What (Else) Matters? Policy Contexts, Emotional Geographies

Abstract

This paper reflects upon a particular, policy-oriented evaluation of a Sure Start Centre: a small element of a UK-Government programme addressing children's well-being in 'deprived' neighbourhoods. Specifically, and contra some chief social-scientific accounts, we seek to acknowledge how 'policy' and 'emotion' were inseparable in this project. We suggest that policy and media discourses, and much extant research, regarding Sure Start have been characterised by a particular apprehension of what matters, which constitutes a particular assumption about how policy interventions, in 'deprived' neighbourhoods and elsewhere, should be evaluated. In marked contrast, we propound qualitative data wherein users of the Sure Start Centre articulated how this facility mattered to them. Our aim is not simply to reiterate a twofold truism: policy is always emotional; emotions are latently political. Rather we consider how, in the wake of this truism, more combinative, open-minded encounters between bodies of socialscientific endeavours conventionally labelled 'policy-relevant' vis-à-vis 'theoretical' might yield more careful apprehensions of the emotion/affect in policy, and the politics of emotions/affects. 2 What (else) matters? Policy contexts, emotional geographies PrefaceWe exit the Sure Start Centre 1 , tape recorders and notebooks in hand. A sunny day. We get in the car and sit, speechless. My co-researcher begins to weep; she hits the steering wheel, sobbing. I sit silent, numbed. For hours, days, afterwards, the story we have just heard tumbles through my head, over and again.

‘It’s good but it’s not enough’: the relational geographies of social policy and youth mentoring interventions

“…From the "everyday activities in quotidian spaces" (Askins forthcoming) of a befriending project involving refugees and asylum seekers, to the "doings" of voluntary work in a drop-in centre (Conradson 2003) or the work of family centres and resident-led community groups (Jupp 2013), increased attention is being paid to "what (else) matters" (Horton and Kraftl 2009a) in such settings where "small acts [and] kind words" (Horton and Kraftl 2009b) are central to the relational practices of care.…”

Editorial: Thinking and doing children's emotional geographies

“…However, dialogue between these fields remains limited. Whilst children's emotions certainly have been addressed by geographers (Nayak 2003;Hemming 2007;Horton and Kraftl 2009;den Besten 2010;Pain et al 2010;Pyer et al 2010;Brown 2011), we believe that there needs to be greater and more focused mutual engagement on such questions as how emotions matter in the spatialities of children's lives (Horton and Kraftl 2006;Hadfield-Hill and Horton 2013) and what is at stake in researching them (Valentine 1999;Robson 2001;Barker and Smith 2001;Horton 2001;Gaskell 2008). It is also important to question if and how children's geographies can and should speak towards the broader field of emotional geographies and to debates in cognate disciplines and practice.…”

Emotions of austerity: Care and commitment in public service delivery in the North East of England

“…In so doing it has highlighted the challenges faced by those on the front line who have experience of Emotions of austerity: care and commitment in public service delivery in the North East of England 28 both the realities of marginalised service user's lives, but also the changing funding landscape. As Horton and Kraftl (2009) valued about such services is often missed -a lesson not specific to the UK context. We also contend that the politics of austerity and its emotional ramifications should not be conceptualised simply in terms of cause and effect, as if emotions were only activated in times of acute crisis in public services.…”

“…In a similar vein to Kraftl (2009) and Hardill and Mills (2013), who complicate the separation between policy studies and research on emotions, we bridge these lines of enquiry through a focus on the politics of emotions in relation to both the operationalization and experience of austerity for those providing public services in the North East of England. For Pain (2009: 18), the point of drawing attention to emotions is that they are always part reflection and part productive of power relations that are 'fundamental to the layout of society'.…”