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Monday 22 January 2018

Empathy for everyone?

By Marium Ibrahim

Is empathic connection only possible with those similar to us?
Photo credit: Pixabay.com

One of the common threads throughout my fieldwork experiences while working at the Collective is related to the dynamics between groups of different social standings. A Muhajir woman in Karachi, while talking about the sanitation system in her area, said that usually everyone keeps the area clean, except for the Bengalis who have their children throw trash on the streets in front of other people’s houses. In a village in Sanghar, people from a mainstream Soomro community talked about how people from a neighboring socially marginalized Nohri community were uncooperative and difficult to deal with.