Abstract
When she started [#NMP3] last year, Holmes was so convinced of her arguments that she expected Page 3 to have stopped by the end of 2012. . . Instead, she experienced a burn-out after constant campaigning, 18-hour stints on Twitter and being subjected to death threats and a stream of misogynistic messages. The classic? ‘Fuck off, you’ve got shit tits.’ Now she’s working in a group of eight, all volunteers like her, tweeting and organising from their homes, and seems highly upbeat again. (Cochrane, 2013, in
Introduction
What is it that refuels the emotional energy of actors working to disrupt an institution? For those actors working to dismantle institutionalized sexism, this is a poignant question. They experience disproportionate levels of abuse and harassment, particularly online, fending off trolling, abuse, and rape and death threats (Busch, Chee, & Harvey, 2016; Lewis, Rowe, & Wiper, 2016). For Lucy-Anne Holmes (see quotation above), the founder of social media-led feminist organization #NoMorePage3 (hereafter #NMP3), feminist institutional work (Karam & Jamali, 2013) was characterized by stress, anger and burnout. #NMP3 sought the removal of a photograph of a nude woman on ‘Page 3’ of the UK’s
Taking #NMP3 as our case study, we address this very puzzle, exploring not only
Our findings extend theorization on emotions and institutional work twofold. Our first contribution is to develop the construct ‘affective embodiment’ (Fotaki & Pullen, 2019), which we define as the corporeal and emotional experiences of the institution, building theory on
Affective embodiment offers an answer to the ‘energizing potential that substance provides’ (Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018, p. 437), because it captures the various affective experiences of actors, as individuals as well as collectives, vis-à-vis the institution. Actors either ‘align’ (Ahmed, 2017) their own embodied experiences of the institution with those of others engaged in feminist institutional work (e.g. shared experiences of extra-communal trolling, often aimed at ridiculing women’s bodies) or ‘misalign’ embodied experiences (e.g. intra-communal bodily differences surfaced during in-fighting). It is this (mis)alignment that mediates how actors replenish emotional energy, detailed below. We thus contribute to structural approaches to institutions and emotions (Zietsma, Toubiana, Voronov, & Roberts, 2019) by reasserting the importance of the body alongside emotional energy and institutional work (Stowell & Warren, 2018).
Our second contribution is in outlining
We now present our theoretical background before introducing the #NMP3 case and our methods. The findings ensue, followed by a discussion and conclusion.
Theoretical Framework
Emotions, defined as relational, ‘not simply individual, psychological reactions but intersubjective, collective experiences’ (Goodwin & Pfaff, 2001, p. 283), are central to institutional work efforts (Lawrence, Leca, & Zilber, 2013; Voronov & Vince, 2012). 1 They are both motivations and outcomes (Farny, Kibler, & Down, 2019). They have been found to energize and mobilize individuals and groups to disrupt institutionalized norms (Barberá-Tomás et al., 2019; Moisander et al., 2016), particularly in the context of gender (in)equality (McCarthy & Moon, 2018). Building upon a strategic and structural approach to emotions (Zietsma et al., 2019), our literature review covers (1) how emotional energy – and its refuelling– supports institutional work and (2) the complexities of this in the context of a large-scale institution such as gender.
Emotional energy for institutional work
Literature related to the purposive use of emotions by institutional actors can be roughly categorized into, first, how actors elicit emotions in others for strategic ends, as a form of institutional work (Creed, Hudson, Okhuysen, & Smith-Crowe, 2014; DeJordy & Barrett, 2014; Gill & Burrow, 2018; Jarvis et al., 2018), and second, how actors may be energized or ‘sparked’ into institutional work action by an emotional reaction (Zietsma et al., 2019, p. 8). We contribute to the second aspect of the literature, joining work that emphasizes the sociological nature of emotions in transforming raw affect into a response (Voronov & Weber, 2016), in this case, focused on the ‘emotional energy’ that works behind the scenes of institutional work.
It is first important to clarify what is meant by ‘emotional energy’. Collins (1993) likened the concept to a positive and energizing feeling that stems from co-present individuals becoming engaged in interaction rituals. Associated with a ‘sort of electricity’ and ‘heightened excitement’ (Collins, 2004, p. 9), a common emotional rhythm is shaped by: group assembly through physical presence; barriers to outsiders; an aligned focus/goal; and a common emotional experience (Collins, 2004, p. 48). Such markers of community connect to Durkheim’s (1906/1974) notion of ‘collective effervescence’, where emotional energy is generated through in-group dynamics. It is perhaps not surprising that this idea has been heavily utilized in the social movements literature to explain how affective solidarity binds individuals together, giving them a shared sense of purpose, confidence and resolve (Kemper, 2001). Emotions of warmth (Mendes, Keller, & Ringrose, 2018), belonging and relief (Clark-Parsons, 2018) promote enduring affective allegiances (Jasper, 2012). For instance, rock concerts provoke reflexivity and affective solidarity among teenagers, sparking commitment to the institutional work of combating poverty (Ruebottom & Auster, 2018). Relevant to our context, feminist activists engage in ‘online participatory communities’ through hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported to solidify identity among like-minded individuals (Maloney, 2013; Mendes et al., 2018).
