The Structure of Feeling – Emotion Culture and National Self-Sacrifice in World Politics
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| Author | Simon Koschut |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829816672929 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829816672929
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2017, Vol. 45(2) 174 –192
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829816672929
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1. Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New
York: Scribner, 2003), 6. See also, Theo Farrell, ‘Culture and Military Power’, Review of
International Studies 24, no. 3 (1998): 407–16.
The Structure of Feeling –
Emotion Culture and National
Self-Sacrifice in World Politics
Simon Koschut
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Abstract
Why do individuals sacrifice themselves to defend a nation-state? This article emphasises the
link between emotion and culture by investigating the affective reproduction of culture in world
politics. Building on the tradition of Émile Durkheim, it introduces the concept of emotion culture
to IR. Emotion cultures are understood as the culture-specific complex of emotion vocabularies,
feeling rules, and beliefs about emotions and their appropriate expression that facilitates the
cultural construction of political communities, such as the nation-state. It is argued that emotions
provide a socio-psychological mechanism by which culture moves individuals to defend a nation-
state, especially in times of war. By emotionally investing in the cultural structure of a nation-state,
the individual aligns him/herself with a powerful cultural script, which then dominates over other
available scripts. The argument is empirically illustrated by the case of the so-called Japanese
kamikaze pilots.
Keywords
culture, emotion, nation-state, self-sacrifice, war
Introduction
Wars can be understood as an expression of a sociocultural order that defines the param-
eters for the worthiness of sacrificing human life on behalf of political communities.1 A
sociocultural order can be conceived of as ‘any interpersonally shared system of meanings,
Corresponding author:
Simon Koschut, Freie Universität Berlin, Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science, Ihnestr. 22, 14195 Berlin,
Germany.
Email: simon.koschut@fu-berlin.de
672929MIL0010.1177/0305829816672929Millennium: Journal of International StudiesKoschut
research-article2016
Article
Koschut 175
2. Dominique Jacquin, Andrew Oros and Marco Verweij, ‘Culture in International Relations:
Introduction to a Special Issue’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 22, no. 3
(1993): 375–7, 375.
3. See for example, the recent roundtable on ‘International Relations as a Social Science’ in
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, in particular: Iver B. Neumann, ‘International
Relations as a Social Science’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43, no. 1
(2014): 330–50, 344 and Jonathan Mercer, ‘“Psychological Constructivism”: Comment
on Iver Neumann’s “International Relations as a Social Science”’, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 43, no. 1 (2014): 355–8, 357, as well as the symposium on ‘A Cultural
Theory of IR’ in International Theory, in particular: Jacques Hymans, ‘The Arrival of
Psychological Constructivism’, International Theory 2, no. 3 (2010): 461–7 and Richard Ned
Lebow, ‘Motives, Evidence, Identity: Engaging my Critics’, International Theory 2, no. 3
(2010): 486–94.
4. Roland Bleiker and Emma Hutchison, ‘Theorizing Emotions in World Politics’, International
Theory 6, no. 3 (2014): 491–514, 508.
5. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York:
Routledge, 1990); Lauren Wilcox, ‘Making Bodies Matter in IR’, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 43, no. 1 (2014): 359–64.
perceptions and values’.2 A central concern of the present study is the interplay between
culture and emotion and how this interplay sometimes mobilises and generates extreme
violence and human suffering in world politics. This speaks directly to an on-going
debate about the socio-psychological foundations of International Relations (IR)3 that
permits further questions regarding the link between individual emotions and their cul-
tural embedding in world politics: Why did Japanese male kamikaze pilots sacrifice
themselves to defend the Japanese nation-state in the Second World War? What were the
motives and dynamics of their psychological attachment? How was it evoked?
Building on the tradition of Durkheim, I introduce the concept of emotion culture to
IR to address these interrelated questions. Over the last decade, many IR scholars have
turned to emotions as a critical source for understanding and explaining world politics.
In particular, scholars are just beginning to theorise how the discursive and culturally
embedded nature of emotions intersects with political power.4 To this literature, the
notion of an emotion culture adds a unique conceptual tool to study the empirical signifi-
cance of particular emotions to maintain culture and power differences between soldiers
and ‘the state’. It is argued that individual emotions are embodied in and structured
through culture. Culture provides a script for emotions that the body is expected to per-
form and obey.5 By emotionally investing in a particular cultural structure, such as ‘the
nation-state’, the individual emotionally aligns him/herself with a particular cultural
script, which then dominates other available scripts, such as attachment to ‘the local’ or
‘the global’. In other words, socially acceptable ways of feeling and expressing emotions
are tied to and reinforce one particular cultural arrangement over others. In short, emo-
tions provide a socio-psychological mechanism by which culture moves people to defend
a nation-state.
To investigate this argument, the article is divided into three parts. First, I develop a
conceptual framework for emotion culture to capture the interplay between culture and
emotions and outline how this concept underpins the nation-state. Second, I analytically
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