Emotion as a Social, Cultural, and Political Construct: Implications for Early Childhood Classrooms

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Reframing the Emotional Life of Children and Adults in Early Childhood Spaces

Abstract

Objective/Framework: The purpose of this conceptual paper is to first provide a historical overview of emotion in early childhood followed by the analysis and presentation of Ahmed’s (2004) model of emotion as s social, cultural, and political construct and how it can be utilized in early childhood teaching and learning. Current developmental theories overlook the political, historical, and cultural aspects of teacher and child emotion, while Ahmed’s theory of emotion uncovers how race, power, oppression and dominance construct individuals’ and communities ways of “doing” emotion. Emotions are often thought of as individualized feeling states that we “have” rather than “do.” As such, this paper presents a model grounded in the assumption that all emotion is a social action.

Warrant for Argument/Theoretical Data Source: Cultural and sociological perspectives view emotion as a socially mediated practice and a discursive construct that is bound by language, culture, and ideology (Ahmed, 2004; Boler, 1999; Lutz, 1988; Zembylas, 2008; Zembylas & Chubbuck, 2009). The question then becomes not “What is emotion?” but “What does emotion do?” Who does it silence? Who does it oppress? How is it as a site of social control? For example, Sara Ahmed, in her book The cultural politics of emotion (2004) examines how the emotion of love has been used as by dominant racial groups to justify racial divisions and the emotion of “hate” towards those who disrupt their historical dominance and power. That is, we fight for our racial community because we love/care for them. From this standpoint, the emotion of hate towards other racial groups who threaten to displace or challenge white power is viewed not as hate, but rather as a love for their own. This love then becomes a justified emotion (i.e., in the name of love) and held up as a positive moral attribute of the person and community. Through the disguise of caring for “our people” and “our community,” people simultaneously use emotion to justify feelings of discomfort and hate towards those who are different from them and who threaten their historical and political ways of caring for their deeply cared for ideological beliefs.

Significance: Too little attention has been given to the complexity of how emotions, perspectives, practices, etc. provide productive grounds for reflection, struggle, community building and social justice work in the early childhood classroom. This model illustrates the significance of reframing emotion. It also provides a rationale for why teachers must use political clarity and consciously consider how their emotions can ultimately oppress and silence the histories of students and/or marginalize groups whose emotional investments differs from their own. Teachers must also be willing to consider how their own emotional investments and attachments reinforce and reinscribe ways of doing emotion in the classroom context. It is not enough to simply love and care for our students. We must first understand, through a critical lens, how emotions are embedded in our social and cultural histories, especially when working with students from diverse backgrounds.

Author

• Samara D. Madrid, University of Wyoming