The Problem of Suffering and the Sociological Task of Theodicy

This article explores the concept of 'social suffering' and how it has been adopted within contemporary sociology as a means to profile the harms done to people in situations of adversity. A focus is brought Pierre Bourdieu's account of this matter in the interviews and essays published in English as The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (1999). Analytical attention is brought to how Bourdieu sought to combine a protest against what suffering does to people with a further protest against the failure of sociology to provide an adequate address to this in human terms. It is argued that The Weight of the World bears testimony to the great burden of contradictions that Bourdieu invested in his sociology and to how this was set to collapse in a fit protest; both against society and his attempts to frame this with sociological understanding.

Dois Pontos, 2022

In this paper, I defend that the concept of systemic suffering represents a useful tool for social criticism. I first make some preliminary methodological remarks (1) and present different meanings that have been attributed to the concept of social suffering (2). I then suggest that we adopt the concept of systemic suffering instead (3). The next step consists in showing how this form of suffering is connected to the existence of non-material aspects that contribute to social reproduction and that can be defined as systemic doctrines (4). Finally, I offer some remarks on possible strategies for criticizing systemic suffering (5).

This essay proposes a critical investigation of the notion of suffering as a premise and warning for the Social and Political domains. Drawing from the writings of the contemporary French philosophers Levinas, Marion, Ricœur and Blanchot, comprising a corpus I refer to as “The Ethics of Suffering”, it treats this issue in four stages of analysis: terminological, phenomenological, ethical and political. The phenomenological analysis first reveals the tension resulting from the double nature of “Suffering”, defined both as a feeling and a long lasting condition. This duality leads then to question our social ability to simply apply suffering based on the fact that it is widespread and known to all, showing that the lack of a permanent substance or single essence causes its political prevention or propagation to remain totally arbitrary. On this account, the positive outcome of the ethical and phenomenological investigations consists in offering a standard ground for bridging between individual and social suffering while sustaining the tension coming from its dual nature. At the same time, their definition of suffering as a basis for solidarity (suffering is always ‘suffering with the others’) while insisting on the solitary mode of torment reveals a problematic double bind. Taking up the work of Adi Ophir on the evil, the essay goes as far as showing how this double bind affects the political thought and action, when exposing its rather limited power of manipulating the human threshold and using suffering as a political instrument. The paper thus seeks to contribute to the social and political discussion by examining our ability to regulate our conduct in the public and the political spheres through the understanding of suffering and by examining whether we can actually protect ourselves and cope with the danger of controlling individuals through the control of their suffering.

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1996

organize suffering into categories to help cope with it, but often these categories themselves conceal some forms of suffering, even contribute to them. This latter experience leads some to suspect that suffering is never entirely reducible to any determinate set of categories. To suffer is to bear, endure or undergo, to submit to something injurious, to become disoraanized. Suffering subsists on the underside of agency, mastery, wholeness, joy, and comfort. It is, therefore, ubiquitous. But there I go.., moving from the agony of suffering to a comforting reflection on it. Appropriating suffering to a reading of the human condition. For severe suffering exceeds every interpretation of it while persistently demanding interpretation. Without suffering, it is unlikely we would have much depth in our philosophies and religions. But with it, life is tough.., and miserable for many. Does the poly-cultural character of suffering reveal something about the human condition? And.how contestable and 3 culturally specific are the medical, psychological, religious, ethical, therapeutic, sociostructural, economic and political categories through which suffering is acknowledged and administered today? Is "sufferingn a porous universal, whose persistence as a cultural term reveals how conceptually discrete injuries, wounds, and agonies are experientially fungible, crossing and confounding the fragile boundaries we construct between them? Or is it a barren generality, seducing theorists into metaphysical explorations far removed from specific injuries in need of medical or moral or religious or political or therapeutic or military attention? Any response to this question draws upon one or more of the theoretical paradigms already noted. A political theorist might focus on power struggles between disparate professionals over the legitimate definition and treatment of suffering. An evangelist might minister instances that fit the Christian model. And a physician might medicate theorists and spiritualists burned out by the projects these faiths commend. Is the bottom line, then, that today people go to the doctor when they really need help? Perhaps. But they might pray after getting the treatment. Or file a malpractice suit. Or join a political movement to redesign the health care system. Sufferers are full of surprises. Among fieid contenders for primacy in the domain of suffering, ethical theory has pretty much dropped out of the running. The reason is clear, even if astonishing. Contemporary professional paradigms of ethics, represented fairly well by John

International Social Science Journal, 1997

How to render suffering meaningful remains a formidable task for social anthropology and sociology. This stems in part from the fact that a society must, to some extent, hide from itself how much suffering is imposed upon individ-uals as a price of belonging; and the social ...

Following the seminal publications of The Weight of the World (1999) by Pierre Bourdieu and colleagues along with the edited collection of essays published under the title of Social Suffering , the concept of "social suffering" has acquired currency in contemporary social science as a means to refer us to lived experiences of pain, damage, injury, deprivation and loss. With reference to social suffering researchers aim to draw critical attention to how subjective components of distress are rooted in social situations and conditioned by cultural circumstance. Here a focus is brought to the social processes and cultural conditions that both constitute and moderate the experience of suffering. It is held that social worlds comprise the embodied experience of pain and that there are often occasions where individual experiences of suffering are also manifestations of social structural violence and political oppression. By recording cultural idioms of distress, researchers aim to unmask the human social condition in contexts of extreme adversity.

Contemporary Sociology, 2017