Victims and protest in a social space: Revisiting the sociology of emotions

Abstract

This article explores how activism and protest shaped cultural renewal through a march organised against the Italian mafia. Drawing on ethnographic insights, employing a reflexive method, taking research notes, using photos and recording the social protest, I introduce 'static agency' and 'dynamic agency' concepts to analyse the perplexing relationship modes among the activists and wider society. I argue that sociocultural codes are the pillars of static and dynamic agency through which the progressive actors strive for a change in the social space of activism. I claim that the fight against the public trouble -the mafia- has the capacity to sustain itself as a persistent cultural movement among the activists through emotional solidarity. However, this does not guarantee the defeat of public trouble in traumatic social geographies where the public culture dominates social behaviours and social memory. Yet the progressive social movements can attain cultural transformation through persistence in their struggle.