Urban Space as a Laboratory of Democratic Change: Ressentiment, Social Love, and Social Transformation

Abstract

This article investigates the intricate interplay between ressentiment—as social emotion—social love, and solidarity in democratic societies, focusing on the urban environment as the primary stage where these processes materialize. Far from being a marginal emotion, ressentiment is deeply intertwined with democratic life, arising from the gap between proclaimed values and lived conditions. It represents an affective reaction to the perceived betrayal of the promise of equality inscribed in democratic ideals. The discussion explores how perceptions of injustice can fracture trust and intensify divisions, but also how they, under certain conditions, can be redirected toward political engagement and common action. The city, characterized by density, diversity, and the continuous negotiation of difference, can serve as a privileged arena for this transformation. Urban space does not merely reflect inequalities; it actively shapes social processes and provides the infrastructure through which collective sentiments are articulated. In this context, “social love” is conceptualized not as a sentimental aspiration, but as a relational force capable of redirecting the moral indignation of ressentiment, far from strategies of grievance politics toward constructive forms of social and political belonging. Cities can function as laboratories of solidarity where grievances are reframed into collective projects that strengthen social cohesion. Mitigating the destructive potential of ressentiment requires addressing its structural roots through inclusive urban policies and dialogical spaces. An approach grounded in social love can counter fragmentation, mobilizing emotions in the service of substantive equality. In this perspective, the city can become a space and a laboratory for change, where resentment can be channeled as a generative force capable of sustaining widespread forms of social love and a sense of the common good.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, democratic societies have undergone major shifts that have altered the relationship between political institutions, citizens, and forms of public participation. Processes of globalization, the crisis of traditional forms of political representation, and the increase in social and economic inequalities have contributed to the spread of feelings of frustration and perceived injustice. In this context, numerous scholars have stressed the emergence of widespread forms of social ressentiment, understood as a social emotion, often associated with the growth of populist movements and the crisis of faith in democratic institutions (Cramer 2016; Hochschild 2016; Collins 1990).

The theoretical perspective adopted here takes ressentiment as its point of reference, understood as a social emotion and distinguished from the “simple” emotion of resentment. Whereas resentment may be conceived as a circumscribed affective reaction to an experienced or perceived wrong, ressentiment refers to a deeper, more enduring, and socially mediated disposition. It emerges from the gap between what individuals possess and what they believe they deserve or are entitled to (Sennett and Cobb [1972] 1983), transforming frustration, powerlessness, and social comparison into a particular way of interpreting the world. In this sense, ressentiment is not merely an individual emotion, but a collective dynamic capable of producing symbolic boundaries, ingroup/outgroup oppositions, and, potentially, processes of social transformation.

Ressentiment is one of the destabilizing forms of the social bond stemming from the betrayal of the democratic promise of equality (Nussbaum 2013; Jasper 2018). However, this interpretation risks oversimplifying the phenomenon. Ressentiment can, in fact, be interpreted not only as an emotional reaction but as a moral and even rational response to the awareness of a gap between the normative promises of democracy and the actual conditions of social life, especially in the face of a perceived inability to counter such processes (Carrera 2025). From this perspective, ressentiment can be read as a generative relational emotion that emerges from the conflict between normative expectations of equality and concrete experiences of exclusion or sidelining, coupled with low political self-efficacy. Ressentiment, therefore, does not represent a negation of democracy, but rather a critical form capable potentially of being one of its foundations. It reveals the contradictions in the daily conditions of experience and in institutional structures (Rosanvallon 2011) and, given enabling conditions, can even become an activating element. Ressentment, as a social emotion that fragments and divides by activating ingroup and outgroup mechanisms, could instead trigger virtuous changes towards forms of social love.

These complex processes unfold not only at the theoretical level but also in the materiality of urban space, which serves as a privileged context where such tensions become visible and can be transformed, functioning as transformative agents. Contemporary cities are places where social inequalities, cultural differences, and normative expectations of equality come into direct relation and, as such, serve as potential socio-political laboratories of change.