Institutional scholars have revealed how the dynamics between emotional ‘lows’ (e.g. frustration, disappointment and upset), as well as ‘highs’ (e.g. excitement, passion and enthusiasm) provoke emotional energy (Fan & Zietsma, 2017). Jasper (2012) likens this to an emotional battery: it is the ‘shock’ or ‘contrast’ between positive and negative states that propels action, encourages imagination and gives a sense of urgency. Animal welfare activists, for instance, suppress painful emotions to offer persuasive, rational arguments to external ‘others’ (Jarvis et al., 2018). Catholic workers open themselves up to vulnerability and uncertainty to heighten emotions and connect more deeply to the group ethos (Summers-Effler, 2005). Further, feminist activists channel anger into collective action to help cope with negative responses to their feminist identities (Hemmings, 2012; Hercus, 1999).
However, what happens when emotional energy flounders? How might actors’ emotional energy be ‘revivified’ (Durkheim, 1906/1974) in the face of adversity? The ‘strategic agency’ of individual actors (Jasper, 2012) to keep regenerating the emotional energy needed for disruptive institutional work remains a core gap in our knowledge; particularly in the context of ‘networked misogyny’ (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016, p. 171), where actors frequently face extreme levels of gendered vitriol. For feminist actors, social media can generate emotions of fear, anger, sadness and shame (Sundén & Paasonen, 2018), emotions that significantly diminish emotional energy (Wijaya & Heugens, 2018; Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017). But beyond cataloguing which emotions ‘pump up’ or ‘depress’ (Kemper, 2001, p. 33) emotional energy, here we wish to further interrogate how emotional energy can be
Disrupting the gender institution
Gender can be conceptualized as an institution because, as a social construction, it has a history and is largely taken-for-granted, omnipresent and collective (Yancey-Martin, 2004). Connell (1987) describes the gender institution as nested: manifest at the micro-level in our everyday lives through practice, performance, text, language and thought, in organizational ‘regimes’ of tangible and intangible rules (Acker, 1992), and in broader societal orders of regulations and laws (Risman, 2004). The gender institution and its affects are experienced emotionally (Ahmed, 2004, 2017) and bodily (Grosz, 1994). Feminist scholars have drawn on the work of Descartes, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault, among others, to further the study of gendered embodiment (Cregan, 2006). Bordo (1993), for example, writes how cultural expectations of the gendered body, such as slimness, are internalized with material impacts. Young (1990) famously demonstrated this with her explanation of how girls’ and boys’ bodies and movements are policed, shaping women’s self-confidence in later life.
The gender institution is one of the hardest to change, precisely because we all live within its nested, dynamic influence (Ridgeway & Correll, 2004). As an exemplar of actors’ ‘embedded agency’ (Battilana & D’Aunno, 2009), many studies show how difficult it is for individuals to disrupt gendered norms and values (Zilber, 2002) and the gender inequality that is a by-product of the gender institution itself (Risman, 2004). The gender institution is, however, not a static phenomenon, but amenable to actor agency and institutional change (Butler, 1993; Karam & Jamali, 2013; McCarthy & Moon, 2018). Yet we believe the role of emotional energy involved in these institutional work efforts to be under-conceptualized in organization studies.
Further, structural approaches to institutions and emotions are still scant (Zietsma et al., 2019). Here we believe there is an important contribution to be made with regard to the gender institution (Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018). While gender has been identified as a future research area for emotions and institutional work theorization (Gill & Burrow, 2018), such calls focus on the differences between men and women’s use of, and experiences of, emotions in institutional work (see Jarvis et al., 2018). This, to our mind, would not explicate gender as much as (supposed) differences between the sexes. Rather, a more nuanced gendered lens on institutional change and ‘embedded action’ in the context of emotional energy (Ruebottom & Auster, 2018) would contribute to recent literature that looks at the emotive challenges of disrupting institutions within which actors are deeply embedded (Wijaya & Heugens, 2018) and where ‘to change the institution means to change oneself’ (Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018, p. 433). ‘It is as affected beings that institutions make sense, that codes become comprehensible by being alive, felt in our bodies’ (Friedland, 2018, p. 532). We believe that by positioning gender as the institution undergoing purposive institutional work, this allows us to study the relationships between emotional energy, institutions and bodies. While the role of emotion in institutional change has been gaining ground, there is less work that explores the nexus of the ‘heart, mind and body’ (Zietsma et al., 2019, p. 13).
It is against this backdrop that we provide insight into the lived experiences of emotional energy at the micro-level, while commenting on the structural nature of emotions and institutions. Specifically, our research question is: ‘How do actors engaged in disruptive institutional work refuel emotional energy and what animates them to do so?’ We now introduce #NMP3 and our research design.
Methodology
Our in-depth case study focuses on actors at ‘No More Page 3’ (#NMP3); an organization which campaigned to remove a sexualized semi-nude photograph of a woman from
Research context
Page 3, launched in 1970, was described as a ‘British institution’, ‘part of British society’ (Monahan, in
In 2015, No other campaign has done as much to inspire a new generation of young feminists as No More Page 3…. [it] became the gateway issue for women finding the courage to speak out on issues they care about. …. [they] took on an institution and made a change – it is a remarkable victory. (Sladdern, in
Data collection
Formal data gathering involved semi-structured interviews, archival data and naturalistic observation, and ran over a six-year period between 2012 and 2018.
