Emotional democracy - Beyond the rationalized citizen. Harnessing the potential of emotions for public engagement

From cultural relations to climate change, politics is emotionally charged and increasingly polarized. Belief in linear progress towards a fair society now seems woefully naïve. Still, we must learn to address disputes, create new aspirations and, in the best cases, find ways to collaborate toward a brighter future. Policymakers often seek to meet these ambitions in processes of public engagement. Often, the designs of such processes are based on the belief that through free and fair, rational deliberation citizens arrive at legitimized consensus. On the other hand, emotions are perceived as destabilizing forces that need to be kept in check through e.g. abstracting away of emotions by focusing on expert knowledge. In many respects this technocratic logic is problematic because it veils and delegitimizes the lived realities of citizens and negates the key role of emotions in information processing, meaning making, judgment, shaping attitudes and behaviors (Escobar 2017; Voss & Amelung, 2016; Schlegel, 2022; Wamsler et al 2023). Additionally, it undermines the social relevance of emotions for shaping interactions, producing and reproducing relationships (Norgaard, 2011). Finally, from a democratic perspective a new emotion-sensitive perspective on public engagement is imperative to account for real-life concerns of citizens, integrating and facilitating an exchange on the diversity of meanings, values and beliefs held in societies. Much depends on the ability to design participatory processes in which emotions find a legitimate outlet and are employed i a way that can harness their real potential for democracies. To do so, ontologically I conceive of emotions as part of ‘individual and collective landscapes ‘which shape interactions and relationships (Gonzalez-Hidalgo & Zografos, 2020. I believe that emotions are socio-historical contingent, implying that they are structurally embedded, shaping not only the individual in society, but also interactions as well as collectives (Durnova, 2018). To develop a new understanding of emotions as performative entities, and social practices inherent to democratic life I borrow theories from cultural sociology (Mesquita, 2024); political sociology (Durnova, 2019); cultural politics (Ahmed, 2004), political philosophy (Nussbaum, 2001; Arendt, XX), anthropology (Scheer, 2012), and sociology (Jasper, 2019). Methodologically I employ a dramaturgical lens to emotions to find out how distinct dramaturgies influence how emotions are socially practiced and performed (Goffman, 1956, Hajer, 2005). Conceiving of gatherings as ritual processes, I also develop an understanding of which emotions or emotional cultures are conducive for democratic processes (Stacey, 2024). Finally, I try to understand how dramaturgical twists can foster conducive emotional cultures in participatory processes. By the time of the seminar, I have published a theoretical journey article on the above conceptualization of emotions, coauthored by Maarten Hajer, Timothy Stacey and Jesse Hoffman.