Emotion and place promotion: Passionate about a former coalfield

Emotion is everywhere in place promotion, from the stickers and t-shirts announcing love for a place to the despair and estrangement experienced by residents when confronted with unrecognisable representations of home. Although academic work has drawn attention to such emotion, even commenting on its potential power, the emotionality of place promotion has not been fully examined. This paper begins to fill that gap. It also contributes to theoretical discussion regarding how emotion moves, taking an object centric approach to consider impressive place promotion that prompted some passionate performances. The paper is indebted to the work of Arlie Hochschild (1990, 2003) on institutional emotion management and Sara Ahmed (2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2008, 2009) on affective economies. The empirical focus of the paper includes the objects, performances, technologies and techniques of two eras of place promotion concerning the former coalfield of East Durham and is based on fieldwork (1998-2000, 2005-2008) dealing with coalfields regeneration in North East England.