Pub Date : 2025-04-27DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101088
Fleur Hessing
To understand the dynamics of the gated community, in this article, conceptions of fear in relation to space are being studied through the experience of residents in gated communities in La Plata, Argentina. In-depth interviews with six participants and observations in different barrios cerrados allowed for an understanding of the use of space and its impact on fear of crime and other safety perceptions. The stories showed how enclosed communities are perceived by the residents as the only safe form of living, both physically and socially, with the outsider being dangerous by default. Also, it established the means used in the space to nurse these feelings of insecurity, such as cameras, guards and fences. The narratives helped understand how self-governance contributes to a feeling of security by being in control of the use of space. My findings showed how gated communities not only contribute to more segregation between inside and outside but also emphasize and reinforce the idea of the outside being an insecure space, and as a justification for emotions such as fear and the need to be in control.
{"title":"Safe behind the gate: Safety perceptions of residents in barrios cerrados in La Plata","authors":"Fleur Hessing","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101088","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101088","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To understand the dynamics of the gated community, in this article, conceptions of fear in relation to space are being studied through the experience of residents in gated communities in La Plata, Argentina. In-depth interviews with six participants and observations in different <em>barrios cerrados</em> allowed for an understanding of the use of space and its impact on fear of crime and other safety perceptions. The stories showed how enclosed communities are perceived by the residents as the only safe form of living, both physically and socially, with the outsider being dangerous by default. Also, it established the means used in the space to nurse these feelings of insecurity, such as cameras, guards and fences. The narratives helped understand how self-governance contributes to a feeling of security by being in control of the use of space. My findings showed how gated communities not only contribute to more segregation between inside and outside but also emphasize and reinforce the idea of the outside being an insecure space, and as a justification for emotions such as fear and the need to be in control.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101088"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143877115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-23DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101089
Vikki Oriane de Jong , Federica Bono
Global food crises force more people into food insecurity. While numerous studies offer valuable insights into household consumption, food access, and adaptive strategies, they often overlook how food insecurity is an inherently emotional experience, deeply connected to—and continuously interacting with—broader sociopolitical dynamics. Consequently, scholars pay insufficient attention to how emotional responses to food insecurity reshape space, place, and drive sociopolitical change. Drawing on insights from emotional geography, this paper explores the emotional dimension of food insecurity, recognizing how it is shaped by sociocultural relations, perceptions of inequality, and narratives of injustice. Focusing on the food crisis in Havana, Cuba, this study takes an ethnographic approach to reveal that emotional responses to food insecurity impact (1) individual and social experiences of food consumption, (2) perceptions, experiences, and use of public space, (3) individual and collective perceptions of identity, and (4) power dynamics and perceived government legitimacy. This leads to significant sociopolitical and spatial changes at the household, urban, and national levels. We conclude that an emotional lens to food insecurity provides essential insights into how personal, yet socially shaped, emotions spill over from the household level to “jumping scales” and catalyzing broader sociopolitical change.
{"title":"Emotional scale jumping: How emotional responses to food insecurity change private and public spaces in Havana, Cuba","authors":"Vikki Oriane de Jong , Federica Bono","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101089","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101089","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Global food crises force more people into food insecurity. While numerous studies offer valuable insights into household consumption, food access, and adaptive strategies, they often overlook how food insecurity is an inherently emotional experience, deeply connected to—and continuously interacting with—broader sociopolitical dynamics. Consequently, scholars pay insufficient attention to how emotional responses to food insecurity reshape space, place, and drive sociopolitical change. Drawing on insights from emotional geography, this paper explores the emotional dimension of food insecurity, recognizing how it is shaped by sociocultural relations, perceptions of inequality, and narratives of injustice. Focusing on the food crisis in Havana, Cuba, this study takes an ethnographic approach to reveal that emotional responses to food insecurity impact (1) individual and social experiences of food consumption, (2) perceptions, experiences, and use of public space, (3) individual and collective perceptions of identity, and (4) power dynamics and perceived government legitimacy. This leads to significant sociopolitical and spatial changes at the household, urban, and national levels. We conclude that an emotional lens to food insecurity provides essential insights into how personal, yet socially shaped, emotions spill over from the household level to “jumping scales” and catalyzing broader sociopolitical change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101089"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143859576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-18DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101087
Zorica Siročić
Festivals, as their etymology suggests, are festive, celebratory occasions. They are also opportunities to have fun and forget the worries of the day. In such an understanding, aggression, anger, fear, frustration, and other negative emotions and attitudes are associated with attendee dissatisfaction and, as such, are hopefully exceptional conditions to be avoided through skilful event management. This paper challenges our conventional wisdom about festivals by bringing up the example of festivals of gender dissent (women's, feminist, LGBTQ+), which deliberately allocate parts of the program for the expression of anger and fear, to name a few of such negative emotions, through different art performances, workshops and dance. In particular, the paper examines whether and how the liminality of festivals i.e. their temporal and spatial exceptionalism allows for the disruption of culturally conditioned and gendered patterns of emotional expression and experience. In order to do so, the paper situates personal observations and interviews with festival organizers and performers within a broader framework of literature on emotions in critical event studies and anger and gender (dissent).
