Download or read book Politics of Empathy written by Anthony M. Clohesy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Empathy argues that empathy is a necessary condition for ethical subjectivity and the emergence of a more compassionate world. One of the reasons empathy is important is because it gives us a sense of what it is like to be someone else. However, to understand its ethical significance we need to look elsewhere. This book claims that empathy is ethically significant because, uniquely, it allows us to reflect critically on the nature of our own lives and sense of identity. More specifically, it allows us to reflect critically on the contingency, finitude and violence that define existence. It is argued that, without this critical reflection, a more ethical and democratic world cannot come into being. Our challenge today therefore is to establish the social and political conditions in which empathy can flourish. This will be a difficult task because powerful political and cultural forces are reinforcing the divisions between us rather than encouraging us to come together in a cosmopolitan community of mutual recognition and solidarity. However, despite these limits, there is hope for a brighter future. The book argues that this can only come about if the Left accepts its responsibility to articulate the contours of a new politics of internationalism and establish the foundations of a sustainable ethical community in which strangers will be accepted unconditionally. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, multiculturalism and international relations.
Download or read book Affective Relations written by C. Pedwell and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the ambivalent grammar of empathy where questions of geo-politics and social justice are at stake - in popular science, international development, postcolonial fiction, feminist and queer theory - this book addresses the critical implications of empathy's uneven effects. It offers a vital transnational perspective on the 'turn to affect'.
Download or read book Radical Empathy written by Terri Givens and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2022-02-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned political scientist Terri Givens calls for ‘radical empathy’ in bridging racial divides to understand the origins of our biases, including internalized oppression. Deftly weaving together her own experiences with the political, she offers practical steps to call out racism and bring about radical social change.
Download or read book Empathy and Democracy written by Michael E. Morrell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy harbors within it fundamental tensions between the ideal of giving everyone equal consideration and the reality of having to make legitimate, binding collective decisions. Democracies have granted political rights to more groups of people, but formal rights have not always guaranteed equal consideration or democratic legitimacy. It is Michael Morrell’s argument in this book that empathy plays a crucial role in enabling democratic deliberation to function the way it should. Drawing on empirical studies of empathy, including his own, Morrell offers a “process model of empathy” that incorporates both affect and cognition. He shows how this model can help democratic theorists who emphasize the importance of deliberation answer their critics.
Download or read book Imperial Emotions written by Jane Lydon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the politicisation of empathy across the British empire during the nineteenth century and traces its legacies into the present.
Download or read book Against Empathy written by Paul Bloom and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.
Download or read book The Politics of Empathy written by Barbara Weber and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2011 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology explores the significance and role of empathy in the public sphere. It examines the use of empathy to establish trans-cultural solidarity as well as to motivate people for political action in our ever increasingly multicultural environment. On a more practical level it investigates if empathy can be taught or cultivated. And, if so, are literature or other forms of cultural representations the most adequate and promising methods. The contributions will analyze these and other implications, potentials and weaknesses of empathy on an interdisciplinary and intercultural level.
Download or read book Seeing Us in Them written by Cigdem V. Sirin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-18 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What causes some people to stand in solidarity with those from other races, religions, or nationalities, even when that solidarity does not seem to benefit the individual or their group? Seeing Us in Them examines outgroup empathy as a powerful predisposition in politics that pushes individuals to see past social divisions and work together in complex, multicultural societies. It also reveals racial/ethnic intergroup differences in this predisposition, rooted in early patterns of socialization and collective memory. Outgroup empathy explains why African Americans vehemently oppose the border wall and profiling of Arabs, why Latinos are welcoming of Syrian refugees and support humanitarian assistance, why some white Americans march in support of Black Lives Matter through a pandemic, and even why many British citizens oppose Brexit. Outgroup empathy is not naïve; rather it is a rational and necessary force that helps build trust and maintain stable democratic norms of compromise and reciprocity.
