Apparently there are three types of empathy. In the sociology of everyday life, if we are to understand the motivations for behaviour, the basis of decisions made, be they conscious or habitual, we need to be able to recognise in some nonjudgmental way, the subjective and material experience of the individuals and groups we wish to study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is of particular relevance now as a common cry is that ‘experts’ and academics, liberal and political elites and so on, do not know anything about or understand the experience and realities, the fears and concerns of ‘ordinary’ people, for instance those that voted for Trump or Brexit’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clearly this need therefore a method of seeing and to some extent entering into the point-of view of others, commonly referred to as empathy. I assume that to identify a point of view is not the same as identifying with a point of view, where through a process of empathy and sympathy there is a danger of #going native’ as the old anthropologist and participant observers used to call it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The three forms of empathy that psychologists have defined are: Cognitive, Emotional, and Compassionate.<\/strong> The type of empathy best suited to a sociological critique of everyday life is a mixture of the cognitive and the compassionate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m currently reading Lefebvre\u2019s Critique of Everyday Life from the point of view of literature . The following are a few notes on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The word\n\u2018critique\u2019 is often associated with finding fault, negative criticism. This is\nnot necessarily the case. A film critic can praise as well as condemn a film,\ncan point out its strengths and virtues as well as perhaps things that could\nhave been better. Critique is also a method of disciplined systematic study and\ncan therefore be, or attempt to be, initially neutral with respect to the\nobject of critique. In philosophy it is seen as the methodical practice of\ndoubt, of examining and challenging prejudice and authority. Since the European\nEnlightenment it can have associations with emancipator projects in conflict\nwith religious and\/or political authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A critique\nthat aims to challenge and orthodoxy or expose the unwarranted assumptions and\nconstructions of a discourse, must, implicitly or explicitly, hold to some\nnotions of the grounds for challenging the orthodoxy or for claiming\nassumptions and constructions are unwarranted. In Marxist critique not\nsurprisingly what is being subjected to critique are forms of ideological\nobfuscations, self-serving distorted accounts of reality, various political and economic doctrines that\ndescribe the world in distorted and partial ways and, relevant to the notion of\neveryday life, prescribes, reinforces and legislates forms of life, ways of\nthinking and acting, that both legitimate and to some extent produce the world\nas imagined and projected by the doctrines. So critique in Lefebvre\u2019s and the\nMarxist sense challenges various orthodoxies and the common-sense, taken for\ngranted everyday ideas, beliefs, opinions, actions and behaviours that are in\nvarious ways, directly and indirectly, produced by the doctrines. For example,\nif it is taken for granted for the moment that we live in a neo-liberal world,\nand that through education, the media, the law, political action and policy,\nthis world is reinforced and reproduced daily through the beliefs and actions\n(chosen and constrained) of the majority of members of society as they live out\ntheir everyday lives. A critique of everyday life would reveal the connections\nbetween the experience, conduct and understanding of individuals as they lead\ntheir lives, make conscious and habitual decisions and interact with other\nmembers of their society, family, friends, fellow citizens in various roles and\nthe doctrines and ideologies that produce, legitimate, regulate and, through\nthe actions of individuals, reproduce the neoliberal world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Two things\nfollow from this. It assumes that ideology is not purely a false account of how\nthings are and that a critique of ideology has as its main purpose to show the\ntruth that is hidden by ideology. If ideology is implemented via the\ncolonisation of the people who shape and produce the world daily, then it has a\npositive function in that it makes our world, it doesn\u2019t merely falsely depict\nit. To some extent ideology, rather than being false, makes true, it realises\nthe world according to its own template. Critique lies not in demonstrating its\nfalsity but in revealing the process by which it makes itself real and, by\ndemonstrating the contingency of this and in so doing shows how things are not\nas they are because they are so naturally but that they could be different. Ideology\nis not exposed as a false account, a body of false ideas. It is analysed as a\nprocess that produces reality whilst offering an explanation and solace for it.