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This article conceives of climate activists as emotion entrepreneurs to explain the emergence of particular emotional responses to climate change. Among these emotional responses is eco-grief or grief felt because of experienced or anticipated ecological losses. I elaborate on the concept of the emotion entrepreneur and theorize the emergence of eco-grief on the basis of a practice theoretical and Bourdieusian approach. I suggest that activists possessing cultural capital are well positioned to introduce new feelings and identify three mechanisms that contribute to explanations of the emergence and growing importance of eco-grief. Objectivation is about the most often reflexive practice of giving names to emotions to turn them into ontological entities. Cultivation is about the creation of social spaces for the experience and regulation of eco-grief among activists. Diffusion is about emotional contagion, the creation of emotional vocabularies, and the spread of activist feeling rules. Research on emotion entrepreneurs moves beyond conceptions of feelings as causes of activism and suggests there is a need for further research on emotional dynamics in heterogenous transnational advocacy coalitions, influences of language on emotions, and feelings rules in late-modern Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we address the question of how policy orientation shapes academic research from a sociological perspective. Policy orientation involves the mobilization of scientific resources and the "mobilization of the world." Our analysis is based on Bourdieusian field theory and focuses on democracy promotion research (DPR). It shows that DPR is a heterogeneous academic field characterized by the field-specific demand for policy orientation. (Western) Scholars and, particularly, scholar-practitioners occupy central positions, and field-specific practices of policy orientation include stocktaking, evaluation, problem identification, and critical intervention. While we derive these insights from analysis of DPR, our findings are useful for the study of policy orientation in similar academic fields. For the reflexive and systematic analysis of how policy orientation shapes, for example, development studies and human rights research, we suggest a focus on interrelations between academic fields, field-specific struggles, and relationships with the respective policy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In international relations, there is regular reflection about the complex relations between academic and various kinds of practical knowledge. In this article, we add to these reflections using the example of democracy promotion expertise. We develop a practice–theoretical methodology based on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and extensions of it in the communities of practice literature. We also include a comparative dimension by studying epistemic practices in North America and Germany. Our analysis shows the importance of knowledge translating between academia and democracy promotion practice and the prestige and capital of roaming experts who cross epistemic boundaries that otherwise divide actors. To varying degrees, roaming experts contribute to practice-oriented translations of academic insights and the identification of problems stemming from ongoing practice that are important in democracy promotion. We show that processes of problem construction are regulated by conventions that homogenize epistemic practices and evidence, with only selective attention paid to emancipatory demands or epistemes from the Global South. While our research shows some epistemes and demands conflict with Western norms, Global South epistemes and demands are most often turned into arguments for further liberal democracy promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]