2. Genealogy of Ressentiment

The concept of ressentiment has a long theoretical tradition in European moral and political philosophy. Its classical formulation is found in the work of Nietzsche ([1887] 1998), who interprets it as a psychological reaction generated by social impotence and the frustration of personal objectives. For the German philosopher, ressentiment is an emotion of weak individuals who lack the strength to change the conditions that generate it, and thus it appears as the outcome of a sort of paralysis due to the impotence of action. From this perspective, ressentiment can produce a reactive morality based on the inversion of values, through which socially subordinated groups transform their weakness into moral virtue by overturning the virtues of the dominant class. It therefore manifests as a process of defense and resistance, both conscious and unconscious, which generates and reinforces a sense of identity while reducing feelings of powerlessness through the devaluation of what cannot be attained (Salmela and Capelos 2021). Groups incapable of directly asserting their will transform frustration into a reactive morality that devalues what cannot be achieved (Nietzsche [1887] 1998). In this view, ressentiment appears as an essentially negative force, associated with the formation of moralistic values born from the negation of others’ power.

Scheler ([1912] 1994) reworks this concept, developing a more sociological interpretation of the phenomenon. He acknowledges the Nietzschean intuition regarding the emotional dimension of ressentiment but rejects its reduction to pure moral pathology. Scheler emphasizes that ressentiment frequently arises in contexts characterized by real and persistent injustices. In this sense, ressentiment is not simply a moral distortion, but an emotional response to social situations perceived as unjust. This reinterpretation opens the possibility of considering ressentiment not only as an individual psychological phenomenon but also as an indicator of tensions within social structures shaped by the relative deprivation mechanism. It is the mechanism by which individuals or groups perceive they have less than they believe is fair or than they see possessed by others, and from this comparison arises frustration, ressentiment, or protest. It is not only “absolute” poverty that matters, but above all the perceived gap between expectations and reality. On a theoretical level, the classic reference is Stouffer et al. (1949), who shows how discontent depends on comparison with one’s reference group. The concept is then developed by Runciman (1966), who distinguishes between egoistic (individual) and fraternalistic (group) relative deprivation. In the sociology of conflicts, Gurr (1970) confirms this social perspective, focusing on how the gap between value expectations and the ability to satisfy them can fuel conflict and collective mobilization. From this perspective, this sense of deprivation is connected with ressentiment, which, in Scheler’s analysis, develops when individuals or groups experience persistent feelings of injustice in relation to better conditions enjoyed by other groups. It is therefore not a matter of absolute lack, but of a comparative experience. For this reason, it can also be found among members of higher classes who, like the most vulnerable groups, experience relative deprivation when comparing themselves with other subjects or with their own expectations.

In the context of current democratic societies, however, ressentiment takes on an additional dimension. As Rosanvallon (2011) observes, modern democracies produce normative expectations of equality and inclusion which, when unmet, generate widespread feelings of injustice. This betrayal of the promise of equality translates into a rancorous ressentiment and, paraphrasing Carlo Mongardini (2004), into the constitution of the “solidary community of the rancorous”. Resentment immobilizes individuals while also constituting the basis of their bond.

“Ressentiment-imbued individuals ruminate. They bring to mind “past injures and injustices” which cement their “victimhood” and generate self-pity. Yet, they cannot imagine taking revenge for the humiliation and the traumas they have suffered. This lasting rumination, in the form of a persistent pre-occupation with the past, does not allow an individual in ressentiment to move forward.”

(Capelos and Demertzis 2022, pp. 5–6)

Social sharing is an important component of ressentiment. Although studies of in-group relations show that shared experiences and group belonging can foster social cohesion, the forms of cohesion associated with ressentiment are theorized as shallow, fragile, and largely negative, insofar as they are grounded less in shared values than in common hostility, grievance, or perceived exclusion (Salmela and Capelos 2021). Capelos and Demertzis (2022) argue that the social bonds generated by ressentiment are similar to those observed in collective narcissism, but they involve a crucial shift. Whereas collective narcissism centers on the inflated moral and symbolic value of one’s own group, ressentiment also entails the moral devaluation of the out-group. In this sense, the other group is not simply regarded as inferior, but is stripped of legitimacy, dignity, or moral value (Hörnqvist 2021).

