Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:49:06.536Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A politics of empathy: Encounters with empathy in Israel and Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

NAOMI HEAD
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article starts from the premise that empathy is an inherent part of social and political life but that this is not sufficiently theorised in International Relations (IR). Building on the burgeoning debates on emotions in world politics, it argues that the study of empathy should be developed more rigorously by establishing an interdisciplinary and critical framework for understanding the experiences and processes of empathy in IR. The central contribution of the article is twofold: firstly, it highlights limitations of the dominant perspective on empathy in IR, and secondly, it argues that a range of meanings may be attributed to empathy when examined within the sociopolitical conditions of particular contexts. Drawing on research on the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the article identifies and articulates two such alternative interpretations: empathy as non-violent resistance and as a strategy of normalisation.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 95 - 113
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Thanks must go to the anonymous RIS referees for their discerning and constructive comments. I would also like to thank the Adam Smith Research Foundation at the University of Glasgow and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for the funding that supported the research in Israel and Palestine. My thanks to all interviewees who shared their narratives, thoughts, and experiences with me and to the Kenyon Institute in Jerusalem. Thanks to those who have provided comments on various drafts of this article: Katherine Allison, Marcus Holmes, Cian O’Driscoll, Ty Solomon, David Traven, Nick Wheeler, and participants at HINT sessions and the Sussex Research in Progress seminar.

References

1 Cheyenne Native American proverb.

2 Exceptions include Sylvester, Christine, ‘Empathetic cooperation: a feminist method for IR’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 23 (1994), pp. 315–334CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morrell, Michael, Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking and Deliberation (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Head, Naomi, ‘Transforming conflict: Trust, empathy and dialogue’, International Journal of Peace Studies, 17:2 (2012), pp. 33–55Google Scholar; Cameron, Lynne, ‘A dynamic model of empathy and dyspathy’, Living with Uncertainty Working Paper No. 6 (May 2013)Google Scholar; Picco, Giandomenico and Rifkind, Gabrielle, The Fog of Peace: The Human Face of Conflict Resolution (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014)Google Scholar; Pedwell, Carolyn, Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crawford, Neta C., ‘The passion of world politics: Propositions on emotions and emotional relationships’, International Security, 24:4 (2000), pp. 116–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marlier, Grant and Crawford, Neta C., ‘Incomplete and imperfect institutionalisation of empathy and altruism in the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine’, Global Responsibility to Protect, 5 (2013), pp. 397–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Obama, Senator Barack, ‘Obama Challenges Grads to Cultivate Empathy’, Northwestern University (2006)Google Scholar, available at: {http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2006/06/barack.html} accessed 30 May 2014; President Barack Obama, Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly, (21 September 2011), available at: {http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/21/remarks-president-obama-address-united-nations-general-assembly} accessed 30 May 2014.

4 De Waal, Frans, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (London: Souvenir Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Rifkin, Jeremy, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (London: Penguin, 2009)Google Scholar; Krznaric, Roman, Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution (London: Rider, 2014)Google Scholar.

5 See Pedwell’s critique of empathy in Pedwell, Carolyn, ‘Affect at the margins: Alternative empathies in ‘A Small Place’, Emotion, Space and Society, 8 (2013), pp. 18–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Sasley, Brent E., ‘Theorizing states’ emotions’, International Studies Review, 13 (2011), pp. 452–476CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steele, Brent J., Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar; Hutchison, Emma and Bleiker, Roland, ‘Theorizing emotions in world politics’, International Theory, 6:3 (2014), pp. 491–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mercer, Jonathan, ‘Feeling like a state: Social emotion and identity’, International Theory, 6:3 (2014), pp. 515–535CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Kelman, Herbert, ‘Transforming the relationship between former enemies: a socio-psychological analysis’, in Robert Rothstein (ed.), After the Peace: Resistance and Reconciliation (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 193–205Google Scholar; Picco and Rifkind, The Fog of Peace

8 This builds on critical approaches articulated in the writings of Ahmed, Sara, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Berlant, Lauren (ed.), Compassion: the Culture and Politics of an Emotion (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar; Pedwell, Carolyn, ‘Affective (self-) transformations: Empathy, neoliberalism and international development’, Feminist Theory, 13:2 (2012), pp. 163–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pedwell, ‘Affect at the margins’; Sylvester, ‘Empathetic cooperation’.

9 Berlant, , Compassion, p. 5Google Scholar.

10 While engaging in these debates is beyond the scope of this article, I recognise that the definition of non-violence is contested.