{"title":"Anger in festivals: Contradiction in terms or a desirable part of the program?","authors":"Zorica Siročić","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101087","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101087","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Festivals, as their etymology suggests, are festive, celebratory occasions. They are also opportunities to have fun and forget the worries of the day. In such an understanding, aggression, anger, fear, frustration, and other negative emotions and attitudes are associated with attendee dissatisfaction and, as such, are hopefully exceptional conditions to be avoided through skilful event management. This paper challenges our conventional wisdom about festivals by bringing up the example of festivals of gender dissent (women's, feminist, LGBTQ+), which deliberately allocate parts of the program for the expression of anger and fear, to name a few of such negative emotions, through different art performances, workshops and dance. In particular, the paper examines whether and how the liminality of festivals i.e. their temporal and spatial exceptionalism allows for the disruption of culturally conditioned and gendered patterns of emotional expression and experience. In order to do so, the paper situates personal observations and interviews with festival organizers and performers within a broader framework of literature on emotions in critical event studies and anger and gender (dissent).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101087"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143843815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-14DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101091
Maria Thulemark
{"title":"The value of being unseen – Experiencing hidden elements of ‘invisible’ work","authors":"Maria Thulemark","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101091","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101091","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101091"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143828929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-04-01DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101086
Christian Möller
This article reports on a case study of charitable fundraising for the UK National Health Service (NHS) and examines its role in managing emotions and shaping our relationship with state-funded health services. Twitter data, images and fundraising materials were collected under the #NHSBigTea hashtag, which coordinates and celebrates annual fundraising events by NHS charities across the UK. Targeting existing affective attachments to ‘our NHS’, nationalistic rhetoric and the imperative to ‘give something back’ after Covid are shown to be part of wider feeling rules which create the NHS as an idealised object requiring performative displays of gratitude and positive affect. Discursive positioning of fundraisers and NHS staff as heroes becomes problematic in an affective economy where national calls to “be there” and show our love for the NHS set unrealistic demands and obscure existing deficits and existential threats to the NHS. Drawing on psychoanalytic perspectives, the article shows how, in times of crisis, displays of gratitude, love and positivity may defend against ambiguous feelings and intense fears of losing the NHS. These difficult emotions and anxieties must be acknowledged to avoid dangerous idealisations and allow a different relationship based not on gratitude but emotional and material investment.
{"title":"‘An outpouring of love’: A psychosocial analysis of the NHS ‘Big Tea’ fundraising appeal","authors":"Christian Möller","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101086","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101086","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article reports on a case study of charitable fundraising for the UK National Health Service (NHS) and examines its role in managing emotions and shaping our relationship with state-funded health services. Twitter data, images and fundraising materials were collected under the #NHSBigTea hashtag, which coordinates and celebrates annual fundraising events by NHS charities across the UK. Targeting existing affective attachments to ‘our NHS’, nationalistic rhetoric and the imperative to ‘give something back’ after Covid are shown to be part of wider feeling rules which create the NHS as an idealised object requiring performative displays of gratitude and positive affect. Discursive positioning of fundraisers and NHS staff as heroes becomes problematic in an affective economy where national calls to “be there” and show our love for the NHS set unrealistic demands and obscure existing deficits and existential threats to the NHS. Drawing on psychoanalytic perspectives, the article shows how, in times of crisis, displays of gratitude, love and positivity may defend against ambiguous feelings and intense fears of losing the NHS. These difficult emotions and anxieties must be acknowledged to avoid dangerous idealisations and allow a different relationship based not on gratitude but emotional and material investment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101086"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-22DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101085
Li Wen, Liu Peng
This research paper explores the atmospheric qualities of urban spaces that are influenced by the presence of graffiti and street art. The study has expanded the literature review to provide a stronger theoretical foundation for examining atmospheres within the urban context, with a particular focus on the intersection of graffiti, street art, and the broader sensory experience of a location. Drawing on non-representational sensory ethnographic methods, the research analyses how the interplay of light, air, and the presence of graffiti/street art shapes the experience and perception of a place. Through on-site observation, interviews, and photographic documentation, the paper explores how these transient, environmental factors contribute to a sense of atmosphere and their role in cultivating a place-making experience for users of the space. The finding suggests that the atmospheric conditions of a place, including its sensory qualities, can significantly impact how people perceive and engage with graffiti and street art, evoking a sense of nostalgia, belonging, and attachment to the urban environment.
