Paper short abstract:

Sara Ahmed and Black feminist scholars such as Joan Anim-Addo contribute an awareness to love, care and affection as part of feminist politics. Inspired by this, I offer ethnographic examples from Papua New Guinea where emotions are critical to the political economy of ceremonial exchange.

Paper long abstract:

Unlike the stereotyped western actor contained within neo-classical economic theory where decisions are characterised as rational, un-emotional, self-maximising and individualistic - the moral economy of exchange in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea is defined locally through the emotions of others and a neglect of these is understood to have material repercussions. The rightful place of emotions within this moral economy justifies and explains both the circulation of valuable items, a sense of obligation to host large scale prestations and a legitimised use of physical exertion when wrong-doing is thought to have occurred. Women's performances of song, dance and crying are particularly important at times of loss and joy. Locally, emotions are the explanation for exchange and transaction in many cases - but emotions or affective performances are also critical to carrying out such exchanges and paying attention to this demonstrates gendered dimensions of value production in the affective and performative dimensions of exchange. The economy is performative and the embodied acts of emotions and the consequential affect that results from these ritual (and non-ritual) processes reaffirm what is valued and valuable. Through ethnographic inquiry economies within and surrounding a food marketplace in Goroka, the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, I contend that through listening to and learning from my interlocutors, the place of emotions as part of rational decision making within economies can be reclaimed; where logic, cause and effect and economic relations are explained through emotions - not in opposition to them.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among settlers and native Qom in the Argentine Chaco, this paper develops the concept of "affects of dispossession" to explain how settler feelings of belonging sustain and reproduce the colonial logics of native territorial dispossession.

Paper long abstract:

Native people have not disappeared, yet the myth of the "vanished native" remains a key feature of settler colonial ideologies to this day, and a central mechanism of ongoing indigenous dispossession. Affect and emotion have often been regarded as less crucial to such processes than the material stakes of land and labor politics. Yet this paper argues that settler affects - of belonging, loss, fear - are indispensable to understanding how colonial structures of dispossession are reproduced, as well as the land and labor politics they entail. This paper develops the concept of "affects of dispossession" as tool for understanding these mechanisms ethnographically. The paper draws on an ethnographic case study among settlers of European descent on ancestral Qom territories (Gran Chaco, Argentina); the settlers talk, act and feel like founders in an empty land, despite having built their plantation economies on Qom land and labor. I will outline some of the ways affects of belonging and loss are central to this racialized disavowal, and to the consequences it bears for native lives and livelihoods. The paper contributes ethnographic and conceptual tools for navigating the often overlooked role of affect in sustaining politics of inequality and colonial racism.

Paper short abstract:

In contrast to a set of liberal institutions interested in the preservation of biological life, through an analysis of the embodiments of fear and courage this paper shows how the willingness to die in a forest of tigers in the Sundarbans might instead be a commitment to a form of life and labour.

Paper long abstract:

The Sundarbans are a melange of rivers, islands, and mangrove forests located at the mouth of the Bengal Delta. These forests teem with animals, both human and non-humans: a large population of Bengal tigers; Bonbibi, a Muslim deity who is the protectress of the forest; and 4.5 million people. Every year over 50-100 fishermen die from attacking tigers. This is a dangerous landscape that elicits immense fear. Fishing, collecting crabs and honey in these forests requires courage. The Forest Department supported by a lobby of conservation NGOs restricts fishers from entering the forests accusing them of risking their lives. Despite huge funds spent on alternative livelihoods and forest patrols, Sundarban residents' willingness to die in a forest of tigers undercuts the state's supreme and absolute power over life. This apparatus of "protection" is not unique to the Forest Department but its logics are akin to the formation of modern states that premise their existence on their role as protectors of life. The liberal state interested in the preservation of biological life finds it impossible to understand a form of work that comes to be defined by embodiments of fear and forms of quotidian courage. Contrary to the narrative propagated by the conservation apparatus, and through an understanding of the embodiments and the politics of emotions such as fear, risk and courage, this paper asks how might the willingness to die be born of a commitment—ethical, social, and political—to a particular value of life and labour?

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that audits of international development projects are far from technical, but are rather highly emotional processes. Examining moments of "affective auditing" in Ghana reveals the political contestations of unequal power between local civil society and international donors.