Semi-structured interviews
In order to explore emotional energy at the micro-level, we interviewed six #NMP3 activists twice; in August 2016 and August 2018. The focus of the first set of interviews was to learn about emotional energy in relation to disruptive institutional work. The second set of interviews sought to sense-check emerging findings by encouraging ‘reflexive openness’ (Vachhani & Pullen, 2018). All interviews took place online, lasting between 40 and 70 minutes, and were recorded and transcribed.
Given our focus on #NMP3 actors, our sample was purposive (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The first author recruited participants through three feminist Facebook groups (including #NMP3 itself) of which she was a member, inviting those who identified themselves as a #NMP3 ‘activist’ or ‘campaigner’ to participate. We enjoyed a good rapport with interviewees, but also ensured informed consent (Morrow, Hawkins, & Kern, 2015) to uphold high standards of research ethics.
Archival analysis
To provide wider, sociocultural context and overcome the limitations of relying solely on human recollection (Levina & Vaast, 2016), we collected secondary materials related to #NMP3, particularly its history, motivations and tactics. #NMP3 actors had been both villainized and praised within the UK media, further exemplifying the inherently emotive nature of institutional work. Using LexisNexis we searched for electronic versions of British newspaper articles written between 2012 and 2015 using the keywords ‘No More Page 3’ and ‘#NMP3’. Our initial search resulted in a corpus of 498 items, filtered down as we removed duplications and cursory references. We also collected background information through the #NMP3 website, e-petition, and an autobiographical account and YouTube videos from founder Lucy-Anne Holmes (2015). The final 87 coded and analysed documents provided vital testimonials, anecdotes and commentary related to #NMP3 (Table 1).
Documents Analysed.
Naturalistic observation
Finally, we gained access to real-time, ‘live’ interactions through immersing ourselves within #NMP3 social media sites (Ghobadi & Clegg, 2015), complementing our retrospective data. While the benefits of online data are well established (Levina & Vaast, 2016), for us, naturalistic observation provided a window into the emotive discourse surrounding #NMP3 actors – and detractors – first-hand. It is also a technique that has successfully unearthed tensions within feminist research contexts (Vachhani, 2019) given that it not only reveals lived experience, but also acts as a social phenomenon in itself (Kozinets, 2015); in our context presenting an ‘artefact’ of women fighting sexual exploitation and gender objectification. Adopting principles of non-participatory ‘netnography’ (Kozinets, 2015), we ‘lurked’ on the #NMP3 Facebook 2 and Twitter 3 pages, observing posts, photographs, videos and links. Between December 2012 and December 2013 we visited the #NMP3 sites daily, and thereafter on a more ad-hoc basis when key events occurred (e.g. when Page 3 was removed), or when particularly emotive threads were activated. This resulted in the collection of 517 posts. Following the removal of nude women from Page 3 in 2015, and the disbanding of the organization, the #NMP3 social media channels grew quiet, and it was at this point that our online data collection reached saturation.
Importantly, our online data came only from public sources, ensuring that we upheld high standards of Internet research ethics (Whiting & Pritchard, 2017). Data provided for analysis has been anonymized by removing identifying information and providing pseudonyms. While data was analysed in its raw form, we ‘cloaked’ comments for publication through a subtle alteration of the text, ensuring participant anonymity while retaining the analytic interpretation of discourse (Glozer, Caruana, & Hibbert, 2019). Through these data sources, a rich case of emotional energy replenishment emerged.
Data analysis
We developed a customized analytical approach (see Gehman et al., 2018; Reay, Zafar, Monteiro, & Glaser, 2019), reflecting on methodologies used in studies of emotions and institutional work (e.g. Barberá-Tomás et al., 2019, Moisander et al., 2016) as well as feminist studies which have connected the micro experience of actors to structural systems of inequality in novel ways (Calás & Smircich, 2006; Özkazanç-Pan, 2020). Our approach blended inductive theory generation, well attuned to interpretive data, with the narrative-based method of vignettes, to enable the emotional and embodied lives of actors to surface. Vignettes are ‘stories generated from a range of sources’ (Hughes, 1998, p. 381) and are particularly favoured for providing complex insights into the ‘messiness’ (McCarthy, 2017, p. 611) of people’s inner life-worlds and the ways in which structures impact on individuals (Özkazanç-Pan, 2020). The process of data analysis was shared between the authors – and respondents – as an iterative process of constant comparison (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).
Similar to Ruebottom and Auster (2018), we created personal stories of emotional energy replenishment, involving data and existing theory (Kreiner, 2016). This involved three steps. First, we mapped actors’ experiences of the institution, and their disruptive institutional work, in relation to our ‘sensitising’ construct (Kreiner, 2016) of emotional energy. We identified data that illuminated
As a second step, we identified six emergent story ‘themes’ in our data, examining how people represent, give meaning to and narrate their personal (bodily) experiences of the institution, then collated these into three common ‘storylines’ (Tables 2, 3 and 4). Storylines are represented by illustrative vignettes in the findings. Our vignettes draw on all data but focus on one interviewee or character to better encapsulate each storyline and capture the ebbs and flows of #NMP3 actors’ emotional energy – and bodily experiences therein – in ways a simple presentation of raw data on its own could not.
Supporting Data for Affective Embodiment.
