The 1970s have a contested place in contemporary historiography. Depending on the perspective, they are seen as either short or long: jammed between the Keynesian postwar boom and the ascendance of neoliberalism, as the peak of modernism, or, conversely, the beginning of our modernity; in each case, a sense of crisis is hard to detach from our understanding of the 1970s. While the organizers of the workshop called attention to this with the title, a global emotional perspective on this decade opens new pathways to feeling the 1970s as various actors across the globe had – hopeful, disappointed, angry, or joyful. Bringing together the merits of two rarely combined approaches to history, global history and the history of emotions, this workshop was structured as four panels with two to three presentations and two responding discussants. It thereby introduced quintessentially new pathways for studying the decade, from emotions as vectors of agency to the transmission of emotions across borders, and collective emotionality.

Treated as vectors of agency, emotions appear to have a powerful impact on international relations. While a reason or interest-based argument might find more difficulty in explaining why, for example, non-oil-producing countries in the Global South supported OPEC countries in raising the oil price, JONAS KREIENBAUM (Rostock) treated the feeling of solidarity as a vector of agency in diplomacy and could thereby explain why culturally, politically, and economically heterogeneous countries acted in fierce coalescence in the 1970s. This shared feeling of solidarity ultimately culminated in a UN proposal for a new economic world order, furthering the political differences between the “First” and the “Third” World.

These divisions were often assumed to be responsible for the paradigm shift at the World Bank that produced the infamous structural adjustment programs after the 1970s as a kind of revenge by the so-called First World, in response to the new self-esteem of the Third World. EVA-MARIA MUSCHIK (Vienna), analyzing oral interviews with former staff members, reached a different conclusion, however. Taking the emotions of excitement of the then very young employees of the bank seriously – a staff member even being fired after cynically questioning Robert McNamara’s1 enthusiasm about projects in India – showed how the more market-based approaches were probably rather employed after a period of experimentation with the goal of overcoming the conflicts of the previous decade, instead of intensifying them.

In a process that SABRINA-JULIA JOST (Tübingen) called emotional decolonization, Australians and New Zealanders were at the same time working out a new national identity – with geopolitical implications. Disenchanted with the UK joining the European Economic Community, overcoming feelings of belonging to the UK became a hopeful chance to form a more inclusive national identity. The emotional forces that solidified the break with what many still perceived as their home country now allowed the creation of a new national identity. In the search for difference with Britain, it now included immigrants and indigenous, othering the British as cold and classist in comparison. Reflected in culinary practices, with Asian restaurants popping up in the urban centers of the continent, the emotional reordering of society around multiculturalism in the end had lasting geopolitical outcomes; it moved Australia and New Zealand closer to its Asian neighbors, again displaying how certain feelings might produce specific geopolitical outcomes.

Emotions similarly have an impact on scholarly work itself. MAURICE COTTIER (Fribourg) studied this effect through the lens of economists of the American Left in the 1970s. A younger generation of economists, radicalized by the developments of the 60s, built their critique of capitalism in the 1970s on feelings of anger and hope for change. Their scholarly output was therefore more revolutionary and radical compared to the work of the older economists guided by the emotional regime of American Cool that was central to previous decades. These different emotional approaches resulted in the lack of a shared cultural imaginary on the Left, ultimately weakening the unity of the movement and paving the way for neoliberal reforms that a decade later replaced Keynesian paradigms.

Beyond emotions being global vectors of change, the workshop introduced another venue for studying emotions globally: how emotions were transmitted and translated across borders. Palestinian political leaders after the 1967 war, for example, moved beyond Palestine’s individual experience as the peculiar outcome of two world wars and instead started relating to a global narrative of colonized oppression, when framing their cause for independence. While joining the global discourse of legitimate anger over colonial oppression had strategic advantages, it also came at the cost of other, more local emotions such as grief. To give emotions global significance, LAURA ROBSON (State College, PA) emphasized the necessity of a translation process, relating local emotions to the global literature about violence, from international authors such as Frantz Fanon or Hannah Arendt. By appropriating the language for their cause, Palestinians were able to give their politics global significance.

The transmission of emotions similarly played a role in global Islamism. SHAHEEN KELACHAN THODIKA (Mohali) introduced a South Asian example to the study of Islamist organizations and suggested that while Cold War politics gave rise to a disenchantment with modernity among Islamists, the successful revolution in Iran in 1979 fueled new emotions and politics in Islamist organizations like the Kerala-based Jamaat-e-Islami Hind; while first surprised by the revolution, the members of these organizations experienced a re-enchantment with modernity. The revolution in Iran evidently had a global impact, particularly on Islamist organizations. Moved by passion and hope, the Islamists in Kerala developed a new language of capitalist critique in which the compatibility of Islam and modernity was recognized, and which was articulated, for example, in the films produced in Iran at the time. Thus, local expressions of revolutionary passion were transmitted across borders and eventually had a global impact.

