Empathy is a term one comes across nearly on an everyday basis. It is used by NGOs, businesses, educators and many more. Yet the answer to the question where empathy comes from and which social, cultural and political contexts have promoted, trained, shaped, cultivated and inscribed empathic practices in collective action and institutional behavior remains unclear. The international conference aimed to explore the relationship between empathy, education and society. Focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, the conference wanted to study the intersection of empathy and education in key sites such as the family, educational institutions, professional training, science and social reform as well as political movements.
In her opening talk, CAROLA GROPPE (Hamburg) spoke about the education of children and adolescents in German bourgeois families in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her case study, she analyzed the contemporary letters of four nuclear families and the role of empathy in the children’s early childhood. She found that in all four families, both parents were very much engaged in their children’s emotional education. Among other things, they did so by taking concrete educational action to teach empathy, e.g., by encouraging their children to share. At the same time, they constantly reflected on their own parental educative competence. Even though the descriptions in the letters only depict the educational avantgarde in German middle class of that time, the way in which empathy (even if not directly called so) was considered as an important part of education is remarkable.
Next, EMILY MANKTELOW (London) talked about the role of empathy, affinity and the family in the colonial missionary world of the 19th century. She explained how English Christian missionaries in the Colonies struggled with the education of their children, who often would not comply with their rules and Christian morals. The answer to this problem was the segregation of the children. Along with their education in England came a multitude of missionary literature, which invited the children to compare themselves to the “heathens” in the colonies, consider themselves lucky, and use their fortune to help others. This type of affectivity made sure that the hierarchy between colonizers and colonized was kept. The special education and segregation of children from colonist families showed that white superiority and Britishness were considered as something that was not internal and therefore had to be protected and reinforced.
Also situated in the colonial context, KATHARINA STORNIG’s (Giessen) presentation dealt with Christian associations, voluntarism and the making of charitable children in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1843, the Holy Childhood Association started its program of “rescuing” Chinese children to baptize and raise them in orphanages. Through the concept of children helping children, where Catholic children raised donations for the orphans, both the Chinese as well as the Western European children were bound to the Catholic Church. In the associated publications, European children were invited to pity the children in China and to reflect on their own privileged life. Stornig noted that the membership in the association can be seen as a form of emotional education to “practice” charity work. The associations promoted child agency by convincing children that their actions and selflessness could make a difference. By using such narratives, the associations did not only want to raise funds, but also to socialize and instruct children about their “right” place in a missionizing church and a colonial world.
In her keynote, UTE FREVERT’s (Berlin) approach was to historicize the feeling of empathy and to understand how it was cultivated and sustained. By investigating the term and concept of empathy as well as related terms and concepts such as pity, compassion, sympathy and sensibility, she gave a thorough insight into the history of these emotions in light of the political, social and economic changes in European societies beginning from the late 18th century as well as into their perception and usage in the age of capitalism.
FABIAN KESSL (Wuppertal/Innsbruck) and HOLGER SCHONEVILLE (Hamburg) addressed a topical aspect of empathy by speaking about the “new charity economy” and the role of emotions in the structural transformation of welfare state arrangements. They outlined the emergence and establishment of food banks, soup kitchens, meal projects and social supermarkets since the 1980s/1990s and argued that this new system developed in the “shadow of the welfare state” and can be characterized as a “new charity economy”. Emotions such as empathy play a big role in this concept since it relies heavily on donations and voluntary work and therefore creates a special emotional relationship between those providing support and those receiving it.
The role of empathy in religion education was the main subject in MARIA LUCENTI’s (Hamburg) presentation. In her research, she focused on religious education in England and Wales from the 1970s onwards and found that there was a shift from religion education, which focused mainly on the six big religions, towards worldviews, which aimed at the portrayal of religious diversity. In her analysis of textbooks and school programs, she found that empathy played a big role since it was seen as an effective key to interpreting and decoding the new paradigms of inclusion of all kinds of diversity, not just the religious one.
STELLA MARIA FREI (Giessen) talked about empathy as an instruction in welfare after World War II. She described the situation in the refugee camps in Europe after WWII, where victims of the Shoah had to be taken care of. Welfare workers from all over the world tried to help while facing the difficulties of dealing with people so heavily traumatized. Empathy was therefore of utmost importance for their job. Frei’s presentation showed that, to tackle this difficult job, it soon was encouraged to employ “survivor caregivers”, who themselves had experienced what many of the “displaced persons” had been through. This raised the question of whether there is a limit to empathy, since it seemed like the “survivor caregivers” were able to handle their task more easily than the non-survivors.
SUSAN LANZONI (Boston) addressed the Quaker social activist and educator Rachel Davis Dubois who tried to create empathic connections across cultural and racial barriers in mid-century America from the 1940s onwards. Dubois founded different workshops and festivals, all with the goal of fostering empathy and creating connections between people of different ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. These events established connections through emotional bonding, sharing of childhood memories and conversation. Lanzoni thus provided insight into a movement that fought racism by enhancing empathy and emotional connection through educators.
Starting the panel about empathy and the professions, SARAH CHANEY (London) talked about the role of empathy in British nursing education from 1900 to 1939. During that time, discipline was one of the major tools in British nursing education – much to the discontent of many of its students. Chaney pointed out that this kind of discipline was nonetheless seen as necessary to create the ideal nurse who was polite, dutiful and virtuous. Even though empathy was not a term used back then, the concept of sympathy was crucial for the education of the nurses-to-be. Later on, in the 1920s and 1930s, the discipline approach and views of gendered emotions were challenged by the women’s right movement.
