Emotional geography

Last updated

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]

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. [5]

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. [6] 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. [7]

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. [8] 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. [5]

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. [7] This emotional awareness changed geographical research methodology, as accounting for the integration of the researcher has induced interconnectivity. [9] 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. [5] 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. [8] So, feeling emotions is humanely omnipresent and is another type of knowledge. [5] Emotions are internal but influenced by varying external conditions. [10] Emotional geography studies how these emotions are varying fluxes in an individual which are then flowing between the individuals and between their environments. [11] 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. [8]

Consequently, personal emotions express themselves in the social realm which is influenced by the space and the framing of the place. [11] This is present when people share and experience a collective emotion or even recreate it. [9] 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, [8] [9] 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. [12]

Limitations

The limitations of emotional geography are the following: [11]

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... [11]

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. [10]

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. Furthermore, there is an organisation, Emotion, Space and Society, [21] which specialises in the relationship between emotion and geography and aims to increase awareness by hosting conferences and publishing journals.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion</span> Conscious subjective experience of humans

Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; and feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them". The term feeling is closely related to, but not the same as, emotion. Feeling may for instance refer to the conscious subjective experience of emotions. The study of subjective experiences is called phenomenology. Psychotherapy generally involves a therapist helping a client understand, articulate, and learn to effectively regulate the client's own feelings, and ultimately to take responsibility for the client's experience of the world. Feelings are sometimes held to be characteristic of embodied consciousness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jealousy</span> Emotion

Jealousy generally refers to the thoughts or feelings of insecurity, fear, and concern over a relative lack of possessions or safety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Risk perception</span>

Risk perception is the subjective judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since they are affected by a wide range of affective, cognitive, contextual, and individual factors. Several theories have been proposed to explain why different people make different estimates of the dangerousness of risks. Three major families of theory have been developed: psychology approaches, anthropology/sociology approaches and interdisciplinary approaches.

An emotional expression is a behavior that communicates an emotional state or attitude. It can be verbal or nonverbal, and can occur with or without self-awareness. Emotional expressions include facial movements like smiling or scowling, simple behaviors like crying, laughing, or saying "thank you," and more complex behaviors like writing a letter or giving a gift. Individuals have some conscious control of their emotional expressions; however, they need not have conscious awareness of their emotional or affective state in order to express emotion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affect (psychology)</span> Experience of feeling or emotion

Affect, in psychology, is the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood, and affectivity. In psychology, the term affect is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.

Children's geographies is an area of study within human geography and childhood studies which involves researching the places and spaces of children's lives.

Animal geography is a subfield of the nature–society/human–environment branch of geography as well as a part of the larger, interdisciplinary umbrella of human–animal studies (HAS). Animal geography is defined as the study of "the complex entanglings of human–animal relations with space, place, location, environment and landscape" or "the study of where, when, why and how nonhuman animals intersect with human societies". Recent work advances these perspectives to argue about an ecology of relations in which humans and animals are enmeshed, taking seriously the lived spaces of animals themselves and their sentient interactions with not just human but other nonhuman bodies as well.

According to some theories, emotions are universal phenomena, albeit affected by culture. Emotions are "internal phenomena that can, but do not always, make themselves observable through expression and behavior". While some emotions are universal and are experienced in similar ways as a reaction to similar events across all cultures, other emotions show considerable cultural differences in their antecedent events, the way they are experienced, the reactions they provoke and the way they are perceived by the surrounding society. According to other theories, termed social constructionist, emotions are more deeply culturally influenced. The components of emotions are universal, but the patterns are social constructions. Some also theorize that culture is affected by the emotions of the people.

Display rules are a social group or culture's informal norms that distinguish how one should express oneself. They function as a way to maintain the social order of a given culture, creating an expected standard of behaviour to guide people in their interactions. Display rules can help to decrease situational ambiguity, help individuals to be accepted by their social groups, and can help groups to increase their group efficacy. They can be described as culturally prescribed rules that people learn early on in their lives by interactions and socializations with other people. Members of a social group learn these cultural standards at a young age which determine when one would express certain emotions, where and to what extent.

The self-regulation of emotion or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. The self-regulation of emotion belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of space</span> Sub-discipline of sociology

The sociology of space is a sub-discipline of sociology that mostly borrows from theories developed within the discipline of geography, including the sub fields of human geography, economic geography, and feminist geography. The "sociology" of space examines the social and material constitution of spaces. It is concerned with understanding the social practices, institutional forces, and material complexity of how humans and spaces interact. The sociology of space is an inter-disciplinary area of study, drawing on various theoretical traditions including Marxism, postcolonialism, and Science and Technology Studies, and overlaps and encompasses theorists with various academic disciplines such as geography and architecture. Edward T. Hall developed the study of Proxemics which concentrates on the empirical analysis of space in psychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Well-being</span> General term for condition of individual or group

Well-being, or wellbeing, also known as wellness, prudential value, prosperity or quality of life, is what is intrinsically valuable relative to someone. So the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good for this person, what is in the self-interest of this person. Well-being can refer to both positive and negative well-being. In its positive sense, it is sometimes contrasted with ill-being as its opposite. The term "subjective well-being" denotes how people experience and evaluate their lives, usually measured in relation to self-reported well-being obtained through questionnaires.

