Misery and Company

Candace Clark here seeks to identify the role sympathy plays in constructing the social order of American society. She explores the difference it makes for individuals, for relationships and for group solidarity if one person gives or withholds sympathy from another. She finds that when we sympathize, we not only express our concern and caring for another, but accrue "sympathy credits" for ourselves. Claiming, receiving, owing and giving sympathy are all subject to an intricate etiquette. The text also tackles a darker, less obvious side of sympathy - how we use it to gain power over others in evryday encounters. When sympathy points out people's problems or their inability to handle those problems, a show of sympathy can humiliate or diminish the recipient. Clark uses a wide variety of data-collection methods that include interviews, surveys and participant observation - "intensive eavesdropping" - in settings such as hospitals and funeral palours to support her case. Ultimately she constructs a kind of social tour of sympathy, revealing that the emotional experience modern Americans call sympathy has a history, a logic and a life of its own.