The article explores how the concept of ‘emotional orientation’ helps us to reimagine the relationship between childhood and public life. By comparing a subset of two ethnographic biographies of underprivileged children, aged 6–8 years from contrasting neighbourhoods in Hyderabad, India, we illustrate the ways in which ‘emotional orientation’ could mediate and signify children’s experiences of public life. The analysis builds on the girls’ common experience of ‘scolding’ to map out the visceral aspects of poverty, local belonging, place sensitivity, power and social inequality in their lives; the implications for their engagement with public life is noted throughout. Thinking with feeling, we argue, offers crucial insights for (re)imagining the relationship between childhood and public life, and children’s participation therein. In particular, the affective analysis provides the opportunity to tap into children’s political knowingness: a knowingness that eludes normative discourses of public life, but which nevertheless is a vital source of children’s everyday participation.

本文探讨了“情感取向”的概念如何帮助我们重新构想童年与公共生活之间的关系。通过比较印度海得拉巴不同地区的6-8岁贫困儿童的两个民族志传记的一个子集，我们说明了“情感取向”可以如何调解和暗示儿童的公共生活经历。这项分析是建立在女孩们普遍的“发冷”经验基础上的，以描绘她们生活中贫穷，地方归属，地方敏感性，权力和社会不平等等内在方面；整个过程都提到了他们参与公共生活的意义。我们认为，有感觉的思考为（重新）想象童年与公共生活之间的关系以及儿童的参与提供了重要的见识。特别是，