The feeling of pain depends on how it is socially expressed

Evidence

My point is only that when pain is a constitutive part of birthing it is not simply the negative experience of a patient, as biomedicine tends to regard it, but an aspect of a distinctive social act in which others assist. What I want to emphasize is that in the cases Klassen describes, pain is not the isolable condition of an individual body to be finally eliminated by chemical or surgical intervention. It is integral to an activity that reproduces and sustains human relationships. For how pain is felt is in some measure dependent on how it is expressed, and how it is expressed is dependent on social relationships. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 429

Categorization

• XREF: This social-construction-of-feeling move parallels Asad’s broader argument that the secular individual’s interiority is itself historically and socially produced. — connects to: Feelings are cultivated according to culturally prescribed emotion work rules. — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”: The work of avoiding…, 86; Observing another’s pain response changes observers’ own physiology — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 904; Researchers assess perceived pain sensitivity through fictional vignettes of foot injury. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 61 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that felt pain is partly constituted by its social expression undercuts the modern biomedical picture of pain as a purely internal, isolable sensation of an individual body.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 429