Social Suffering

El artículo pone de relieve cómo el sufrimiento social, concebido como manifestación de la opresión social y la injusticia incorporada en el individuo, posee atributos que atraviesan las distintas etapas del retorno migratorio, etapas que se encuentran marcadas por procesos transnacio-nales y multilocales. A tal efecto, el Modelo VIA-compuesto por los ejes analíticos de vulnerabilidad, incertidumbre y asistencia-permite describir, interpretar y analizar el sufrimiento social durante el proceso de retorno desde un análisis multinivel que conecta las percepciones y vivencias de los actores con las desigualdades estructurales. Palabras clave: migración de retorno; integración social; sufrimiento; movilidad social; migrantes; emigración e inmigración.

The purpose of this paper is to expose, and provide a possible solution to, an internal inconsistency in Axel Honneth’s critical theory of recognition. Honneth requires a way of making his claim that misrecognition causes subjective suffering, with the potential to cognitively disclose injustice, consistent with his account of ideological recognition as a form of misrecognition which engenders compliance with an oppressive social order. Only by reconciling these claims – that is, by showing how ideological recognition can engender an acceptance of domination whilst at the same time causing subjective suffering - can Honneth’s theory of recognition retain the kind of critical capacities he desires. As a means of achieving this reconciliation, I propose the notion of ‘invisible suffering’. In the case of ideological recognition, I suggest, the suffering caused by misrecognition has its disclosive power blocked by the faux-affirmation that the ideology discursively accords, and this renders the experience of suffering, qua painful indicator of social injustice, invisible to the subject. Drawing on insights from medical sociology, I show how the need to supplement Honneth’s theory of recognition with the idea of ‘invisible suffering’ is revelatory of the kind of critical theoretical stance demanded by his ontological commitments.

El mercado global farmacéutico ha provocado en la actualidad una actitud distinta frente a la enfermedad. Médicos, enfermeros y terapeutas alópatas son hoy “ofertantes”, mientras sus pacientes se han convertido en “usuarios”, consumidores de bienes y servicios para aliviar su sufrimiento. El tratamiento de la enfermedad mental en el medio hospitalario no escapa de esta lógica mercantil de la biomedicina. A través de un relato etnográfico y de las narrativas de algunos pacientes institucionalizados, el artículo aborda algunas expresiones íntimas de la experiencia de la locura en el marco del capitalismo biomédico en Bogotá, Colombia.

This paper recapitulates two influential JRAI articles to discuss comparison in anthropology. Charles Lindholm's 1995 article criticized the then new, now well-established, trend in Middle East ethnography for its radical emphasis on particularism and lack of theorization, driven by fears of de-humanizing subjects. In turn, Joel Robbins's 2013 article proposed an "anthropology of the good" as a substitute to the particularism of the anthropology of the "suffering subject". This would reinstate the notion of cultural diversity and its comparative vocation as touchstones of contemporary anthropology. Connecting these articles is a discussion of Middle East and Palestine ethnography's major shift in the 1970's to an anthropology of suffering reflected in anthropology at large. The conclusion is that suffering, just as comparison, must be qualified. Thus, qualified comparison must be the foundation to anthropological critiques of Western reason as much as it is to classical cultural critique.

Annak ellenére, hogy a kritikai elméletek célja a társadalmi okokra visszavezethető szenvedés feltárása, annak határállapotai sokáig nem váltak önálló elemzés tárgyává. A társadalmi szenvedés mibenlétének és hatásának jellemzése ugyanis sok szempontból kivezet a társadalomtudományok területéről: olyan tapasztalatokra utal, melyeknek a fizikai fájdalom és a lelki megpróbáltatások egyaránt szerves részét képezik, miközben nyelvi kifejezhetőségük korlátozott.