\nIdeology on the one hand produces a reality, a particular one that is in\nprinciple one of several possibilities, and then disguises it. The disguise is\ntwofold \u2013 it disguises the historicity and contingency of the reality it produces;\nit naturalises it and forms the ground for claims that there is no alternative,\nand it obscures the mechanisms and machinations that produce the reality it\nproduces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So an\nimportant part of critique is not just to demonstrate the inconstancies and\ncontradictions in various texts. An indispensable aspect of critique is the\nanalysis of the everyday life of society that is the motor of ideological\nrealisation. Doctrines are translated into the exercise of productive power.\nThe productive power is deployed through various channels, politically,\neconomically, legislatively and culturally. All this shapes the everyday life\nworld of society. This is a text of another sort, the symbolic universe of\nliving. No doubt this can be done anthropologically but anthropology is a\ndifferent sort of text, a different sort of narrative to that of the everyday.\nMuch research in the post Trump post Brexit shows that individuals are swayed\nnot so much by facts or academic and expert accounts, they cannot be swayed by\nany sort of education initiative. This if anything reinforces the feelings of\nmany of being patronised, misunderstood and does not recognise the reality and\nexperience of their lives. The contemporary distrust of experts and claims of\nexpert knowledge easily translates into a resistance, even aversion, to\npatronising condescending offers of education and betterment. What influences\npeople and recruits them to particular ways of thinking, doing, understanding\nthe world and their place in it are narratives, stories fragmentary or\ncomplete, that chime in with their experience, make sense to them, gives them\nways of understanding their predicaments, disappointments, frustrated hopes. It\nalso offers them a way to feel more positive about themselves, as part of a\ncommunity of suffering and fate, confronting the same predicaments, and perhaps\na hope of personal vindication and happiness. Narrative trumps expert knowledge\nand paternalistic offers of education, especially if these are seen as being\nfoisted by self-important educated liberal metropolitan elite. A different\nworld will not be achieved by teaching everyone to be an anthropologist, an\nhistorian, political scientist of sociologist. It is not just an educational\nproject that will elicit right thinking and right doing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of\nlife consists of being a spectator and reacting to events on the basis of\nhabitual behaviours and internalised routing reactions, sometimes in the guise\nof independent decisions. At the most general level this perspective sees\nsomeone living and reproducing the narrative of their lives. Individuals are\nnot necessarily freed from this determining narrative by turning them into\nscholars, academics or experts. In fact they are already experts in\nunderstanding the realities of their lives and circumstances and coping with\nthem. They are lay experts in the art of living in their world. They make\njudgments, decisions and plans on the basis of their knowledge as organic\nintellectuals (in Gramsci\u2019s sense), adapted to and experts in their lives. What\nthey need, arguably, is a different narrative that entails a different art of\nliving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So the\nanthropological study by itself is not the best approach although it has an\nimportant part to play. Nor is any other formal academic expert account of the\nreality of their lives. This is possibly where literature comes in. The\ndominant narratives that are so influential today can best be countered by\nalternative narratives that also chime in with people\u2019s everyday life. They\nwould have to function the same way as the current narratives, meet the same\nneeds, give people hope, but can only do so if they penetrate everyday life and\nbegin to shape attitudes and behaviours and people\u2019s understanding of the causes\nof their problems. Literature, radio, film, digital media and to some extent\norganised experiences can problematise the dominant narrative, tear away the\nveil of assumed common-sense and inevitability, the naturalness of things, and\nbegin to construct an alternative understanding, an alternative narrative, and\nopen up the possibility of living differently. The critique of everyday life\nbecomes the basis for a counter narrative offering the possibility of a new\nunderstanding and a different way of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apparently there are three types of empathy. In the sociology of everyday life, if we are to understand the motivations for behaviour, the basis of decisions made, be they conscious or habitual, we need to be able to recognise in some nonjudgmental way, the subjective and material experience of the individuals and groups we wish … Continue reading “The role of empathy in the sociology of everyday life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terrywassall.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
https:\/\/blog.heartmanity.com\/the-three-kinds-of-empathy-emotional-cognitive-compassionate<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n