ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews of contemporary research and writing on social suffering. It offers a more detailed overview of the range of interests and concerns that characterize the ways in which problems of social suffering are addressed in sociology and anthropology. The chapter argues that the renewed gathering of interest around problems of social suffering is set to make the public value of social science a pressing matter for debate. One of the distinguishing features of social science in the twenty-first century lies in a new-found concern with problems of ‘social suffering’. The incidence of social suffering is understood to expose how society operates to damage people’s human dignity and personhood. ‘Social suffering’ is a concept that originates in the eighteenth century enlightenment of sympathy. The twenty first century interest in social suffering marks a return to traditions of social inquiry that place a high value on the cultivation of potential for ‘fellow feeling’.
