Addressing a Sociology of Empathy: Theoretical Frameworks, Concepts and Perspectives of Investigation

In recent years, the proposal for a sociology of empathy has made its way. Important contributions to this purpose can be found in the sociology of emotions. These pioneering works on the relationship between empathy and social life have mostly seen the cognitive and emotional models of empathy alternate. However, the recent flowering of interdisciplinary studies on empathy has promoted a more layered model of empathy that brings together perceptual, affective, cognitive and emotional aspects. This aspect leads to renew and systematize the sociological analysis of empathy.This contribution aims to reflect on the most appropriate theoretical frames and conceptual tools to deepen the analysis of the social implications and social conditioning underlying the empathic phenomenon. The paper will develop two concepts that can be useful for this purpose: “empathic work” and “empathic habitus”. The first is grounded on the Hochschildian dyad emotional work and emotional labor and can be employed to highlight the factors that solicit or inhibit empathic activation, influencing its modulations and output. The notion of “empathic work” allows us to inquire the social distribution of the empathic load and to investigate the logics that define our empathic maps. While the empathic work is connected to forms of more or less conscious control of one's feelings and affective manifestations, the notion of “empathic habitus” reinforces the identification of pre-reflective social conditioning that characterizes the development of empathic dynamics, This notion will be addressed in order to analyze how relationships of power, social distance and socio-cultural factors are inscribed in our empathic sensitivity.After illustrating the plurality of components related to empathy, having specifically described the concepts of empathic work and empathic habitus, the paper will focus on how these tools can be applied in sociological inquiring reflecting on new research hypotheses concerning the relationship between empathy and society.