Call for papers
Fourth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies
1-3 July 2013 at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands
EMOTIONAL GOVERNANCE? NEW GEOGRAPHIES OF SOCIAL POLICY AND STATE INTERVENTION
Organisers: Dr Eleanor Jupp, (The Open University), Dr Jessica Pykett (University of Birmingham), Dr Fiona Smith (University of Dundee)
Recent commentators on social policy have started to draw attention to the emotional and relational nature of much service delivery work (eg Hunter, forthcoming). Often taking a cue from feminist approaches but also more recently non-representational geographies of affect, such accounts challenge straightforward accounts of the working of the state and other agencies, showing how spaces of interventions often frame much ‘more than’ (Horton and Kraftl, 2009) policy rationalities, producing ‘enlivened’ (Smith et al, 2010) accounts of encounters between citizens and the state and its agencies. Yet this new sensibility in analysis sits alongside a new mood within governmental practices themselves which explicitly seek to capitalise on emotional labour and therapeutic interactions or govern through affective, non-rational behaviours, raising questions about the role of the state and its relationships to citizens. Examples would include new interests in ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘mindfulness’ within education, and new paradigms of ‘co-production’ and localism in public services and community or neighbourhood interventions. Such practices potentially demand new forms of investment and capacity from citizens, and frame new relationships and forms of emotional work around dynamics such as trust and reciprocity.
This session seeks to bring together accounts of ‘emotional governance’ in geography and related disciplines. We will explore how these contribute to understanding the contemporary conditions of governing, and also what the political implications of different theoretical approaches might be, whether embedded in Foucauldian inspired critiques of governmentality, feminist work on emotional labour or geographies of materiality and affect. Ultimately we seek to work through what the rapprochements (Colls ,2012) and divergences between these accounts might be.
We invite papers which might address the following questions, through empirical analysis and/or more theoretical contributions:
- What insights and political trajectories arise from accounts of governance and service delivery focusing on emotional and affective dynamics?
- What forms of knowledge and expertise are mobilised by states in new forms of explicitly governing emotions?
- More specifically what are the rationalities and emotional geographies of new paradigms in social policy including co-production and personalisation in services, volunteering and new forms of
localism and civic involvement?
- How far are the emotional and affective registers of governance projects ever fully governed and what might be the unintended consequences of emotional governance?
- What is politically at stake in the slippage between a language of (expressed) emotion and (non-cognitive) affect in accounts of governance?
- How are time, space , place and locality being reconfigured in emotional forms of governance?
- Do emotional governance practices add up to a broader therapeutic culture through which neoliberal subjects are reproduced?
- What are the democratic implications of emotional governance in terms of the relationship between state and citizen, and how is this relationship mediated?
Please send abstracts of around 200 words to the organisers, Eleanor Jupp ([log in to unmask]), Jessica Pykett ([log in to unmask]), and Fiona Smith ([log in to unmask]), by 15 December 2012
Refs:
Colls, R. (2011) "Feminism, bodily difference and non-representational geographies" Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37, 430-445
Hunter, S. (forthcoming) Power, Politics and the Emotions: Impossible Governance? Routledge, in press
Horton, J. and Kraftl, P.( 2009) “What (else) matters? Policy contexts, emotional geographies”, Environment and Planning A, 41, 2984-3002.
Smith, F., Timbrell, H., Woolvin, M., Muirhead, S., Fyfe, N. (2010). “Enlivened Geographies of Volunteering: situated, embodied and emotional practices of voluntary action”. Scottish Geographical Journal, 1126, 258-274.
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Dr Jessica Pykett
Lecturer in Human Geography (Urban Living and Behaviour Change)
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
http://governingtemptation.wordpress.com/
Affiliate member of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance, The Open University
Affiliate member of OpenSpace research centre, The Open University
New title:
2012 Governing Through Pedagogy. Re-educating Citizens (Routledge, London)
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415696210/
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