The complexity of ressentiment in present-day democratic societies requires bringing into dialogue other theoretical traditions that have interpreted this phenomenon from different perspectives. The contemporary theory of recognition developed by Honneth (1995) offers a further perspective on this social dimension of ressentiment, stating that social conflicts arise from experiences of misrecognition that strike at individuals’ moral identity. From this perspective, emotions such as indignation, anger, or ressentiment do not simply represent irrational deviations but constitute normative signals indicating violations of expectations of mutual respect. Ressentiment thus becomes a form of moral protest that reveals deficits of acknowledgment in social relations.

This reading is at least partially criticized by Nancy Fraser, who argues that an exclusive focus on this cultural and moral dimension risks obscuring the material structures of inequality (Fraser and Honneth 2003). Social conflicts in contemporary societies must instead be interpreted as the result of the nexus between problems of economic redistribution and cultural recognition. In this framework, ressentiment can emerge not only from experiences of symbolic contempt but also from structural conditions of economic exclusion. This debate between Honneth and Fraser highlights a central tension in present-day interpretations of ressentiment: whether it should be interpreted primarily as a demand for moral recognition or as a reaction to structural inequalities. A more integrated perspective indicates that these two dimensions are strongly intertwined. Experiences of economic injustice are often accompanied by perceptions of symbolic devaluation, while misrecognition can amplify the consequences of material inequalities.

By situating resentment within an interpretation of its social function and its potential as a catalyst for change, Thomas Marshall’s perspective allows this sentiment to be understood not merely as an expression of frustration or powerlessness, but also as a conflictual resource capable of making inequalities visible and fostering processes of social transformation. Marshall conceptualizes resentment as rooted in the structure of social relations and in the unequal distribution of power that characterizes them. Resentment operates through a complex process of “comparison”, “frustration”, and “oppression”.

“Comparison is the main force creating social levels (…) by perfecting the individual’s awareness of himself and the group’s consciousness of its own character. (…) Frustration arises wherever privilege creates inequality of opportunity (…) and it imputes to the superior class responsibility for the injustice under which the inferior suffers. (…) Oppression as conflict between two parties engaged in unequal co-operation identifies the group of person wielding power against whom the struggle may be waged.”

(Marshall [1938] 1973, pp. 168–70)

In this sense, understood as a class sentiment, resentment may become a source of conflict and, therefore, a potential catalyst for social transformation. At the same time, Marshall’s class-based interpretation of resentment must be critically reconsidered in the contemporary context of liquid modernity (Bauman), marked by fragmented identities, unstable affiliations, and increasingly fluid forms of social positioning. While Marshall could understand resentment as a class sentiment rooted in relatively stable social positions and recognizable power differentials, contemporary societies tend to individualize experiences of inequality, translating structural disadvantage into narratives of personal failure, competition, exclusion, or inadequacy. As a result, resentment does not necessarily generate collective class consciousness or organized conflict; it may instead remain dispersed across fragmented and unstable forms of identification. Nevertheless, Marshall’s perspective remains analytically relevant insofar as it highlights the social and conflictual potential of resentment. In this sense, resentment can still be interpreted not simply as a force of paralysis, but as a possible engine of social change, provided that individualized grievances are transformed into collective claims and shared forms of mobilization.

Martha Nussbaum’s (2013) position can be situated within a similar interpretive framework. Like Marshall’s perspective, it allows resentment to be understood as an emotion capable of generating social bonds; however, it moves beyond the specific reference to class relations and class consciousness. In Nussbaum’s view, resentment may emerge from experiences of injury, humiliation, vulnerability, or denied recognition, and can therefore be interpreted as a moral response to perceived injustice. In this sense, resentment is not only rooted in structural inequality, but may also contribute to the formation of affective and moral ties, forms of solidarity, and potentially collective action. Understanding ressentiment as political emotions, she emphasizes the role of emotions in building civic bonds and motivating collective action. She argues that emotions such as compassion, indignation, and civic love can play a fundamental role in fostering democratic solidarity. From this perspective, the problem is not to eliminate emotions from politics, but to understand how they can be oriented toward inclusive and socially generative goals. This perspective connects to Ahmed’s (2004) studies on the collective dynamics of emotions, which examine how emotions are not simply individual inner states but social phenomena that circulate among bodies and contribute to the building of emotional communities. Political emotions, in this sense, help define the boundaries between “us” and “them,” facilitating the formation of collective identities.

