James Waller - Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

Description

Political or social groups wanting to commit mass murder on the basis of racial, ethnic or religious differences are never hindered by a lack of willing executioners. In Becoming Evil, social psychologist James Waller uncovers the internal and external factors that can lead ordinary people to commit extraordinary acts of evil.
Waller debunks the common explanations for genocide- group think, psychopathology, unique cultures- and offers a more sophisticated and comprehensive psychological view of how anyone can potentially participate in heinous crimes against humanity. He outlines the evolutionary forces that shape human nature, the individual dispositions that are more likely to engage in acts of evil, and the context of cruelty in which these extraordinary acts can emerge. Illustrative eyewitness accounts are presented at the end of each chapter. An important new look at how evil develops, Becoming Evil will help us understand such tragedies as the Holocaust and recent terrorist events. Waller argues that by becoming more aware of the things that lead to extraordinary evil, we will be less likely to be surprised by it and less likely to be unwitting accomplices through our passivity.

From the Turks' massacre of Armenians in 1915 through the Serbians' slaughter of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims during the 1990s, the 20th century was an era of mass killing. Social psychologist Waller (Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across America) develops a four-layered theory of how everyday citizens became involved. First considering factors in evolutionary psychology such as humans' instinctive xenophobia and desire for social dominance Waller examines psychosocial influences on the killers, from people's willingness to obey authority even when causing others physical pain (the famous Milgram experiments of the early 1960s play a role here) to elements of rational self-interest (subscribing to, or at least not dissenting from, the norms of a military or other group). Waller's third element focuses on how some groups can create a "culture of cruelty," in which initially reluctant individuals ultimately commit heinous acts. In his last and most interesting section, Waller shows how a perpetrator learns to see his victim as a less-than-human "other," so that, in some cases, the victim is even blamed for his or her death. There is no new research here, and Waller's theory is quite complex. But he clearly and effectively synthesizes a wide range of studies to develop an original and persuasive model of the processes by which people can become evil.







Thank you! :)

Disclaimer:
Contents of this page are indexed from the Internet. All actions are under your responsability. Email us to report illegal contents or external links and we'll remove them immediately.

Please check the description for download links if any or do a search to find alternative books.

Can't Download?
Please search mirrors if you can't find download links for "James Waller - Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing" in "Description" and someone else may update the links. Check the comments when back to find any updates.

Search Mirrors
Maybe some mirror pages will be helpful, search this book at top of this page or click here to find more info.

1. Ebooks list page : 2706
2. Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspective
3. Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth: The 8 Secrets of How 5,000 Ordinary Ameri
4. Killing Our Oceans: Dealing with the Mass Extinction of Marine Life
5. The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia.
6. Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (The Making of the Modern World)
7. Ordinary People Extraordinary Wealth
8. Ordinary.People.Extraordinary.Wealth
9. Ted Hart, James M. Greenfield - People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities
10. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 2: The Rise of the West and Coming Genocide
11. Rainbow Tribe: Ordinary People Journeying on the Red Road
12. Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 1: The Meaning of Genocide
13. James Grippando - Hear No Evil
14. Extraordinary Performance from Ordinary People: Value Creating Corporate Leadership
15. The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products
16. The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products