2nd International Political Sociology Conference – Resentment, Fear, and Identity in Contemporary Society: Emotions and Social Transformations in the Reconfiguration of Political Action
Thursday 17 – Saturday 19 September 2026, Rome, Italy
Contemporary democracies are undergoing profound transformations that affect social structures, processes of political subjectivation, and the symbolic repertoires through which individuals interpret their position in the social world. These processes unfold as interconnected dynamics involving material and symbolic inequalities, the redefinition of collective belongings, and a growing weakening of social and political ties.
In this context, the re-emergence of radicalised and ambivalent political emotions – such as resentment, fear, anxiety, and a sense of loss – does not constitute a mere epiphenomenon of the democratic crisis, but rather one of the principal ways through which this crisis is experienced and politically mobilised. Political emotions operate as sense-making devices that orient political judgement, structure perceptions of justice and injustice, and contribute to the construction of symbolic boundaries between social groups, between insiders and outsiders.
Resentment, in particular, should not be understood merely as a pathology of politics, but as a historically produced form of social experience, emerging at the intersection of structural inequalities, perceptions of injustice, and frustrated expectations of recognition. The gap between objective and perceived inequalities, together with the diffusion of the “fear of loss”, deeply affects processes of politicisation and forms of political attachment, shaping relations to authority and the legitimacy of democratic institutions.
Political sociology is therefore called upon to investigate the relationship between structural transformations and identity processes, showing how economic and social changes translate into specific forms of emotional and symbolic mobilisation. Transformations of neoliberal capitalism – from the precarisation of life trajectories to the erosion of collective protection mechanisms – have reshaped the social foundations of democratic citizenship, fuelling demands for security, recognition, and belonging that often find expression in forms of identity-based politicisation and simplified narratives of social conflict.
The conference is grounded in major sociological traditions that emphasise the inseparability of politics from social structures, value systems, and dynamics of integration and conflict. From this standpoint, politics is conceived as a field of forces in which structural variables, cultural processes, and emotional dynamics interact. The II Conference of Political Sociology aims to provide a space for theoretical and empirical debate on ongoing transformations, with particular attention to the crisis of political representation, understood not only as an institutional mechanism but as a social relation and a process of democratic legitimation. This crisis increasingly takes the form of a crisis of recognition, opening up opportunities for emotionally polarising political languages and for neo-authoritarian tendencies.
Alongside the politics of fear, the conference also seeks to explore the conditions of possibility for a politics of hope, capable of reactivating processes of recognition, solidarity, and emancipation. The analysis of political emotions thus becomes a central tool for understanding both dynamics of democratic regression and practices of resistance, grassroots mobilisations, and emerging forms of participation and collective action. The conference invites theoretical and empirical contributions that address these issues from a sociological perspective attentive to the interactions between economic, symbolic, and affective dimensions of contemporary political life.
Find more information here: https://www.aispoliticalsociology.com/
This event will be held at Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.