New Anthropological Approaches to Empathy: The Case of the Research by Douglas Hollan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21301/eap.v20i3.9Keywords:
empathy, basic and complex empathy, understanding, anthropology, Douglas HollanAbstract
After a period of general indifference of anthropologists towards empathy as a research topic, by the beginning of the new century an incentive has arisen for the systematic disciplinary study of this phenomenon, resulting in a number of works, as well as the need to offer an overview, as a continuation of previous research (Ilić 2019). A consensus cannot be identified in anthropological research – contemporary, as well as older – concerning the meaning of the term empathy, nor the approach applied in its study. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to offer a general, albeit short and incomplete insight into the recent research into empathy (whose results are published in English), focusing upon the conceptual and theoretical determinants. The work of the American psychological anthropologist Douglas Hollan is in focus, with the intention to elucidate some of his theoretical propositions following earlier anthropological approaches to emotions and empathy – universalistic and relativistic – and the recent results of neurological research he considers. Hollan’s theoretical differentiation between basic and complex empathy is presented, as well as his intention, during his fieldwork in the Indonesian community of Toraja, to approach the phenomenon in a cultural context. Finally, the insufficient verification and application of theoretical premises in the fieldwork itself is stated, as well as avoidance of certain emotions, insufficient theoretical considerations of the emotional aspect of empathy, and the exceedingly wide meaning of the phenomenon.
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