P40 - Public emotions in policy conflicts
PANEL Organizers
• Verhoeven Imrat (i.verhoeven@uva.nl), University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
• De Carlo Laurence (decarlo@essec.edu), ESSEC Business School (France)
• Laws David (d.w.laws@uva.nl), University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
• Verloo Nanke (n.verloo@uva.nl), University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
SUMMARY
Emotions are part of public life. They fuel conflicts and spark the formation of publics around policy controversies. Fear generated by threatening technologies like fracking may, for example, bring citizens, NGOs, businesses, and public officials together as members of a contentious public. Anger may bring residents into dispute with city officials who disrupt their entrepreneurial efforts to organize change. Grief, hate, surprise, and shame also play a binding role in initiating and escalating policy conflicts. These emotions challenge all stakeholders - including policy makers and third parties - to make sense of what emotions are telling them and how they are shaping understanding and relationships through conflict. In this panel we take up the challenge of grasping how interpretative policy analysis can make sense of the collective role that emotions play in policy conflicts. We invite papers that deal with specific emotions that bind groups in conflict and controversy. How do fear, anger, grief and other emotions catalyze the development of contentious publics and contribute to collective action? How do the actions of politicians and policy-makers affect the development citizens' emotions? How do politicians and policy makers experience emotions themselves and what influence do their emotions have? Can triggering negative emotions be transformed into more constructive feelings? We also invite papers that attempt to specify how to analyze the role that emotions play in public life. Should we look for “emotion words” that signify specific emotions? What benefits might an analysis of metaphor play in this context? What other ways are there of analyzing emotions in collective contexts? Are these approaches exclusive or can they be combined to provide insight into the role that emotions play in policy conflict, dialogue, and negotiation? We welcome papers by Ph.D. students but also by more experienced researchers working from an interpretative perspective.
KEY WORDS
Emotions, publics, conflicts
ROOM
Sciences Po Lille B2.1
SESSION 1 : 8/07/2015 : 15:00-16:30
Chair: Verhoeven Imrat (i.verhoeven@uva.nl),University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Discussant: Michael Orsini (morsini@uottawa.ca), University of Ottawa(Canada)
• Disgust, Revulsion and Public Policy: the case of prostitution policy
Henk Wagenaar (h.wagenaar@sheffield.ac.uk), The University of Sheffield (England)
• From informal anger to professional grief: how public emotions can escalate or transform public contestation
Nanke Verloo (n.verloo@uva.nl), University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
• No change without loss: the role of mourning in policy practice
David Laws and John Forester (d.w.laws@uva.nl, jff1@cornell.edu), University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Cornell University (USA)
• Our houses are collapsing! Framing fear of and anger on the ‘gas-quakes’in Groningen, the Netherlands
Imrat Verhoeven and Tamara Metze (i.verhoeven@uva.nl, t.metze@uvt.nl), University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), University of Tilburg (The Netherlands)
SESSION 2 : 8/07/15 : 17:00-18:30
Chair: Imrat Verhoeven (i.verhoeven@uva.nl), University (Country)
Discussant: David Laws (d.h.laws@uva.nl), University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
• Mobilizing metaphors: complex moral emotions and the affective politics of obesity
Michael Orsini (morsini@uottawa.ca), University of Ottawa (Canada)
• Rethinking the gap between emotions and rationality: an analysis of the “atomic fear rationalization process” in antinuclear activism
Lenoire Justine (Justine.lenoire@univ-lille2.fr), CERAPS, Université de Lille 2 (France)
• The role of empathy in building public support for egalitarian politics
Peter Skilling (peter.skilling@aut.ac.nz), Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand)
