Tag: Emotions

We Can Feel the Other World: The Prefigurative Emotion Culture

Corey Wrenn, PhDLeave a comment

 

Credits: Poma, A. (2025) Llevamos un mundo nuevo en nuestros corazones. Guia para construir una cultura emocional prefigurativa. Mexico City: CEIICH-UNAM. Translated title: Translation of the title: “We carry a new world in our hearts. A guide to building a prefigurative emotional culture.”

 

By Alice Poma and Tommaso Gravante

Challenging the hegemonic (capitalist, colonialist, patriarchal, and speciesist) culture is an integral part of building a new world, and one way to do so is questioning our individual and collective emotions.

Our project focuses on the idea of a prefigurative emotion culture which would be the set of feeling rules activists consider appropriate for the new world we/they want to create. In other words, a prefigurative emotion culture is the attempt to feel the new world we aspire to, before reaching it.

Why a prefigurative emotion culture matters

A prefigurative emotion culture is not created through formulas, self-help books, coaching, or mindfulness, but collectively, through dialogue and reflection on what we should feel, and our counter hegemonic feeling rules differ from the dominant ones.

In a society where emotions are confined to the individual sphere (and still, for some, seen as irrational), where there is no emotional education and emotions are only addressed when they become a mental health issue, it’s understandable that we find it difficult to express and work on them collectively. However, if we don’t break through these barriers, we condemn ourselves to accepting—or suffering under—the dominant emotion culture.

All efforts aimed at building an emotion culture as part of social movement activities should not be seen as tacky, superficial, or reserved for more sensitive people. Following Hochschild: “Not simply the evocation of emotion but laws governing it can become, in varying degrees, the arena of political struggle” (1979: 568).

A few examples of prefigurative feeling rules in Mexican anti-system activism

Two feeling rules of the current capitalist system are: feeling indifference toward the collective and resignation in the face of building alternatives to capitalism (Poma, 2025)[1]. Starting from here, a prefigurative feeling rule observed in different social movements is caring about the common good and wellbeing.

A second rule that is common in many forms of struggle is not to resign oneself in the face of the difficulties and triumphs of the domination system. Resignation is a mood that we made from experience; therefore, to avoid it, it’s necessary to share stories that show that it’s worth continuing the fight. It’s important to keep in mind that resignation shouldn’t be confused with the need to rest or take a break from activism.

A third prefigurative feeling rule, is the need to feel a radical and constructive hope, defined as the hope that there is still much to save, and that we can only achieve it collectively.

How can this other emotion culture be consolidated?

To consolidate a prefigurative emotion culture we need to recognize whether we have succeeded in establishing new feeling rules that we share with other groups, collectives, communities, and so on. For instance, if love for all animals is not only something that characterizes us as individuals but also something we believe we should feel—or that it’s right to feel— and that we share with other people and groups, we can consider this emotion a feeling rule. Starting from that point, we can then evoke, share, and spread it so that it becomes a feeling rule shared by more people and groups, as happens, for instance, in the LGBTQAI+ community where pride becomes a counter-hegemonic feeling rule to overcome the shame that many societies impose on those who are not heterosexual.

The best path to strengthen a prefigurative emotion culture is through empathy, which helps us accept differences (not only ideological or belief-based, but also in how we construct emotions). As Hochschild (2016) showed, imposing a rule can generate resentment in those who don’t share it.

Conclusions

Observing which emotions activists believe they should ideally feel allows us to glimpse, in a prefigurative way, the new world we aspire to, which, as the Zapatistas imagine can be “A world where everyone is who they are, without shame, without being persecuted, mutilated, imprisoned, murdered, marginalized, oppressed” (2023)[2].

 

References

Hochschild, A. R. (1979). Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85 (3).
Hochschild, A. R. (2016). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right. New Press.
Poma, Alice (2025). Llevamos un mundo nuevo en nuestros corazones. Guía para construir una cultura emocional prefigurativa. Mexico City: CEIICH-UNAM.

