Empathie als moralischer Zwang

Intersubjektivität und nahrungsbezogene Sozialität in Daiden (Papua Neuguinea)

Abstract

In this article I analyse the cultural dimensions of empathy ('feeling into others') as configured in Daiden, a Bosmun place in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea. In order to grasp the Bosmun sense of empathy I explore their ideas on morality, intersubjectivity and the practice of food reciprocity. Compared with other social, human, and experiential phenomena, empathy has been a neglected area of research in anthropology. Indeed, more systematic theoretical approaches combined with detailed ethnographic illustrations have begun to emerge only recently. I take up some of these current findings on empathy and show that in thinking about it from an anthropological perspective, one has to be particularly aware of the prevailing cultural limits as well as permissibility of 'feeling into others' in a given lifeworld. This builds the bridge to the second and empirically grounded part of the article. I argue that Bosmun empathy is expressed via distinct 'foodways' (regular food-related actions and activities), and that it is due to commensality that people feel both permitted and obliged to enquire into each others' lives. To engage in 'good personhood' in Daiden is to engage in 'transparent selfhood' with people one has come to know through relationships of longstanding food reciprocity. People should not only approach others emotionally but let others approach their selves, too. Interestingly, the ideal of mutual transparency includes the expression of negative feelings in public. People who hide negative feelings are said to develop great hatred and are more likely to become suspects of sorcery than people who voice their anger among social consociates, thus allowing others to moderate their negative feelings. Finally I argue that 'relationalism' as grounded in my understanding of a Bosmun relational scheme of living provides a better societal frame for empathy to thrive than 'individualism'.