Exploring the role of empathy in a variety of Pacific societies, this book is at the forefront of the latest anthropological research on empathy. It presents distinct articulations of many assumptions of contemporary philosophical, neurobiological, and social scientific treatments of the topic. The variations described in this book do not necessarily preclude the possibility of shared existential, biological, and social influences that give empathy a distinctly human cast, but they do provide an important ethnographic lens through which to examine the possibilities and limits of empathy in any given community of practice.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Douglas W. Hollanand C. Jason Throop
Part I: History and Fieldwork as Lenses on Empathy
Chapter 1. Empathy, Ethnicity, and the Self among the Banabans in Fiji
Elfriede Hermann
Chapter 2. The Boundaries of Personhood, the Problem of Empathy, and “the Native’s Point of View” in the Outer Islands
Maria Lepowsky
Part II: Universal and Particular Aspects of Empathy
Chapter 3. Empathy and “As-If” Attachment in Samoa
Jeannette Mageo
Chapter 4. Empathic Perception and Imagination Among the Asabano: Lessons for Anthropology
Roger Lohmann
Part III: Personhood, Morality, and Empathy
Chapter 5. Suffering, Empathy, and Ethical Subjectivity in Yap (Waqab), Federated States of Micronesia
C. Jason Throop
Chapter 6. Do Anutans Empathize?: Morality, Compassion, and Opacity of Other Minds
Richard Feinberg
Chapter 7. Bosmun Foodways: Emotional Reasoning in a PNG Life-World
Anita von Poser
Part IV: Vicissitudes of Empathy
Chapter 8. Vicissitudes of “Empathy” in a Rural Toraja Village
Douglas W. Hollan
Afterword
Alan Rumsey
Bibliography
Index
About the author
C. Jason Throop is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork on pain, suffering, and morality on the island of Yap in the Western Caroline Islands of Micronesia.
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