Looking Away? Civilized Indifference and the Carnal Relationships of the Contemporary Workplace

• Published date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12175
• Date: 01 September 2016

Looking Away? Civilized Indifference and the Carnal

Relationships of the Contemporary Workplace

David Courpasson

EMLYON Business School and Cardiff University

I

The idea that I put forward in this essay is not, in its immediate content, a happy one.

The three-year old Aylan Kurdi, lying face down in the sand, on a Turkish beach; the

immobile f‌igure of a police off‌icer beside him, like a powerless sentinel. This small body

washed up on a beach. Other pictures emerged of the boy with his f‌ive-year old brother

Galip [also dead], laughing and holding a teddy bear in a pink dress; another with

Galip’s arm around his brother. These pictures gripped the whole world in early

September 2015, for several days. They were ‘extraordinarily powerful images’ (The

Independent, 3 September 2015). It appeared like a revelation to each of us that millions

of people were trying to escape from their camps, villages, dead places where no future

could be invented any more. The image of the boy’s body was an emotional shock. Why

him? Why now? Surprisingly, these pictures created carnal connections, as if we knew

the boys and their family because they acted like any boy: laughing, playing with teddy

bears, and... with sand on a beach. But did we really care? Were we feeling true and

durable pain and suffering, as if we all were his parents, brothers or friends? Or some

ersatz substitute displayed on-line while we continue our studied indifference to the peo-

ple around us? I think that this unfortunately mundane experience of virtual solidarity

can help us to interrogate (again) the genuineness of contemporary emotions and of the

gaze we have on each other’s destiny: civilized indifference and voyeurism? Genuine sol-

idarity is rare; it is hardly achieved by emotional excitement or empathic attunement,

especially on-line, because we are not in others’ skin.

At the time of the internet, people often remain hidden behind their screens to

express feelings and opinions. They click out and forget what they have done and said

Address for reprints: David Courpasson, EMLYON Business School, France (courpasson@em-lyon.com).

For your comments about this discussion, please visit http://www.socadms.org.uk/looking-away-civilized-

indifference/.

V

C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 53:6 September 2016

doi: 10.1111/joms.12175