Pain and cruelty in socio-historical perspective

Thinking with suffering

“…For example, Natan Sznaider holds to the view that: By defining a universal field of others whom contracts and exchanges can be made, market perspectives extend the sphere of moral concern... however unintentionally. (Sznaider, 2001, p. 9) This 'civilising process' (Elias, 1978) is understood to manifest itself in the progressive developments we have witnessed over the last two hundred years in workers and women's rights legislation, child welfare, penal reform, and animal protection (Sznaider, 1996;. In each instance, these are identified as evidence in support of the conclusion that more people than ever before in human history are moved by the suffering of others to engage in political struggles for social change.…”

“…Thirdly, in an analytical move which seeks to radically revise the sociological tradition of theorising the cultural evolution of modernity in terms of a transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (Tonnies, 1957), there are a group of writers who suggest that, where the brute fact of human suffering may now appear to be particularly problematic for our culture, this is largely the result of the extent to which the everyday experience of life under conditions of modernity is liable to arouse in us a greater sensibility towards matters of personal feeling (Amato, 1990;Pahl, 2000;Silver 1989;1990;Sznaider 1996;. Here, when it comes to the task of conceptualising 'the problem' in suffering, the emphasis is placed not so much upon what we have lost in our culture, or the ways in which the 'sheer aversiveness' (Scarry, 1985) in events of extreme suffering works to undermine traditional forms of cultural meaning, but rather, upon the extent to which we may understand modern people to be involved in a new 'structure of feeling' (Williams, 1961, p. 64) that leaves them particularly sensitive towards each other's pain.…”

“…Indeed, in almost every instance, writers identify strict adherence to the conventions of disciplinary boundaries as a serious obstacle to the task of establishing a conceptual framework which is adequate for exploring what 'suffering' is, as well as the different forms it takes and what it actually does to people (Graubard, 1996). Accordingly, this is a topic which brings together the work of social/ cultural historians (Amato, 1990;Perkins, 1995;Sznaider, 1996;, philosophers (Cavell, 1997;Levinas, 1988;Schopenhauer, 1970) political theorists (Amato, 1994;Boltanski, 1999;Ignatieff, 1985;Ingram, 1993;Felice and Falk, 1996), literary theorists (Scarry, 1985;Morris, 1990) anthropologists (Das, 1995;1997a;1997b;Janes, 1999;Kleinman, 1996;Kleinman and Kleinman, 1996;ScheperHughes, 1992;Skultans, 1998), theologians/experts in the study of religion (Metz and Moltmann, 1995;Moltmann, 1974;Bowker, 1970; health care specialists (Cherny, 1996;Kleinman, 1988 Johnson, 1991), psychologists (Fromm, 1974;Glover, 1999) and sociologists (Bourdieu et al, 1999;Morgan and Wilkinson, 2001) in an effort to construct a new frame for 'seeing' the contemporary world in terms of the extremes of pain, suffering and misery that comprise the lived experience of millions of people around the globe. 1 This paper focuses upon a conceptual difficulty which is commonplace within this literature as a whole, namely, the problem of thinking with suffering (Kleinman, 1995, p. 181).…”

‘It Is As Bad To Be a Black Man's Animal As It Is To Be a Black Man’ – The Politics of Species in Sol Plaatje'sNative Life in South Africa

“…Reformers categorised 'kindness to animals' as characteristically 'civilised' and, increasingly, 'British' (and more particularly 'English') emotions. 84 English humane society claimed kindness to animals as an English trait, and associated cruelty to animals with foreigners. 85 This spread to the colonies -particularly as cruelty to animals was identified as an African attribute.…”