Arrangement

The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) has the pleasure of inviting you to a theory seminar with Jonathan Mercer:

Feeling like a state: Social emotion and identity
Can one use emotion at anything other than the individual level of analysis? Emotion happens in biological bodies, not in the space between them, and this implies that group emotion is nothing but a collection of individuals experiencing the same emotion. This paper argues that group level emotion is powerful, pervasive, and irreducible to individuals.

People do not merely associate with groups (or states), they become those groups through shared culture, interaction, contagion, and common group interest. A focus on social identities captures the importance of social emotion. Mercer examines prestige – what it is, why policy-makers think it matters, and why it probably does not matter – and using the South African War (aka The Boer War, 1899-1902) as a case study.

Jonathan Mercer (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics and is on leave from the University of Washington in Seattle where he is an associate professor of political science. He specializes in international relations with an emphasis on international security and political psychology. Recent publications include: “Emotion and strategy in the Korean War,” International Organization (2013); “Audience costs are toys,” Security Studies (2012); “Rational signaling revisited” in an edited volume on Psychology, Strategy, and Conflict (2012); “Emotional beliefs,” International Organization (2010).