Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics

by Luc Boltanski, Graham D. Burchell

Overview

Images of starving children, bombed villages and mass graves brought to us by television in the comfort of our homes implicitly call on us to act. What can we do when the suffering we see is so distant and we feel powerless compared with the forces behind the suffering? Luc Boltanski examines the ways in which, since the end of the eighteenth century, spectators have tried to respond acceptably to what they have seen, and discusses whether there remains a place for pity in modern politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521573894
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/28/1999
Series:	Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.45(h) x 1.02(d)
Lexile:	1730L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Part I. The Question of the Spectator: 1. The politics of pity; 2. Taking sides; 3. The moral spectator; Part II. The Topics of Suffering: 4. The topic of denunciation; 5. The topic of sentiment; 6. The critique of sentimentalism; 7. The aesthetic topic; 8. Heroes and the accursed; Part III. The Crisis of Pity: 9. What reality has misfortune?; 10. How realistic is action?