{"title":"Encountering graffiti and street art under light and air conditions: Exploring the atmospheric qualities of a place","authors":"Li Wen, Liu Peng","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101085","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101085","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This research paper explores the atmospheric qualities of urban spaces that are influenced by the presence of graffiti and street art. The study has expanded the literature review to provide a stronger theoretical foundation for examining atmospheres within the urban context, with a particular focus on the intersection of graffiti, street art, and the broader sensory experience of a location. Drawing on non-representational sensory ethnographic methods, the research analyses how the interplay of light, air, and the presence of graffiti/street art shapes the experience and perception of a place. Through on-site observation, interviews, and photographic documentation, the paper explores how these transient, environmental factors contribute to a sense of atmosphere and their role in cultivating a place-making experience for users of the space. The finding suggests that the atmospheric conditions of a place, including its sensory qualities, can significantly impact how people perceive and engage with graffiti and street art, evoking a sense of nostalgia, belonging, and attachment to the urban environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101085"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143681010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-04DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101079
Yujie Zhang
This study explores how corporate public restrooms, often regarded as mundane, serve as critical therapeutic landscapes within the high-pressure environment of China's real estate sector. Through ethnographic research at S Corporation, it reveals how these restrooms become gendered, political, and relational spaces where emotional release, solidarity, and subtle resistance unfold. For men, restrooms offer a space to momentarily shed and quietly reaffirm corporate masculinity, while for women, they become sanctuaries of shared vulnerability and mutual support. Politically, these spaces provide informal arenas for navigating workplace power dynamics and hierarchies away from official scrutiny. Beyond their functional design, these restrooms enable moments of collective strength and resistance, reflecting broader societal issues around gender expectations, emotional labor, and the strains of corporate life. In highlighting how such ordinary spaces shape emotional experiences and social relations, the study highlights the potential for solidarity and resistance within even the most controlled environments, revealing the deeper social challenges embedded in everyday emotional landscapes.
{"title":"The role of corporate public restrooms as therapeutic landscapes","authors":"Yujie Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101079","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101079","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores how corporate public restrooms, often regarded as mundane, serve as critical therapeutic landscapes within the high-pressure environment of China's real estate sector. Through ethnographic research at S Corporation, it reveals how these restrooms become gendered, political, and relational spaces where emotional release, solidarity, and subtle resistance unfold. For men, restrooms offer a space to momentarily shed and quietly reaffirm corporate masculinity, while for women, they become sanctuaries of shared vulnerability and mutual support. Politically, these spaces provide informal arenas for navigating workplace power dynamics and hierarchies away from official scrutiny. Beyond their functional design, these restrooms enable moments of collective strength and resistance, reflecting broader societal issues around gender expectations, emotional labor, and the strains of corporate life. In highlighting how such ordinary spaces shape emotional experiences and social relations, the study highlights the potential for solidarity and resistance within even the most controlled environments, revealing the deeper social challenges embedded in everyday emotional landscapes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101079"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143534193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-02DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101067
Geraint Rhys Whittaker , Kimberley Peters , Ilse van Opzeeland
Art-science installations with a focus on marine research are a critical way that the ocean is experienced by various publics beyond the physical boundaries of the sea. Like ocean themed cinema, documentaries, music, photo exhibitions, aquariums, museums and so on they contribute to how oceans are imagined and experienced without the need to get wet. Although they can never quite replicate the ocean, they offer touching points for embodied engagement with alternative imaginaries of the sea. Mirrors is a sound installation that follows the acoustic journey of the Minke Whale as it travels from Antarctica to the coast of Namibia, which debuted in 2023 as part of an international marine biodiversity symposium. Drawing from the development and delivery of Mirrors, this paper contends that sound installations are one way that audiences can know the ocean as they uniquely capture underwater worlds and anthropogenic impacts on marine life. This paper argues that key to the success of this is being able to create narratives that can inspire oceanic imaginations through what is introduced for the first time in this paper as ‘submersive affective atmospheres’.
