Using Subjectivity and Emotion to Reconsider Participatory Natural Resource Management

This article examines what attention to subjectivity and emotion can bring to understandings of participatory resource governance. This focus highlights limitations of common participatory governance approaches, as well as possible ways forward. Attention to these dynamics makes it clear that for participatory governance interventions to be equitable and sustainable they must attend simultaneously to structural and institutional dynamics, as well as an individuals’ experience of participation. Moving forward, we offer some suggestions of new tools and approaches (e.g. emotion work, participatory performance, and spatial tools) that emerge from explicit consideration of emotional and subjective dimensions of participatory resource governance.