Empathy Industry

Topic

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The empathy industry is a conceptual framework and critique describing how human emotions, moral sentiments, and interpersonal understanding are commodified, structured, and leveraged within global markets. In literary and cultural studies, it refers to how narratives from the Global South are packaged to generate moral sentiment for Western audiences, while in technology and media studies, it critiques the commercialization of empathy through virtual reality, AI, and automated systems.