This article develops the concept of emotional capital by exposing its operation in proceedings between legal elite professionals. We argue that (a) the micro-structural restraints of the interaction order among the participants have to be accounted for in order to understand the dynamics of emotional capital, and; (b) the emotional processes at play have to be expanded beyond feelings of care showing how emotions can be employed to reproduce status and power. Empirical examples from criminal courts in Scotland and the United States demonstrate that judges and prosecutors depend on emotional capital to steer the legal proceedings. Emotional capital is both stable in that acquired capital often can be transferred across fields and volatile in that it presupposes interactional agreement to ensure successful emotional capital employment. In contrast, the lack of such agreement may devalue emotional capital regardless of overall capital wealth. In high status bureaucratic positions, the conversion of emotional capital into symbolic capital not only affects the authority of individual actors but reproduces public trust in governmental institutions.
Based on the experiences from a social innovation process of Swedish preschool remodelling aiming to enhance equal and inclusive learning and playthe study investigates sociomaterial dimensions in complex multi-actor/level (ex)change. Previous studies on systemic change through social innovation ecosystems help reveal dynamics and challenges in the coordination of varying logics and interests among the involved preschools, municipality, architectural firm, universities and innovation agency. The shared appreciation of equal preschools as universally good and desirable, served to conceal contestations of the principal aspirations of innovative socio-material transformation, instead conceptualising it as conflicting institutional logics and lacking cross-institutional coordination. The study further confirms that the large complex systems that characterise formal education may hamper innovation by its high degree of inertia, while distinguishing a potential for enhanced innovation through participatory, empowering approaches in social innovation ecosystems.
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