AustLit

'In my recent book, Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire, I set out to explore how images have worked historically to create empathy and mobilise social action.1 Many scholars have examined the role images have played in shaping ideas about race and difference, but I became interested in the broader array of emotional relationships and ideas they helped to define, and especially the ways in which they may have helped to argue for humanitarian ideals and, ultimately, human rights. A key question raised by this history is the way that images may prompt what eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith called ‘fellow feeling’, today often glossed as empathy. Today, empathy is generally considered to be a self-evident good. We try to teach our children empathy by encouraging them to imagine what it would be like to ‘walk in another’s shoes’. Empathy is seen to be an essential skill for medical students, in particular, alongside technical knowledge, so as to establish trust, the foundation of a good doctor-patient relationship. Over the last decade, a substantial body of research has argued that more empathetic doctors can be linked to ‘greater patient satisfaction, better outcomes, decreased physician burnout, and a lower risk of malpractice suits and errors’.2 Empathy is considered a cognitive skill that can be taught, rather than a personality trait, and so empathy training is increasingly being incorporated into medical courses around the world. Frequently such teaching is premised upon the belief that fictional narratives, art, or music may effectively convey another’s experience and allow the observer an enlarged understanding of their plight.' (Introduction)