A szenvedés empirikus formáival azok a terápiás gyakorlatok kerülnek közvetlen kapcsolatba, amik csökkentésükre vagy megszűntetésükre irányulnak. A kritikai elméletek és a pszicho-tudományok közti viszony azonban kölcsönösen távolságtartó: az előbbiek leginkább a társadalmi különbségeket „naturalizáló” hatalmi komplexum részeként tekintenek az utóbbiakra, azok pedig magyarázatukban hajlamosak alábecsülni a társadalmi komponensek jelentőségét.
A könyvben arra teszek kísérletet, hogy e távolságot áthidalva, a kritikai elméletek számára hasznosítsam a mentális zavarok pszicho-tudományokban kidolgozott leírásait. Az olyan tünetegyüttesekre mint a depresszió, generalizált szorongás vagy szerfüggőség a társadalmi szenvedés határállapotaiként tekintek. Ebből kiindulva pedig arra a kérdésre keresek választ, hogy az olyan különböző integrációs logikán alapuló társulások torzulásai mint a mezők (Bourdieu), a kommunikatív cselekvési (Habermas) vagy éppen elismerési hálózatok (Honneth) miként járulhatnak hozzá létrejöttükhöz.

Muitos trabalhos recentes acerca da violência sugerem que, quando se contempla a violência, atinge-se uma espécie de limite da capacidade de representar. Em geral apresentados sob o signo do “horror”, eles nos fazem pensar como seres humanos podem ter sido capazes de atos tão hediondos, em tão grande escala, como em Ruanda ou na ex-Iugoslávia. A violência da Partição da Índia, em 1947, fornece um tropo de horror comparável na historiografia da Índia.

This paper explores the production process behind charity appeals in the context of developing Philippines. INGO appeals have traditionally been studied through textual analyses that expose their use of shock effect techniques and neo-colonial narratives that fail to bridge the “moral distance” between Western donors and “distant sufferers” (Chouliaraki, 2013; Vestergaard, 2009). Here, I develop an ethnographic approach to investigate the interactions between producers and the poor people who are subjects of appeals. I pay attention to producers’ articulations of “good work” and strategies of compliance and resistance as regards local media conventions of representing suffering within a culture of disaster and everyday suffering.

This article identifies that the current literature on ‘distant suffering’ lacks a nuanced account of the relationship between televised representations of suffering and the audiences that encounter these in their everyday lives. Text-centered studies overemphasize how news narratives cause compassion fatigue, while audience-centered studies enumerate audience responses with inadequate references to the textual elements and social factors that shape these responses. While recent theorizations about ‘media witnessing’ have provided a guidepost in thinking about the ethical consequences of showing and seeing suffering in the media, it however obscures the normative from the descriptive, and universalizes the experience of the ‘witness’ it speaks about. To address these gaps and develop a holistic approach to examine televised suffering, the article proposes the use of mediation theory to account for the distinct ethical questions that arise from the specific ‘moments’ of mediation and how they should altogether inform the ethical critique of media.

In Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften wird oft ein Zusammenhang zwischen der gegenwärtigen Gesellschaftsform und psychischen Krankheiten postuliert. Zwar ist es epidemiologisch umstritten, ob diesem als »Burnout« oder »Erschöpfungssyndrom« diskutierten Phänomen ein realer Anstieg psychischer Erkrankungen entspricht. Dennoch kommt im Begriff der Erschöpfung eine Dynamik von Beschleunigungsphänomenen zum Ausdruck, die ihm eine zeitdiagnostische Bedeutung verleiht. Indem sie die Phänomene von Überforderung und psychischer Krankheit aus interdisziplinärer Sicht untersuchen, liefern die Abhandlungen in diesem Band zugleich Beiträge zu einem Psychogramm der heutigen Gesellschaft.

À une époque où le bien-être constitue un enjeu central dans nos différentes sphères de vie, le travail est pourtant régulièrement présenté comme source de stress, de risques psychosociaux voire de burn-out. En prenant appui sur le personnel international humanitaire, aussi appelé « expatrié », de l’organisation « Médecins Sans Frontières » (MSF), cette thèse étudie l’insatisfaction, entendue ici comme l’ensemble des expériences ou des émotions jugées négativement par l’individu.
Sur la base d’une cinquantaine d’entretiens réalisés sur le terrain et d’une observation participante en tant qu’« expatrié » lors de dix missions humanitaires sur quatre continents, cette recherche offre non seulement une vision, de l’intérieur, d’un secteur en mutation (croissance de la proportion d’expatriés issus du Sud, multiplication des critiques internes et externes, étiolement de l’engagement au profit de la professionnalisation), mais elle interroge en même temps les ressorts sociaux du processus émotionnel.
L’insatisfaction, en l’occurrence la « frustration » du personnel international humanitaire, est communément décrite comme un écart entre des attentes et la survenue d’événements. Grâce à l’étude successive des tensions inhérentes au fonctionnement de MSF, des parcours de vie des « expatriés », puis de l’interaction entre ces individus et l’organisation, cette recherche défend la thèse suivante : quel que soit l’écart entre attentes et survenue d’événements, l’insatisfaction ou non d’un individu est d’abord le reflet de sa confiance dans l’entité jugée responsable, c’est-à-dire de sa reconnaissance des légitimités et des rapports de domination en jeu.