Within this complex and articulated theoretical scenario, the role of urban space becomes especially relevant. Lefebvre famously argues that

“(social) space is a (social) product” and that the space thus produced is not only “a means of production [but also] a means of control, and hence of domination, of power.”

(Lefebvre [1974] 1991, p. 26)

From this perspective, urban space cannot be understood as a neutral container of social relations, but rather as an active and historically produced dimension through which social practices, representations, and power relations are organized, reproduced, and perceived.

These perspectives suggest that urban space can be interpreted as an emotional infrastructure, capable of generating, amplifying, or transforming collective emotions. Contemporary cities indeed represent places where the gap between democratic promises and social realities grows notably visible, but, at the same time, where opportunities can be generated for the construction of new forms of solidarity via practices of civic participation and mutual recognition. In this context, social love can be understood as a complex relational disposition that acts upon the affective and moral dynamics of ressentiment. Its relevance lies in the possibility of transforming the divisive and paralyzing force of ressentiment into practices of solidarity, participation, and shared planning. Ressentiment may bring to light experiences of injury, injustice, and misrecognition; yet, when it remains locked within the repetition of grievance and the moral devaluation of others, it tends to reproduce social fragmentation rather than overcome it. From a relational perspective, the task is therefore not to deny or repress ressentiment, but to understand its social roots and the structural and institutional conditions that may allow its affective charge to be reoriented toward socio-political processes of change.

3. Political Emotions and Democratic Life

In recent years, a growing number of studies have questioned the traditional separation between rationality and passion in political theory, showing how emotions play a fundamental role in the formation of moral judgments and in the conditions for participation in public life. From this perspective, it has long been established that emotions do not simply represent irrational elements that disturb the functioning of democratic institutions but constitute fundamental elements of the processes through which citizens interpret and attribute meaning to social processes and injustices, mobilize politically, and build collective belongings. Authors such as Caillé (2007), Pierpaolo Donati (2006), and Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) have shown how social relations cannot be understood exclusively through economic or contractual categories but must also be analyzed in light of the logics of the gift, reciprocity, and trust, and can be guided by different “moral economies” of justification.

Nussbaum (2013) has developed one of the most interesting reflections on this theme, arguing that democracies cannot rely exclusively on formal institutions and norms, but also require the cultivation of public emotions capable of sustaining civic solidarity. Sentiments such as compassion, moral indignation, and even civic love can contribute to the formation of bonds of mutual liability among citizens. In this perspective, emotions are not simply individual reactions, but social products, moral resources that can be oriented toward the promotion of social virtues and integrative dwelling.

Ahmed (2004) has also analyzed how emotions are not simply individual inner states but social phenomena that circulate among bodies and contribute to the production of configurations of power and belonging. In her work on the “cultural politics of emotions,” Ahmed highlights how sentiments such as fear, anger, or ressentiment can be mobilized to build symbolic boundaries between social groups, assisting in defining who belongs to the political community and who is excluded from it, but they can also be rethought to generate entirely different social outcomes. This ambivalence suggests that political emotions cannot be interpreted simply as positive or negative forces but must be analyzed in the context of the social relations and institutional configurations in which they emerge, and within an essential processual dimension. Urban conflicts are not merely expressions of private dissatisfaction; they are arenas in which actors translate grievances into publicly defensible claims. In this sense, conflicts require practices of justification, since actors must appeal to principles of worth that can be recognized by others. Boltanski and Thévenot define this as the study of “the critical operations that people carry out when they want to show their disagreement without resorting to violence” (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006, p. 25).