{"title":"Narrators of submersive affective atmospheres: Analysing oceanic representations through narratives of sound","authors":"Geraint Rhys Whittaker , Kimberley Peters , Ilse van Opzeeland","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101067","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101067","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Art-science installations with a focus on marine research are a critical way that the ocean is experienced by various publics beyond the physical boundaries of the sea. Like ocean themed cinema, documentaries, music, photo exhibitions, aquariums, museums and so on they contribute to how oceans are imagined and experienced without the need to get wet. Although they can never quite replicate the ocean, they offer touching points for embodied engagement with alternative imaginaries of the sea. <em>Mirrors</em> is a sound installation that follows the acoustic journey of the Minke Whale as it travels from Antarctica to the coast of Namibia, which debuted in 2023 as part of an international marine biodiversity symposium. Drawing from the development and delivery of <em>Mirrors,</em> this paper contends that sound installations are one way that audiences can know the ocean as they uniquely capture underwater worlds and anthropogenic impacts on marine life. This paper argues that key to the success of this is being able to create narratives that can inspire oceanic imaginations through what is introduced for the first time in this paper as ‘submersive affective atmospheres’.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101067"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143526582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101065
Rachael Hood , Martina Angela Caretta , Christina Digiulio , Lora Snyder
To date, there has been limited analysis at the intersection of extractive industry and emotional geography. Our research addresses this intersection by investigating how gas extraction, production, and distribution have disrupted residents’ place attachment, and how this disruption is emotionally embodied. This research relies on 24 interviews and 2 workshops conducted in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia in the summer of 2021. This tri-state region, sitting on the Marcellus shale, has witnessed a significant industrial buildout in the form of pipelines and hydraulic fracturing in the last fifteen years. This buildout is compounded by social vulnerability and environmental degradation resulting from the historical extractivism that has shaped Appalachia. From the results of this research, we argue that gas extraction, production, and distribution are not only a physical construction but also a system of unfairness and marginalization that materializes in emotional, embodied harms to residents. This paper illuminates the emotional dimensions of energy extractivism, advancing a synthesis of energy and emotional geographies which improves our understanding of how energy systems interact with lived experiences, an essential but overlooked aspect of energy extraction and production.
{"title":"Disrupted place attachments and emotional energy geography in fracked Appalachia","authors":"Rachael Hood , Martina Angela Caretta , Christina Digiulio , Lora Snyder","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101065","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101065","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To date, there has been limited analysis at the intersection of extractive industry and emotional geography. Our research addresses this intersection by investigating how gas extraction, production, and distribution have disrupted residents’ place attachment, and how this disruption is emotionally embodied. This research relies on 24 interviews and 2 workshops conducted in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia in the summer of 2021. This tri-state region, sitting on the Marcellus shale, has witnessed a significant industrial buildout in the form of pipelines and hydraulic fracturing in the last fifteen years. This buildout is compounded by social vulnerability and environmental degradation resulting from the historical extractivism that has shaped Appalachia. From the results of this research, we argue that gas extraction, production, and distribution are not only a physical construction but also a system of unfairness and marginalization that materializes in emotional, embodied harms to residents. This paper illuminates the emotional dimensions of energy extractivism, advancing a synthesis of energy and emotional geographies which improves our understanding of how energy systems interact with lived experiences, an essential but overlooked aspect of energy extraction and production.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"54 ","pages":"Article 101065"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143095482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-02-01DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101070
Surangika Jayarathne
This paper explores the intimate biographies of first mothers involved in transnational adoption in Sri Lanka. It specifically examines the experiences of first mothers who relinquished their children for adoption in the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the often-overlooked act of relinquishment. By amplifying the personal narratives of these first mothers and applying the conceptual lens of geotrauma, the paper explores the trauma inherent in relinquishment, the impact of distance motherhood, and the spaces that facilitate healing. Drawing on insights from feminist geography and interdisciplinary perspectives, this paper sheds light on trauma's intertwined temporal and spatial dimensions in the context of transnational adoption in Sri Lanka. It highlights the importance of recognising survivors as experts in narrating and understanding trauma and the potential for resistance and healing through the mobilisation of place.
{"title":"Navigating geotrauma in transnational adoption: A visual journey into first mothers' intimate biographies","authors":"Surangika Jayarathne","doi":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101070","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101070","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the intimate biographies of first mothers involved in transnational adoption in Sri Lanka. It specifically examines the experiences of first mothers who relinquished their children for adoption in the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the often-overlooked act of relinquishment. By amplifying the personal narratives of these first mothers and applying the conceptual lens of geotrauma, the paper explores the trauma inherent in relinquishment, the impact of distance motherhood, and the spaces that facilitate healing. Drawing on insights from feminist geography and interdisciplinary perspectives, this paper sheds light on trauma's intertwined temporal and spatial dimensions in the context of transnational adoption in Sri Lanka. It highlights the importance of recognising survivors as experts in narrating and understanding trauma and the potential for resistance and healing through the mobilisation of place.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47492,"journal":{"name":"Emotion Space and Society","volume":"54 ","pages":"Article 101070"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143445034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}