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Cultivating Sympathy and Reconciliation: The Importance of Sympathetic Response

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The Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation

Abstract

It is generally assumed that societies emerging from abuse will necessarily be receptive to programs of acknowledgement and reconciliation. Yet often they are not, and efforts to promote reconciliation fall on unreceptive audiences at the national level and below. This paper traces the factors that hamper the uptake of reconciliation and the acknowledgement of past events, and develops the following hypothesis: thin sympathy must be developed or acknowledgement will not occur. The paper considers the importance of building a critical level of understanding or “thin” sympathy in the population through exposure to the “other” and helping people see through new lenses about the other’s experiences. It argues that reconciliation efforts fail when there is not even “thin” sympathy or basic understanding of the experiences of the other within civil society. Through the lens of Canada, a number of factors that obscure this kind of knowledge translation are explored: lack of national identity, and the strategy of self-preservation single-mindedly pursued by government.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ferdinand Tonnies divided societies into two distinct groups: “Gemeinschaft society is one in which people live together in primary groups, tightly wound around the institutions of kin, community and church.” See Howard (1995), 25–26.

  2. 2.

    The term is credited to author MacLennan (1945).

  3. 3.

    The Kelowna Accord was a 2005 initiative to ‘close the gap’ on the standard of living between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. With a budget of $5 billion, the plan would have targeted health, education, housing, infrastructure, economic opportunity, accountability, and the relationship between Indigenous Canadians and the Government of Canada. A change in government in early 206 meant that the plan was never really implemented (The Canadian Encyclopedia).

  4. 4.

    Kagame’s policy also includes Ingando solidarity camps that are little more than forced political re-education camps. See Thomson (2011).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

    Joanna R. Quinn

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  1. Joanna R. Quinn
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Correspondence to Joanna R. Quinn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Sarah Maddison

  2. Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Tom Clark

  3. York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Ravi de Costa

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Quinn, J.R. (2016). Cultivating Sympathy and Reconciliation: The Importance of Sympathetic Response. In: Maddison, S., Clark, T., de Costa, R. (eds) The Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2654-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2654-6_8

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