"It could have been me": Empathy, Civic Engagement, and Violence in Mexico
Although inter-state and civil war are on the decline in the world today, sustained violence persists, particularly in young democracies. Here, promising democratic transitions frequently yield intense criminal violence with death rates that rival civil war. Relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of criminal violence on civilian political life in these special contexts. Indeed, one of the most persistent findings from investigations into the political legacies of violence is also one of the most poorly understood: From Africa to the United States and Eurasia, individual exposure to criminal and political violence is positively associated with future political participation and civic engagement. What explains this relationship? Existing accounts emphasize the role of direct victimization, that is, instances in which an individual or their family member is harmed. These arguments posit that victims channel the trauma of victimization into political action. Yet, these cannot account for the more puzzling actions of non-victims, that is, those who live in a violent context but are not directly victimized. Why do non-victims take up anti-violence civic engagement despite not being victimized themselves?
My book project, “It Could Have Been Me”: Violence, Empathy and Civic Engagement in Mexico, reveals and explains these puzzling instances of non-victim civic action. The book’s central thesis is that the choice to participate versus abstain from civic engagement for non-victims is not motivated by trauma, but instead by empathy for the victimized. To develop this theory, I spent 16 months embedded in communities beset by organized crime violence in Monterrey, México. Usually off-limits to outsiders, I gained unique access to these local conflict spaces, where I lived and worked alongside residents. Building on insights from psychology, I find that citizens are more likely to pursue civic action in response to violence if they have imagined themselves in the place of a victim. This empathic imagining is triggered through channels I explore in the book, like social identification with victims and geographic proximity of violence. I develop and test my theory of empathy politics through a mixed methods study that integrates ethnographic interviews and participant observation in Monterrey with large-n statistical analysis, qualitative content analysis, and a behavioral experiment outside that case. The experiment is directly informed by my ethnographic work.
It Could Have Been Me advances dialogue on the political consequences of criminal violence by revealing that direct victimization is not the only conduit through which violence shapes individual political action. Instead, I find that even the most indirect forms of exposure to violence, such as through the mass media, can provoke civic action when those instances of violence stimulate a sense of empathy for victims. In doing so, the book sheds important light on democratic politics amidst large-scale criminal violence, the increasingly common but poorly understood face of the post-Cold War political landscape. Seven out of 10 of the most violent countries today are democracies not in civil war (UNODC), or "violent democracies" (Arias and Goldstein 2010). Through in-depth analysis of one important case, Mexico, It Could Have Been Me describes how living in these contexts shapes the everyday civic lives of citizens, including whether they choose to participate in civil society, or not, and the cognitive processes behind those choices.
My book project, “It Could Have Been Me”: Violence, Empathy and Civic Engagement in Mexico, reveals and explains these puzzling instances of non-victim civic action. The book’s central thesis is that the choice to participate versus abstain from civic engagement for non-victims is not motivated by trauma, but instead by empathy for the victimized. To develop this theory, I spent 16 months embedded in communities beset by organized crime violence in Monterrey, México. Usually off-limits to outsiders, I gained unique access to these local conflict spaces, where I lived and worked alongside residents. Building on insights from psychology, I find that citizens are more likely to pursue civic action in response to violence if they have imagined themselves in the place of a victim. This empathic imagining is triggered through channels I explore in the book, like social identification with victims and geographic proximity of violence. I develop and test my theory of empathy politics through a mixed methods study that integrates ethnographic interviews and participant observation in Monterrey with large-n statistical analysis, qualitative content analysis, and a behavioral experiment outside that case. The experiment is directly informed by my ethnographic work.
It Could Have Been Me advances dialogue on the political consequences of criminal violence by revealing that direct victimization is not the only conduit through which violence shapes individual political action. Instead, I find that even the most indirect forms of exposure to violence, such as through the mass media, can provoke civic action when those instances of violence stimulate a sense of empathy for victims. In doing so, the book sheds important light on democratic politics amidst large-scale criminal violence, the increasingly common but poorly understood face of the post-Cold War political landscape. Seven out of 10 of the most violent countries today are democracies not in civil war (UNODC), or "violent democracies" (Arias and Goldstein 2010). Through in-depth analysis of one important case, Mexico, It Could Have Been Me describes how living in these contexts shapes the everyday civic lives of citizens, including whether they choose to participate in civil society, or not, and the cognitive processes behind those choices.