Résumé
Menée dans les quartiers les plus défavorisés de la capitale de Zanzibar, cette recherche porte sur le compagnonnage de leurs habitants avec les esprits, ces instances aux multiples visages qui partagent les vies des humains dans lesquelles ils interviennent tantôt comme alliés, tantôt comme adversaires. Plus généralement, l’investigation concerne la manière dont les Zanzibaris font face aux difficultés de la vie quotidienne. À travers des collaborations étroites ou des affrontements dévastateurs, humains et esprits partagent le monde ordinaire dans lequel ils sont aux prises avec les mêmes problèmes. Dès lors, ils sont obligés de cohabiter, au risque de se nuire parfois fatalement. Les modalités de pacification de leurs relations doivent donc être toujours et encore renégociées. C’est un travail au jour le jour : il faut pouvoir se réaccorder dans des environnements où les raisons d’entrer en conflit sont innombrables. Ce travail a lieu au sein d’un complexe rituel appelé « uganga », qui génère une multitude de modes d’action permettant la « montée » des esprits dans les corps humains. Parce qu’il faut bien leur faire une place et leur donner la parole, il faut aussi leur donner corps, et c’est là que la voix de ceux avec qui il va falloir entrer en matière peut se faire entendre. Ce n’est qu’une fois l’esprit installé dans le corps de son hôte (sur sa « chaise ») que des réponses aux difficultés peuvent être trouvées. Au prisme de ce qui se passe dans l’uganga, cette thèse est une étude de la manière dont les femmes et les hommes des quartiers pauvres répondent créativement et collectivement à la vulnérabilité et aux incertitudes inhérentes à la vie ordinaire.
Abstract
This research was conducted in the poorest neighborhoods of the capital city of Zanzibar and deals with the companionship of its inhabitants with spirits, these authorities with multiple faces who share the lives of humans in which they intervene sometimes as allies, sometimes as opponents. The investigation concerns more generally the way in which the Zanzibaris face the difficulties of everyday life. Through tight collaborations or devastating confrontations, humans and spirits share the ordinary world in which they face the same problems. They are forced to cohabit, and sometimes lethally at risk of harming each other. Therefore, the modalities of pacification of their relationships have to be always renegotiated. It is a work of the everyday: one has to be able to attune him/herself to others again and again in neighborhoods where the reasons of being in conflict are numerous. This work is done in the ritual complex called “uganga”, generating multiple modes of action allowing the spirits to “mount” human bodies. Because they are in need of place and speech, one has to lend them a body, the locus where the voice of those whom one needs to be in touch with can be heard. It is only once the spirit has entered the body of its host (sitting on his “chair”) that responses to the difficulties could be found. Through what happens in uganga, this dissertation is a study of the manners in which women and men of poor neighborhoods collectively and creatively deal with the vulnerability and the uncertainties inherent to ordinary life.

This studio/seminar is an arts and art history collaboration, combining theory and praxis by integrating creative work with art theory, criticism and history. Representation of pain and human suffering has always been a vibrant subject of debate in the history of art from the Pergamene sculpture of dying Gauls and snake bitten Laocoön to Edward Munch's Der Schrei der Natur or Otto Dix's War graphics. In the new world order of late capitalism, we are constantly bombarded with visceral images of human suffering: the image of the Syrian refugee boy Alan Kurdi washed ashore on the Turkish coast, ISIS beheadings, scenes of torture in Abu Ghraib prison, the repeated image of the starving African child. The pornographic intensity and numbing effect of violent and painful imagery in the digital age raises serious questions about the ethics and politics of representation: how does one deal with the pain of others and the questions raised by its visualization? How can we understand the permanent depicting of individual hardship and suffering in times of invisible threats to mankind? What does it mean to be alive in the Anthropocene and what can we expect in the future? This seminar will seek creative, collaborative responses and critical debate on the relationship between visuality and pain, suffering, and violence.