Supporting Data for Affective Solidarity.
Supporting Data for Sensory Retreat.
Our first storyline was one of ‘heart, body and mind’ which captured two themes: alignment (cohort with others’ embodied experiences of the institution) and misalignment (discord with others’ embodied experiences of the institution). We borrowed the term ‘alignment’ from Ahmed (2004), who expresses that feminism is ‘the alignment of the “we” with the “I”, the feminist subject with the feminist collective’ (p. 188). We related these phenomena to
Our second and third storylines emerged as we explored
A final step of abductive coding (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2007) examined the relationships between constructs. Exploring similarities and differences in emotional energy replenishment across the storylines, we identified how mis/alignment of embodied experiences mediates how actors replenish emotional energy. In cases of alignment, actors were more likely to default to the collective (affective solidarity). Yet when misalignment was experienced, actors moved away from the collective (sensory retreat). Of course this is far from a simple cause and effect relationship as the actors may have engaged in affective solidarity and sensory retreat in a cyclical fashion (see discussion of Priya below). In aiming to capture the rich dynamics of our data, this final step, however, further solidified our construct of affective embodiment in providing the core around which actors replenished their emotional energy.
Findings: Affective Embodiment and Emotional Energy Replenishment
We find that
Affective Embodiment and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy.
‘Heart, mind and body’: Affective embodiment
Our first construct is that of ‘affective embodiment’, the term we give to actors’ emotional and corporeal experience of the institution (see Table 2). These experiences are often expressed as ‘feeling-perceptions’ (Weik, 2019a, p. 324): subjective observations, sensations and emotions related to the gender institution. In this case, and as is hinted at in Helen’s vignette, actors both embody the gender institution, and are embodied by it, as they work to disrupt the inequality that resides therein; a complex experience we expand upon in the discussion. Here we outline how affective embodiment is articulated through themes of (mis)alignment of one’s own embodied experience with others’.
Our first theme of alignment was present through shared recounts of body-image anxieties and objectification related to Page 3. As seen in Helen’s vignette, actors’ sense of alignment was enhanced through shared experiences of women’s embodied experiences of sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention and abuse, (re)fuelling emotional energy: So many people have sent us messages of kind support or explained some truly terrible things that have happened to them that they feel happened as a result of the normalization of sexual objectification of women. So many women have confided how these images directly affected their self-esteem growing up and beyond. We’ve had BEAUTIFUL protest poems recorded in the name of No More Page 3. This campaign has sparked so much truth and creativity. Thank you. IT FUELS US. (#NMP3 website, 2016)
Actors divulged, and others read and ‘related’ to (Louisa, 2016), personal experiences of gendered violence and objectification, connecting these to a seemingly ‘micro’ issue of an image in a newspaper: Katy Harris: Paul- This is not stupid. You being male wouldn’t have had attention because of Page 3. I have. Lots of it. Lots of disgusting comments and suggestions. Molestation by strangers who have read the paper on the train on their way home from a drunken night out. . . (Facebook Post, 2012)
Alignment was reinforced through the constant visceral, sensational threats actors received in the form of trolling. Comments directly related to women’s bodies like ‘you’re a fat, ugly lesbian’ or ‘why don’t you wear some make-up?’ (Louisa, 2016) unified actors: I burnt out after six months, but then reached out to people to start a team, which was when the magic really started. Together we weathered the responses of ‘you’re frigid/ugly/jealous’ or ‘you’re only doing this because you’ve got shit tits’ and being wished dead. (Holmes in
Much of actors’ institutional work was characterized by the often painful, sometimes joyful, experiences of the body: The feminist stuff still remains the thing that really lights me up. . .I feel it’s personal, it’s maternal, because I have a daughter, and a son, who’s affected by toxic masculinity. . . it’s in my experience of abuse in relationships. . . I’m angry about it and passionate about it because it’s personal to me and people that I love. (Sally, 2018)
The quote above exemplifies why affective embodiment provides emotional energy, as ‘heart, body and mind’ are all engaged in institutional work. Affective embodiment is profoundly ‘personal’ because it is lived viscerally and emotionally, leveraging emotions of love, anger, passion and fear; experienced individually but shared collectively. Others’ bodies, and how they are shaped by the gender institution (‘toxic masculinity’), are also important.
Our second theme of misalignment saw actors feeling outside of shared embodied experience: ‘the “we” of feminism is shaped by some bodies, more than others’ (Ahmed, 2004, p. 189). While the goal of #NMP3 was to ‘unite women under one cause who many never have anything at all in common’ (Facebook post, 2014), social media threads were littered with disagreements, which we interpret as contestation about the nature of the gendered body and feminist stances toward it. As referred to in Helen’s vignette, ‘in-fighting’ (Kristy, 2016) and ‘being unable to agree on one thing or another’ (Louisa, 2016), was considered by many as ‘part of again what we do’ (Kristy, 2018) and reveals how not all actors considered themselves as a homogeneous mono-body of gendered experience, but more a diverse collective of various bodies and feelings. This reveals the complexity of how actors connect to the institution and heterogeneity in how emotional energy is replenished.
