The crisis of democracy is not only institutional. It is also emotional, relational, and physical.
Embodied Politics (EP) is based on the notion that psychological processes are centrally at work in political ones: politics are embodied as well as embedded within structures.
EP brings the feeling body to the center of social sciences and policy-making.
People experience politics through feelings like stress, fear, frustration, hope, exclusion, dignity or care. What we feel in our bodies informs how policymakers make decisions, what issues people care about, and how citizens relate to politicians and to each other. The outcomes of political decisions are felt on and in the body - the animal being - that we are.
Understanding these embodied, psycho-physiological, evolved dimensions throws light on the roots of polarisation, trauma, disengagement, and authoritarian appeal, and can also help build better democratic practices and more responsive institutions.
EP centers on the political subject and actor as feeling, vulnerable body, on how bodily experience and evolved social emotions shape political behavior, democratic resilience, and public life. It thereby re-focuses the lens through which researchers, theorists, practitioners and policymakers can refract their investigations, analyses and action plans.
EP translates these insights into research, dialogue, and practical tools for democratic renewal. It works to integrate the subjective dimension into mainstream metrics, geopolitics, economics.
By providing insights into the feeling bodies that constitute the body politic, the EP project:
- Connects the dots between planetary politics, transnational democracy, and political psychology, via collaborative scientific research into bodily experience and by devising actionable analytical tools.
- Develops theories and embodied practices of care in connection with feminist IR re-oriented to feelings, senses, the natural and built environment, food production, health and gender, and thereby becomes anchored within democratic innovations.
- Hosts interdisciplinary seminars and workshops, and enables the creation of connections between areas of study at the STG and the broader EUI community, including the MORES program on moral emotions and politics.
- Connects to the sustainable food practices central to Florentine and Tuscan culture.
- Connects to the history of art and to contemporary art practices locally and internationally.
Areas of analysis, participation, experimentation and evaluation include: sustainable food actors, political theater and the arts, experimental psychology as applied to political and social emotions, interventions in citizens’ assemblies, relational strategies in the areas of conflict, migration and gender.