How can we ensure that these important voices testifying to the memory of comfort women do not remain solely figments of local history, fixed within a certain time, to be gradually forgotten with each passing generation? In reflecting on this question, this study ventures the possibility of constructing a hermeneutical model that critically engages the memory of comfort women for the sake of all global citizens committed to resisting any types of violence, regardless of racial/ethnic and gendered boundaries. To do this, it proposes a hermeneutical model based on Kuan-Hsing Chen's "Asia as method," which places in conversation the theologies of Johann Baptist Metz and Angela Sims to read the memories of comfort women as dangerous memories that can remember a future of freedom from sexual violence, trauma, and militarism. The final result of the proposed hermeneutical model is to remember the testimonies of comfort women as dangerous memory for the global community, making them part of a global discourse that remembers them into different stories of suffering. Overall, the current project can readily address the implications of the proposed hermeneutical model to make comfort women's stories relevant to the present and future generations locally, nationally, and internationally, not only in terms of resistance to social sins such as sexual violence, but also in terms of fostering a spirit of solidarity with those in need of our support as a form of love.

The rise of global health as a field of study and site of intervention has animated significant critical social science engagements. Of these, medical anthropology has arguably emerged as the ascendant in the field with its growing corpus of writing and advocacy largely animated by the discipline’s ‘suffering slot’. This paper thus applies a geographical critique to anthropology’s moral, humanitarian impulse to give voice to suffering by exploring the spatial consequences of this mode of scholarship. It argues that the suffering slot inevitably leads global health researchers to certain archetypal spaces and that, in turn, these places: (i) are overwhelmingly biomedical; (ii) come to function as ‘truth spots’ in the production and circulation of global health knowledge and (iii) perpetuate a global health riddled with ‘ignorance spots’. Given this, the paper asks what happens if we look beyond suffering to consider the hidden geographies of global health that might then be revealed. It argues that in order to develop a richer topography of global health knowledge and critique, we must also consider those spaces where pleasure and suffering intersect in ways that challenge the humanitarian impulse and crisis-led readings of health. These other archetypal spaces of global health – gyms, bars, supermarkets and more – are not flippant distractions from the grave reality of human suffering, but rather spaces that condition the genesis of suffering and where affliction is put aside in favour of pleasure. In arguing that we need to be far more attuned to the non-medical spaces where global health is produced, experienced and challenged, the paper also articulates how geography might productively meet anthropology in critical studies of global health.

En esta investigación, analizo las retóricas y las prácticas del exceso y la moderación en el proceso de patologización de la adicción —un fenómeno que, en antropología, suele atribuirse a la medicalización/psicologización de la vida social, propias de la modernidad temprana y tardía—. Defino la adicción como sufrimiento social y propongo una indagación de mayor hondura cronológica para identificar las fuerzas histórico-culturales del fenómeno, que han servido como condiciones de posibilidad en su tránsito a convertirse en enfermedad y, simultáneamente, en pathos que demanda ser curado.
Para lograr este objetivo, opté por una perspectiva multisituada, tanto a escala espacio-temporal como en mi interacción con diversos sujetos y fuentes. En primera instancia, me valí de una extensa revisión crítica de fuentes secundarias, que me condujo a la reconstrucción genealógica e histórica de tres dominios conceptuales: el melodrama como retórica del exceso, la imaginería en torno a hýbris vs. sôphrosynê, y la emergencia de la adicción como patología moderna. En segundo lugar, elegí el recurso a la etnografía como método de aproximación a la escena contemporánea de la adicción: adelanté el trabajo de campo en un centro privado de tratamiento de adicciones y en diversos grupos de apoyo del Programa de Doce Pasos en Bogotá, Colombia; así mismo, realicé entrevistas a usuarios y terapeutas y analicé documentos oficiales, literatura de autoayuda y algunos espacios virtuales.

