The Emotional Transition in Social Movements. The case of PAH

We find that some fractured societies, in grappling with Neo-Liberalism as a political project, embark on an emotional transition to win hearts and minds for new, fairer policies to tackle inequalities. Thus, there are what one might term 'affective spaces' that facilitate this emotional transition, thereby allowing the building of collective action. For these spaces to work well, they must be configured as chains of interaction rituals, which use emotional change to drive social change. This paper is based on a documental analysis and an ethnographic study carried out between 2013 and 2018 in several assemblies of and actions taken by the PAH (a platform for those affected by home foreclosure) in several Catalan municipalities. It was conducted by participatory observation, focus groups and in-depth interviews with activists.