Historicizing suffering

According to the standard accout suffering is a universal human experience described as a negative basic feeling or emotion that involves a subjective character of unpleasantness, aversion, harm or threat of harm to body or mind (Spelman 1997; Cassell 1991). The approach to suffering the author argues for accepts that generic accounts of suffering should be developed and that major human performances such as hatred and friendship have recurrent and largely commensurable elements. He urges the reader to be sensitive to the fact that suffering has changed historically and of the need to pay more attention to the social construction of suffering in particluar contexts.