"Researchers have tried to determine and verify the effects of violent conflicts on the men- tal health of those affected by focusing on war trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other trauma-related disorders. This, in turn, led to the development of differ- ent kinds of theories and aid programs that aim at preventing and treating the conse- quences of violence and mental health. Until now, there is no agreement on the public health value of the concept of PTSD and no agreement on the appropriate type of men- tal-health care. Instead, psychiatrists have engaged in sometimes fierce discussions over the universality of war trauma, PTSD, and other trauma-related disorders. The two most polar positions are those who try to validate PTSD as a universal and cross-culturally valid psychopathological response to traumatic distress which may be cured or ameliorated with (Western) clinical and psychosocial therapeutic measures, and those who argue that the Western discourse on trauma only makes sense in the context of a particular cultural and moral framework and, therefore, becomes problematic in the context of other cultural and social settings. Although these positions seem mutually exclusive, their debates have led to the development of less radical approaches toward war-trauma and PTSD.
The purpose of this literature review is to analyse the discourses on and debates over war- trauma and PTSD in the psychiatric literature in order to establish a better understanding for the diverse conceptualizations, interpretations and proposed healing strategies. More- over, I discuss the cultural construction and conceptualization of war-trauma and PTSD from an anthropological perspective and show how anthropologists contribute to psychi- atric debates so as to ensure more sophisticated diagnoses and healing strategies in cultur- ally diverse contexts."

Esta tese reconstrói a obra de Axel Honneth desde os estudos preparatórios para a teoria da luta por reconhecimento até os desenvolvimentos mais recentes, vinculados à ideia de liberdade social. A partir da análise das insuficiências teóricas do modelo crítico do reconhecimento, examina-se a possibilidade de encontrar, na própria lógica interna da teoria honnethiana, elementos que contribuam para superá-las. Tendo como referência sua perspectiva acerca dos potenciais de resistência frente a experiências de injustiça vivenciadas pelos atores sociais como sofrimento, são identificadas e discutidas três fases no pensamento do autor. 1) Modelo crítico do reconhecimento: nas décadas de 1980 e 1990, Honneth recorre à ideia de interesse emancipatório, segundo a qual o bloqueio da autorrealização causa nos atores sociais concernidos algum tipo de mal-estar que, por sua vez, guarda potenciais motivacionais para a resistência à dominação e a luta pela libertação do sofrimento. A experiência de injustiça representa, assim, uma oportunidade para os atores sociais articularem de modo reflexivo as expectativas normativas que conformam o seu repertório moral. 2) Fase de transição: durante os anos 2000, apresenta-se nos escritos de Honneth um bloqueio sistemático na conexão motivacional entre sofrimento e resistência. Nesse contexto, apesar de a ideia de sofrimento permanecer central, seu potencial de impulsionar uma resistência ativa nos atores concernidos sai de cena como consequência de um diagnóstico de época mais sofisticado, que identifica patologias sociais justamente na erosão do aspecto motivacional da experiência de sofrimento. 3) Modelo crítico da liberdade social: a partir da década de 2010, a ausência na obra do autor de análises sobre a possibilidade de resistência à dominação social pode ser atribuída à adoção de um modelo teórico de tendência sistêmica. Com o foco não mais nas experiências de desrespeito nem nas patologias sociais, mas nas chamadas anomalias sociais – entendidas como desequilíbrios funcionais na reprodução social –, Honneth deixa em segundo plano precisamente seu impulso teórico inicial: a busca por superar, no pensamento crítico, as abordagens funcionalistas que impediam que se revelasse, no âmbito da própria vida social, um potencial latente de resistência. Honneth abandona o vínculo fundamental, anteriormente defendido, entre desrespeito, sofrimento e disposição para a resistência. Tal ruptura não é fruto de um diagnóstico de tempo, como no caso das patologias sociais, mas de uma reorientação teórica em direção à perspectiva do observador, em detrimento da do participante, minando com isso o poder explicativo e normativo da ideia de interesse emancipatório. Todavia, uma noção ampliada de reconstrução normativa com foco na negatividade latente da realidade social (desenvolvida a partir da própria obra de Honneth, mas indo além de suas formulações mais recentes) pode assumir um caráter emancipatório – não porque de algum modo desfaz o dano causado pelo sofrimento, mas antes porque contribui para o trabalho reflexivo, distorcido por fenômenos patológicos, de articulação social do sofrimento individualmente experienciado. É, assim, na interação concreta entre as perspectivas do observador e do participante, mediada pela colaboração entre filosofia, teoria social e pesquisas empíricas, que uma teoria crítica reconstrutiva pode fazer justiça às suas intenções práticas.