Notes

[1] The Emotional Culture of Capitalism a conference by Hochschild, available here: https://fb.watch/ncgm9_COkP/

[2] https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2023/11/22/twelfth-part-fragments-fragments-of-a-letter-written-by-subcommander-insurgent-moises-sent-a-few-months-ago-to-a-geography-distant-in-space-but-close-in-thought/

What Sociology Can Tell Us about Empathy for Animals

Corey Wrenn, PhDLeave a comment
Photo Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

Corey Lee Wrenn, PhD
University of Kent

Empathy for Animals is a Core Human Value

Humans across the globe share their homes with dogs, cats, rodents, and other animals. We call them companions, pets, or even family members. Thousands of pounds are invested in these animals with regard to food, treats, toys, clothing, kennels, healthcare, and even birthdays and funeral services. Clearly humans deeply care about other animals. At our core, we have empathy for animals other than ourselves.

Exploitative Economies Distort Our Empathy for Animals

So why do so many humans stop short of extending this compassion to animals categorized as food, clothing, or labour? Sociology offers a variety of explanations according to theoretical perspectives. Many sociologists, however, point to the economic structure of a society and the commodification of nonhuman animals. David Nibert has argued that our switch to a hunting economy not only created a society newly structured around the oppression of animals (speciesism) but it also created a society divided by gender. The transition to agriculture entrenched speciesism further with the advent of domestication. This also introduced class division since agriculture allowed for surplus goods (and unequal distribution).

By the late 1500s, early capitalism and colonial expansion spread and deepened speciesism across the globe (and, in doing so, introduced racial division as well). Today, in late-stage capitalism, speciesism (animal agriculture in particular) is more intensive than ever. It is rapidly normalizing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other previously colonized spaces as a result of Western coercion. These are regions where plant-based consumption was once normative. The loss of traditional foodways is not only harmful for nonhuman animals identified as “food,” but the global poor identified as their consumers. Social stratification, in other words, is rooted in the adoption of speciesism as a primary economy both past and present.

Distorted Empathy for Animals Includes Humans, Too

Notice how human oppression codeveloped with animal oppression. This intersectionality is key to the sociological understanding of speciesism. Species, race, class, gender, and other social categories are economically functional. They ensure that unpleasant jobs will be filled and that labour may be exploited for low cost (or for none at all). These categories also represent social difference and tend to facilitate conflict and discourage cooperation. For sociologists, this tendency is politically relevant. A divided society, after all, is more easily manipulated by the dominant class in support of its own interests.

The most fundamental social division is that between humans and other animals. It is this animalization which separates those who are marginalized from those who are centered in society with regard to social recognition and allocation of resources. Women are animalized, people of color are animalized, humans with disabilities are animalized, homosexual people are animalized, ethnic minorities are animalized, and non-binary and trans humans are animalized. Even nonhuman animals themselves are animalized.

This is because “animal” is a social category imbrued with symbolic meaning. Just like race really has more to do with power, prestige, and access to resources than it does with one’s actual skin color, species is also not so much about one’s biological makeup (i.e. if one has hands or hooves, skin or scales). All groups, whether human or nonhuman, that are labeled “animal” are described as physically and cognitively inferior to the dominant class and can be denied rights accordingly.

Unteaching Empathy

True, nonhuman and human animals are indeed biologically different. But there are many more commonalities between the two groups. Why do we emphasize difference over sameness? I have described a society that is fundamentally in conflict. In order to maintain such a volatile system, powerful ideologies must be introduced and enforced through institutions and socialization. Psychologists point to a variety of cognitive and emotional mechanisms for managing the discomfort humans feel when faced with contradictions in their empathy toward other animals. Sociologists, however, are interested in how our empathy for some animals and our lack of empathy for others is learned (or, more accurately, is taught).

We are taught by our parents that some animals are for petting, some animals are for admiring, some are pests we should kill, and others are food we should eat. Doctors (who generally lack nutritional training) teach us that eating animals and drinking nonhuman breastmilk is good for us. We are taught by our teachers, museums, and zoos that nonhuman animals are ours to exploit. Mainstream media (which long since converged in the 1990s under the ownership of a handful of powerful billionaires) programs us that animals are objects and our using them is good for the economy. We’re being taught these lessons from childhood throughout our life course.

Reclaiming Empathy

Fortunately, if speciesism is something that is learned, that means it is something which can be unlearned. Sociologists are also interested in how social change happens and how social justice can be achieved in a society that is fundamentally unequal. Although the system may be rigged against us (and nonhuman animals), individuals can resist the erosion of our empathy by choosing food, clothing, and entertainment which does not harm other animals. Individuals can also work to create a more inclusive, peaceful world by getting active in our communities and putting pressure on policy-makers. It is possible to reclaim our empathy for animals.