LOVING INTERNATIONALISM: THE EMOTION CULTURE OF TRANSNATIONAL WOMEN’S ORGANIZATIONS, 1888-1945 Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp * Research on the collective identities of social movement participants points to the strong con- victions that underlie activism. A great deal of mobilization work involves channeling, trans- forming, legitimating, and managing emotions. In this article we use the concept of emotion culture, drawn from social constructionist approaches to emotions, to understand how women in the three major transnational women’s organizations from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War built solidarity across national boundaries in order to work for women’s rights and peace. The analysis focuses on how the gendered emotion culture of the international women’s movement promoted a loving community that transcended national rivalries. We identify three socialization processes: (1) staging expressive public rituals of reconciliation between women who stood on opposite sides of national conflicts; (2) forming intense affective ties across national boundaries; and (3) drawing on the emotional template of mother love. If there is a single precept that has emerged from the past three decades of social movements research, it is that social movements develop out of preexisting social networks built on inter- personal trust, reciprocity, and shared cultural meanings (Tilly 1978; Freeman 1979; McAdam 1988). It is little wonder that international activism has been so rare. As Tarrow (2001) points out, the transaction costs of linking activists into integrated networks that cross national boundaries are especially high because the social networks and political identities that form out of contentious politics are likely to be detached from the structures of everyday life. One of the primary ways social movements create the solidarity necessary to act in unison is by fashioning a collective identity that marks off the group and politicizes the shared everyday experiences of members by connecting them to a larger set of social claims or injustices (Melucci 1989; Gamson 1992; Taylor and Whittier 1992; Whittier 1997). In turn, this process of constructing a collective identity is facilitated by the mobilization of emotion within the movement. In this article, we use the concept of emotion culture, drawn from social construc- tionist approaches that view emotions as influenced by larger historical and cultural processes (Gordon 1981, 1990; Hochschild 1983; Thoits 1990; Barbalet 1998), to understand how women in three major transnational women’s organizations from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War built solidarity across national boundaries. Transnational women’s organizations provide a useful case for analyzing the relationship between emotion and collective action. Coming together to create the first wave of an international women’s movement was no mean feat in a world rent by war, depression, revolution, and the rise of fascism. Yet members of international women’s organizations managed to forge international * Verta Taylor is Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University. Leila J. Rupp is Professor of History, The Ohio State University. E-mail: taylor.40@osu.edu © Mobilization: An International Journal, 2002, 7(2): 141-158 141 Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/mobilization/article-pdf/7/2/141/1811871/maiq_7_2_fw3t5032xkq5l62h.pdf by University of California user on 23 May 2020