Dans les sociétés occidentales modernes, les personnes exclues du logement de droit commun sont très minoritaires mais leur nombre a augmenté ces dernières années. Elles se retrouvent dans diverses situations d’habitat : hébergements chez des particuliers, dans des institutions, des hôtels à leurs frais, des squats, d’autres habitats de fortune ou encore sans abri. Cette dernière situation suscite beaucoup d’interrogations : comment se fait-il que des personnes ne recourent pas aux hébergements sociaux et dorment à la rue ? Une raison parfois avancée dans le monde politique ou le grand public est le « choix personnel ». D’autres parlent de cas psychiatriques. Deux autres causes souvent avancées sont le manque de places disponibles, et l’effet de dissuasion lié à de nombreux refus par manque de place ou aux conditions d’hébergement jugées indignes dans certains centres d’urgence. Comment faire la part entre ces diverses explications ? Et ne peut-on pas en envisager d’autres ?
Cette étude apporte un éclairage quelque peu différent sur cette question. Elle s’intéresse principalement aux personnes en situation de non-recours durable (au moins plusieurs mois), et notamment à celles qui ne demandent plus d’hébergement, voire refusent les places qui leur sont proposées. Elle mobilise à la fois des techniques statistiques, par l’exploitation des données issues de l’enquête HYTPEAC (2011), et des techniques de recherche qualitative, permettant d’accéder directement aux personnes concernées.
Cette étude apporte deux résultats principaux. Le premier souligne que toutes les personnes sans domicile n’ont pas les mêmes probabilités de recours aux hébergements sociaux, et conduit à interroger les pratiques de priorisation à l’œuvre dans le système de prise en charge. Le second résultat, qui concerne spécifiquement les personnes sans abri sédentarisées depuis au moins plusieurs mois, voire années, explique les refus de places pourtant disponibles par la difficulté rencontrée par ces personnes pour casser les relations signifiantes qu’elles ont nouées dans un environnement qui les expose pourtant à une dégradation de leur état de santé et à des violences.
Ces deux résultats invitent à reconsidérer ce qui est appelé « la grande exclusion » à l’aune de sa dimension collective. Plutôt que d'expliquer le sans-abrisme de longue durée par des choix individuels, et d'en déduire que le mieux est de ne pas intervenir, le regard sociologique sur ces situations limites apporte de nouvelles perspectives et ouvre une réflexion sur la création d'un "droit à habiter".

Bringing together contributions from anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and philosophy, along with ethnographic case studies from diverse settings, this volume explores how different disciplinary perspectives on the good might engage with and enrich each other. The chapters examine how people realize the good in social life, exploring how ethics and values relate to forms of suffering, power and inequality, and, in doing so, demonstrate how focusing on the good enhances social theory. This is the first interdisciplinary engagement with what it means to study the good as a fundamental aspect of social life.

COLLECTIVELY, WE/YOU MAKE IT ALL – INCLUDING THE SATANIC CABAL.

THAT’S IT.  WAKE UP!!!  TAKE FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY – ACCEPTING THINGS INSIDE IS YOUR GREATEST “I AM” POWER BECAUSE INSIDE YOU HAVE FULL CONTROL.

EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS YOU.  IMAGINEERED BY YOU AND YOUR TRIBE.  PERIOD.

Trauma is often seen as an event that blocks the victim's expressive capacities. It leaves people speechless, manifesting itself in various symptoms and post-traumatic disorders. Yet, it also generates a stream of narratives-textual, visual, or oral.