The new government in Teheran fostered the spread of revolutionary emotions by inviting leaders from Islamists organizations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. Palestine made their appeals global by appropriating the language of other freedom fighters for their cause. Yet, a more immediate and direct way to spread emotions was perhaps employed in the Peoples’ Republic of China’s Third Worldism. In a hopeful act of cultural diplomacy, aiming at positive recognition by African states and societies, African acrobats and dancers were regularly trained in China. JAMIE MONSON (Michigan, MI) introduced the idea that this was by no means a one-sided manipulation technique. The female acrobats she studied used their diplomatic standing to advance their own projects, sometimes even playing global superpowers against one another. China’s Third World diplomacy eventually allowed it to receive the votes at the UN to become recognized as the sole representation of China. In this case, acrobatics eased the translation of emotions on a mass scale. As performers moved back and forth between China and Africa, they communicated feelings of solidarity, friendship, and communist connection, fostering nation building processes, for instance in Tanzania, and advancing China’s global interests.

The discussion of a global history of emotions accordingly posed particular questions of agency and connections. Yet another theme was present during the conference: collective emotionality or the question of emotional communities. MARIA ADAMOPOLOU (Florence) presented a story of multiple disenchantments for temporary migrants from Greece to Germany, which were experienced collectively. Disenchantments were connected through feelings of hope and possibility: first came the disenchantment with Greece, then the hope for new employment in Germany under better conditions, then another disenchantment as the host country treated the migrants as disposable and sent them back after economic crisis hit, and lastly the disenchantment when returning home as the acquired industrial skills found no corresponding industries. Neither the German nor the Greek state was able to shelter these emotional communities from market fluctuations. Often transplanted from rural areas in Greece to industrial centers in Germany, these disenchantments were however experienced together, a factor that might have allowed these communities to stay resilient.

While the 70s are the origin of our contemporary identity politics, the previous examples make clear that political claims were by no means focused on the individual, yet. Instead, collective emotions had to be organized and mediated to reach political goals. In South America for instance, queer people for the first time appeared publicly in the 70s, organizing around a positive self-identity focused on anger and pride, leaving behind the self-deprecation Catholic society had forced on them. Safety in numbers allowed an experience of collective coming-out, FELIPE CESAR CAMILO CARO-ROMERO (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) claimed, while many, as individuals, could not even come out to their families. The feeling of pride further connected gay liberation movements across the world, again often mediated through literature, plays, and movies.

Such collective emotions could even reach across identity markers, as SARAH EHLER (Munich) made clear with her research on anti-pesticide activism. Successful environmental campaigns in the US led corporations to export environmentally harmful pesticides increasingly to the developing world. Reflecting the nature of globalizing supply chains, activism increasingly had to translate the emotional experience of local farmers to a global consumerist audience. Activists created visual narratives about the plight of farming under these harmful conditions, forming an emotional connection between farmers and consumers. While harmful pesticides are still not fully banned everywhere, this example in combination with the two previous ones shows the political potential emotional communities had in a globalizing world.

This workshop allowed participants to experiment with two rarely combined approaches to history. Certainly, it was clear at various points that this combination still lacks some methodological clarity. Definitions, for example of specific emotions, are needed in particular. Due to the wide range of topics discussed, comparisons from scholars of the same field and critique related to individual sources were rarely present. However, these initial projects already presented ways in which our understanding of the 1970s would benefit from following emotions in world history. They not only drive people’s individual actions, but when collectivized often even have geopolitical implications. Like goods and people, they move across borders and oceans, tying people together in one globalized world. While their dissemination is rarely consistent, and certain emotions might have more salience over others, they reflect the nature of one unequal, but global society. Given that emotions appear to exert greater power than previously assumed, it might be timely to follow these potentials in more refined academic exploration.

Conference overview:

Session 1: Sensing the Economy
Chair: Agnes Arndt (Berlin)

Jonas Kreienbaum (Rostock): Between Panic and Feelings of Empowerment: Emotional Reactions to the First Oil Crisis and the Debate over a New International Economic Order

Maurice Cottier (Fribourg): The End of Irony: Emotions and Criticism of Capitalism in the United States in the Global 1970s

Eva-Maria Muschik (Wien): Age of Assertion? The Global 1970s from the Perspective of World Bank Staff

Discussants: Alexandra Oberländer (Berlin), Korinna Schönhärl (Frankfurt am Main)

Session 2: Transnational Activism
Chair: Caroline Moine (Berlin)

Laura Robson (State College, PA): Emotional Solidarities: The Post-1967 Politics of Feeling in Palestine

Felipe Cesar Camilo Caro-Romero (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt): Pride over Prejudice: The Shared Emotions of the Latin-American Homosexual Liberation Movement

Sarah Ehlers (München): “A New Sense of Global Organizing”: Narratives of Hope and Solidarity in Anti-Pesticide Activism during the 1970s and 1980s

Discussants: Juliane Fürst (Potsdam), Robert Skinner (Bristol)

Session 3: Reaching out and closing in
Chair: Michael Amico (Berlin)

Shaheen Kelachan Thodika (Mohali): Islamism and the Disenchantment of the 1970s: A Case Study of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Kerala, circa 1980–1992

Sabrina-Julia Jost (Tübingen): “An Emotional Leap” – Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s

Discussants: Ute Frevert (Berlin), Joseph Ben Prestel (Berlin)

Session 4: Global Encounters
Chair: Stephanie Lämmert (Berlin)

Jamie Monson (Michigan, MI): Performing Internationalism: African Women’s Delegations to China in the 1970s

Maria Adamopoulou (Florence): Guest and Insecure: The Oil Crisis and the Greek Gastarbeiter in the Federal Republic of Germany

Discussants: Rukmini Barua (Berlin), Marcia Schenck (Potsdam)

Note:
1 Robert McNamara was president of the World Bank from 1978 to 1980.