Emotional geography

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Emotional geography is a subtopic within human geography, more specifically cultural geography, which applies psychological theories of emotion. It is an interdisciplinary field relating emotions, geographic places and their contextual environments. These subjective feelings can be applied to individual and social contexts. Emotional geography specifically focuses on how human emotions relate to, or affect, the environment around them. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

Firstly, there is a difference between emotional and affectual geography and they have their respective geographical sub-fields. The former refers to theories of expressed feelings and the social constructs of expressed feelings which can be generalisable and understood globally. The latter refers to theories underlying inexpressible feelings that are independent, embodied, and hard to understand. [6]

Emotional geography approaches geographical concepts and research from an expressed and generalisable perspective. Historically, emotions have an ultimate adaptive significance by accentuating a non-verbal form of communication that is universal. [7] This dates back to Darwin's theory of emotion, which explains the evolutionary development of expressed emotion. This aids individual and societal relationships as there is the presence of emotional communication. For example, when studying social phenomena, individuals' emotions can connect and create a social emotion which can define the event happening. [8]

So, emotional geography applies emotional theory to places, emphasising the individual and social presence of it.

History

Emotions in geography have previously been ignored and classified as unimportant, leading to misconceptions and methodological issues. [9] So, this appearance of emotions in geography is part of the cultural turn. Previously emotions were not accounted for due to historical reasons which include: the analytic mindset refusing to express emotion (from the Enlightenment), sexist connotations of emotions, cultural taboos of emotion and the idea of the objective researcher who does not account for emotions in their research. [6]

As individuals express a constant circulation of emotion, researchers also encompass these subjective emotional fluxes which extend beyond the individual and influence the research, both intentionally and unintentionally. [8] This emotional awareness changed geographical research methodology, as accounting for the integration of the researcher has induced interconnectivity. [10] This can be especially important when trying to understand the feelings of the 'other' as situational and personal awareness is required from the researcher to achieve a rational perspective. [6] By including emotion in research, it has induced research reflexivity and provoked a paradigm shift, aiding the reputation of geography as a social science.

Individuals

The complex lives of individuals lead them to constantly have an emotional perspective. [9] So, feeling emotions is humanely omnipresent and is another type of knowledge. [6] Emotions are internal but influenced by varying external conditions. [11] Emotional geography studies how these emotions are varying fluxes in an individual which are then flowing between the individuals and between their environments. [12] This leads to people identifying with certain places, such as through a sense of place and topophilia, which in turn influences the perception of a place based on an individual's emotion. However, due to the subjective nature of emotions, everyone's perception of a location is completely different.

Society

Emotional geography has implications for societal emotions which lead to social and cultural geographical concepts that are related to emotions. Contemporarily, emotions are integrated into society, which differs from its historical restriction to the private life, thus allowing relationships between people and their locations. [9]

Consequently, personal emotions express themselves in the social realm which is influenced by the space and the framing of the place. [12] This is present when people share and experience a collective emotion or even recreate it. [10] These collective emotions, such as heightened emotions during social events, can also lead to dominant norms, allowing the possibility of systemic change. Collective emotions have been studied through social inequality including racism, sexism and the societal discrimination of other marginalised societies, [9] [10] which could lead to institutional change. However, there is a diversity of cross-cultural emotional expression and interpretation which should be accounted for in policy change. [13]

Limitations

The limitations of emotional geography are the following: [12]

This shows a potential lack of inadequacy and incapability of real world applications. To overcome these limitations, emotional geographers could reflect on the basis of their field and avoid presuming emotions while simultaneously accounting for thoughts, affects, etc... [12]

Examples

Real world-applications of this field are numerous and include studies demonstrating:

There is a wide range of literature addressing emotional geography which extends beyond this list and findings may be applied socio-culturally, morally, professionally, physically, and politically. [11]

