Social Suffering – Flashcards

The lived experience of pain, damage, injury, deprivation and loss as a result of a society -Focuses on what suffering does to people, such as how people experience, represent, live through and respond to the suffering -Focuses on extreme forms of suffering, such as torture and genocides, because it is more obvious that suffering has occurred

-Social inequalities -Wars and genocides -Routine exploitation -Rape and domestic violence -Famines -Racism and other isms -Natural catastrophes -Medical treatments

Societies dominated by the pursuit of profit and cold rationalization often leave no public space for emotional wealth, resulting in suffering of the exploited -Have a diminished sense of another's individuality -More self centered community

Religions try to explain the reality of evil in the world using divine forces -Theodicy: Why God is justified in allowing suffering and evil Sociology tries to explain the social, economic and political sources of evil -Sociodicy: Social suffering is accounted for social inequalities and hierarchies of power

1. Genocides and Holocaust Studies 2. Ethnography of Suffering 3. Mass Media and Suffering 4. Medical Anthropology

-Holocaust literature is used to understand the social and historical causes -Language of suffering must be able to show immediacy of the event but does not trivialize or over-explains events

Lots of research by Jean Amery -The first blow is when a part of a life ends and can never be recovered -Once the new self has a "border violation", the original can never be recovered -Torture is rape in the way that the torture forces themselves on others -At the first blow, one loses trust in the world -Death of the original self occurs -Whoever was tortured stays tortured

Social suffering occurs when political and economic conditions create social conditions that alienate a group of people ~> economic hardship and political injustice

By Bourdieu -Studies the working class families in France -Lives and living of those individuals is very demeaning -The people have a massive sense of alienation and despair -This results in damage to the person's sense of dignity and self worth, believing they have no escape

-Studied to understand the role of mass media in the formation of consciousness and humanitarian concern -Mediatized suffering results in not always a proper account of the suffering because tailoring for an audience -Through media, audiences may feel morally and politically detached from suffering

Whether the public reacts with indifference ignoring or denying the moral responsibility or engages in social action Types of negative reactions: -Compassion fatigue: getting so much suffering that are weary -States of Denial: turn a blind eye when faced with media representations of suffering

Addresses the extent to which the pain sensation is a product of the neuro-physiological processes, social contexts and cultural meanings -Makes significance of lived experience of human suffering as part of the diagnostic process of language

By Eric Cassel -Suffering is not directly addressed in medical education -This results in not all of the pain being treated -Suffering is experience by people, not just by bodies, so social and psychological factors come into play (mind and body suffer together)

-Suffering is experience by the whole person, body and mind (Suffering is very personal) -Suffering occurs when an impending destruction of the person is perceived -Suffering can occur in relation to any aspect of the person, such as social roles and group identification

-Knowing the source of the pain, changing its meaning, demonstrating control over it and showing the end is almost over with it can help with the suffering -No relief if the personal meaning isn't considered

Studies the historical and social processes where compassion for others' suffering shapes the definition of social problems -Makes suffering visible -Creates a sense of moral obligations to strangers -Identifies causes of suffering and takes actions of remedy suffering -Recognizes, validates and respects the dignity of the sufferer -Progress relies on science, rationality and profits but also humanitarian feelings -Compassion may be a result of the intensifying capitalist force