WP5: Future, Futurelessness, and Vernacular Responses to Suffering
Suffering prompts a quest for meaning for everyone. Therefore, it is essential to include "ordinary" or vernacular responses in a fair and comprehensive analysis of meaning-making in the face of suffering and the experience of the tragic. WP5 will focus on the vernacular responses to suffering as articulated and enacted by various interlocutors and actors in diverse empirical research materials.
Photo copyright: Tuula Sakaranaho
The questions we explore include the following:
- What kinds of vernacular articulations (explanations, justifications, imaginations) are offered regarding suffering, particularly in relation to human and other-than-human death, climate change, loss of nature, the impact of changing technologies, and the unpredictability of the future?
- How do theodicies, cosmodicies, and sociodicies manifest in the religious and non-religious worldviews held by different groups and individuals?
- What types of (meliorist) responses to suffering, beyond mere justifications, can we identify in different contexts? In addition to verbally articulated responses, we are also interested in rituals and other expressions and actions.
- Whose suffering is considered more justified than that of others? Is one’s own suffering viewed as different from that of others?
- Is the suffering of certain groups, such as immigrants, the elderly, or the unemployed easier to accept compared to that of other groups?
- Can we justify allowing nature to suffer in order to enhance human well-being?