For example, Priya discusses how her cultural heritage came up against the ‘sometimes very White Feminist’ (Sally, 2018) experiences of the collective: ‘For me, I think the biggest kind of risk. . . on Facebook you’ve got all this distant family, which, in my case, can sometimes be really conservative. . . I feel like there’s different versions of me’. Priya felt she had to ‘play’ at fitting in with others’ (largely White and British) embodied experiences of gender, meaning it could be challenging ‘to talk across difference’ (Priya, 2018). Others contested a shared experience around motherhood: ‘For me it [#NMP3] was never about protecting the children’ (Louisa, 2016); ‘Some women want kids, I don’t’ (Helen, 2018). Misalignment is therefore a recognition of these differences between individuals’ embodied experiences of the gender institution. As Sally (2018) laments: One of the most difficult things about feminist activism in the last year has been the number of women who I adore, who I respect massively, who appear to have taken such an – extremist? – absolutely adamant stance [on transgender issues]. . . I know that their scepticism comes from a place of fear that is because of horrible things that have happened to them.
Perceptions of difference in embodied experiences are as important as material, bodily differences during misalignment.
In sum, affective embodiment provides emotional energy due to its connection to the ‘substance’ (Friedland, 2018, p. 536) of the institution under attack – gender. Embodiment remains a dualistic process: institutions shape how we think, feel and act, but we are also shaped by those very same actions. Misalignment is therefore more than just being in disagreement with others performing institutional work. It is a deeper, experiential and relational perception of, and material difference in, individuals’ embodiment of institutions, and experiences therein. We next discuss
‘Strength in numbers’: Affective solidarity
‘Affective solidarity’ replenishes emotional energy when actors emotionally and physically move towards the collective, placing emphasis on affective embodiment and aligned experiences. In line with studies of feminist activism (Hemmings, 2012; Vachhani & Pullen, 2018) and institutional work (Farny et al., 2019; Ruebottom & Auster, 2018), we find that this replenishes emotional energy in two ways (Table 3).
First, movement towards the ‘collective effervescence’ (Durkheim, 1906/1974) of other actors replenished emotional energy through a theme of ‘sharing space, sharing stories’. Feminism offers a community to feel at home within; a safe space for battle-worn bodies to move in and out of (Ahmed, 2017). As well as the very popular public #NMP3 Facebook page and Twitter account – ‘which allowed a new generation of women to articulate their opposition to Page 3 and support each other in the face of a backlash’ (Smith in HQ. . .wasn’t [just] for the campaign, you see, we used HQ as a supportive space for life in general, you know, we’ve helped each other through all sorts of things. . .relationship issues and grief and death and marriage, all sorts, having babies and all sorts of things have happened in that space. . . it’s been quite something. (Sally, 2016)
Care was also visible in the public Facebook page, where women congregated to share emotive and aligned experiences of sexual harassment, underscored by affective embodiment. For example, an emotional poem published anonymously not only offered the poet catharsis, but also solidified the experiences of like-minded, similarly-bodied individuals (Maloney, 2013; Mendes et al., 2018), strengthening affective solidarity:
Liz Reed: <3 I’m sorry you went through this, it’s not an uncommon experience. Jane McDuff: Great poem. Most women I speak to have had something like this happen to them. So sad. Rebecca Amos: Exactly! And that feeling stays with you for ever Gina Rodgers: Thatss so sad ☹ xxx Rachel Jones: I remember a very similar event in my childhood. This poem is extremely powerful. We’ll never move on if we don’t take action to change for the next generation Vanessa Peters: Thank you. Incredible poem. Brought back all those feelings of being a young girl. Self conscious, scared and ashamed. (Facebook Post, 2013)
Replenishing emotional energy through the ability to voice, listen and share amongst a collective with whom one felt an embodied and affective alignment, was key.
Second, affective solidarity was also activated on a more one-to-one basis through the theme of ‘networked support’, distancing from recent work that has explored the group dynamics of emotional energy (e.g. Ruebottom & Auster, 2018). Actors exploited the constant connectivity of social media to ‘tag someone else in’ (Kristy, 2016), to request help from other actors in heated social media exchanges, or simply to ask someone else to take over ‘if you’re trying to cook tea for the kids’ (Kristy, 2016). Premised upon trust – largely because these women were aligned in their haunting experiences of objectification – actors ‘passed the baton’ (Sally, 2018) to replenish emotional energy; dipping in and out of institutional work as needed: [The online safe space]. . .thankfully was really reassuring because you knew that as soon as it got to a certain level of abuse and people were starting to sort of comment on your general appearance and your kids need to be raped and those sort of stupid comments, you just literally clicked on this thing and there was always somebody willing to drop in and help you out, or you just drop out of the conversation. . . So I felt quite supported. (Kristy, 2016)
In sum, affective solidarity replenished emotional energy through actors engaging in safer, collective places, characterized as so because of the feeling of embodied alignment. It enabled a crucial transformation from feelings of burnout, apathy and isolation, towards positivity and strength (see Hercus, 1999).