Paper long abstract:

Under mandates of "good governance," audits are considered important for demonstrating the accountability and inclusiveness of development aid. In this paper, I aim to show that donor audits are not limited to technical bureaucracy, but are highly emotional processes that lay bare the political inequalities of development relationships. Literature has shown that the complex issues of development are not so easily managed by efforts to apply technical and apolitical solutions. This paper builds on these rejections of technocratic approaches to illuminate another aspect of the politics of aid - the dynamic emotional underpinnings of everyday development bureaucracy. I focus on the experiences of national Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in Ghana to ask how are NGOs enrolled in, contesting, and negotiating audits? As a country that has been called a "success story" of good governance, Ghana is an illustrative context to examine bureaucratic negotiations within development. This paper draws on anthropology of emotions to take seriously the anger, frustration, and confusion of NGO staff during audit procedures. The paper also explores the suspicion and mistrust inherent within increasingly stringent auditing requirements and the ways these are received and negotiated by NGOs. These moments of what I call "affective auditing" reveal the unequal power relations with donors and the ways that emotions become a means for NGOs to navigate the politics of development projects. I propose that these emotionally charged moments within audits become sites at which national NGOs can affectively, if not always effectively, contest unequal power relations with international donors.

Paper short abstract:

A presentation of an ethnographic account of the politics of emotion at the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference and a reflection on the analytical purchase offered by the 'international' within scholarly work on the politics of affect/emotion.

Paper long abstract:

Geographers have played a critical role in reconceptualising of spaces of international climate change as both boundary spaces and arenas inseparable from the politics of emotion (e.g. Farbotko & McGregor 2010; Mahoney 2013). In this paper, I build off this work in order to make two contributions. First, I offer a series of textured ethnographic vignettes I generated during PhD fieldwork at two UN Climate Conferences (Conferences of the Parties, or COPs) in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Drawing on these qualitative materials and in a contrast to the high drama of the final hours in the negotiating rooms, I bear witness to the 'COP' as a stultifying, slowly frustrating and anxiety-inducing edifice that projects these effects beyond its physical extremities. Second, from the point of view of the climate emergency and elsewhere, we are on threshold of a new decade in which the 'international' as both an organising framework and a liberal humanist ideal appear under threat (internationally networked far-right politics, erosion of climate multilateralism etc.), yet also pregnant with new possibilities (e.g. global Green New Deal, climate justice movements). As such, secondly I wish to use this intervention to propose closer engagement with the 'international' as a concept with potential to enrich and take forward discussions around the politics of affect and/or emotion currently present within our two disciplines.

Paper short abstract:

Biennials have proliferated in art, architecture and design - particularly in the majority world. Moving beyond the politics of representation, the biennial demands a reckoning with affect. This paper considers the ways that the spatiality and temporality of the biennial is rife with emotion.

Paper long abstract:

Biennials have proliferated in art, architecture and design, particularly in cities outside of North America and Europe. As a distinctively urban event, the biennial signifies a stage, spectacle, and symbol of a participation in a specific kind of cosmopolitanism, one coupled with a fixation on contemporaneity. Particularly in settings of growing inequality, and political and institutional instability, the provenance and resilience of the biennial defies its circumscription to the ornamental. The aim of this paper is to set out the ways that the biennial relates to the city in fraught, emotional ways in cities around the world from Dakar to Gwangju, from Istanbul to Sao Paulo. With the aim to push boundaries using politically charged, and intellectually engaged themes, the biennial perennially breeds anticipation. The events, the art exhibited, the artists, curators, and various stakeholders involved evoke a whirlwind circuit of admiration and disdain. The historical, political, social contextualization of these events in their post-colonial or neoliberal contexts incites contempt, or at times the desire for redemption. Instead of studying the biennial purely from a political economic point of view, as city branding instrument, for instance, this paper considers the ways that the spatiality and temporality of the biennial is rife with emotion. Moving beyond the traditional politics of representation, the biennial demands a reckoning with affect. The passions and resentments that the biennial encapsulates ranges from amusement to disdain or even revulsion, and is deeply intertwined with the powerful position this event holds for cities that they inhabit.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing from research with construction industry professionals, this paper explores their expressions of passion for their work. It asks how we can take seriously this emotion as deeply-felt and authentic, while also recognising the broader forces that foster, and benefit from, passionate workers?

Paper long abstract:

Many of the professionals I encountered during my recent ethnographic fieldwork on construction and urban development in the North East of England, described themselves as passionate about their work. Passion for work was offered as the motivating force for long hours and sacrifice, and while it related intrinsically to the self, passion was also often connected to the importance of working on behalf of others, or contributing to a better society or greater good.

In this paper, I explore the way passion for work is deeply felt as emerging from an internal well-spring. I understand this as part of contemporary formations and experiences of individual personhood, where notions of an authentic, inner self, that needs to be nourished, are central (Taylor 1989). In one sense, passion as 'an expression of essence' (Marx 1844) can be seen as the opposite of alienation, while it also enables intensified exploitation, and is encouraged and increasingly expected in organisations.

How can we take seriously our interlocutors experiences of authentic, deeply-felt passion for their work while also recognising the broader forces that give shape to, foster, and benefit from, passionate workers?