  We present a phenomenological discussion of spin-independent, generalized
dipole polarizabilities of hadrons entering the virtual Compton scattering
process gamma* h -> gamma h. We introduce a new method of obtaining a tensor
basis with appropriate Lorentz-invariant amplitudes which are free from
kinematical singularities and constraints. We then motivate a gauge-invariant
separation into a generalized Born term containing ground-state properties
only, and a residual contribution describing the model-dependent internal
structure. The generalized dipole polarizabilities are defined in terms of
Lorentz-invariant residual amplitudes. Particular emphasis is laid on a
physical interpretation of these quantities as characterizing the spatial
distributions of the induced electric polarization and magnetization of
hadrons. It is argued that three dipole polarizabilities, namely the
longitudinal electric alpha_L(q^2), the transverse electric alpha_T(q^2), and
the magnetic beta(q^2) ones are required in order to fully reconstruct local
polarizations induced by soft external fields in a hadron. One of these
polarizabilities, alpha_T(q^2), describes an effect of higher order in the soft
final-photon momentum q'. We argue that the associated spatial distributions
obtained via the Fourier transforms in the Breit frame are meaningful even for
such a light particle as the pion. The spatial distributions are determined at
large distances r ~ 1/m_pi for pions, kaons, and octet baryons by use of ChPT.