Download or read book Social Empathy written by Elizabeth A. Segal and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our ability to understand others and help others understand us is essential to our individual and collective well-being. Yet there are many barriers that keep us from walking in the shoes of others: fear, skepticism, and power structures that separate us from those outside our narrow groups. To progress in a multicultural world and ensure our common good, we need to overcome these obstacles. Our best hope can be found in the skill of empathy. In Social Empathy, Elizabeth A. Segal explains how we can develop our ability to understand one another and have compassion toward different social groups. When we are socially empathic, we not only imagine what it is like to be another person, but we consider their social, economic, and political circumstances and what shaped them. Segal explains the evolutionary and learned components of interpersonal and social empathy, including neurobiological factors and the role of social structures. Ultimately, empathy is not only a part of interpersonal relations: it is fundamental to interactions between different social groups and can be a way to bridge diverse people and communities. A clear and useful explanation of an often misunderstood concept, Social Empathy brings together sociology, psychology, social work, and cognitive neuroscience to illustrate how to become better advocates for justice.
Download or read book Empathy Imperiled written by gary olson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-12 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most critical factor explaining the disjuncture between empathy’s revolutionary potential and today’s empathically-impaired society is the interaction between the brain and our dominant political culture. The evolutionary process has given rise to a hard-wired neural system in the primal brain and particularly in the human brain. This book argues that the crucial missing piece in this conversation is the failure to identify and explain the dynamic relationship between an empathy gap and the hegemonic influence of neoliberal capitalism, through the analysis of the college classroom, the neoliberal state, media, film and photo images, marketing of products, militarization, mass culture and government policy. This book will contribute to an empirically grounded dissent from capitalism’s narrative about human nature. Empathy is putting oneself in another’s emotional and cognitive shoes and then acting in a deliberate, appropriate manner. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it requires self-empathy because we’re all products of an empathy-anesthetizing culture. The approach in this book affirms a scientific basis for acting with empathy, and it addresses how this can help inform us to our current political culture and process, and make its of interest to students and scholars in political science, psychology, and other social sciences.
Download or read book Citizen Cash written by Michael Stewart Foley and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading historian argues that Johnny Cash was the most important political artist of his time Johnny Cash was an American icon, known for his level, bass-baritone voice and somber demeanor, and for huge hits like “Ring of Fire” and “I Walk the Line.” But he was also the most prominent political artist in the United States, even if he wasn’t recognized for it in his own lifetime, or since his death in 2003. Then and now, people have misread Cash’s politics, usually accepting the idea of him as a “walking contradiction.” Cash didn’t fit into easy political categories—liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, hawk or dove. Like most people, Cash’s politics were remarkably consistent in that they were based not on ideology or scripts but on empathy—emotion, instinct, and identification. Drawing on untapped archives and new research on social movements and grassroots activism, Citizen Cash offers a major reassessment of a legendary figure.
Download or read book The Hegemony of Psychopathy written by Lajos Brons and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2017 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Any social and political arrangement depends on acceptance. If a substantial part of a people does not accept the authority of its rulers, then those can only remain in power by means of force, and even that use of force needs to be accepted to be effective. Gramsci called this acceptance of the socio-political status quo "hegemony." Every stable state relies primarily on hegemony as a source of control. Hegemony works through the dissemination of values and beliefs that create acceptance and that serve the interests of the state and/or the ruling elite (the "hegemones"). Hegemony is most efficient if it remains invisible. A key hegemonic belief is the idea that there is no alternative to the current socio-political status quo or that the way things are is "natural." The current hegemony - that is, the set of values and beliefs that bolster the current socio-political status quo - is a hegemony of psychopathy: it promotes "cultural psychopathy" and destroys empathy and compassion, thus threatening everything that makes us human. The hegemony of psychopathy is responsible for massive human suffering. It must be fought and replaced with a counter-hegemonic set of values and beliefs that promote compassion and care. Fighting hegemony requires fighting the "pillars" that support it. Most important among these are the mass media and culture industry, and mainstream economics. The former is responsible for a continuous stream of hegemonic propaganda; the latter - among others - for providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the false belief that there is no alternative. The Hegemony of Psychopathy concludes with some considerations on tactics and strategy in the struggle against the hegemony of psychopathy, but does not - and cannot - offer any concrete advice. The Hegemony of Psychopathy is a publication of Brainstorm Books, a collaboration between Punctum Books and the Literature & the Mind specialization at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Download or read book Compassion written by Lauren Berlant and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Compassion, ten scholars draw on literature, psychoanalysis, and social history to provide an archive of cases and genealogies of compassion. Together these essays demonstrate how "being compassionate" is shaped by historical specificity and social training, and how the idea of compassion takes place in scenes that are anxious, volatile, surprising, and even contradictory.
