Pedwell, Carolyn (2012) Economies of empathy: Obama, neoliberalism, and social justice. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30 (2). pp. 280-297. ISSN 0263-7758. (doi:10.1068/d22710) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:42862)
The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided. | |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/d22710 |
Abstract
This paper asks how we might theorise the politics of empathy in a context in which visions of social justice premised on empathetic engagement need to be situated within prevailing neoliberal frameworks. Through reading the ambivalent grammar of President Obama’s emotional rhetoric, I examine how it resonates in different ways both with feminist and antiracist debates about empathy and social justice and with the neoliberal discourse of the ‘empathy economy’ expressed within popular business literatures. I argue that, in framing empathy as a competency to be developed by individuals alongside imperatives to become more risk-taking and self-enterprising, Obama’s rhetoric reveals its centrist neoliberal underpinnings and risks (re)producing social and geopolitical exclusions and hierarchies. Yet, I suggest that seeing the phenomenon of ‘Obama-mania’ as produced not only within discourses of neoliberal governmentality but also through more radical intersections of empathy, hope, and imagination illustrates how empathy might be conceptualised as an affective portal to different spaces and times of social justice
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
DOI/Identification number: | 10.1068/d22710 |
Uncontrolled keywords: | affect, empathy, hope, imagination, neoliberalism, Obama, social justice |
Subjects: |
H Social Sciences H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform |
Divisions: | Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research |
Depositing User: | Carolyn Pedwell |
Date Deposited: | 09 Sep 2014 14:31 UTC |
Last Modified: | 05 Nov 2024 10:27 UTC |
Resource URI: | https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/42862 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes) |
- Export to:
- RefWorks
- EPrints3 XML
- BibTeX
- CSV
- Depositors only (login required):