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The Businessmen's Revival in Boston was an exercise in the collective performance of emotion. This display of persons gathered in groups large and small, in churches, chapels, theatres, homes, basements, on board ships in the harbor, and in outdoor settings was of utmost importance. That display of emotion, in its general contours, conformed to Protestant expectation for raised affections as part of a revival of religion. Experienced in the collective expression of their feelings through their participation in various kinds of public events Bostonians developed opinions about the nature of emotion: its causes, its uses, and its ends. Moreover, emotion was taken as a commodity, and as such could be acquired for a price and could be exchanged for various other things. So, while Bostonians collectively emoted, they were also participating in an emotional economy. Therefore, the collectivity and the economy of emotion were closely interwoven, the envaluing of emotion being possible only within a public context that allowed for the assignment of value through social agreement.

The usage of the term cohesion is complex and multiple. This chapter aims to identify a coherent definition of the concept of cohesion. The chapter explores the use of the concept of cohesion in the sociological literature on the military, beginning with the famous article by Janowitz and Shils, and in social psychology, especially the work of Festinger et al. The chapter claims that in all this scholarship cohesion refers to the individual motivation which arises from the special bonds of comradeship and close personal relations. Because they like each other, individuals are willing to do things which they would not do independently. Motivation is clearly important but this chapter proposes that it is better to understand cohesion not as a special form of motivation but as collective performance itself and specifically collective combat performance.

This chapter considers the precarity of graffiti grrlz’ social and subcultural status. Graffiti subculture thrives on social relation; in this economy, aesthetics and peer recognition have value, but who gets to spend or accrue this value through their artistic labor differs based on gender conventions. Graffiti grrlz are vulnerable within this economy because their aesthetics and their bodies (thus, their peer recognition) are valued differently—often, their contributions do not “count.” By way of a comparative analysis of two annual, international all-grrl events—Ladie Killerz (Australia) and Femme Fierce (United Kingdom)—the chapter asks what the public collective performance of feminine identity markers does within spaces where heterosexist male masculinity is the valued convention. Through the strategic public performance of an undervalued gender identity, these “ladiez” and “femmes” claim their subcultural ownership, transform their precarious social belongings, and activate the social and political power of feminist collectivity.

This chapter addresses the appearance of demonic possession in seventeenth-century Muscovite witchcraft trials. Klikushestvo, usually translated as “shrieking” or “possession,” was a particularly dramatic form of magical affliction, one that horrified Russian communities and fascinated onlookers by its nightmarish manifestations. As recorded in both miracle tales and court records, possession was often, but not always, attributed to the malevolent acts of witches and sorcerers. Another disturbing condition in Muscovy and imperial Russia, often but not always observed alongside the other characteristics of klikushestvo and sometimes thrown into general symptomology of possession, was ikota — literally, hiccupping. With their dramatic manifestations, klikushestvo and ikota in the Russian lands and the less dramatic (but no less frightening) forms of demonic possession in the Ukrainian lands involved families and communities in shared collective performances. Performance in this sense does not connote any falsehood; rather it underscores the extent to which possession can never be a truly solitary act. It is theatrical in its essence, a public performance. Collective consensus, a shared assessment between afflicted and witnesses, completed and validated possession cases.