The feeling rules of victim offender mediation

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.