Affective States: Exploring Emotion in Political Life
Manchester 17th-18th May 2012

The aim of this workshop is to bring a critical discussion of affect into debate with an anthropology of the state as a way of working towards a more coherent, ethnographically sensitive and fine-grained approach to the role of affect in political life. How, we ask, does the state come to be constituted as a subjective object through its affective resonance: a source, often, of awe, of fear, of thrill; of cynicism, anger, suspicion, or disillusion; but also potentially the object of hope or desire? What is the role of affect in sustaining the state as bounded, as a source of authority, seemingly ‘over and above' its population? How do memories of exceptional events and of mundane bureaucratic procedures structure encounters with, and feelings for, the state? How are such legacies and traces dealt with, accommodated, or erased? How do emotions come to be invested in particular sites, people, material infrastructure, projects, documents, legal enactments? And how does emotion intermingle in the mundane bureaucratic work of the state?

This workshop is supported by the University of Manchester School of Social Sciences, the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change and the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures

For details of the preliminary workshop programme please see below.

Participation is free but space is limited to ensure an effective workshop format.  Please note that the emphasis will be on discussion of pre-circulated papers.   

For enquiries or to register a place please contact Madeleine.Reeves@manchester.ac.uk by April 30th 2012