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This paper contests what has remained a core assumption in social psychological and general understandings of the Milgram experiments. Analysing the learner/victim’s rhetoric in experimental sessions across five conditions (N= 170), it demonstrates that what participants were exposed to was not the black-and-white scenario of being pushed towards continuation by the experimental authority and pulled towards discontinuation by the learner/victim. Instead, the traditionally posited explicit collision of “forces” or “identities” was at all points of the experiments undermined by an implicit collusion between them: rendering the learner/victim a divided and contradictory subject, and the experimental process a constantly shifting and paradoxical experiential-moral field. As a result, the paper concludes that evaluating the participants’ conduct requires an understanding of the experiments where morality and non-destructive agency were not simple givens to be applied to a transparent case, but had to be re-created anew – in the face not just of their explicit denial by the experimenter but also of their implicit denial by the victim.

Part of a comprehensive study to analyse British broadsheets’ coverage of the First Gaza War, this paper examines the moral arguments presented in editorials. Doing so, it showcases a non-dualist, relational inquiry of the representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of focusing on what is empirically ‘true’, morally ‘right’, and ethnically ‘Israeli/Jewish’ or ‘Palestinian/Arab’ as extra-discursive categories, it approaches them as discursive constructions and asks what relations, what forms of lives the editorials cultivate in representing them. The analysis demonstrates that whilst newspapers overwhelmingly imagine isolated and ahistorical essences to clash in Palestine-Israel, they do not exclusively do so. Traces of a discourse of relations, where ‘I’ (Palestinian or Israeli) is partly constituted by the ‘Other’ (Israeli or Palestinian) can also be found in the editorials. It is with the vicissitudes of such relational accounts that the article concludes.

In this paper we develop a conceptual and methodological approach which psychologists and other social scientists can employ to study emergence. We consider relevant social psychological approaches and conclude that, for the most part, social psychology has tended to focus on processes of normalisation following disruptions, rather than examining emergence in itself. An exception to this is G.H. Mead, whose work we draw on to theorise emergence with a focus on contemporary ‘affective politics’. In the second part of the paper, we use focus group data on the EU referendum in the UK to empirically illustrate our theoretical points. We discuss in particular three axes for exploring the emergent politics of Brexit: political values, political authority, and the authority of affect. We conclude our discussion by reflecting on some of the theoretical and political implications of our analysis.

This article examines the significance of the private-public exchange of letters between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt in the wake of the Eichmann trial. Using rhetorical analysis, it considers the respective arguments concerning Jewish responsibility, the incompatible political-moral frameworks offered to underpin such judgments, and the extreme identities the correspondents construct for each other. In doing so, it identifies the ultimate significance of the exchange with the total breakdown of discourse it symbolically resulted in—in other words, with the consensus pertaining to the Holocaust leading to a complete incommensurability of the respective political-moral positions. Such a state of affairs is finally accounted for, paradoxically, in terms of the far-reaching agreement. between Arendt and Scholem, reaching beyond politics and even identity: the total inescapability of Jewishness.

Drawing on a large-scale study examining the British broadsheets’ coverage of the first Gaza war, this paper proposes some methodological considerations for analyzing the particularly emotive discourse on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and suggests a reflective multi-methodological approach to account for both the complexities and the intensities of the conflict. The paper starts by arguing that, working with a large data-set, quantitative data are both required and required to be interpreted by acts of contextualisation. Two strategies of contextualization are then introduced: interpreting patterns and associations in the numerical data. Following this, the paper continues by examining the findings and dilemmas that have emerged from quantitative analysis, using qualitative analysis of editorial extracts. It therefore shows examples for how quantitative codes can be built into and built up by narratives and arguments. Doing this, it also demonstrates possible ways of connecting qualitative to quantitative research: explanation, extension, and transformation/subversion.

The study critically examines contemporary academic engagement with Stanley Milgram's classic ‘obedience to authority’ experiments. It argues that, following what will be termed the ‘first wave of criticism’ (1964 to mid‐1980s) and ‘consensus and canonization’ (mid‐1980s to mid‐2000s), this present‐day phase has constituted a veritable ‘second wave of criticism’. The ‘second wave’ is reviewed in terms of, first, a return to fundamental dilemmas around the experiments (i.e., replication, ethics, methodology, and theory); and second, a recourse to novel data sources as well as theoretical and epistemological‐methodological developments. Such integration of traditional concerns and new perspectives has resulted in focus being redirected to a forgotten aspect of the experiments: the interactional production of affective dynamics in the lab. Although the ‘second wave’ will be critiqued for selectively focusing on either affective atmosphere or interactional process, the paper will conclude with the suggestion that bringing these two aspects together continues to promise a theoretical contribution to the understanding of the experiments not seen before.

