The empathic work of understanding is often written about as if it depended solely on the emotional, imaginative, or mind reading capabilities of the empathizer. But if it is embedded in an intersubjective encounter that necessitates ongoing dialog for its accuracy, then it implicates the imaginative and emotional capacities of the person to be understood as well. I argue that we should be investigating more actively the ways in which people in different times and places promote or discourage understanding of themselves. [empathy, anthropology, imagination, Toraja, work of empathy]
In this special issue, we examine the problem of empathy in anthropological theorizing and practice. Noting the relative lack of explicit interest in or systematic exploration of empathy in anthropology, we explore some of the issues related to defining, recognizing, and enacting empathic‐like processes in cultural context. We also highlight similarities and differences in the way contributors examine empathy, and based on this comparative perspective, we raise a number of questions for further research and discussion. We conclude by noting some of the issues not addressed by this small collection of articles and by suggesting why anthropologists in particular have so much to contribute to the study of empathy. [empathy, intentionality, theory of mind, intersubjectivity]
Especially since the discovery of mirror neurons, scholars in a variety of disciplines have made empathy a central focus of research. Yet despite this recent flurry of interest and activity, the cross-cultural study of empathy in context, as part of ongoing, naturally occurring behavior, remains in its infancy. In the present article, I review some of this recent work on the ethnography of empathy. I focus especially on the new issues and questions about empathy that the ethnographic approach raises and the implication of these for the study of empathy more generally.
I argue that certain varieties of psychoanalysis and cultural phenomenology are not antithetical, and that indeed, their respective foci and methodologies each have strengths that balance out the other's limitations. Put more strongly, the two perspectives need one another. Experience should not be reduced to solipsism, nor should specific individuals, each marked by their own “pinch of destiny” and experiential heaviness, be lost in the haze of ever receding future horizons. The unfolding of self‐awareness and experience is indeed an autopoietic, recursive process whose complexities surely escape any single perspective. [cultural phenomenology, psychoanalysis, pinch of destiny, varieties of cultural experience, subjectivity]
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