‘Solace in solitude’: Sensory retreat
‘Sensory retreat’ replenishes emotional energy through actors moving away, emotionally and physically, from the collective in response to sensory overload (Table 4). This concept connects with affective embodiment and misalignment as actors tended to turn to sensory retreat after solidarity failed to provide, chiefly through recognition of difference (both material and perceived) in embodied experiences. Priya in particular moved through cycles of affective solidarity and sensory retreat as her dissatisfaction with the collective waxed and waned. Sensory retreat thus enabled actors to dis-embed into order to
What did sensory retreat look like in practice? First, it involved ‘purposive withdrawal’, i.e. leaving a Facebook group or walking away from the computer; a theme we term ‘escaping cyberspace’. ‘Exhaustion and fatigue’ (Priya, 2018) brought on by the ‘overwhelming’ (Holmes, 2015), ‘never-ending’ cycle of online discussion (Glozer et al., 2019) both inside and outside of the collective, meant that actors ‘disengaged’ (Priya, 2018) from some aspects of the Internet in its entirety, after experiencing misalignment with others’ embodied experiences. While alone, sensory retreat enabled actors to assess the damage done to body and mind, sometimes by reflecting on the misalignment that they or others may have felt. Sally evocatively explains how this reflection is felt as much as thought: We needed to be more aware, be more careful about our language, educate ourselves for goodness sake, about how very white we were and how we weren’t really taking account of other people’s experiences. . . So those learning curves were sometimes ouch, but you learnt to realize that when you felt uncomfortable in your pit of stomach, that might be because you actually need to go away and challenge yourself and think about it harder. (Sally, 2018)
Sensory retreat helped to ‘refocus the mind’ (Helen, 2018) and look forward; ‘I need to go and spend some time staring at the sky’ (Sally, 2016). It provided remedy and allowed the body to heal: Rachel Stephens: I’m not going to hold my breath, but you should absolutely take a break. I think, to be honest, we could all do with one. Standing up for what is right is enough to make your legs go weak, your voice grow hoarse, and your hands shake with rage. The moment you stop. . . even if it seems to be for a very good reason like now. . . you just feel empty, utterly exhausted, and that’s when the bruises start to show. When you are busy fighting for something that is bigger than you, for the welfare and rights of others. . . you do not stop but to put the smallest of bandages on the wounds you encountered whilst doing it. (Facebook Post, 2015)
Second, our findings also revealed sensory retreat in the form of ‘silence as agency’. Here actors fell silent in online spaces, observing rather than participating, as well as actively ‘not listening’ to certain discussions. While often driven through a sense of frustration – ‘I’m going to have to leave this because stuff like this makes me realise just how many people are unwilling to accept change!’ (Facebook Post, 2013) – as opposed to seeing silence as defeat of feminism in online spaces (Cole, 2015), we consider such activities as agentic and disruptive; providing a purposive focus on self-preservation to replenish emotional energy: I think one thing I’ve learned from the campaign is don’t waste your time on people whose minds you can’t change . . . I’m just going to step back, watch and wait, maybe take a break and later move on to the next person and talk to them, and that’s the hardest thing to do, to let go . . . (Louisa, 2016)
Kristy (2018) replenished by ‘not feeding the trolls’, not necessarily by being defeated by them but ‘saving her emotional energy’. Here silence was used strategically to eject activists from dead-end conversations and preserve energies for more fruitful debates. We see this form of emotional energy replenishment below, which comes after a 287-comment thread between #NMP3 supporters, opponents and trolls: Kesha Dadzie: Clever comments! (That is sarcasm by the way). I was hoping for a minute that you may engage in some intelligent, objective debate about the issue but it seems you are just here to try to find faults with the campaign. Have a good evening guys Brian Lopez: It’s all gone a bit quiet over there Harry. It looks like they have all gone back to their sheltered lives it is way past their bedtimes god only knows what they might see on tv this late my goodness Kesha Dadzie: Brian since you have said that you don’t care about the issue & that you are just on here to wind people up I’m going to leave the discussion with you there. Brian Lopez: I’ve just put across several points and not one comeback what is wrong with u girls Vanessa Regan: Ditto, seeing as it is a self-confessed troll, I will retire also :) (Facebook Posts, 2013)
Silence and exiting are thus a form of ‘wilfulness’ (Ahmed, 2017, p. 38). Sensory retreat replenishes actors’ emotional energy through movement away from the collective, towards time-out and personal solace. When misalignment surfaced through in-fighting or simply divergences in opinion, actors were further inclined to seek sensory retreat. However, this was not an end to disruptive institutional work, but rather a temporary form of emotional and bodily self-preservation. In the next section we detail our main contributions to theories on emotional energy and institutional change, and end reflecting on what such findings mean for a range of social activists.
Discussion
In this paper we have explored how, in the face of extra-communal abuse and intra-communal discord, #NMP3 actors replenished emotional energy to return to institutional work. Our study has important insights not only into emotional energy replenishment, but also how emotional energy levels are connected to the very institution actors are working to disrupt: in our case, the gender institution.
