engleski

Policy, Diversity, Affective Economies and Bodily Performance

In my talk I discuss inextricability of emotions and public policies and analyse various ways in which feelings are negotiated in the public sphere. I start with anthropology of policy that stress that public policy could be seen as a mechanism that contributes to the formation of identity. As Chris Shore and Susan Wright (1997, 2011) point out, public policies affect the lives and livelihoods of citizens. They actively constitute social reality. They give shape and meaning to what we call reality, they are often designed not so much to generate public support but to construct what they propose in order to bear on the governance of the social. Therefore, according to them, the anthropological task is to question power relations and ‘naturalised’ assumptions which often frame public policy. Inspired by affect theory, especially by the work of Sara Ahmed (2004, 2010, 2012) and Lauren Berlant (2014, 2015, 2016), I argue that in order to understand power relations and policies as a form of social action we also need to explore ‘emotionality of policy’, the ways in which policies are designed to offer emotional attachments to people, the kind of fantasies they mobilize (utopian and dystopian), and atmospheres they create that people move through (anxiety, fear, happiness…) in relation to the abstractions like race, gender, class and nation. To talk about emotionality of policy and affective tendencies is, as Berlant (2015) argues, almost always to talk about intensities, and “behind that linkage is a relation to the stories which we tell about ourselves, that modality of performance that attaches feeling states to bodily performance”. In discussing some of these issues I use examples from my own ethnographic research on contemporary policies of cultural diversity in New Zealand and representations of relations between Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand and Croatians, one of the many ethnic groups in New Zealand

emotions and public policies

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