Distant Suffering

Studies about the moral consideration of nonhuman animals have experienced a tremendous development in the last decade. An important topic which is recently receiving increasing attention is the idea that we may have reasons not only to abstain from harming wild animals but also to help those in need. Life in the wild is far from being idyllic: wild animals undergo systematic harms on a daily basis, due to intra and interspecific aggressions (predation, parasitism) and other natural causes (e.g. starvation, disease, harsh weather conditions). Though it is usually accepted that we have no obligation to prevent or to reduce the occurrence of these harmful states of affairs, if the interests of nonhuman animals are morally relevant at all, it seems that the interests of animals living in the wild should also be taken into account in moral deliberation. This number will be dedicated to addressing in detail this vastly unexplored issue, challenging life in the wild as a “flat moral landscape”.

In March 2012, American NGO Invisible Children released an online video about the crimes committed by Ugandan war lord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. Rapidly shared through social network sites, Kony 2012 soon earned the title of fastest spreading online video ever produced. At the same time, the video and its makers also came under massive criticism from bloggers, journalists, academics, and the general public. This study offers an exploration of the phenomenon Kony 2012 from an audience perspective. Theoretically building on the literature on mediated distant suffering and empirically based on an online survey, we explore how the video was successful in exerting moral pressure on a critical online audience of ‘Ironic Spectators’. In particular, we investigate to what extent different forms of being critical towards the video and its makers have mitigated a sense of personal moral responsibility to act towards the distant suffering other.

Deze studie onderzoekt de beeldvorming binnen Vlaamse kranten van westerse en niet-westerse hulporganisaties die steun verleenden aan de Filipijnen nadat het werd getroffen door tyfoon Haiyan (2013). Een kritisch geïnspireerde kwalitatieve inhoudsanalyse leert dat westerse hulporganisaties, en in het bijzonder Belgische instanties, meer en positievere media-aandacht verkrijgen dan niet-westerse hulporganisaties. Dit duidt op een onderliggende praktijk en discours van ‘Othering’.

A Passion for Society explores the historical development and current condition of social science with a focus brought to how this has been shaped in response to problems of social suffering. Following a line of criticism offered by key social theorists who themselves were unhappy with the professionalization of social science, it provides a critical commentary on how studies of human social life have moved from an original concern with social suffering and its amelioration to dispassionate inquiries into society for their own sake. It explores the potential for terms of social investigation and social research to be informed by humanitarian impulse and by care for humanity. The overall aim is to show how social care can be and is being developed in social science as a powerful revitalization and remaking of the discipline.

“This is a wonderful book on an extremely important subject. The social causes of individual suffering—in company or in isolation—get the attention and probing investigation they demand, both as a contribution to epistemology and as pointers to ways and means of remedial action. This is a much awaited—and beautifully written—book which should make a huge difference to the sad and unjust world in which we live.”—Amartya Sen, Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University

“A Passion for Society is a stirring rejection of the cult of dispassion in modern anthropology and sociology and a brisk rehabilitation of attempts to link fellow feeling to pragmatic (and, yes, humanitarian) efforts to lessen the suffering of others. This defense of caring and caregiving revives old lessons and offers new ones, burnishing the example of great social theorists and of almost forgotten ones. Wilkinson and Kleinman are not trying to win an argument, although they do, but rather to offer a hopeful and humane intellectual basis for what is, fundamentally and unapologetically, a moral stance: against indifference and cynicism and inaction, and for their opposites. This fierce book is both balm and compass.”—Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health, The Brigham and Women’s Hospital

“The world is stuffed full of unbearable human misery. Every day billions of people in the world find themselves living in tragic desperation. What is to be done? How can a social science deal with this best? In this challenging, committed and original study, Iain Wilkinson and Arthur Kleinman provide a history and appreciation of the study of social suffering and urge us to place this at the heart of understanding society by putting compassion and practical care at its core. Critical of the formalism, distance, and coldness of both academic life and social science, the book creates new dialogues. It deserves to become a landmark in redirecting social science to work more passionately to make the world a kinder place.”—Ken Plummer, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Essex University

“In their analysis of ‘the problem of suffering,’ Wilkinson and Kleinman provide a thoroughly convincing argument for a new approach to social theory and social research practice—one that is compassionate, interventionist, and globally oriented, and thus better able to address the pressing issues that define our age.” —Alan Petersen, Professor of Sociology, Monash University

The article seeks to understand the narrative strategies mobilized by press journalism to expose scenes of suffering related to child domestic labor, considered by social organizations as one of the activities in which children and adolescents are more oppressed and have their rights violated. It starts with the theoretical discussion of “politics of pity” (H. Arendt) in order to understand in journalistic narratives the suffering appropriations considering the narrative configuration of scenes and of the suffering subjects. It explores ethical issues underlying these reports, questioning narrative strategies which are commonly recommended to reporters, as the thematization of injustices in the form of the complaint and a description of characters and life stories in the narratives. It concludes, in the light of the language of pity, that these stories are decisive for how child domestic labor is configured or not as a public issue and to understand the gestures of portrayal the suffering in the journalistic narratives.