Our first contribution is the identification of affective embodiment as connection to the ‘substance’ of institutions (Friedland, 2018, p. 536) – offering insight into what ‘binds’ actors to institutions and provides them with emotional energy to carry out institutional work (Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018, p. 437). Our data show how the corporeal and emotional experience of an institution (affective embodiment) can provide emotional energy and how mis/alignment mediates emotional energy replenishment for institutional work. We have drawn on feminist scholarship to develop the construct of affective embodiment (Fotaki & Pullen, 2019), since within this field there is a sophisticated understanding of bodies, subjectivity, structures and emotions (Bordo, 1993; Butler, 1993; Young, 1990). Ahmed (2017) and Hemmings (2012) surface the heart-beating rage of feeling belittled, and the joy of passionate connection with others; a ‘sensation’ (Ahmed, 2017, p. 38) central to the experience of living within the social category of ‘woman’ as an ‘affective inheritance’ (p. 20). The body (and our thoughts and feelings towards it) is a profound element of subjectivity related to institutional work and was expressed through actors’ accounts of the threat of (and experience of) sexual harassment, body image anxieties and unwanted objectification. We found that many actors were bolstered by a feeling of ‘alignment’ (Ahmed, 2017) in this inhabited existence, of shared bodily experiences of gender (both positive and negative), and this provoked them to replenish their emotional energy through ‘affective solidarity’ found in (largely) women-only online spaces. This emphasizes the possibility of feminism(s) creating ‘affective atmospheres’ (Bell & Vacchanni, 2019, p. 8) for digital activism.
Yet, in our digital age, feminist ‘body politics’ are further heightened (Baer, 2016), reflected in the angry and passionate exchanges observed not just between supporters and ‘trolls’, but within the #NMP3 organization itself. Debate about the gendered body, and what it means in society, produced feelings of difference, of bodies and experiences not sufficiently ‘shared’ with the group. This theme of ‘misalignment’ destabilizes the myth of shared experience, prompting actors to retreat towards ‘self-care’ in order to replenish emotional energy and return to institutional work. We argue that this reflects the paradox of embedded agency (Battilana & D’Aunno, 2009): the living, feeling body provides a ‘god-like’ driver for action and emotional energy (Friedland, 2018), yet in drawing on the very experiences and emotions related to embodiment – experiences that are often oppressive or alienating – there is a tension. Affect drives energy (Weik, 2019b) needed for institutional work, but bodies and their embodiment of institutions are grounded in material realities. This tension between affective embodiment as providing emotional energy, and as a means of control, is visible in how actors replenish their emotional energy, providing new insight into the emotions and institutional work literature. Furthermore, as affective solidarity and sensory retreat are experienced recursively, and for varying durations, we show that emotional energy replenishment is far from a standardized endeavour, but crucially mediated by (mis)alignment, which directs nourishment either through the collective or temporary isolation.
To what extent is affective embodiment unique to the gender institution? Friedland (2018) explains how embeddedness in an institution, and full commitment to it, means actors embody it in a sensory, emotional manner. He, however, doesn’t specify how different institutions might affect to what extent embodiment occurs. We suggest closer attention to ‘powerful’ institutions (Nilsson, 2015, p. 373) such as gender, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability and sexuality may elucidate in finer detail the connections between emotions and institutional work. For example, Gill and Burrow (2018) point to the patriarchal masculinity that underscores emotions in the maintenance of haute cuisine. What if this study examined masculinity as a dynamic of the gender institution (McCarthy, Soundararajan, & Taylor, 2020)? This might help further explain the power of emotions in maintaining institutions, not of haute cuisine, but of gender itself. We believe that while institutions such as haute cuisine or environmental sustainability (Barberá-Tomás et al., 2019) provide a sense of identity for the individuals under study, they cannot be as corporeally and emotionally
We thus contribute to recent studies that have explored the emotive challenges of disrupting institutions within which actors are deeply embedded (Wijaya & Heugens, 2018) by responding to the call to ‘explore further the social consequences of institutionalization of particular bodily constructions and experiences, such as race and gender’ (Zietsma et al., 2019, p. 14). By recentring the body alongside emotions, we contribute to a more materialist understanding of emotions in contexts of institutional change (Creed, Taylor, & Hudson, 2020; Stowell & Warren, 2018) and ‘bodies as sites of knowing and feeling in organizations’ (Bell & Vachhani, 2019, p. 30). We argue that this can bolster our theoretical toolkits by considering actors as ‘bringing their whole selves – heart mind and body’ (Zietsma et al., 2019, p. 13) to institutional change efforts, but also how emotions, bodies and affect constitute some of the ‘substance’ of institutions which makes them harder to change (Weik, 2019a, 2019b). However, our findings present a caveat: while the ‘body’ is an important connection to the ‘substance’ of the institution, there is no such thing as ‘
Our second contribution is to respond to the puzzle about how actors refuel emotional energy (Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018). Emotional energy replenishment through affective solidarity (our storyline of ‘strength in numbers’) and sensory retreat (our storyline of ‘solace through solitude’) drives institutional work as the #NMP3 actors manage, rather than suppress, painful emotions (Jarvis et al., 2018). Here we provide deeper insight into the strategic use of emotional energy within disruptive institutional work efforts (Zietsma et al., 2019) as through themes of ‘sharing space, sharing stories’ and ‘networked support’, online battlegrounds are transformed into caring environs offering much needed support and respite. We also build upon studies of emotional sustenance in the context of social movements (King, 2005). Affective solidarity is crucial to institutional work – indeed the power of the group is often revered (Hemmings, 2012; Vachhani & Pullen, 2018), particularly in the context of embodied similitude – but we also find that the ability to move away from the collective and engage in sensory retreat, albeit temporarily, is necessary. This challenges the notion that emotional energy generation is always a collective endeavour (cf. Collins, 2004) and emphasizes the novelty of our new construct, sensory retreat; taking solace through the self, devoid of sensory stimulation. This is particularly important in revealing the shortcomings of affective solidarity as even ideologically aligned individuals still experience institutions in various, and often idiosyncratic, ways.
