Re-thinking political sociology of emotions: autonomy and liberal democracy in pandemic times.

The pandemic situation has transformed the relationship between the individual and the collective impacting how personal experience and individual requirements are presented and legitimized in democratic governance. This paper takes the example of policy changes around birthing, induced by the pandemic, to suggest that a more nuanced political sociology of emotions can provide both a theoretical and analytical framework to discuss the liberal democratic paradigm and the role of autonomy in particular. In their aim to reduce the risk of spreading the SARs-Cov2 virus, many governments in the Western world banned the presence of fathers at the delivery room. Yet, mothers countered that it is their human right to keep the companion of choice at birth. Fathers were also regarded as guardians of the mother’s emotional well-being, protecting her from abuse during childbirth. These arguments were supported by WHO guidelines emphasizing mother’s right to a positive childbirth experience during a pandemic. The other side countered that the father’s presence is more of a fashion and a surplus to care, rather selfish one, when fighting a pandemic is on the agenda. The example is used in the paper to discuss how the importance of citizen’s individual choices gets contrasted with collective regulations, such as safety measures during a pandemic. In particular, the discussion shows how the pandemic puts autonomy on a weighing scale and how that scale is navigated through emotions. As a central component of liberal democratic order, autonomy maintains that individuals may shape collective action through informed choices. Such conception presumes that individuals, regardless of social circumstances and power relations, are equally rational and capable of reflection on complicated choices, once they have been provided adequate knowledge by those in charge (both experts and politicians). Yet, when individuals or communities question this knowledge through other kinds of epistemic frameworks, such as the argument of emotional well-being in the example above, the debate around the acceptance and legitimacy of these individual choices arises. The role of emotions to enact such legitimacy and acceptance seems to be crucial. Emotions are an integral part of interpersonal interactions and perceptions of the world around us. There is no attitude or value without emotional commitment and political sociology has advanced a vast scholarship on the importance of emotions in collective action and democratic governing. However, as the interpretive research on emotions shows us, while some emotions are presented as legitimate in public debates, other emotions might be considered disqualifying for having an opinion or irrelevant to a particular decision. Emotions have a meaning-making capacity and influence who has a voice in political debates and how strong that voice is. We thus propose political sociology of emotions which (1) identifies this sociopolitical dynamic, in which emotions are understood, and (2) analyzes the specific gendered and topical context in that emotions are produced. Such political sociology of emotions allows at the same time to conceive of liberal democracy as a battle between individual requirements and their collective acceptance.