SANDRA SCHNÄDELBACH (Düsseldorf) introduced the field of empathy in legal practice during reform movements around 1900. In Germany at that time, voices demanding a more conscious education of judges, which included the management of emotions, began to rise. The idea of an empathic judge, who was able to reach a thoughtful and considerate verdict, became more popular. Analyzing court reports and press coverage, Schnädelbach showed that the development of empathy – even if not named so – was one of the main educational goals of the so-called Free Law Movement.
ROB BODDICE (Tampere) talked about the politics of commiseration including medical authority, intersubjectivity and the experience of pain. By taking a closer look at the placebo effect, he pointed out that research on the history of this phenomenon has so far been insufficient. He argued for a critical, careful use of the term and concept of empathy, since it is often only vaguely defined and has only reached popularity in the last decades.
JOSEPH BEN PRESTEL (Berlin) presented the Palestine solidarity movement in West Germany and the politics of suffering. He argued that the rapid change by the Left in West Germany from support of Israel to pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist activism was heavily influenced by emotions, evoked by the depictions of Palestinian suffering. Palestinians themselves played a big role in this, for example by translating and distributing pro-Palestinian narratives and media. While rising empathy (and/or solidarity) for Palestinians led to pro-Palestinian activism in West Germany, it also gave rise to violent anti-Zionism that could target Israeli citizens as well as non-Israeli Jews.
RILEY LINEBAUGH (Mainz/Giessen) turned back to colonial matters and talked about the consequences of imperial empathy during the British end of empire. In 1961, the UK Colonial Office ordered their colonial governments in Africa to destroy and remove classified documents that might “embarrass Her Majesty’s Government (HMG)” before Africanization expelled colonial administrators from office. Linebaugh argued that the following mass record destruction and removal at the end of Britain’s colonial empire can be seen as a collective empathy exercise, since servants were asked to think about the threat of embarrassing HMG. This solicitation therefore created the moral ground for the suppression of legal evidence, which hindered human rights interventions to get a complete picture of colonial rule und war crimes until today.
DOLORES MARTÍN MORUNO (Geneva) picked up the conference’s initial starting point and questioned whether the organization Sea-Watch is our contemporary “university of empathy”. In an analysis of both the outward and the self-image of this human rights organization and the activists themselves, she established that most of them prefer to use the concept of solidarity rather than empathy to describe their work. In a critical approach to the concept of empathy, Moruno questioned the ability to actually put oneself in the refugee’s shoes and highlighted the limits of empathy for cultivating civil disobedience in the name of human dignity.
In the concluding discussion, the conference’s organizers observed that the term and concept of empathy had been discussed controversially in all presentations. They noted that – as the term is so widely used – it is necessary to clearly define it in order to provide a valid analytical framework for research. This is even more important when using rather modern terms like empathy for time periods in which the term was either not used at all or only rarely used. Such intricacies are intensified by difficulties in translation, since every language and time period have their very own language of emotion. Yet, to some degree it is necessary to accept that the language of emotions cannot be easily pinned down, is continuously changing and highly subjective. The organizers also noted that empathy is and always has been connected to power hierarchies and influenced by categories such as gender, race and class. At the end, the organizers and participants agreed that the conference showed that some form of empathy has been an important criterion in education throughout time and space, even if used, interpreted and taught very differently.
Conference overview:
Sites of Emotional Education
Carola Groppe (Hamburg): Empathy in Families. The Education of Children and Adolescents in German Bourgeois Families in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Emily Manktelow (London): Affecting Empathy: Empathy and the Family in the Colonial Missionary World
Katharina Stornig (Giessen): Christian Associations, Voluntarism and the Making of Charitable Children in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Keynote
Ute Frevert (Berlin): Historicizing Empathy and Education
Current Perspectives
Fabian Kessl (Wuppertal/Innsbruck) and Holger Schoneville (Hamburg): The New Charity Economy – Emotions in the Structural Transformation of Welfare State Arrangements
Empathy in Educational Institutions and Social Reform
Maria Lucenti (Hamburg): Developing Empathy in Religion Education. From the “Big Six” to Worldviews
Stella Maria Frei (Giessen): To „Help That Great Orphan – Humanity”: Empathy as an Instruction in Welfare after WWII
Susan Lanzoni (Boston): Creating Empathic Connections across Cultural and Racial Barriers in Mid-Century America
Empathy and the Professions
Sarah Chaney (London): “Tyranny on the wards”: Establishing Empathy in British Nursing Education, 1900-1939
Sandra Schnädelbach (Düsseldorf): Empathy as a Tool for Social Change? German Judges and Legal Practice in the Light of Reform Movements around 1900
Rob Boddice (Tampere): The Politics of Commiseration: Medical Authority, Intersubjectivity, and the Experience of Pain
Politics and Establishing Empathy
Joseph Ben Prestel (Berlin): The Palestine Solidarity Movement in West Germany and the Politics of Suffering
Riley Linebaugh (Mainz/Giessen): The Consequences of Imperial Empathy during the British End of Empire
Dolores Martín Moruno (Geneva): Is the organization Sea-Watch our contemporary “University of Empathy”?