In their new book, A Passion for Society: How We Think About Human Suffering, Kent sociologist Iain Wilkinson and Harvard University’s Arthur Kleinman document the origins and development of ‘social suffering’ as a public, analytical and critical concern. They chart the potential for problems of social suffering to awaken social consciousness and for this to inspire the pursuit of social understanding out of a commitment to initiate practical healing and progressive social change in people’s lives. Their book can also be read as a further contribution to the development of a ‘care perspective’ in social science. They argue that research and writing on problems of social suffering to necessarily involve a commitment to understanding how the moral imperative to care for others is met, experienced and negotiated under real life conditions; and is thereby either left frustrated or provided with a social space to nurture humanity.
The authors are committed to the project of promoting care as a means to positively transform society and conditions of democracy. They add, however, that they also see this as a fundamental requirement for the invigoration of human-social understanding. They contend that the value of social science should be sought in its involvement in the promotion of real acts of care in society, and further, that it is through the act of caring for others that we stand to grasp how social life is made possible and sustained; and most particularly in terms of what matters for people. They take the provocation of social suffering as a spur towards the alignment of social inquiry with the pedagogy of caregiving.
You can read complimentary reviews of the book and order a copy on University of California Press website.
Dr Iain Wilkinson is Reader in Sociology at the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research.