From this perspective, ressentiment can be interpreted as one of the most ambivalent political emotions of contemporary democracies. It can fuel dynamics of polarization and antagonism, but it can also constitute a form of moral indignation that, by expressing the perception of structural injustices, can generate drives for mobilization for change (Tomelleri 2009). Understanding the role of ressentiment in democratic life, therefore, requires analyzing not only its emotional dimension but also the symbolic and material social and spatial conditions that guide its possible transformations.

It is precisely from this ambivalence that the concept of social love acquires analytical relevance. Social love can be understood as a relational and normative disposition that intervenes in the affective dynamics of democratic life, not by suppressing ressentiment, but by opening the possibility of reworking its moral and emotional energy (Collins 1990). Where ressentiment expresses experiences of injury, exclusion, and misrecognition, social love points to the conditions under which such experiences may be translated into solidarity, mutual responsibility, and participation rather than into withdrawal, hostility, or fragmentation. In this sense, social love allows us to connect the emotional quality of democratic life with the social and institutional conditions that make democratic coexistence possible. This connection becomes especially evident in urban space. The city is not simply the setting in which political emotions are manifested, but a material and symbolic field in which they are organized, intensified, redirected, or inhibited. As will be argued in the following section, urban space may either reproduce the fractures that nourish ressentiment or enable practices of encounter, recognition, shared planning, and collective action through which democratic life can take concrete form.

4. The Collective and Political Dimensions of Social Love

The theoretical foundation for social love as a political force owes much to the work of Nussbaum (2013). In her exploration of political emotions, Nussbaum argues that a just and decent liberal society cannot sustain itself on procedural justice and formal institutions alone; it requires an emotional infrastructure rooted in “civic love” (Nussbaum 2013). This form of love is not a blind and uncritical patriotism, but rather a complex and cultivated public emotion that fosters a commitment to shared goals, mutual responsibility, and the broader concept of the common good. It acts as a necessary counterweight to the corrosive emotions of anger, envy, and ressentiment that often arise when democratic promises of equality are perceived as broken.

Social love also makes it possible to transform the sense of personal responsibility experienced in relation to one’s social condition, as well as the consequent feeling of shame that may arise from it.

“The contemporary liberal “rethoric of rising” promises success to everyone who, with an equal chance, works hard to develop one’s skills and talents. However, not everyone can win, and individuals can blame only themselves if they lose in the competition for meritous positions, with resulting feelings of humiliation and resentment, two emotion that we recognize as a driver and an outcome of ressentiment.”

(Salmela and Capelos 2021, p. 195)

This gives rise to a profound sense of shame, which operates both at the individual level, in terms of self-blame, and at the social level, by stigmatizing subjects as incapable. Contemporary modernity has progressively burdened subjects with a deep sense of responsibility for their individual and social destinies; at the same time, however, it has projected them into what, drawing on Ulrich Beck’s words, may be defined as “the world of the consequences of secondary consequences”. They thus find themselves responsible for themselves without, however, possessing the conditions and tools that would allow them truly to be so, and are left only to experience a sense of shame that contributes to their isolation and exposes them to the risk of resentment, as well as to all the processes it sets in motion, thereby exacerbating those very outcomes.

In this framework, social love is a deliberate, relational practice capable of activating entirely different processes. It involves the capacity to extend imaginative empathy toward fellow citizens, recognizing their equal dignity and shared vulnerability. As Nussbaum suggests, emotions are not merely irrational impulses but can contain cognitive appraisals of what we value; therefore, cultivating social love means actively valuing the democratic community and the diverse subjects’ potentialities within it (Nussbaum 2013) reducing the risk of social fractures and conflicts. This duality, however, should not necessarily be read in oppositional terms, because, as Honneth (1995) observes, social conflicts should not be interpreted exclusively as threats to social cohesion, but as processes through which new rights and forms of recognition can emerge.

