Closely linked to current conflicts on minority rights, anti-discrimination, and diversity, awareness has emerged in recent years as a specific practice of discrimination avoidance. In this paper, awareness is examined as an emotion program that specifically seeks to generate regard for the concerns of individuals and groups whose identity claims are considered contested. Drawing on qualitative data from field research, which resulted from explorations of various anti-discrimination practices up to today's club scene, the action problems, unintended consequences, and paradoxes associated with awareness are analysed. Awareness claims to raise sensitivity to discrimination and to contribute to the struggle against it. However, these claims are also associated with new problems in the prevention of discrimination, which cannot be tackled by awareness itself. By relying on a politically motivated form of emotion management, affective tensions are created that themselves refer back to awareness practices. In addressing these paradoxes of awareness, emotional sensitivity does not resolve experiences of discrimination when it leads to subjective feelings and emotional reactions becoming the decisive indicator of perceived power relations. How awareness practices could avoid such problems and paradoxes will be discussed in conclusion.
Closely linked to current conflicts on minority rights, anti-discrimination, and diversity, awareness has emerged in recent years as a specific practice of discrimination avoidance. In this paper, awareness is examined as an emotion program that specifically seeks to generate regard for the concerns of individuals and groups whose identity claims are considered contested. Drawing on qualitative data from field research, which resulted from explorations of various anti-discrimination practices up to today's club scene, the action problems, unintended consequences, and paradoxes associated with awareness are analysed. Awareness claims to raise sensitivity to discrimination and to contribute to the struggle against it. However, these claims are also associated with new problems in the prevention of discrimination, which cannot be tackled by awareness itself. By relying on a politically motivated form of emotion management, affective tensions are created that themselves refer back to awareness practices. In addressing these paradoxes of awareness, emotional sensitivity does not resolve experiences of discrimination when it leads to subjective feelings and emotional reactions becoming the decisive indicator of perceived power relations. How awareness practices could avoid such problems and paradoxes will be discussed in conclusion.
Closely linked to current conflicts on minority rights, anti-discrimination, and diversity, awareness has emerged in recent years as a specific practice of discrimination avoidance. In this paper, awareness is examined as an emotion program that specifically seeks to generate regard for the concerns of individuals and groups whose identity claims are considered contested. Drawing on qualitative data from field research, which resulted from explorations of various anti-discrimination practices up to today's club scene, the action problems, unintended consequences, and paradoxes associated with awareness are analysed. Awareness claims to raise sensitivity to discrimination and to contribute to the struggle against it. However, these claims are also associated with new problems in the prevention of discrimination, which cannot be tackled by awareness itself. By relying on a politically motivated form of emotion management, affective tensions are created that themselves refer back to awareness practices. In addressing these paradoxes of awareness, emotional sensitivity does not resolve experiences of discrimination when it leads to subjective feelings and emotional reactions becoming the decisive indicator of perceived power relations. How awareness practices could avoid such problems and paradoxes will be discussed in conclusion.
Keywords
anti-discrimination
awareness
emotion program
