Framing Emotions: Accounting for Feelings in Human Geography

Abstract: Researchers, from various academic departments, are increasingly undertaking studies of phenomena by way of practices considered to be within the sub-field of emotional geography. Emotional geographers, in an attempt to imbue research with the intensely subjective experiences of events and spaces, seek to uncover feelings by way of emotions, yet cautiously avoids the non-representational by working through language. In this thesis, I expand upon theorisations of emotions, and affect, to a lesser extent, and position the reader amongst the rich methodologies inherent to emotional geography. The linkages that connect emotional and affectual geographies are exposed, which provide this thesis with a clear reading of emotions. The thesis also conducts a dual emotional geography in-practice, to familiarise myself, and the reader, with the felt experience of conducting an emotional geography on a plot of land in Västra Skrävlinge, Malmö; more importantly, however, the dualistic practice also demonstrates the differences between the dominant and less-dominant forms of emotional geographical conduct. This extensive examination, which spans across various intensive readings of scholarly literatures, an interview, and memory-based reflections, highlights the importance and room for increased emotive accounts of events and spaces by researchers in human geography; indeed advocating that emotional geography need not feel itself restricted by the challenges inherent to approaching emotions. Rather, emotional geographers should build upon the increasing acknowledgements that emotions are spatially pervasive. This, I argue, promises to add more, if not a deeper account of human experiences in relation to events, spaces, and each other.