A specific declination of these processes is discussed by Fraser (2003) when she observes that solidarity cannot be built exclusively through symbolic recognition but also requires transformations in the material structures of inequality, thus highlighting an ineliminable tension between the abstract dimension and the material dimension of social justice. In this framework, the concept of social love can be reinterpreted not as a simple individual emotion, but as a relational disposition that guides practices of cooperation, mutual recognition, and solidarity. Social love does not imply the absence of conflict, but the ability to transform social tensions into processes of negotiation and collective learning.

From a sociological perspective, particularly within the relational sociology developed by scholars like Pierpaolo Donati, Silvia Cataldi, and Gennaro Iorio, social love is understood as a potentially generative social action. It is defined not merely as a feeling, but as an “action, relationship or social interaction in which subjects exceed… all their prompts and therefore offer more than the situation requires in order to make benefits” (Montagna 2023). This “overabounding” quality means that social love operates well beyond and outside the strict logic of utilitarian exchange or contractual obligation.

Cataldi and Iorio identify four key dimensions of social love: overabounding (giving beyond what is strictly required), care (attentiveness to the needs of others), universalism (extending beyond immediate kin or in-groups), and recognition (acknowledging the intrinsic worth of the other) (Araújo et al. 2015) (Araújo et al. 2016; Cataldi and Iorio 2023). When these dimensions intersect in the public sphere, social love becomes a mechanism for generating “relational goods”, intangible assets like trust, civic friendship, civic virtues, and social cohesion and solidarity, that can only be produced and enjoyed collaboratively, and whose levels rise the more it is used.

In democratic societies grappling with structural inequalities and the resulting ressentiment, social love offers a pathway from grievance to solidarity. Ressentiment often stems from a deficit of recognition and a feeling of powerlessness. While it can be a valid moral protest against injustice, if left unchecked, it tends to curdle into antagonistic populism or social withdrawal. Social love intervenes by providing alternative relational grammar. It does not demand the erasure of conflict or the silence of legitimate grievances. Instead, it reframes how those conflicts are navigated. By recognizing the existence and weight of inequalities, it does not compel the reversal of values typical of the dynamics of ressentiment; it does not deny the meaning and importance of those values, but rather turns them into goals to be aspired to and pursued at the social level. By fostering social environments, particularly within the dense, heterogeneous spaces of the urban landscape, where mutual recognition and care are practiced, social love helps translate the raw energy of ressentiment into constructive civic engagement. It encourages citizens to view each other not as competitors in a zero-sum game of rights and resources, but as co-creators of a shared democratic project.

5. Urban Space as Emotional Infrastructure

In this path, urban space plays a crucial role. Cities indeed offer institutional and relational contexts in which experiences of injustice can be reworked through material and symbolic practices of civic participation, public deliberation, and social cooperation. In this sense, social love can be interpreted as a dynamic emerging from the daily interactions that develop in urban spaces. Considering these considerations, it is possible to propose a theoretical model that interprets the transformation of ressentiment as a relational process articulated in different phases. This process begins with the experience of injustice or exclusion, which can derive both from structural conditions of economic inequality and from dynamics of symbolic devaluation. In this first phase, the normative expectations of substantive equality and respect that characterize democratic societies come into conflict with the concrete experiences of individuals. In a second moment, these experiences can generate emotions of indignation and ressentiment. As studies on political emotions suggest (Ahmed 2004; Jasper 2018), such emotions are not simply individual reactions, but social phenomena that circulate within political communities and contribute to defining shared interpretations of injustices. The indispensable starting point is that, even within the liquid and unstable configurations of contemporary society, where one cannot avoid confronting the fragmentation of interests and the multiplication of perspectives, it remains crucial to acknowledge the social character of emotions. Emotions should be understood not merely as private or individual states, but as shared experiences that circulate among subjects and as the outcome of social dynamics, cultural frameworks, and relational processes. In this sense, the analysis of emotions requires moving beyond a purely psychological understanding and situating affective life within broader social and political contexts. This perspective resonates with Bauman’s account of liquid modernity, in which social bonds and collective orientations become increasingly unstable (Bauman 2000), as well as with sociological and cultural approaches that interpret emotions as socially organized, normatively regulated, and politically consequential phenomena (Hochschild 1983; Ahmed 2004; Wetherell 2012). Indeed, it is essential to understand that in general terms emotions exist not simply as internal states of the individual but in the relationships between individuals and in the interaction between individuals and their social situations (de Rivera and Grinkis 1986; Torrance 1977; Barbalet 1992).

