Emotions, Policy and Society Network

The Emotions, Policy and Society Network (EPSN) was created to foster exchange and collaboration among individuals who are both new and experienced in studying emotions, including graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and new and experienced instructors and professors. Your research may come from any part of the world in the form of case studies or comparative analyses and utilize a variety of methodological and theoretical orientations. What is required is an open mind and a willingness to engage each other and these themes. Emphasis on emotion as an integral part of interaction and cognitive perception of the world around us has recently become an essential perspective in public policy. While the mainstream approaches to public policy see in emotions elements shaping collective action and impacting policy processes, this panel (and sections) wants to look at emotions as meaningful practices, shaping our understanding of policies and related processes in the first place. In a nutshell, emotions are important for policies, as the content of issues to be regulated, while they are also relevant for how these contents are communicated. The specific boundaries of emotionality can challenge the policy situation because they point to what is acceptable and seen as legitimate in a given situation: positive and negative emotions are discursive labels and the way these labels are embedded in the larger context impacts who has a say in politics, what kind of knowledge is accepted, and where this knowledge needs to be situated with policy actors.