Emotion Work and Scale in Sociocultural Bicycle Advocacy and Transportation Literature

Abstract

Previous reviews of sociocultural bicycle transportation studies have focused on analysis of research results and policy meant to increase bicycle transportation. However, the literature also reveals relevant but implicit patterns regarding emotion and scale embedded in the discourse of the authors, a dimension of the literature that could be explored further. This underlying meaning expressed implicitly by researchers has been much less studied and is the focus of the present research. Affect or emotion related to daily transportation has been shown to influence what mode people use for transit. Sociology of emotion research suggests that emotional factors are part of all that is social, creating an emotional dimension to the allocation of transportation resources, bicycle safety, and policy. In this study, Arlie Hochschild’s concept of emotion work is suggested as a mechanism that crosses the divide between individual scales and state-level policy/institutions. Through a systematic qualitative review of sociocultural bicycle literature using Foucaultian discourse analysis, this paper suggests ways individuals are linked to formally rationalized institutions through emotion work focused on identity, here, largely race, class, and gender. In this review, rationalized institutions were seen to reduce the impact of emotional responses to the distribution of transportation resources, while emotion and emotion work were key to both the production and perpetuation of these institutions along existing dimensions of inequality. In the literature, underlying or less-than-conscious emotion work enabled policy decisions to occur at scales removed from the population level while also producing the illusion of meaningful public deliberation. In contrast, emotion work by groups that eschew institutional structure such as Critical Mass was meant to disrupt existing transportation norms and, thus, maintains deliberation about transportation at the population level. These results suggest links between individual emotional experience and formally rationalized institutions.

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