This course explores this dual nature of trauma: trauma as a tool of repression and silencing, and trauma as a prerequisite for a "talking cure." We will see how traumatic events are worked through storytelling-by creating narratives of loss, suffering, and displacement.

The course combines two types of texts: 1) key theoretical works on trauma, witnessing, and testimony, and 2) artistic representation of trauma, loss, and grief. Throughout the semester, we will be building close connections between these two types of traumatic representations.

United Methodist pastors often serve under attacks from bullying congregations that affect their health, performance, and confidence in their calling. It is important to explore the phenomenon of pastor bullying in comparison with and in contrast to workplace bullying by examining sociological and scientific findings. This thesis seeks to determine the cause of bullying behavior by examining Walter Wink’s theology of evil, the theology of systemic sin, and to explore the dynamic between ecclesiology, personal responsibility, and collective leadership. Further, the author will examine Fr. Richard Rohr’s spirituality of the second half of life and Barbara Brown Taylor’s alternative to full solar spirituality to help United Methodist pastors heal and forgive.
The sin of pastor bullying is systemic. Therefore, United Methodist pastors are encouraged and make a personal commitment to working collectively with laity on changing the mindsets from “I” to “WE,” helping congregations grieve individually and as a community. Thus, both pastor and congregation could confess any known sins that were committed individually and collectively to be able to begin growing in personal and social holiness through practicing Wesley’s Do No Harm principle through love and forgiveness.

This article explores the concept of 'social suffering' and how it has been adopted within contemporary sociology as a means to profile the harms done to people in situations of adversity. A focus is brought Pierre Bourdieu's account of this matter in the interviews and essays published in English as The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (1999). Analytical attention is brought to how Bourdieu sought to combine a protest against what suffering does to people with a further protest against the failure of sociology to provide an adequate address to this in human terms. It is argued that The Weight of the World bears testimony to the great burden of contradictions that Bourdieu invested in his sociology and to how this was set to collapse in a fit protest; both against society and his attempts to frame this with sociological understanding.

L iterary practice relates not only to the aesthetic and ideological themes of literature, but also to the production and management of emotional states that have ritual or political consequences in lived experience. One thinks of the way in which certain kinds of nationalist or Zionist literature-Bialik's poem "The City of Slaughter" is a good example-worked to promote and legitimize politically actionable sentiments like outrage against gentile violence, while also marginalizing traditional ritual ("quietistic") expressions of grief and lamentation. 1 One also thinks of the ways in which nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury autobiographers in both Jewish and non-Jewish contexts struggled to articulate new relationships between gender, emotion, and modern individualism. 2 Because of their explicit interest in shaping the way people perceive and respond to the world (and their constant reinforcement through ritual), Jewish mystical texts provide one of the most powerful examples of how literature helps to shape and manage distinctive forms of human subjectivity. My article analyzes an early

In recent years an extensive social gradient in cancer outcome has attracted much attention, with late diagnosis proposed as one important reason for this. Whereas earlier research has investigated health care seeking among cancer patients, these social differences may be better understood by looking at health care seeking practices among people who are not diagnosed with cancer. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among two different social classes in Denmark, our aim in this article is to explore the relevance of class to health care seeking practices and illness concerns. In the higher middle class, we predominantly encountered health care seeking resembling notions of health consumerism, practices sanctioned and encouraged by the health care system. However, among people in the lower working class, health care seeking was often shaped by the inseparability of physical, political, and social dimensions of discomfort, making these practices difficult for the health care system to accommodate.

O conceito de sofrimento social emergiu nas últimas décadas como um novo paradigma das ciências sociais e como lente particularmente apropriada para olhar as relações profundas entre a experiência subjetiva do mal-estar e os pro-cessos históricos e sociais mais amplos. O presente artigo, e os contributos aqui reunidos, pretendem abordar o sofrimento social sob três pontos de vista que consideramos fundamentais: 1) a forma paradoxal como é retirado ou atribu-ído o poder às pessoas; 2) a apropriação, por parte das instituições que criam as condições para que o sofrimento tenha lugar, das teorias " salvíficas " sobre a utilidade do sofrimento com vista a um bem-estar maior e futuro da huma-nidade; 3) a evidência de quanto a assistência, os cuidados, o Estado-social, a proteção humanitária e até os direitos, podem ser manipulados e imbricados na definição e organização das modalidades de pertença ou exclusão nacional, até ao extremo da redução do indivíduo à sua " vida nua " .

