Anxiety and Paranoia among Activist Groups
Policing and the Repression of Political Dissent in Britain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21394488 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sophie Crowe (Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380261261462631 |
| OpenAlex | W7166129077 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
Scholarship on activism and state repression has outlined the centrality of affect and emotions for the experience of grassroots politics. There has been substantial focus on intentional affects, such as moral outrage, anger, fear and loyalty, for their work in moving people to participate in and commit to political groups. Less attention has been given to anxiety and paranoia as often subtle feelings that persist in long-term temporalities within activist organising networks. This article investigates the role of anxiety and paranoia in shaping lived experience of participation in such groups in the context of surveillance practices and recent public order legislation in Britain. It argues that activists inhabited anxiety and paranoia in ways that encouraged critical reflection and analysis of state power, illustrating how collective subjectivity is entangled with conditions of state repression. The article suggests that these negative affects emerging through protest policing, surveillance and anti-protest laws in particular did not undermine political agency. Rather, given the ambiguous dimension of affect, activists were channelling anxiety and paranoia that emerged through perceptions of and encounters with state power into unfolding critiques of the status quo. This approach highlights the importance of studying durable affects that often remain implicit for their role in evolving forms of resistance and collective agency. The article draws on affect theory and studies of ambiguous agency, and is based on 28 interviews with activists in Britain who were involved in groups campaigning on issues including climate justice, Palestinian rights and animal rights
Anxiety · Contentious politics · Context (archaeology) · Dissent · Paranoia · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · State (computer science) · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History of Emotions Research · Populism, Right-Wing Movements
Modulating the Excess of Affect
The Affective Dynamics of Mass Protests
The Cultural Politics of Emotion
Constructing Indignation
Cruel Optimism
The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements
Emotions and Contentious Politics
Revolution Squared
Dark Matters
Surveillance experiences of extinction rebellion activists and police
Relationality in a time of surveillance
Hope, Fear, and the Politics of Affective Agency
Undercover policing and the spectre of ‘domestic extremism’
Creative paranoia
From ‘the effect of repression’ toward ‘the response to repression
Environmental protest, contention, and the law
M Mobilizations and the penalization of counter-hegemonic protest in contemporary Spain
I started seeing shadows everywhere
The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association
Public Feelings
Anxiety and political action in times of the Covid-19 pandemic
Policing Atmospheres
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |