The social markets of compassion; bargaining over compassion and the social space of institutional impunity. Humanitarian crises in Poland in 2021–2022

Abstract

The central term of the article is compassion analyzed as a social phenomenon and a category that can be applied to interpretations of individual and collective behavior and attitudes. In the worldview disputes currently taking place in the public space, a mechanism known in sociology from the analysis of poverty and social exclusion is revealed - namely, the division of those deserving compassion and those who should be deprived of it. The justifications for this division, referring to the axiological sphere, are also revealed with particular sharpness in the situation of the humanitarian crisis – the one on the Polish-Belarusian border and the other caused by Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine, in different attitudes towards “closer” and “further” Others. It is my position that justifications referring to the category of compassion, embodied in the cognitive component of attitudes, create a social market of compassion conceptualized as a space in which discursive in its nature bargains for compassion take place. At the same time, these justifications form the foundation of social practices, both the aid and rescue activities of individuals, self-organized groups identifying themselves with civil society and NGOs appealing to the values of community and humanitas, as well as formal and informal anormative actions undertaken by social actors in the social space of (institutionalized) impunity.