Abstract
Stephen Coleman has the uncommon ability of identifying research topics which are innovative, timely and academically pertinent. His ideas are original, and his courage does not falter when he ventures in unexplored academic terrain. His studies on Big Brother followers in relation to democratic practices (Coleman, 2003, 2006), or on the construction of politicians in British soap operas (Coleman, 2008) constitute excellent examples of his academic imagination and rigour.
How Voters Feel stems from one of these stimulating ideas. Following growing awareness and interest in the study of the emotional/passional aspects of politics (see, for example, Hall, 2005; Illouz, 2007; Marcus, 2002; Mouffe, 2002), Coleman decided to embark on an exploration on the part played by emotions in the very act of voting. This is not a book about the role emotions play in deciding which electoral option to vote for, but about the different emotions citizens attach to voting (both understood as casting a ballot in a physical location, and as a civic act). Informed by a range of interviews with citizens living in the north of England, Coleman constructs a narrative analysing both citizens’ discourses about their emotions, and the cultural construction of the act of voting.
The book offers an erudite analysis of the cultural assumptions, the narratives, the metaphors and the norms governing voting. Drawing ideas and examples from films, legal texts, literature, theatre plays and also from academic and philosophical texts, Coleman dissects the act of voting and its cultural and political implications. This analysis is interlinked with the discourses identified in the interviews the author held with his informants, with the ultimate aim of identifying imbalances/discontinuities between the act of voting and the emotions that are invested in it.
This book shows Coleman’s erudition, as well as the depth and breadth of his thought. It is also an original piece, and includes interesting reflections about topics which may only be tangentially related to the issues in question (such as Edinburgh buses, for example, see p. 175). The contexts in which the interviews took place are often described with ethnographic detail, offering rich accounts of the nature of the discussion held with the interviewee. This is not done merely to spice up the narrative, but to contextualize the emotional fabric in which some discourses about voting emerge. The narrative contains many excursus, which contribute to constructing a multifaceted understanding of the act of voting, as if they were brush strokes in an impressionist painting. In this sense, and for example, Coleman (p. 169) discusses how members of an unnamed organization engaged in an internal election that had generated strong divisions among the membership just to illustrate how the aura of voting is generated.
The book is eminently divided in two sections, one justifying the interest of the project, and discussing the metaphors, the narratives and the norms surrounding the act of voting, and a second part which emerges from Coleman’s empirical research for the Road to Voting research project. This second part offers very interesting, rich data about how voting is experienced as a political and as a symbolic act. These findings confirm the pertinence of studying emotions in relation to voting, not only because of its potential to help us explain (and eventually address) the decline in electoral turnouts but also because of the hints it offers about contemporary representative democracies and the lack of spaces and opportunities for political deliberation.
Although this book should be praised for its originating idea, and there are many sections which are insightful and intellectually stimulating, I also believe it has some aspects which are not as accomplished. I missed greater discussion on the selection of interviewees. The ones that got mentioned in the book were described in great detail, but the author did not discuss how he constructed his sample, nor how many interviews he held. I also seemed to perceive that interviews with citizens who had never voted (or who were not politically active) were very prominent in the book – which was somehow paradoxical, since the author seemed to be so interested in the physical act of voting. Politically apathetic citizens clearly outshone the voice of party members, enthusiastic voters or politically active members of the public. Did Coleman interview members of different social classes? People with different educational backgrounds? And, more specifically, did he interview voters who cast their ballot through the post? And individuals who participate in politics through means other than voting? What about citizens who had become disenchanted with electoral politics even though they used to vote regularly in the past? I believe the author should have discussed his sample in more detail: this would have contributed to strengthening his findings.
The research project from which this book emerges aimed at producing a theatre play and other artistic outputs using the project’s data and findings. While this is a commendable endeavour, and it constitutes a very interesting and innovative way of showcasing research data to citizens outside academia, I believe the section discussing these outputs (p. 90ff) would have been more suitable as an appendix.
In spite of these observations, this book is a welcomed addition to the research works exploring citizens’ understandings of (and their relationship to) democratic politics and practices using qualitative methods (see, for example, Eliasoph, 1998; Walsh, 2004). The richness of the data discussed by Coleman and the interest of his findings constitute yet another justification for the need to use these methodologies more extensively to better understand how citizens relate to, perform and experience democratic politics.