechniczny”, in F. Pierzchalski, J. Golinowski (eds.), Socjotechnika lęku w polityce, Bydgoszcz 2016.
Google Scholar
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