11 This is not to exclude the role of elite rhetoric and leadership or public opinion from the study of empathy. However, given the focus here is on civil society and popular narratives of the conflict, this is beyond the scope of the article.

12 Cox, Robert W., ‘Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond International Relations theory’, in Robert O. Keohane (eds), Neorealism and its critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 208Google Scholar.

13 Ibid.

14 Cameron, ‘A dynamic model’.

15 Doty, Roxanne Lynn, Imperial Encounters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 4Google Scholar.

16 Löwenheim, Oded, ‘The ‘I’ in IR: an autoethnographic account’, Review of International Studies, 36:4 (2010), p. 1025CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Mills, C. Wright, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 6Google Scholar.

18 Pedwell, , ‘Affective (self-) transformations’, p. 175Google Scholar.

19 Sylvester, , ‘Empathetic cooperation’, p. 326Google Scholar.

20 See, for example, Eisenberg, Nancy and Strayer, Janet (eds), Empathy and its Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Batson, C. Daniel and Ahmad, Nadia Y., ‘Using empathy to improve intergroup attitudes and relations’, Social Issues and Policy Review, 3:1 (2009), pp. 141–177CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Moses, Rafael, ‘Empathy and dis-empathy in political conflict’, Political Psychology, 6:1 (1985), p. 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Nussbaum, Martha, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 339Google Scholar; Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature (London: Penguin Books, 2012), p. 692–697Google Scholar; Wilson, Richard Ashby and Brown, Richard D., Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 19Google Scholar.

23 Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. 1 of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982 [orig. pub. 1759]); Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (London: Dent, 1911)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha, Cohen, Joshua (eds), For Love of Country? (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002 [orig. pub. 1996])Google Scholar; Nussbaum, , Upheavals of Thought, pp. 335–337Google Scholar; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discourses on the Origin of Inequality (New York: Dover, 2004 [orig. pub. 1754])Google Scholar; Porter, Elizabeth, ‘Can politics practice compassion?’, Hypatia, 21:4 (2006), pp. 96–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Waal, The Age of Empathy; Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization; Frevert, Ute, Emotions in History: Lost and Found (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krznaric, Empathy; Pinker, , Better Angels, pp. 210–221Google Scholar, p. 711; Reddy, William, ‘Historical research on the self and emotions’, Emotion Review, 1:4 (2009), pp. 307–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Pinker, , Better Angels, p. 573Google Scholar.

25 Linklater, Andrew, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), p. 206Google Scholar; Linklater, , The Problem of Harm in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Pedwell, , ‘Affect at the margins’, p. 19Google Scholar; Pinker, , Better Angels, pp. 711–713Google Scholar.

27 Marlier and Crawford, ‘Incomplete and imperfect institutionalisation of empathy’. Marlier and Crawford acknowledge that empathy, when poorly undertaken, can lead to paternalistic interventions and programmes (pp. 399–400).

28 Linklater, , Transformation, p. 206Google Scholar.

29 Pedwell, , ‘Affective (self-) transformations’, p. 165Google Scholar; Krznaric, , Empathy, pp. 91–92Google Scholar; Author interview with Lucy Nusseibeh, Director of Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy (MEND), 13 May 2014.

30 Author interview with Lucy Nusseibeh.

31 Cited in Sylvester, ‘Empathetic cooperation’, p. 326.

32 Pedwell, , ‘Affect at the margins’, p. 19Google Scholar; Malkki, Liisa, ‘Speechless emissaries: Refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricization’, Cultural Anthropology, 11:3 (1996), pp. 377–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Pedwell, , ‘Affect at the margins’, p. 25Google Scholar.

34 Exceptions include White, Ralph K., Fearful Warriors: A Psychological Profile of U.S. – Soviet Relations (US: Macmillan, 1984)Google Scholar. See Crawford, Neta C., ‘Human nature and world politics: Rethinking “Man”’, International Relations, 23:2 (2009), pp. 271–288CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Booth, Ken and Wheeler, Nicholas J., The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008)Google Scholar.

35 Linklater, Andrew, ‘Anger and world politics: How collective emotions shift over time’, International Theory, 6:3 (2014), pp. 574–578CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Hutchison, and Bleiker, , ‘Theorizing emotions’, p. 498Google Scholar.

37 Hemmings, Clare, Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), p. 199Google Scholar.

38 Lebow, Richard Ned, ‘Reason, emotion and cooperation’, International Politics, 42:3 (2005), p. 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Martin Jay in Honneth, Axel, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, ed. Martin Jay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Hemmings, , Why Stories Matter, p. 201Google Scholar.

