Dr hab. Adriana Mica’s project, funded in the competition for research projects at CESS

04 10 2024

The project of dr hab. Adriana Mica from the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences and Resocialisation “Taste of Failure: Moving Beyond Cognition and Emotions in the Exploration of Policymaking in Europe and Africa” was funded in the competition for research projects at the Centre of Excellence in Social Sciences.

The project received funding in the amount of 80 000,00 PLN.

Let’s play a game. We are all aware of the relevance of cognitive processes when coming into contact with the world. We know, for instance, where rain comes from, having memories about a particularly rainy day, which in some way was meaningful. Imagine, however, that you need to talk about your place in the world, your relationship to various phenomena, but you cannot use words related to cognition, neither to knowledge nor learning for that matter. Which means basically that you do not have access to the usual modality in which scientists and, probably, lay people explain how we give meaning to the world. No problem, you will probably say, I can always appeal to emotions. Indeed, the affective dynamics is arguably the next most popular way to account for the interaction between us, nature and society. We recall the many instances we were frustrated about rain because we did not have the proper clothes. Or, on the contrary, we were happy because we entered a poetic mood. What about taking things to the next level? Now imagine you can neither use cognition, nor emotions. Where would this lead you? What other modalities of experiencing the world are there? How else do we enter into communication with the rain? Or other more concrete inconveniences, such as failures, f*** ups, and lost opportunities? We do so, we argue in this project, through senses – taste, scent etc. That is transmission of instant messages about the composition and risks entailed by certain goods and processes, which has an impact on whether we accept these or nor, as well as on our judgements regarding their ethical standing (good or bad). “Rain Dogs” – the most acclaimed album by American singer Tom Waits is about the urban paupers and plebs of New York City. It is “a reference to dogs who lose their way when touchstone scents are washed away in storms” – as written on the cover of the 2023 reissue.

In this project we make the argument that it is time to render taste more central in the explorations of social sciences. Increasingly often instead of getting to know things through calculation or measurements, or engaging our perception through emotions of curiosity, joy or anger, we simply make judgements of whether we like something or not. Following, we also extend these valuations and classifications upon the taste of other people. One of the most influential French sociologists of all times, Pierre Bourdieu, has built a sociological theory of taste, and how this is a tool of social and cultural judgement that is rooted in class and other structural elements. In philosophy, seminal German thinker Immanuel Kant used to frame this problem as “judgement of taste” and argued that although our valuations are subjective, we nevertheless claim universality. In this project we rediscover the relevance of taste and show that it is particularly pertinent when talking about failure and the perception of contradictions of policymaking. All the more so in contexts that are marked by history of marginalization and oppression that resulted in creolization effects of policy prioritization and political exploitation (Central and Eastern Europe) or colonial control and pressures towards assimilation (West and East Africa).

We show that in areas marked by processes of transregional or inter-imperial domination, or colonial past, the cultural meaning of failure is less about how to move forward. But rather about how policy dispositions and failure traces on the body of the society play out in the process. In this project we explore how in these “non-central” areas societies do not learn from failure (as in the classical neoliberal story), but they experience it somatically, they sense it ethically, and they have a particular taste for the variety of grey areas, and policy contradictions. We map out the sensorial manifestations of failure in policymaking in Central and Eastern Europe (Poland and Romania), and West and East Africa (Nigeria and Kenya). While also integrating critical failure perspectives arising globally, and from North America in particular. As here the critical failure discourse is particularly strong.