Does fiction reading make us better people?: Empathy and morality in a Literary Empowerment Programme

Charlotte Ettrup Christiansen

doi:10.1080/00141844.2021.2007158

Does fiction reading make us better people? Empathy and morality in a Literary Empowerment Programme

Institut for Kultur og Samfund - Afdeling for Antropologi

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift/Konferencebidrag i tidsskrift /Bidrag til avis › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › peer review

3 Citationer (Scopus)

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Abstract

Studies have proposed that participatory arts, particularly literature reading, enhance empathy, supposedly leading to enhanced moral judgment. Building on fieldwork in a Literary Empowerment Programme for people with mental vulnerabilities in Denmark, I seek to qualify the role of empathy, the ability to imaginatively put yourself in other people’s shoes, when reading literature in a social setting. I describe encounters with empathy and the limits thereof, as it happened in the reading groups investigated. Taking inspiration from Jarrett Zigon, these encounters are situated within the moral and ethical assemblage of the programme, whose objective was to create ‘literary free spaces’. I connect this objective to Scandinavian and Scottish Enlightenment values of freedom, equality and civil society. These insights are finally used to discuss future pathways for the anthropology of literature and reading, moving beyond a focus on understanding and meaning-making processes.

Originalsprog	Engelsk
Tidsskrift	Ethnos
Vol/bind	88
Nummer	5
Sider (fra-til)	994-1013
Antal sider	20
ISSN	0014-1844
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2021.2007158
Status	Udgivet - 2023

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10.1080/00141844.2021.2007158

Does Fiction Reading Make us Better People - Empathy and Morality in a Literary Empowerment Programme_AMAccepteret manuskript, 470 KB

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Does fiction reading make us better people? Empathy and morality in a Literary Empowerment Programme

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