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Emotion, Space and Society 14 (2015) 20e21

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Emotion, Space and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/emospa

Book review

Performing Politics, Making Space: A Visual Ethnography ofPolitical Change in Ecuador, Carolin Schurr. Franz Steiner Verlag,Stuttgart (2013). 213 pp., $42.00 cloth, ISBN: 978-3-515-10466-1

In recent decades, Ecuador's electoral spaces have been charac-terised by an increased presence of women, indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian peoples. To a large degree, active political campaigninghas instigated this change, which resulted in a rise in ethnic-inflected parties during the 1990s and the introduction of the1997 gender quota law, the Ley de Amparo Laboral. In PerformingPolitics, Making Space: A Visual Ethnography of Political Change inEcuador, Carolin Schurr sets out to explore the processes involvedin this decolonial transformation that fundamentally challengesthe ‘white and mestizo racialization’ (p.31) of formal politicalspaces. Specifically, rather than addressing gender and ethnicityon separate terms, her novel approach focuses on how the inter-play between the two shape the constitution of local electoralpolitics.

Feminist readings of electoral geography are scarce (seeWebster, 2000; Secor, 2004; McGing, 2013). In Performing Politics,Making Space, Schurr successfully sets out to address this gapthrough a ‘feminist electoral geography’ (p.23) that attends to theembodied, the emotional and the intersectional performancesthat redefine the spaces of political participation and representa-tion in Ecuador. This conceptual approach, outlined in Chapter 2,bridges theories of antagonism, performance studies, emotionand affect and intersectionality. Under this framework, a revitalisedelectoral geography would require: (i) challenging the binary be-tween politics and the political by acknowledging that antagonisticstruggles influence the spaces of electoral politics; (ii) re-locatingpolitics in both public and private spheres by recognising extra-statal spaces of democracy and the performative nature of thesespaces; (iii) highlighting the plural, contingent and fluid nature ofidentities and the importance of intersectionality; and (iv)engaging with questions of power and the ways inequalities shapepolitical opportunities and subjectivities (p.61e63). Crucially,Schurr's analytical treatment of the embodied and everyday prac-tices of local politics and electoral campaigning is a much-neededintervention against long-standing concerns surrounding electoralgeography's ‘rampant empiricism’ (Leib and Quinton, 2011: 21). Assuch, the book is an excellent point of reference for those interestedin feminist and post-structural engagements with power, differ-ence, identity and contingency within the field of politicalgeography.

Each of the main empirical sections e performativities, emo-tions and intersectionalities e detail and expand on Schurr's argu-ments. In “performativities” Schurr suggests that scholars need toevaluate articulations of power within the performed spaces of pol-itics. Through her ethnographic approach she illustrates thatcounter-hegemonic practices, such as the use of the kichwa

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2014.12.0021755-4586

indigenous language in campaign speeches, can re-appropriatethe postcolonial spaces of exclusionary politics. In “emotions”Schurr outlines a lens that sees identity performances as embodiedand spatialised. She contends that this focus captures howemotional campaign practices performatively challenge and informgendered and racialised boundaries of political spaces. In particular,she addresses how emotions of rabia (rage) and amor (love) areevoked to construct a populist imaginary of el pueblo (the people).Finally, in “intersectionalities” she analyses how relationships be-tween and through multiple dimensions of structural inequality,such as gender, race, class and locality, influence participation inelectoral politics and the making of political subjectivities. In doingso, Schurr problematises the gender quota law for not addressingthe interplays between different systems of oppression. The finalchapter in this section, co-authored by D€orte Segebart, aims totackle feminist postcolonial critique through participatory andintersectional methods that, they argue, could decolonise develop-ment research.

Critical analysis is achieved through a multi-method approachthat Schurr suggests is ‘beneficial to grasp both structural inequal-ities and everyday practices’ (p.146). Qualitative and quantitativemethods are used, including semi-structured interviews with fe-male politicians and representatives of women's organisations,participant observation of female politician's activities, visualethnography (photographs and video recordings) of identity per-formances in election campaigning and questionnaires to 798 localgovernment representatives. In addition, three case study localitiesare selected for their different histories, socio-demographic charac-teristics and levels of female participation in electoral politics.Though this ambitious treatment is commendable, it leaves littleroom for a thoroughly engaged analysis of all the methods. Indeed,although the title of the book alludes to the central method beingvisual ethnography, it is not until Chapter 4 that this is mentioned.Here, she contends that the use of non-textual sources ‘facilitated astronger analytical focus on the embodied practices, emotions, andinteractions that constitute the performative spaces of politics’(p.67). Certainly, visual ethnography tackles concerns withinperformative geographies over the predominance of discursivemethods. However, Schurr says very little about the extent towhichwe can capture sensory embodied experiences of research partici-pants e or the researcher e whilst operating and looking frombehind the lens of a video camera. A second example of this lackof analytical treatment is in the use of anchor quotes and wordclouds in Chapter 7 to highlight the most frequently used wordsin interviews with female politicians in three provinces. Thismethod of quantifying and categorising interview material createsan unhappy juxtaposition with the embodied and emotionalapproach presented.

Overall, this book makes a significant contribution to feministunderstandings of political spaces of democratic practice. It offers

Book review / Emotion, Space and Society 14 (2015) 20e21 21

an innovative multi-methodological approach to understandingprocesses of political transformation and shows how gender,ethnicity and class intersect in Ecuador's postcolonial politicalspaces. Furthermore, the book enriches the burgeoning field ofemotional geographies through an empirical engagement withthe links between identity, emotion and politics. The author offersa discussion of how political performances are shaped by particularhistorical, economic, political and social-cultural contexts, whichthereby influence the emotive spaces of local politics. Certainly,further research on the interplay between specific histories of iden-tity and difference and the power geometries that shape these dy-namics would enhance understandings of the emotionalgeographies of political campaigning. While the ambitious attemptto cover a multiplicity of methods and conceptual approachesleaves many questions unanswered, Schurr's Performing Politics,Making Space provides an accessible tool for scholars engagingwith feminist readings of electoral politics, the institutionalisationof indigenous politics in Latin America and visual ethnographicmethods.

References

Leib, Jonathan, Quinton, Nicholas, 2011. On the shores of the “moribund back-water”?: Trends in electoral geography research since 1990. In: Warf, Barney,Leib, Jonathan (Eds.), Revitalizing Electoral Geography. Ashgate, Farnham,pp. 9e27.

McGing, Claire, 2013. The single transferable vote and women's representation inIreland. Ir. Polit. Stud. 28 (3), 60e76.

Secor, Anna, 2004. Feminizing electoral geography. In: Lynn, A., Staeheli,Kofman, Eleonore, Peake, Linda (Eds.), Mapping Women, Making Politics: Femi-nist Perspectives on Political Geography. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 261e272.

Webster, Gerald R., 2000. Women, politics, elections, and citizenship. J. Geogr. 99(1), 1e10.

Anna F. LaingSchool of Geographical and Earth Sciences,

University of Glasgow,University Avenue, Glasgow,

G12 8QQ, UKE-mail addresses: Anna.Laing@glasgow.ac.uk,

annafrances_laing@yahoo.co.uk.