Drawing on a large-scale study examining the British broadsheets’ coverage of the first Gaza war, this paper proposes some methodological considerations for analyzing the particularly emotive discourse on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and suggests a reflective multi-methodological approach to account for both the complexities and the intensities of the conflict. The paper starts by arguing that, working with a large data-set, quantitative data are both required and required to be interpreted by acts of contextualisation. Two strategies of contextualization are then introduced: interpreting patterns and associations in the numerical data. Following this, the paper continues by examining the findings and dilemmas that have emerged from quantitative analysis, using qualitative analysis of editorial extracts. It therefore shows examples for how quantitative codes can be built into and built up by narratives and arguments. Doing this, it also demonstrates possible ways of connecting qualitative to quantitative research: explanation, extension, and transformation/subversion.

This article examines the significance of the private-public exchange of letters between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt in the wake of the Eichmann trial. Using rhetorical analysis, it considers the respective arguments concerning Jewish responsibility, the incompatible political-moral frameworks offered to underpin such judgments, and the extreme identities the correspondents construct for each other. In doing so, it identifies the ultimate significance of the exchange with the total breakdown of discourse it symbolically resulted in—in other words, with the consensus pertaining to the Holocaust leading to a complete incommensurability of the respective political-moral positions. Such a state of affairs is finally accounted for, paradoxically, in terms of the far-reaching agreement. between Arendt and Scholem, reaching beyond politics and even identity: the total inescapability of Jewishness.

Part of a comprehensive study to analyse British broadsheets’ coverage of the First Gaza War, this paper examines the moral arguments presented in editorials. Doing so, it showcases a non-dualist, relational inquiry of the representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of focusing on what is empirically ‘true’, morally ‘right’, and ethnically ‘Israeli/Jewish’ or ‘Palestinian/Arab’ as extra-discursive categories, it approaches them as discursive constructions and asks what relations, what forms of lives the editorials cultivate in representing them. The analysis demonstrates that whilst newspapers overwhelmingly imagine isolated and ahistorical essences to clash in Palestine-Israel, they do not exclusively do so. Traces of a discourse of relations, where ‘I’ (Palestinian or Israeli) is partly constituted by the ‘Other’ (Israeli or Palestinian) can also be found in the editorials. It is with the vicissitudes of such relational accounts that the article concludes.

The study critically examines contemporary academic engagement with Stanley Milgram's classic ‘obedience to authority’ experiments. It argues that, following what will be termed the ‘first wave of criticism’ (1964 to mid‐1980s) and ‘consensus and canonization’ (mid‐1980s to mid‐2000s), this present‐day phase has constituted a veritable ‘second wave of criticism’. The ‘second wave’ is reviewed in terms of, first, a return to fundamental dilemmas around the experiments (i.e., replication, ethics, methodology, and theory); and second, a recourse to novel data sources as well as theoretical and epistemological‐methodological developments. Such integration of traditional concerns and new perspectives has resulted in focus being redirected to a forgotten aspect of the experiments: the interactional production of affective dynamics in the lab. Although the ‘second wave’ will be critiqued for selectively focusing on either affective atmosphere or interactional process, the paper will conclude with the suggestion that bringing these two aspects together continues to promise a theoretical contribution to the understanding of the experiments not seen before.

This paper contests what has remained a core assumption in social psychological and general understandings of the Milgram experiments. Analysing the learner/victim’s rhetoric in experimental sessions across five conditions (N= 170), it demonstrates that what participants were exposed to was not the black-and-white scenario of being pushed towards continuation by the experimental authority and pulled towards discontinuation by the learner/victim. Instead, the traditionally posited explicit collision of “forces” or “identities” was at all points of the experiments undermined by an implicit collusion between them: rendering the learner/victim a divided and contradictory subject, and the experimental process a constantly shifting and paradoxical experiential-moral field. As a result, the paper concludes that evaluating the participants’ conduct requires an understanding of the experiments where morality and non-destructive agency were not simple givens to be applied to a transparent case, but had to be re-created anew – in the face not just of their explicit denial by the experimenter but also of their implicit denial by the victim.

In this paper we develop a conceptual and methodological approach which psychologists and other social scientists can employ to study emergence. We consider relevant social psychological approaches and conclude that, for the most part, social psychology has tended to focus on processes of normalisation following disruptions, rather than examining emergence in itself. An exception to this is G.H. Mead, whose work we draw on to theorise emergence with a focus on contemporary ‘affective politics’. In the second part of the paper, we use focus group data on the EU referendum in the UK to empirically illustrate our theoretical points. We discuss in particular three axes for exploring the emergent politics of Brexit: political values, political authority, and the authority of affect. We conclude our discussion by reflecting on some of the theoretical and political implications of our analysis.