41 Author interview with Nava Sonnenschein, Director of Neve Shalom – Wahat al-Salam (School for Peace), 4 May 2014

42 Participant observation, MachsomWatch tour, May 2014. MachsomWatch is a volunteer organisation of Israeli women who oppose the Occupation. They conduct a range of activities including daily monitoring of the checkpoints and tours in the West Bank and Jerusalem area for Israelis and foreigners.

43 Moses, , ‘Empathy and dis-empathy’; Jean Decety (ed.), Empathy: From Bench to Bedside (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

44 Decety, Jean and Ickes, William (eds), The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cameron, ‘A dynamic model’; Krznaric, Empathy.

45 Ross, Andrew A. G., Mixed Emotions: Beyond Fear and Hatred in International Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Jeffrey, Renee, ‘Reason, emotion, and the problem of world poverty: Moral sentiment theory and international ethics’, International Theory, 3:1 (2011), pp. 143–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDermott, Rose, ‘The body doesn’t lie: a somatic approach to the study of emotions in world politics’, International Theory, 6:3 (2014), pp. 557–562CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mercer, Jonathan, ‘Emotional beliefs’, International Organization, 64 (2010), pp. 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Damasio, Antonio, Descartes’ Error (London: Vintage Books, 1994)Google ScholarPubMed.

46 Matthew Waldman, ‘Strategic empathy: the Afghanistan intervention shows why the U.S. must empathize with its adversaries’, Washington, DC: Report for New America Foundation (April 2014).

47 Halpern, Jodi and Weinstein, Harvey M., ‘Rehumanizing the other: Empathy and reconciliation’, Human Rights Quarterly, 26 (2004), pp. 561–583CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Crawford, ‘The passion of world politics’; Mercer, ‘Emotional beliefs’; Head, ‘Transforming conflict’; Morrell, Empathy and Democracy; Jeffrey, ‘Reason, emotion, and the problem of world poverty’; Forum on emotions and world politics, International Theory, 6:3 (2014); Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought.

49 Cameron, ‘A dynamic model’; Head, ‘Transforming conflict’, pp. 39–40.

50 Cameron, , ‘A dynamic model’, pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

51 Adwan, Sami, Bar-On, Daniel, and Naveh, Eyal (eds), Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine (PRIME, New York: New Press, 2012)Google Scholar, p. xiv.

52 Head, ‘Transforming conflict’, pp. 39–41.

53 Ron, Yiftach and Maoz, Ifat, ‘Dangerous stories: Encountering narratives of the other in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 19:3 (2013), p. 292Google Scholar, emphasis added.

54 Author interview with Nava Sonnenschein; expressed similarly in author interview with Zoughbi Zoughbi, Director of the Wi’am Center for Conflict Resolution, 5 May 2014.

55 Butler, Judith, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), p. 5Google Scholar.

56 Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), p. 6Google Scholar.

57 Author interview with Nava Sonnenschein.

58 Bruneau and Saxe have suggested that ‘“perspective-giving” would be well tailored to the needs of members of disempowered and non-dominant groups, whereas “perspective-taking” would be better tailored to the needs of dominant group members’ (p. 856), in Bruneau, Emile G. and Saxe, Rebecca, ‘The power of being heard: the benefits of ‘perspective-giving’ in the context of intergroup conflict’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48:4 (2012), pp. 855–856CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 This was a perspective which a number of Palestinian and Israeli practitioners self-identified with in interviews.

60 Pedwell, ‘Affect at the margins’, p. 19; Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (London: Continuum, 2000 [orig. pub. 1970]).

61 The same applies to Palestinians and Israelis occupying different socioeconomic positions within their societies.

62 Hammack, Philip L., Narratives and the Politics of Identity: The Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 259–260Google Scholar.

63 See ibid.; Siniver, Asaf, ‘Israeli identities and the politics of threat: a constructivist interpretation’, Ethnopolitics, 11:1 (2012), pp. 24–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klug, Tony, ‘Israel/Palestine: Trapped by our own narratives?’, Open Democracy (22 December 2013)Google Scholar.

64 Author interview with Palestinian NGO leader, 5 September 2013.

65 Author interview with Abdelfattah Abusrour, director of Alrowwad, Aida refugee camp, 5 September 2013. While some groups may continue with intergroup dialogue others currently focus on intra-group dialogue. This depends in part on how individual/organisational positions intersect with the narrative of normalisation.

