Exploring the role of empathy in a variety of Pacific societies, this book is at the forefront of the latest anthropological research on empathy. It presents distinct articulations of empathy in the Pacific region. More specifically, the volume examines significant regional patterns in the experience, enactment, recognition, and limits of empathy that challenge many assumptions of contemporary philosophical, neurobiological, and social scientific treatments of the topic. The variations described in this book do not necessarily preclude the possibility of shared existential, biological, and social influences that give empathy a distinctly human cast, but they do provide an important ethnographic lens through which to examine the possibilities and limits of empathy in any given community of practice.<BR><BR>“[This volume] sets out to provide ethnographic data on a neglected topic and does much more than just that by exploring different ways to study such a slippery cultural expression/human capacity and to create empathy by representing fieldwork data.” · Susanne Kuehling, University of Regina<BR><BR>“...this collection on 'empathy' is excellent.” · Donald Rubinstein, University of Guam<BR><BR>“This book is a pioneering work in the development of an anthropological approach to empathy.” · Edward Schieffelin, University College, London