The Problem of ‘Social Suffering’: The Challenge to Social Science

Abstract

This article presents a critical review of contemporary research on ‘social suffering’. It dwells substantially upon the ways in which social researchers account for the problem of bringing the lived reality of suffering to public attention. The author considers the possibility that it is the public failure of writers to provide a sufficient account of suffering that, paradoxically, works to convey an essential part of how this takes place in human experience; namely, as a most painful denial of meaning and a terminal struggle for understanding. Such public failing, it is argued, has a positive value insofar as it has the potential to serve as a force of moral inquiry and political engagement.

Key Words:

• Sociology
• suffering
• pain
• ethnography
• humanitarianism
• consciousness