Relating to Distant Suffering: Meanings of Public Talk and Action in the Contemporary US Anti-Trafficking Movement

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Omeltchenko
Keyword(s):  
Distant Suffering

scholarly journals Giving Aid Inside the Home

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Christin Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Support Networks ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Syrian Refugees ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Distant Suffering ◽  
Set Up

Through a hospitality lens, the article looks at an Evangelical grassroots organization’s practice of house visits to Syrian refugees in Mafraq, Jordan. It begins by situating the hosting practices of European volunteers in the context of Mafraq’s multi-layered NGO environment and within the emerging literature on the role of transnational support networks in faith-based humanitarianism. A review of philosophical and anthropological literatures reveals how power dynamics and bordering practices shape the hospitality encounter. Its function as a scale-shifter between the local and the national makes “hospitality” well-suited for the study of displacement. Subsequent parts of the article explore volunteers’ acts of infringement on Syrians’ hospitality code that allow them to “contain” refugees’ demands for aid. The final section revisits Boltanski’s theory of a “politics of pity” in communicating distant suffering. The set-up of house visits forces refugees to perform “suffering” which provides the raw material for volunteers’ moving testimonies back home.

Deservingness and political preference in opinions on distant suffering

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-473
Author(s):  
Thomas Olesen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
Political Preference ◽  
State Research ◽  
Distant Suffering ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
The Right

This article argues that opinions on distant suffering must be understood via three variables: recipients of aid and sympathy; cause of suffering; and providers of aid and sympathy. These insights are present in the literature but have not to date been combined. One advantage of such a combination is that it allows us to explore the extent to which providers of aid and sympathy employ deservingness criteria in their opinion formation. Theoretically, the article thus opens a dialogue between the distant issue literature and theories of deservingness in welfare state research. Methodologically, it builds on an original survey of 2003 Danish respondents. The article’s main ambition is to probe (1) the relationships between political preference and opinions on distant suffering; (2) the extent to which Danes engage in deservingness calculations when they relate to it; and (3) whether deservingness calculations are patterned along political preference. The data show that political preference predicts opinions and that deservingness calculations are indeed prevalent. Yet they also demonstrate that these differences should be interpreted against the background of a high aggregate level of support for distant issue engagement. The effect of political preference is most pronounced at the outer poles of the political spectrum, and less so at the centre. And while deservingness logics are most prevalent on the right, the pattern is moderate and non-consistent.

360° Video Journalism: Experimental Study on the Effect of Immersion on News Experience and Distant Suffering

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (14) ◽  
pp. 2053-2076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Van Damme ◽  
Anissa All ◽  
Lieven De Marez ◽  
Sarah Van Leuven
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Distant Suffering ◽  
Video Journalism

The problem of different post-colonial spatial contexts in television news about distant wartime suffering

2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (6-8) ◽  
pp. 644-663
Author(s):  
Pavel Doboš
Keyword(s):  
Television News ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Imaginative Geographies ◽  
Distant Suffering ◽  
Context Shapes ◽  
Point Of Departure

The point of departure of the article is distant suffering studies. The article tries to supplement them by theses from post-colonial and critical spatial theories that were elaborated in post-colonial geography. Through post-colonial imaginative geographies, the spatial context shapes Western television performances of wartime suffering. This is demonstrated by empirical examples of mediation of wars in Mali, Palestine and Syria, from the news of Czech Television. In the Malian case, the space is homogenized as a violent African space, where suffering is moral. In the Palestinian case, the space is divided into rational Israeli and barbaric Palestinian space, where Palestinians’ suffering is neglected, if Israel stays evidently rational. In the Syrian case, the suffering is accented, however, only if Syrians seem to want to de-Orientalize themselves. These cases demonstrate that there is always a need to be spatially sensitive in respect to mediated distant suffering from post-colonial regions.

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