Title: The feeling rules of victim offender mediation

Authors: Anna Rypi

Addresses: Department of Sociology, School of Social Work, Lund University, Box 114, 221 00 Lund, Sweden

Abstract: This paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted in Sweden and focuses on the emotional aspect, both its rhetoric and interaction, of the victim offender mediation process. The emotion culture is examined, as well as the basic feeling rules that tell victims and offenders how to feel, value, and manage their own, and the other party's feelings in the mediation process. If mediation is done 'with your heart', then mediation is also the practice of managing hearts. The practice of mediation is influenced by both a victim discourse and an impartiality discourse, which encourages participant control of emotions but also support spontaneous emotional expressions as a natural part of the remedial ritual.

Keywords: victim offender mediation; emotion culture; feelings rules; restorative justice; ethnography; Sweden; victim discourse; impartiality discourse; participant control; emotions; emotional expressions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWOE.2016.078074

International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 2016 Vol.7 No.2, pp.83 - 97

Received: 09 Dec 2014
Accepted: 24 Jul 2015

Published online: 01 Aug 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article