From Emotional Labour to Affectual Bodies: Moving Towards an “Affective Ethnography” of The Criminal Court Space

Carline, Anna, Gunby, Clare ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8428-6621, Munro, Vanessa, Tinsley, Yvette, Duncanson, Kirsty and Flowe, Heather (2024) From Emotional Labour to Affectual Bodies: Moving Towards an “Affective Ethnography” of The Criminal Court Space. Emotion Review. ISSN 1754-0739 (In Press)

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Abstract

Participation in, and attendance at, court – particularly in a criminal trial – often positions people amid a charged emotional environment, where the evidence involves distressing accounts of victimisation and vulnerability, and the stakes of decision-making are high. Potential stress and anxiety, particularly for lay participants, are contributed to by both combative strategies adopted by opposing counsel within an adversarial system and the arid and alienating nature of legal argument and language. All of this is acted out and embodied within affective, human interactions that take place in austere, unwelcoming and often ill-designed buildings (Mulchahy, 2011; Mulchahy & Rowden, 2019). In this article, we draw on examples from a small number of pilot observations to explore the ways in which an "affective ethnography" (Gherardi, 2019) of the criminal court yields urgent and valuable insights across a range of offences, actors, and spaces.