Misery and Company: Sympathy in Everyday Life

Abstract

Candace Clark here seeks to identify the role plays in constructing the social order of American society. She explores the difference it makes for individuals, for relationships and for group solidarity if one person gives or withholds from another. She finds that when we sympathize, we not only express our concern and caring for another, but accrue sympathy credits for ourselves. Claiming, receiving, owing and giving are all subject to an intricate etiquette. The text also tackles a darker, less obvious side of - how we use it to gain power over others in evryday encounters. When points out people's problems or their inability to handle those problems, a show of can humiliate or diminish the recipient. Clark uses a wide variety of data-collection methods that include interviews, surveys and participant observation - intensive eavesdropping - in settings such as hospitals and funeral palours to support her case. Ultimately she constructs a kind of social tour of sympathy, revealing that the emotional experience modern Americans call has a history, a logic and a life of its own.