The trajectory of ressentiment depends, however, on the ways in which these emotions are processed within institutions and social practices. In some contexts, it can be channeled toward forms of antagonism or exclusion and as the outcome of dynamics and processes that contribute to deepening social divisions. In other cases, it can be mediated through practices of mutual recognition and civic participation, which allow indignation to be transformed into a demand for justice and into concrete actions aimed at that goal. Finally, when such mediation processes find favorable institutional conditions, ressentiment can contribute to the construction of new forms of solidarity and social love. From this perspective, conflict does not necessarily represent a threat to democracy but can constitute a phase of reworking through which democratic societies redefine their norms of justice, equity, and belonging.

The proposed relational model therefore suggests that ressentiment should not be interpreted exclusively as a destructive force, but as a dynamic that, under certain social and institutional characteristics, can contribute, recursively, to the transformation of democratic relations, within material and symbolic contexts that offer the conditions to activate functional transformative processes. This perspective suggests that the transformation of ressentiment into solidarity and social bonds is the result not of a simple individual emotional change, but of collective cultural processes involving institutions, occasions, and social practices that take shape in urban space. Cities can therefore function as laboratories of solidarity, in which political emotions are reworked through forms of participation and mutual recognition. Ressentiment evolution depends on the ways in which the experience of injustice and inequality is produced and processed within institutions and social practices.

The role of urban space in shaping political emotions has been increasingly recognized, especially in critical spatial theory. One of the most influential formulations is that of Lefebvre [1974] 1991, according to whom urban space does not constitute a simple neutral container of social relations but rather a social product, structured and structuring, passive and active, that reflects and reproduces power relations, while at the same time being capable of shaping them. From this perspective, the production of urban space is part of the economic, political, and semiotic dynamics that organize collective life. Cities thus become places where social inequalities manifest themselves and become visible through spatial configurations of distribution of resources, opportunities, and forms of recognition. Social inequalities, wrote Secchi (2013), always also take the form of spatial inequalities.

Following the same line of reasoning, urban space can be understood as a privileged site for contesting such inequalities and for enabling transformative processes. From this perspective, the city is not only the arena in which social divisions are produced and reproduced, but also the space in which they may be critically addressed, reconfigured, and potentially overcome. Cities can be interpreted as laboratories of experimentation and innovation, becoming contexts in which conflict and cooperation intertwine. Sennett (2012), for example, has highlighted how the social and cultural density of cities makes encounters with difference inevitable. This encounter can generate tensions and misunderstandings, but it can also constitute a resource for the construction of new and more complex forms of cooperation and solidarity. And it is for this reason that urban life requires the development of specific civic skills, including the ability to coexist in a generative way with differences and to negotiate conflicts without resorting to forms of exclusion.

The dialogue between the different perspectives suggests that urban space should not be interpreted simply as the place where political emotions manifest, but rather as a significant dimension in their production and transformation. Spatial configurations influence how individuals grasp and perceive inequalities, interpret injustices, and build relations of belonging. In this sense, the city can be conceived as a material and emotional infrastructure, a set of material and symbolic conditions that contribute to developing and generating the emotional interactions of democratic life. This perspective is particularly relevant for understanding the role of ressentiment in contemporary societies and of cities that embody its duality, representing contexts in which the gap between normative promises of equality and social realities of inequality becomes especially visible, and in which relational density can offer opportunities for the transformation of such emotions by means of practices of civic participation and mutual recognition.

If ressentiment represents an emotional response to experiences of injustice, misrecognition, and perceived impotence, the central question becomes what social and institutional conditions are able to transform this emotional energy into practices of solidarity and experiences of social love.

