“Pedagogia delle emozioni”, neoliberismo, democrazia. Il caso della Scuola-Città Pestalozzi

This article questions the cultural change of emotions through the emergence of contemporary practices called “emotion pedagogies”, practices that circulate on a global scale and take various forms according to ethnographic contexts. Beyond local varieties, these large-scale changes involve considering emotions as teachable skills. The article shows that these emotional learnings can take place within different frames of reference: neoliberalism on the one hand and democracy on the other. Recent anthropological studies on “emotion pedagogies” emphasize the neoliberal logics of these emerging practices. However, an ethnography of a novel practice called “affective and relational education” developed at the Scuola-Città Pestalozzi, a primary, public and experimental school in Florence shows that these practices aim to rethink education for democracy according to the prism of an education of emotions. The article concludes by drawing attention to the need for further research about this emerging phenomenon.