Communities

The leading community for emotional geography is an organisation known as EMME (Eliciting, Mapping and Managing Emotions). It has its home in the Festival of Emotions which can be found at: www.emotional-geography.com. It consists of 84 Geographers of Emotions, citizens of the world with no borders or agenda, who come together to share their knowledge and experience with others through courses, journeys, games and community events.[ citation needed ] Furthermore, there is a schollarly journal, Emotion, Space and Society ( ISSN   1878-0040), which specialises in the relationship between emotion and geography and aims to increase awareness by hosting conferences and publishing journals.[ citation needed ]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Castree, Noel; Kitchin, Rob; Rogers, Alisdair (2013). "emotional geographies". A Dictionary of Human Geography. p. 125. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001. ISBN   978-0-19-959986-8.
  2. ↑ Kearney, Amanda (March 2009). "Homeland Emotion: An Emotional Geography of Heritage and Homeland". International Journal of Heritage Studies. 15 (2–3): 209–222. doi:10.1080/13527250902890746.
  3. ↑ Knudsen, Britta Timm; Waade, Anne Marit (2010). "Performative Authenticity in Tourism and Spatial Experience: Rethinking the Relations Between Travel, Place and Emotion". In Knudsen, Britta Timm; Waade, Anne Marit (eds.). Re-Investing Authenticity. pp. 1–20. doi:10.21832/9781845411299-004. ISBN   978-1-84541-129-9. JSTOR   jj.27195511.6.
  4. ↑ Bradley, John J.; Kearney, Amanda (2009). "Manankurra: What's in a name? Placenames and emotional geographies". In Koch, Harold; Hercus, Luise (eds.). Aboriginal Placenames. Naming and re-naming the Australian landscape. pp. 463–480. doi: 10.22459/AP.10.2009.19 . ISBN   978-1-921666-08-7.
  5. ↑ Clowes, Edith W. (2024). Shredding the Map: Imagined Geographies of Revolutionary Russia, 1914-1922. doi:10.1353/book.126955. ISBN   978-1-943208-78-4.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Horton, John; Kraftl, Peter (2013). Cultural Geographies. doi:10.4324/9781315797489. ISBN   978-1-317-75368-1.[ page needed ]
  7. ↑ Gray, Peter O.; Bjorklund, David (2018). Psychology (8th ed.). Macmillan Learning. ISBN   978-1-319-15051-8. OCLC   1007923744.[ page needed ]
  8. 1 2 Everts, Jonathan; Wagner, Lauren (August 2012). "Guest Editorial: Practising emotions". Emotion, Space and Society. 5 (3): 174–176. doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2012.02.004.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Anderson, Kay; Smith, Susan J. (March 2001). "Editorial: Emotional geographies". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 26 (1): 7–10. Bibcode:2001TrIBG..26....7A. doi: 10.1111/1475-5661.00002 .
  10. 1 2 3 Little, Jo (2019). "Editorial: Emotional geography and Transactions". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 44 (2): 210–213. Bibcode:2019TrIBG..44..210L. doi: 10.1111/tran.12301 .
  11. 1 2 3 Hargreaves, Andy (August 2001). "Emotional Geographies of Teaching". Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education. 103 (6): 1056–1080. doi:10.1111/0161-4681.00142.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Pile, Steve (2010). "Emotions and affect in recent human geography". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 35 (1): 5–20. Bibcode:2010TrIBG..35....5P. doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00368.x. JSTOR   40647285.
  13. ↑ Jack, Rachael E.; Caldara, Roberto; Schyns, Philippe G. (February 2012). "Internal representations reveal cultural diversity in expectations of facial expressions of emotion". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 141 (1): 19–25. doi:10.1037/a0023463. PMID   21517206.
  14. ↑ Giesbrecht, Melissa; Stajduhar, Kelli I.; Cloutier, Denise; Dujela, Carren (March 2021). "'We are to be like machines…fill the bed before it gets cold': Exploring the emotional geographies of healthcare providers caring for dying residents in long-term care facilities". Social Science & Medicine. 272: 113749. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113749. hdl: 1828/12735 . PMID   33588203.
  15. ↑ Rodriguez Castro, Laura; Brady, Michelle; Cook, Kay (24 March 2022). "Negotiating 'ideal worker' and intensive mothering ideologies: Australian mothers' emotional geographies during their commutes". Social & Cultural Geography. 23 (3): 460–478. doi:10.1080/14649365.2020.1757140. hdl: 1959.3/455637 .
  16. ↑ Zebracki, Martin (July 2017). "Homomonument as Queer Micropublic: An Emotional Geography of Sexual Citizenship". Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. 108 (3): 345–355. doi:10.1111/tesg.12190.
  17. ↑ Roberts, Andrea; Butler, Maia L. (3 April 2022). "Contending with the Palimpsest: Reading the Land through Black Women's Emotional Geographies". Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 112 (3): 828–837. Bibcode:2022AAAG..112..828R. doi:10.1080/24694452.2021.2020615.
  18. ↑ De Guzman, Allan B.; Valdez, Les Paul; Henson, Careen P.; Gumba, Romnick E.; Fradejas, Frank Von (2 April 2020). "So near and yet so far : a grounded theory study of incarcerated Filipino elderly's experiences of emotional geography". Educational Gerontology. 46 (4): 235–245. doi:10.1080/03601277.2020.1726648.
  19. ↑ Wiesner, Diana (2018). "Sketches of an Emotional Geography Towards a New Citizenship". Urban Planet. pp. 445–450. doi:10.1017/9781316647554.049. ISBN   978-1-316-64755-4.
  20. ↑ Masterson, Vanessa A.; Stedman, Richard C.; Enqvist, Johan; Tengö, Maria; Giusti, Matteo; Wahl, Darin; Svedin, Uno (2017). "The contribution of sense of place to social-ecological systems research: a review and research agenda". Ecology and Society. 22 (1). doi: 10.5751/ES-08872-220149 .
  21. ↑ Richardson, M.; Dobson, J.; Abson, D. J.; Lumber, R.; Hunt, A.; Young, R.; Moorhouse, B. (January 2020). "Applying the pathways to nature connectedness at a societal scale: a leverage points perspective". Ecosystems and People. 16 (1): 387–401. Bibcode:2020EcoPe..16..387R. doi: 10.1080/26395916.2020.1844296 .

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