Misery and company : sympathy in everyday life / Candace Clark.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-297) and indexes.

The social character of sympathy -- Sympathy giving : forms and process -- Framing events as bad luck : sympathy entrepreneurs and the grounds for sympathy -- The socioemotional economy, social value, and sympathy margin -- Sympathy biography and the rules of sympathy etiquette -- Interpreting deviance : the sympathetic response -- Sympathy, microhierarchy, and micropolitics.

In a kind of social tour of sympathy, Candace Clark reveals that the emotional experience we call sympathy has a history, logic, and life of its own. Although sympathy may seem to be a natural, reflexive reaction, people are not born knowing when, for whom, and in what circumstances sympathy is appropriate. Rather, they learn elaborate, highly specific rules-different rules for men than for women-that guide when to feel or display sympathy, when to claim it, and how to accept it. Using extensive interviews, cultural artifacts, and ""intensive eavesdropping"" in public places, such as hospitals and funeral parlors, she also analyzes charity appeals, blues lyrics, greeting cards, novels, and media reports. Ultimately, she constructs a kind of social tour of sympathy, revealing that the emotional experience we modern Americans call sympathy has a history, a logic, and life of its own.