Toward a Critical Theory of Untidy Geographies: The Spatiality of Emotions in Consumption and Production

Abstract

This paper offers a non-essentialist, normative view of the spatiality of emotions in consumption and production, underscoring issues of difference in everyday life. As people interweave thoughts and feelings across spheres of life, over time, economic and noneconomic logics become blurred, leading to multiple, often conflicting sentiments. Cognitive dissonance is not necessarily resolved and manifests in incoherent consumer practices. Understanding individuals' often covert disarticulation from communities can help proactively uncover avenues for expressing agency within structures of constraint. The geographies of multiple logics also clarify behavior in production regarding thoughts and feelings emanating from outside the workplace. Managers can use this knowledge to achieve competitiveness by accommodating workers' needs and nurturing collaboration, tapping overlapping social networks across time and space. Thinking normatively about the spatiality of emotions requires analytical fluidity to relate context-specific and mobile, mutable processes. The process-oriented framework developed here is intended to complement, not replace, pattern-oriented analysis.

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