Download or read book The Politics of Compassion written by Sirriyeh, Ala and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether addressing questions of loss, (be)longing, fears of an immigration ‘invasion’ or perceived injustices in immigration policies, immigration debates are infused with strong emotions. Emotion is often presented as a factor that complicates and hinders rational discussion. This book explores how emotion is, in fact, central to understanding how and why we have the immigration policies we do, and what kinds of policies may be beneficial for various groups of people in society. The author looks beyond the ‘negative’ emotions of fear and hostility to examine on the politics of compassion and empathy. Using case studies from Australia, Europe and the US, the book offers a new and original analysis of immigration policy and immigration debates.
Download or read book Empathy Beyond US Borders written by Gary Adler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do colleges and churches travel to help distant others and what does transnational civic engagement actually accomplish?
Download or read book Empathy written by David Johnston and published by Signal. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 28th Governor General's most personal and timely book to date: a passionate and practical guide for turning empathy into action. As the world stumbles through the most severe pandemic of the last century, threatened by teetering economies, torn by political division, separated by unequal access to resources, and wrestling with issues as diverse as racism, gender, cybercrime, and climate change, the nations that best adapt and prosper are those in which empathy is fully alive and widely active. Written for a post-pandemic world, Empathy is a book about learning to be empathetic and then turning that empathy into action. Based on the personal experiences of author David Johnston, the book explores how awakening to the transformative power of listening and caring permanently changes individuals, families, communities, and nations. A how-to manual for a world craving kindness, Empathy offers proof of the inherent goodness of people, and shows how exercising the instinct for kindness creates societies that are both smart and caring. Through poignant stories and crisp observations, David contends that “Everyone has power over some things that other people don’t. When they learn ways to turn that power into action, they change the future dramatically.” With clear and practical focus, Empathy looks at a host of issues that demand our attention, from education and immigration, to healthcare, the law, policing, business ethics, and criminal justice. In each of these areas, Johnston highlights the deeper understandings that have arisen during the COVID-19 crisis, with sharp emphasis on the positive and negative lessons now in crisp focus. Convinced that empathy is the fastest route to peace and progress in all their forms, David ends each short chapter with a set of practical steps the reader can take to make the world better, one deliberate action at a time.
Download or read book The Age of Empathy written by Frans de Waal and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thought-provoking book, the acclaimed author of Our Inner Ape examines how empathy comes naturally to a great variety of animals, including humans. Are we our brothers' keepers? Do we have an instinct for compassion? Or are we, as is often assumed, only on earth to serve our own survival and interests? By studying social behaviors in animals, such as bonding, the herd instinct, the forming of trusting alliances, expressions of consolation, and conflict resolution, Frans de Waal demonstrates that animals–and humans–are "preprogrammed to reach out." He has found that chimpanzees care for mates that are wounded by leopards, elephants offer "reassuring rumbles" to youngsters in distress, and dolphins support sick companions near the water's surface to prevent them from drowning. From day one humans have innate sensitivities to faces, bodies, and voices; we've been designed to feel for one another. De Waal's theory runs counter to the assumption that humans are inherently selfish, which can be seen in the fields of politics, law, and finance. But he cites the public's outrage at the U.S. government's lack of empathy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a significant shift in perspective–one that helped Barack Obama become elected and ushered in what perhaps could become an Age of Empathy. Through a better understanding of empathy's survival value in evolution, de Waal suggests, we can work together toward a more just society based on a more generous and accurate view of human nature. Written in layman's prose with a wealth of anecdotes, wry humor, and incisive intelligence, The Age of Empathy is essential reading for our embattled times. "An important and timely message about the biological roots of human kindness."—Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape