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a self-reported measure of well-being, typically obtained by questionnaire.

Vulnerability refers to "the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally." The understanding of social and environmental vulnerability, as a methodological approach, involves the analysis of the risks and assets of disadvantaged groups, such as the elderly. The approach of vulnerability in itself brings great expectations of social policy and gerontological planning. Types of vulnerability include social, cognitive, environmental, emotional or military.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.

Social determinism is the theory that social interactions alone determine individual behavior.

A functional account of emotions posits that emotions facilitate adaptive responses to environmental challenges. In other words, emotions are systems that respond to environmental input, such as a social or physical challenge, and produce adaptive output, such as a particular behavior. Under such accounts, emotions can manifest in maladaptive feelings and behaviors, but they are largely beneficial insofar as they inform and prepare individuals to respond to environmental challenges, and play a crucial role in structuring social interactions and relationships.

Emotional choice theory is a social scientific action model to explain human decision-making. Its foundation was laid in Robin Markwica’s monograph Emotional Choices published by Oxford University Press in 2018. It is associated with its own method for identifying emotions and tracing their influences on decision-making. Emotional choice theory is considered an alternative model to rational choice theory and constructivist perspectives.

References

  1. ↑ Derek Gregory; Ron Johnston; Geraldine Pratt; Michael Watts; Sarah Whatmore (2011). The Dictionary of Human Geography (5., Auflage ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   978-1-4443-5995-4. OCLC   897578256.
  2. ↑ Kearney, Amanda (2009-03-01). "Homeland Emotion: An Emotional Geography of Heritage and Homeland". International Journal of Heritage Studies. 15 (2–3): 209–222. doi:10.1080/13527250902890746. ISSN   1352-7258. S2CID   143790559.
  3. ↑ Britta Timm Knudsen; Anne Marit Waade (2010). Re-investing authenticity : tourism, place and emotions. Bristol, UK: Channel View Publications. ISBN   978-1-84541-128-2. OCLC   433549644.
  4. ↑ L. A. Hercus; Harold Koch (2009). Aboriginal placenames: naming and re-naming the Australian landscape. Canberra: ANU E Press. ISBN   978-1-921666-09-4. OCLC   436100287.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Horton, John; Kraftl, Peter (2013-10-08). Cultural Geographies (0 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315797489. ISBN   978-1-317-75368-1.
  6. ↑ Gray, Peter; Bjorklund, David F. (2018). Psychology (Eighth ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan Education. ISBN   978-1-319-15051-8. OCLC   1007923744.
  7. 1 2 Everts, Jonathan; Wagner, Lauren (2012). "Guest Editorial: Practising emotions". Emotion, Space and Society. 5 (3): 174–176. doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2012.02.004.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Anderson, Kay; Smith, Susan J. (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 . ISSN   0020-2754.
  9. 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 . ISSN   0020-2754. S2CID   151179983.
  10. 1 2 3 Hargreaves, Andy (2001). "Emotional Geographies of Teaching". Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education. 103 (6): 1056–1080. doi:10.1111/0161-4681.00142. ISSN   0161-4681.
  11. 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. ISSN   0020-2754. JSTOR   40647285.
  12. ↑ Jack, Rachael E.; Caldara, Roberto; Schyns, Philippe G. (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. ISSN   1939-2222. PMID   21517206.
  13. ↑ Giesbrecht, Melissa; Stajduhar, Kelli I.; Cloutier, Denise; Dujela, Carren (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. S2CID   231938010.
  14. ↑ Rodriguez Castro, Laura; Brady, Michelle; Cook, Kay (2022-03-24). "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. ISSN   1464-9365. S2CID   219028786.
  15. ↑ Zebracki, Martin (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.
  16. ↑ Roberts, Andrea; Butler, Maia L. (2022-04-03). "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. ISSN   2469-4452. S2CID   247337910.
  17. ↑ De Guzman, Allan B.; Valdez, Les Paul; Henson, Careen P.; Gumba, Romnick E.; Fradejas, Frank Von (2020-04-02). "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. ISSN   0360-1277. S2CID   214001520.
  18. ↑ Wiesner, Diana (2018-04-26), Elmqvist, Thomas; Bai, Xuemei; Frantzeskaki, Niki; Griffith, Corrie (eds.), "Sketches of an Emotional Geography Towards a New Citizenship" , Urban Planet (1 ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 445–450, doi:10.1017/9781316647554.049, ISBN   978-1-316-64755-4 , retrieved 2023-03-28
  19. ↑ 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): art49. doi: 10.5751/ES-08872-220149 . ISSN   1708-3087.
  20. ↑ Richardson, M.; Dobson, J.; Abson, D. J.; Lumber, R.; Hunt, A.; Young, R.; Moorhouse, B. (2020-01-01). "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 . ISSN   2639-5908. S2CID   229259611.
  21. ↑ "Emotion, Space and Society | Journal". ScienceDirect. Retrieved 2023-03-28.

Further reading


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.