Emotions (re)negotiated? Deliberative methods for studying political emotions

Emotions are increasingly recognised as a driving force that shapes politics and policies and how these are debated, understood and interpreted. Evidence suggests that emotions interact with values and identities, and in particular that gendered identities influence emotional response to climate change narratives. In this research, we utilise a deliberative research method to study the intersection of climate emotions and emotions of inequality with gender identity (Daggett 2018; Nelson 2020; Anshelm and Hultman 2014). We understand climate emotions as: “a wide range of affective states and emotional responses that individuals and communities experience in relation to climate change” (Roelvink and Zolkos 2011; Pihkala 2022a; Mosquera & Jylhä 2022). We understand emotions of inequality as: “the affective dimensions of social structures and situations characterized by disparities in power, status, and resources based on categories such as race, class, and gender” (Slaby and Scheve 2019). We understand them as political emotions because they stem from both individual and collective sources and involve shared experiences, values, and concepts of morality. Emotions are relational and deeply embodied. They are relational because “they involve (re)actions or relations of ‘towardness’ or ‘awayness’ […] to […] objects” (Ahmed, 2014, p. 8) and they are embodied because they are often accompanied by bodily feelings and sensations (Ahmed, 2014). It is doubtful whether we can distinguish between thoughts, emotions and bodily feelings analytically because it is not certain if these three realms of human experience can even be experienced as distinct (Ahmed, 2014, p. 6). Therefore, following Ahmed (2014) we do not distinguish between them and approach these three realms as “impressions”. Understanding emotions in this way, deliberation is uniquely suited for our research intent because it allows us to: (1) give citizens agency and a feeling of empowerment in their reactions; (2) observe reactions and further investigate their emotional background; and (3) to observe how reactions are shaped by other members of the public and their emotions. Deliberation in the modernist paradigm has been framed as a rationalized procedure opposing emotions. In line with feminist epistemology, we argue that the emotions elicited through public engagement are crucial for framing and reframing of political discourses and that identities, including gender identities, contribute to the emotional framing. In this paper we aim to show, how deliberative research methods can be used to research how emotions are negotiated and renegotiated, and how personal identities, values and histories, as well as identities of others, play a role in this (re)negotiation. We draw on data created during the structured deliberative mini-publics organized in Czechia and Italy on the public perception of various strategies of the climate justice movement.