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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]

The problem of disinformation is widely seen as a threat to democracy. Scholars, journalists, and civil society organizations have quickly developed tools to track and counter various forms of disinformation, but efforts to strengthen democratic institutions in the digital age are far less coordinated. In some cases, these efforts are built on outdated assumptions about the role of truth in democratic participation. In this article, we argue that the threat that disinformation poses to democracy is less about the undermining of truth, and more about limiting access to forms of information necessary for collective efforts to democratize political power. We develop our argument by discussing the ways that this threat has reoriented theoretical, practical, and normative assumptions about the nature of democracy and democratization. We draw on our research on the field of international democracy promotion to inform this discussion. International democracy promotion is one of the few areas that has directly worked on the problem of disinformation. The organizations in this field, some of which grew from Cold War-era propaganda and information campaigns, have histories of building the type of trust in democratic processes that disinformation campaigns often aim to undermine. As the experiences of democracy promoters show, establishing the legal legitimacy of democratic institutions does not guarantee that people will trust in them. In an online world, trustworthiness requires forms of credibility that are more intimately connected to people’s everyday lives. For democracy promotion experts, building this credibility has been a problem due to factors that are unique to the field. As a result, over time these experts have developed responses to anti-democratic information campaigns meant to attack their credibility and the credibility of democratic reforms. By outlining how democracy promotion organizations have coordinated international anti-disinformation efforts, this article outlines some of the challenges that disinformation poses to democracy based on the experiences of professionals in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Welfare internationalism was and still is one of the most powerful justifications for establishing international organizations. It suggests that public international organizations should cater to the material needs of individuals, rather than solve conflicts among states. In this article, we trace the origins of welfare internationalism, challenging the dominant narrative that depicts it as a projection of the British welfare state or the American New Deal to the globe. We show that welfare internationalism emerged earlier and combined ideational elements of very different origins. Notions of professional colonial administration migrated to the international context and dovetailed with a cosmopolitan interpretation of 19th-century public unions as caretakers of citizen interests. Reform socialist approaches to the social question inspired domestic and international developments simultaneously, leading to the foundation of the International Labour Organization, which became a crucial venue for the promulgation of welfare internationalism. We thus document how international theorists and practitioners of the early 20th century established a new perspective on international affairs, emanating from individuals and their needs. That perspective came to rival the traditional conception of international politics as intergovernmentalism and delivered important building blocks for the (self-)legitimation of the League of Nations and the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]