Some recent sociological studies have emphasized the fundamental role of prosocial emotions in building forms of solidarity capable of countering dynamics of fragmentation and polarization (Nussbaum 2013). In this perspective, the transformative potential of social love comes to the fore as a relational practice that can guide common interactions and even institutional practices, assisting in building forms of trust, reciprocity, and recognition (Araújo et al. 2015) (Araújo et al. 2016; Cataldi and Iorio 2023). From this perspective, social love does not eliminate conflict, but offers alternative modalities for processing social tensions, orienting them toward dynamics of cooperation and mutual responsibility. This viewpoint allows for the reinterpretation of social love as a potentially generative force in social relations, capable of helping construct increasingly inclusive communities through the creation of spaces of cooperation and mutual recognition. In the materiality of urban spaces, it can generate practices of civic participation, new forms of collectively inhabiting urban public spaces and caring for them, and daily solidarity, thereby supporting the redefinition of how individuals inhabit and interpret the city. It is thus articulated not as a simple normative aspiration, but as a concrete dimension and criterion of social relations that can contribute to changing urban dynamics, favoring the construction of more open, inclusive and solidary communities. If ressentiment represents an emotional response to experiences of injustice and misrecognition, social love appears as an increasingly relevant analytical category in contemporary social sciences, which recognize how prosocial emotions play a fundamental role in building civic bonds and promoting democratic solidarity.

In contemporary cities, spaces distinguished by strong social and cultural heterogeneity, where the confrontation between differences can generate as much conflict as new forms of cooperation, social love can contribute to the construction of urban practices oriented towards the care of shared spaces, civic cooperation, and the production of symbolic and material relational goods. Through routines of daily solidarity, civic participation, and care for public spaces, social love can become a force capable of redirecting urban dynamics and emotions toward progressively inclusive models of social living.

6. Concluding Remarks: Toward a Relational Framework of Urban Social Love

The analyses developed in the previous sections suggest that ressentiment cannot be interpreted exclusively as an emotional deviation or as a pathology of contemporary democracies, but rather as a structural effect generated in response to the tensions arising from the disappointment of the normative expectations of equality and recognition inherent in democratic societies. In this sense, ressentiment can be interpreted as an indicator of the splits that cross social and institutional relations, making visible the gap between proclaimed principles and the daily conditions experienced. Ressentiment thus emerges from the intersection of the symbolic and material dimensions of social (in)justice, showing a tension between the need for recognition and the unequal distribution of resources. The way in which this emotion evolves is not, however, predetermined. In some contexts, ressentiment can be mobilized, also through its strategic political use, in antagonistic forms that strengthen dynamics of exclusion and polarization. In other cases, instead, it can be reworked through social and institutional practices that favor mutual recognition and civic participation by making productive use of its potential moral energy that can contribute to the redefinition of social relations. It is precisely in this conceptual space that the concept of social love acquires particular relevance as a form of relationship that generates relational goods and practices of reciprocity, a social dynamic capable of producing trust, shared responsibility, and acceptance of the other, fostering the construction of social bonds that go beyond the utilitarian logic of interactions in the direction of an assumption of responsibility and care for the other.

In this complex dynamic process, the role of urban space is especially significant. Contemporary cities indeed represent contexts in which tensions between social, cultural, and economic differences occur with particular intensity, and in which socially produced urban configurations shape how individuals inhabit space, perceive inequalities, and build forms of belonging. In complex city scenarios, social love can be interpreted as a structural dimension of social relations capable of generating trust, reciprocity, and recognition, and it functions as a fundamental resource for imagining new and innovative forms of solidarity.

If ressentiment signals the normative tensions of contemporary democracy, social love can represent one possible response to them. Via practices of civic participation, daily cooperation, and care for public spaces, social love can contribute to the construction of more welcoming cities and more solidary social relations. In this sense, rethinking the role of social love in urban dynamics does not simply mean introducing an ethical and emotional dimension into sociological reflection, but rather recognizing a relational force capable of redefining models of social living in contemporary societies. Cities can thus become material and symbolic spaces in which political emotions not only fuel conflict and polarization but contribute to the construction of new forms of democratic solidarity.