Becoming evil : how ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing / James Waller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Waller, James, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Genocide--Psychological aspects.

Genocide.

Social psychology.

Physical Description:

xxvi, 351 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

The first edition of Becoming Evil spoke unforgettably to a world shell-shocked by 9/11, a world that faced a new "war on terror" against members of an "Axis of Evil." With this second edition, James Waller brings us up to date on some of the horrific events he used in the first edition to illustrate his theory of extraordinary human evil, pointing out steps taken both forward and back. Nearly a third of the references are new, reflecting the rapid pace of scholarship in Holocaust and genocide studies, and the issue of gender now occupies a prominent place in the discussion of the social construction of cruelty. Waller also offers a reconfigured explanatory model of evil to acknowledge that human behavior is multiply influenced and that any answer to the question "Why did that person act as he or she did?" can be examined at two levels of analysis-the proximate and the ultimate. Bookended by a powerful new foreword from Gregory H. Stanton, vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and a devastating postscript that addresses current outbreaks of genocide and mass killing, this new edition demonstrates that genocide is a problem whose time has not yet passed, but Waller's clear vision offers hope that we can at least begin to understand how ordinary people are recruited into the process of brutality.

Contents:

Part I What are the Origins of Extraordinary Human Evil?

Introduction: A Place Called Mauthausen 3

1 The Nature of Extraordinary Human Evil 9

"Nits Make Lice" 25

2 Killers of Conviction: Groups, Ideology, and Extraordinary Human Evil 33

Dovey's Story 54

3 The "Mad Nazi": Psychopathology, Personality, and Extraordinary Human Evil 59

The Massacre at Babi Yar 92

4 The Dead End of Demonization 98

The Invasion of Dili 128

Part II How Do Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing?

5 Beyond Demonization: A Model of How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing 137

The Tonle Sap Massacre 163

6 Cultural Construction of Worldview: "Who Are the Killers? 171

Death of a Guatemalan Village 190

7 Psychological Construction of the "Other": Social Death of the Victims 196

The Church of Ntarama 221

8 Social Construction of Cruelty: The Power of the Situation 230

The "Safe Area" of Srebrenica 272

Part III What Have We Learned, and Why Does It Matter?

9 Conclusion: Can We Be Delivered from Extraordinary Human Evil? 281

Postscript: Past as Present 299.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-342) and index.

ISBN:

0195180933

9780195180930

0195314565

9780195314564

OCLC:

70129232