Angry times: What shapes and amplifies political anger across the world?

They may be Trump supporters invading Capitol Hill, women loudly demanding abortion rights in Argentina or farmers blocking the streets of Brussels with tractors. Ideologically and geographically, they are far apart, but they have one thing in common: They are angry and not afraid to show it.

Many academics, politicians and commentators argue that the world has become an increasingly angry place. Frequent outbursts of collective, dramatic and politically motivated anger are expressed on the streets, on social media or through other channels of communication.

Against the backdrop of socio-political polarisations, there is an urgent need to study how and why people turn towards anger as a mode of creating political connections and building cultural exchanges.

With a €2.5 million Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), a new research project headed by Associate Professor Atreyee Sen from the Department of Anthropology will now investigate how powerful collective anger is generated, shared and legitimised within or across different communities. In addition, the aim of the project, entitled 'Anger, legitimised: Amplified anger and its rhetorics of legitimation in the 21st century' (ANGLE), is to provide a vibrant research platform for studying the cross-regional, interconnected politics of anger.

Such questions are important from a scientific point of view, but also from the perspective of creating alternative kinds of dialogue between states and protest communities that are becoming increasingly divided, argues Atreyee Sen.

“Against the backdrop of socio-political polarisations, there is an urgent need to study how and why people turn towards anger as a mode of creating political connections and building cultural exchanges,” she says.

Anger can be seen as a rightful response to crisis

Although extreme anger is often perceived as unconstructive and even anti-democratic, people who express collective anger may see it as a perfectly valid and rightful response to injustice, oppression or crisis.

People can express anger for many reasons. It can be fuelled by economic turmoil, climate collapse, culture wars and violent conflicts. 

The project will collect fine-grained empirical data on how contemporary political actors embed and ethically justify the display of anger in their contentious social worlds.

“People can express anger for many reasons. It can be fuelled by economic turmoil, climate collapse, culture wars and violent conflicts. With ANGLE, we will develop an innovative comparative framework to understand how anger invigorates the dynamics of contemporary political action across vastly different human crises, conditions, and cultures,” explains Sen, who will conduct the study in close collaboration with co-investigator Matthew Carey, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology.

The project will unfold through four interrelated work packages called Fury, Venom, Rage and Wrath, covering gendered, post-colonial, post-conversion and neo-religious variations of amplified anger:

Fury explores the cultivation of anger among men and women who see themselves as culturally discriminated and dominated. One case study will explore female fury in contemporary women’s movements in India. Another case study will examine exhibition of fury among socially alienated men, focusing on INCELs (‘involuntary celibates’) in the US.

Venom will study post-colonial and post-imperial anger against the legacies of colonial oppression. One case study will explore postcolonial anger in France, Morocco and Algeria. A second case study will examine post-imperial anger, directed towards Russia(ns) in Georgia.

Rage investigates amplified anger in post-conversion communities in Amazonia, South America, where Christianisation has condemned rage, raiding and revenge to a ‘heathen’ past. The project will explore new values and practices that legitimises and ‘returns rage’ to these communities.

Wrath will examine the re-appropriation and subversion of ‘divine anger’ by neo-religious movements. The project will explore how spiritual climate activists in India draw on the anarchic anger of androgynous, ambivalent divinities instead of the wrath of patriarchal Gods that reinforce social order.

A new ‘grammar of anger’

Methodologically, the project combines anthropological fieldwork and participant observation with textual analysis of print media and online/digital spaces.

This will allow project participants to study the shifting forms of anger as it moves between its local and transnational expressions. The project refers to this shared methodology as a ‘codebook of anger’, as the process of data collection will map the trajectories of anger and its legitimation across multiple political arenas.

Another important research outcome will be the development of a new ‘grammar of anger’; a novel analytical framework that compares the common language of rage created by political communities, both literally and figuratively, including slogans, idioms, music, behaviour, dress, images, etc.

“Ultimately, our ambition is to consolidate international research on anger by creating a unique network of scholars, practitioners and activists based at the Department of Anthropology. The awarded grant will enable us to co-create new knowledge about global politics in the 21st century,” says Atreyee Sen.

European Research Council press release: ERC Advanced Grants: €652 million for leading researchers in Europe