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Becoming Evil : How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

by: James Waller

ISBN: 9780195189490 | 0195189493

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Pub. Date: 8/11/2005

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Summary Table of Contents Author Biography

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... MORE 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.

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. Book jacket.

Preface: "I Couldn't Do This to Someone"

Part 1: What Are the Origins of Extraordinary Human Evil?

Introduction: A Place Called Mauthausen

1. The Nature of Extraordinary Human Evil

"Nits Make Lice"
<

Foreword

vii

Christopher R. Browning

PART I. WHAT ARE THE ORIGINS OF EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN EVIL?

Introduction: A Place Called Mauthausen

... MORE

(6)

The Nature of Extraordinary Human Evil

(20)

``Nits Make Lice''

(6)

Killers of Conviction: Groups, Ideology, and Extraordinary Evil

(26)

Dovey's Story

(5)

The ``Mad Nazi'': Psychopathology, Personality, and Extraordinary Evil

(39)

The Massacre at Babi Yar

(6)

The Dead End of Demonization

(42)

The Invasion of Dili

124

(9)

PART II. BEYOND DEMONIZATION: HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE COMMIT EXTRAORDINARY EVIL

A Model of Extraordinary Human Evil

133

(3)

What Is the Nature of Human Nature? Our Ancestral Shadow

136

(39)

The Tonle Sap Massacre

169

(6)

Who Are the Killers? Identities of the Perpetrators

175

(27)

Death of a Guatemalan Village

197

(5)

What Is the Immediate Social Context? A Culture of Cruelty

202

(34)

The Church of Ntarama

230

(6)

Who Is the ``Other''? Social Death of the Victims

236

(31)

The ``Safe Area'' of Srebrenica

258

(9)

PART III. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Conclusion: Can We Be Delivered from Extraordinary Evil?

267

(14)

Notes

281

(22)

Selected Bibliography

303

(8)

Index

311

James Waller is Professor and Lindaman Chair of Psychology at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington

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Becoming Evil : How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing

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