The affective politics of policy making spaces: Gendered and racial embodiments of neoliberal deservingness and power in a city council meeting |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, 1911 Building, Campus Box 8107, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA;2. Departamento de Ecología Humana, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional-Unidad Mérida, Km 6 antigua carretera a Progreso, Colonia Cordemex, CP 97310, Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico;3. Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos, El Colegio de Michoacán, A. C., Cerro de Nahuatzen 85, Fracc. Jardines del Cerro Grande, CP 59300, La Piedad de Cabadas, Michoacán, Mexico;4. Department of Anthropology, Purdue University, 700 W. State Street, Suite 219 West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA;1. Department of Geography, King''s College, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK;2. School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, Bennett Building, University Road, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK;1. Brussels Centre for Urban Studies, Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, Building F, Room 4-69, 1050, Brussels, Belgium;2. Department of Politics & International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom;1. University College London, United Kingdom;2. University of Birmingham, United Kingdom;3. University of Tampere, Finland;4. Hebrew University of Jeruaslem, Israel;5. University of Haifa, Israel;6. Soran University, Kurdistan Region, Iraq;7. National University of Singapore, Singapore |
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Abstract: | Bringing together feminist works on affect, neoliberalism, and the racial dimensions of dependency discourse, this paper discusses affective politics in policy making spaces by examining a Durham (North Carolina, USA) City Council meeting. We focus on a 2017 Housing Needs Hearing where bodily gestures and speech acts were crucial parts of emotional interactions that defined, maintained, and challenged subject positions and power structures. We argue that embedded within legacies of racial and gender inequality, neoliberal sensibilities work through embodied emotional performances that impact policy conversations. Our analysis reveals how, despite progressive aspirations and accomplishments in Durham, the meeting's extractive set up perpetuates inequities by positioning those seeking assistance to prove their worth through a contradictory performance of desperation and self-actualization while enabling supporters of housing affordability, including city officials, to adopt the role of caring advocates. We find that a performance of pain and the rhetorical proof of self-responsibility opens up potential access to affordable housing and in doing so reveals both the limits and impact of a broken housing system. We thus extend analysis of the neoliberal condition of US housing inequality by deepening understanding of how neoliberal deservingness is embodied and shapes racialized, classed, and gendered subject positions. |
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Keywords: | Affect and emotion Urban neoliberalisms Policy making Affordable housing Neoliberal subject positions Race and gender Suffering |
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