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Reimagining Sympathy, Recognizing Difference

Insights from Adam Smith

Millicent Churcher author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Rowman & Littlefield International

Published:1st Oct '19

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Reimagining Sympathy, Recognizing Difference cover

Contemporary societies are marked by deep inequalities grounded in collective failures to recognize the histories, needs, and experiences of marginalized social groups. What are the strategies that can help individuals become more responsive to social realities and perspectives that differ significantly from their own? In Reimagining Sympathy, Recognizing Difference: Insights from Adam Smith, Millicent Churcher attends to recent debates over the imagination as a resource for social and political reform, and highlights the central relevance of Adam Smith’s voice to these debates. Smith, best known for his work on economics, may seem an unlikely figure to draw upon in this context. However, his nuanced account of ‘sympathy’—conceived as an imaginative and reflective capacity that develops within and through social experience—greatly enriches the role of imagination in fostering mutual understanding and solidarity among a diverse citizenry. Churcher critically explores and extends Smith’s view that if sympathy is to bind people together across their differences rather than divide them, it requires work at the level of individual practice, as well as the support of wider social structures. By drawing Smith into conversation with contemporary debates in social and political theory, this monograph addresses the pressing question of what is required from individuals and institutions to remedy abject failures to recognize and respond ethically to difference.

In this book, Millicent Churcher engages with Australasian thinkers, bringing them into dialogue with social epistemology and critical race theory. This book also performs an important theoretical role of bringing into contact recent works on social imagination with their historical forebear, Adam Smith. -- Joanne Faulkner, ARC Future Fellow in Cultural Studies, Macquarie University
This timely book is a strong contribution to recent and ongoing discussions in political philosophy concerning the role of emotions and the imagination in issues of justice (including communicative and epistemic justice), recognition, social peace, identity/difference and equality. -- José Medina, Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University
This distinctive intervention features studies on the continuing oppression of First Nations in Australia, and a unique interpretation of Smithian virtues. -- Jeremy C A Smith, Associate Professor of Sociology, Federation University Australia

  • Winner of 2020 David Harold Tribe Philosophy Award 2020

ISBN: 9781786609441

Dimensions: 233mm x 159mm x 22mm

Weight: 508g

218 pages