Sensory retreat is an, as of yet, under-theorized phenomenon in how actors replenish and continue their fight against institutionalized inequality. It is a construct that adds to our knowledge about emotional energy in that while affective solidarity is needed for initial energy generation (Ruebottom & Auster, 2018) and replenishment, sensory retreat is equally important in later stages of institutional work or activist activity. Thus, while feminist work employing the concept of affective solidarity does acknowledge the potential for discord and dominance of some experiences over others (Hemmings, 2012; Vachhani & Pullen, 2018), our construct offers insight into how activists may respond to and overcome waning levels of emotional energy, caused in part by exclusion, through sensory retreat. This is because, in relation to our story themes, it provides an ‘escape from cyberspace’ and the opportunity for ‘silence as agency’ when the going gets tough in extra- and intra-communal spaces. We posit that this may be even more the case when the institution under attack is deeply connected to the individuals doing the attacking, bodily and emotionally. Affective embodiment helps explain why sensory retreat is so crucial to emotional energy replenishment: because actors can never step outside an institution such as gender, they must find ways of reconnecting with their self in order to recharge. Misalignment with others’ embodied experiences means that affective solidarity on its own is not enough; actors pursue sensory retreat as individuals to connect back to their embodied subjectivity when affective solidarity fails to provide, which in turn can spark emotional energy for institutional work once more.
While withdrawing or silence in online spaces could be seen as feminist defeat (Cole, 2015; Scheff, 2013), seeking sensory retreat in our context is an empowering force of self-care and self-preservation as ‘an act of political warfare’ (Lorde, 1988, p. 130). This construct offers an alternative window, then, into what happens when institutional actors in an online context seem to silence others (Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017). What if we reconceptualize these exits, silences and breaks as agentic choice? Particularly for those actors who experience misalignment, sensory retreat represents purposeful care for oneself. Our study reasserts the power of the collective – the importance of shared experiences for replenishing emotional energy – but it also shines a light on the ‘fragility of feminist shelters’ (Ahmed, 2017, p. 175). Equally important to the collective is the time to switch off, walk away and rejoin institutional work efforts when ready. However, we do also appreciate the limits of sensory retreat and its capacity to become all-encompassing when it becomes sustained rather than temporary (e.g. when actors fully disconnect from institutional work efforts entirely); when retreat unfortunately shifts to defeat.
Conclusion and Implications
This paper provides micro-level insight into the refuelling of emotional energy in the context of disruptive institutional work. We introduce the concept of ‘affective embodiment’, capturing what provides emotional energy by connecting actors to the substance of the institution under attack via corporeal and emotional experiences. We also contribute to knowledge on how actors’ disruptive institutional work efforts can be sustained – and emotional energy replenished – through affective solidarity (movement towards the collective) or sensory retreat (movement away from the collective). We hope that at a time when many are asking how to sustain activism in the face of emotional energy depletion, this study will provoke further analysis, reflection and ideas for action.
Of course, our case provides just a snapshot of feminist institutional work in the UK context. Our participants were those who wished to talk to us, and thus excludes absent voices whose may have totally withdrawn from institutional work. However, our study indicates that what may have previously been interpreted as total depletion, and exit from institutional work, may be seen as a temporary retreat. Thus, while the generalizable quality of our study may be limited, we believe that the #NMP3 case paints a rich picture of emotional energy replenishment in the digital age, particularly in the context of feminism, and offers a number of useful implications for practice and theory.
First, our findings point to exciting and important further research. How might the emotional energy (replenishment) rollercoaster have longer-term implications for actors’ employment and personal relationships? Longitudinal analysis may shed useful light on the evolution of emotional energy over time, not only in feminist contexts, but also for other marginalized groups, such as oppressed black communities (Gabriel, 2016) and LGBTQI groups (Clark-Parsons, 2018) where emotional energy is intricately tied to specific institutions and embodied subjectivity. The construct of affective embodiment, and themes of (mis)alignment, imply that there is more to be explored around intersectionality in social justice movements, particularly how to support the emotional energy of those who contest the mainstream.
Second, our analysis of the #NMP3 case, often heralded as an example of ‘how to start a revolution’ (Holmes, 2015), has important implications for how change agents in organizations and activists in social movements can be supported for sustained activism (King, 2005). That the body, and affective experiences of it, are central to institutional work means that some actors may be supported better through collective, closed, safe spaces. Others may be better supported through the freedom to temporarily exit, going silent and focusing on self-care. These tools have important spatio-temporal dimensions for institutional work and can be built into offline and online worlds to provide ‘organising spaces’ (Haug, 2013). Such insights may be beneficial to organizations and movements seeking to maintain morale (Creed et al., 2014), such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Facilitating space and time for sensory retreat is crucial. Ultimately, while the online age affords wonderful opportunities for institutional work on social justice issues, it remains a battleground. Further insights into how action can be sustained can only be a good thing.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-oss-10.1177_0170840621994501 – Supplemental material for Heart, Mind and Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-oss-10.1177_0170840621994501 for Heart, Mind and Body: #NoMorePage3 and the Replenishment of Emotional Energy by Lauren McCarthy and Sarah Glozer in Organization Studies
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