66 Author interview with Bassam Aramin, 4 September 2013; Interview with Lucy Nusseibeh, 13 May 2014.

67 Author interview with Abdelfattah Abusrour.

68 Author interview with Zoughbi Zoughbi.

69 For example, see activities run by Holy Land Trust, MEND, Wi’am Center, Combatants for Peace, CARE, MachsomWatch.

70 Fierke, K. M., Diplomatic Interventions: Conflict and Change in a Globalising World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Fierke, , Diplomatic Interventions, p. 145Google Scholar.

72 Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (London: Tavistock Publications, 1957)Google Scholar.

73 Siniver, , ‘Israeli Identities’, pp. 32–34Google Scholar.

74 See Adwan et al., Side by Side.

75 Butler, Precarious Life, pp. xx–xxi.

76 Examples of this might include: the Israeli organisation Zochrot, the PRIME initiative, and intergroup encounters which address political and historical issues.

77 Interview with Bassam Aramin, Combatants for Peace, 4 September 2013.

78 Adwan et al., Side by Side, p. x.

79 Ibid. p. xiv.

80 Author interview with Professor Eyal Naveh, Tel Aviv University, 20 May 2014; Author interview with Palestinian educator, 2 September 2013.

81 Pedwell, , ‘Affect at the margins’, p. 25Google Scholar.

82 See{www.http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1749} accessed 30 May 2014.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid.

85 Allport, Gordon, The Nature of Prejudice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954)Google Scholar.

86 Nadler, Arie, ‘Intergroup conflict and its reduction: a social-psychological perspective’, in Rabah Halabi (ed.), Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue: The School for Peace Approach (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 23Google Scholar.

87 Michael Zak, Rabah Halabi, and Wafa’a Zriek-Srour, ‘The courage to face a complex reality: Encounters for youth’, in Halabi (ed.), Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, p. 113; Adwan et al., Side by Side, p. xvi; Hélène Pfeil, ‘Understanding the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian grassroots dialogue workshops: the contribution of a Habermasian approach’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society (December 2013); Hammack, Narratives and the Politics of Identity; author interviews with Palestinian and Israeli activists, September 2013, May 2014.

88 Allport recognised the importance of equal status between the parties during contact along with other criteria. This condition has not adequately addressed the broader asymmetrical relations of power which have framed contact encounters in this conflict.

89 Nadler, , ‘Intergroup conflict’, pp. 25–26Google Scholar; Rouhana, Nadim N., ‘Group identity and power asymmetry in reconciliation processes: the Israeli-Palestinain case’, Journal of Peace Psychology, 19:3 (2004), pp. 33–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kuttab, Jonathan and Kaufman, Edy, ‘An exchange on dialogue’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 17:2 (1988), pp. 84–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Nadler, , ‘Intergroup conflict’, p. 26Google Scholar.

91 Hammack, , Narratives and the Politics of Identity, p. 14Google Scholar.

92 Hemmings, , Why Stories matter, p. 204Google Scholar.

93 Ramzi Suleiman, ‘Jewish-Palestinian relations in Israel’, in Halabi (ed.), Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue.

94 Author interview with Abdelfattah Abusrour; author interview with member of East Jerusalem NGO, 6 September 2013. The interviewee’s views were based on prior experience of and participation in dialogue and peacebuilding projects.

95 Bar-Tal, Daniel, ‘The rocky road toward peace: Beliefs on conflict in Israeli textbooks’, Journal of Peace research, 35 (1998), p. 725CrossRefGoogle Scholar; author interview with East Jerusalem NGO, 6 September 2013; author interview with Palestinian educator, 2 September 2013.

96 Author interview with East Jerusalem NGO, 6 September 2013; author interview with Palestinian educator, 2 September 2013.

97 Cited in Suleiman, , ‘Jewish-Palestinian Relations in Israel’, p. 38Google Scholar.

98 Cikara, Mina, Bruneau, Emile G., and Saxe, Rebecca R., ‘Us and them: Intergroup failures of empathy’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20:3 (2011), pp. 149–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruneau and Saxe, ‘The power of being heard’.

99 Pfeil, ‘Understanding the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian grassroots dialogue workshops’, p. 10.

100 Siniver, , ‘Israeli Identities’, p. 38Google Scholar; Bar-Tal, ‘The rocky road’; Sonnenschein, Nava, Bekerman, Zvi, and Horenczyk, Gabriel, ‘Threat and the majority identity’, Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 14:1 (2010), pp. 47–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Bar-Tal, ‘The rocky road’; Hammack, Narratives and the Politics of Identity.