This review traces anthropological studies of humanitarianism starting in the late 1980s, when humanitarianism began to take shape as a particular moral and political project through the formation of transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It follows both the evolving relationship of anthropologists to humanitarianism-initially as allies, then as critics, alternately embracing and challenging their conjoined humanist legacy-and the growing field of the anthropology of humanitarianism.

RESUMO A teoria crítica adorniana é seguidamente acusada de possuir um déficit normativo, isto é, de não conseguir prestar contas acerca dos critérios que utiliza para criticar a sociedade. O presente artigo busca mostrar, sobretudo por meio da análise da obra Dialética negativa, como Adorno justifica as suas críticas. Para tanto, é necessário investigar a ideia de crítica imanente, diferenciando seu uso instrumental e não instrumental, e seu uso negativo e positivo. Defende-se assim que Adorno faz um uso puramente instrumental da crítica imanente positiva (a crítica da ideologia), ao mesmo tempo em que recorre, em última instância, a uma crítica imanente negativa, a qual pode ser identificada, em sua obra, com a crítica do sofrimento social. Palavras-chave: Theodor W. Adorno. Teoria crítica. Dialética negativa. Crítica imanente. Sofrimento social. ABSTRACT Adorno's critical theory is often accused of having a normative deficit, that is, it can not give an account about the criteria that it uses to criticize society. This paper aims to show, mainly by analyzing the work Negative Dialectics, as Adorno justifies his criticism. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the idea of immanent critique and differentiate their instrumental and non-instrumental use, as well as its negative and positive use. I argue that Adorno does a purely instrumental use of positive immanent critique (a critique of ideology), while making use, ultimately, a negative immanent critique, which can be identified in his work with the critical of social suffering.

In this seminar, we explore children and youth as figures who can guide us into elusive dimensions of experience and knowledge. Moving beyond liberal preconceptions of childhood, we will consider children/youth as beings with access to experiential realms that adults may not be able to readily see or predict. We will explore how children and youth access invisible worlds, within a range of situations and settings including social realities of violence and suffering, across institutions, politics, and the state, and amid contemporary crises. Aside from visiting ethnographies that focus on the experiences of children and youth, the course assumes that the “child voice” is a region of voice in all of us.

The seminar will begin by exploring how children orient themselves to the human and nonhuman. How do children guide us into new worlds and into an unexpected sense of the living and animate? The second part of the seminar considers how youth are recruited into projects of war, violence, and labour. What does the plasticity of childhood or youthfulness offer to militias, insurgencies, and to state projects of violence? How do young people act through relations in which care is enmeshed with violence? In the third quarter, the seminar considers the forms of knowledge that children/youth offer to institutions such as law and medicine. Instead of replicating liberal divides between children, sexuality, and violence, this module asks how children’s intimate experiences of events are taken up or re-worked by institutional knowledge practices. Final sessions will cover questions of childhood and futurity especially in the age of global crisis.

""In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like 'culture,' which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of 'experience' has generated its own interpretive literature, competing schools of analysis, and internal resistances. We propose that the anthropology of experience has achieved a degree of recognition and maturity that renders genealogical reflection, stocktaking, and agenda setting both possible and necessary.
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for naıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls 'the inclusive integrity of "experience."’ This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions." [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]""

Radical democrats highlight dramatic moments of political action that disrupt everyday habits of perception, which sustain unequal social relations. In doing so, however, we sometimes neglect how social conditions, such as precarious employment, social dislocation and everyday exposure to violence, might undermine political agency or be contested in uneventful ways. Despite their differences, two thinkers who have significantly influenced radical democratic theory (Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière) have been similarly criticised for contributing to such a socially weightless picture of politics. However, attending to how they are preoccupied by the social conditions of inequality and loneliness enables us to recognize two distinct aspects of democratic politics: emancipation and civility. Cultivating an interpretive flexibility to shift between these aspects of politics might enable radical democrats to more clearly picture how struggles for appearances are limited and shaped by the social conditions within which they are enacted.