Emotional Geographies of Development

Hope, despair, fear, hate, joy, desire and anger; the social sciences have increasingly recognised the role of emotions in shaping society, and in defining and transforming people and place. Such concerns have clear implications for the study of development. Emotions help create development subjects and define subjectivities. They are imbricated in the production of exclusions and colonialisms yet they can also empower resistance and progressive change. In short, they are intimately bound up with the way development functions in all its messiness. In this paper I begin to explore the generative role of emotions in the discourses and practices of development. I draw on empirical work with land reform participants in the Philippines to consider the ways emotions are central to participants' experiences. Emotions inform how the land tillers act and react, and how they understand the past, present and future. I find that consideration of emotions, and indeed of all that is beyond-the-rational, is imperative if we are to move beyond development's modernist roots towards more postcolonial understandings.