Author: Paul G. Bain Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 113627510X Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 365
Book Description
What does it mean to be human? Why do people dehumanize others (and sometimes themselves)? These questions have only recently begun to be investigated in earnest within psychology. This volume presents the latest thinking about these and related questions from research leaders in the field of humanness and dehumanization in social psychology and related disciplines. Contributions provide new insights into the history of dehumanization, its different types, and new theories are proposed for when and why dehumanization occurs. While people’s views about what humanness is, and who has it, have long been known as important in understanding ethnic conflict, contributors demonstrate its relevance in other domains, including medical practice, policing, gender relations, and our relationship with the natural environment. Cultural differences and similarities in beliefs about humanness are explored, along with strategies to overcome dehumanization. In highlighting emerging ideas and theoretical perspectives, describing current theoretical issues and controversies and ways to resolve them, and in extending research to new areas, this volume will influence research on humanness and dehumanization for many years.
Author: David Livingstone Smith Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674545567 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
A leading scholar explores what it means to dehumanize othersÑand how and why we do it. ÒI wouldnÕt have accepted that they were human beings. You would see an infant whoÕs just learning to smile, and it smiles at you, but you still kill it.Ó So a Hutu man explained to an incredulous researcher, when asked to recall how he felt slaughtering Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. Such statements are shocking, yet we recognize them; we hear their echoes in accounts of genocides, massacres, and pogroms throughout history. How do some people come to believe that their enemies are monsters, and therefore easy to kill? In Making Monsters David Livingstone Smith offers a poignant meditation on the philosophical and psychological roots of dehumanization. Drawing on harrowing accounts of lynchings, Smith establishes what dehumanization is and what it isnÕt. When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: we believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human. To call someone a monster, then, is not merely a resort to metaphorÑdehumanization really does happen in our minds. Turning to an abundance of historical examples, Smith explores the relationship between dehumanization and racism, the psychology of hierarchy, what it means to regard others as human beings, and why dehumanizing others transforms them into something so terrifying that they must be destroyed. Meticulous but highly readable, Making Monsters suggests that the process of dehumanization is deeply seated in our psychology. It is precisely because we are all human that we are vulnerable to the manipulations of those trading in the politics of demonization and violence.
Author: Sarah J. Gervais Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461469597 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 191
Book Description
People often see nonhuman agents as human-like. Through the processes of anthropomorphism and humanization, people attribute human characteristics, including personalities, free will, and agency to pets, cars, gods, nature, and the like. Similarly, there are some people who often see human agents as less than human, or more object-like. In this manner, objectification describes the treatment of a human being as a thing, disregarding the person's personality and/or sentience. For example, women, medical patients, racial minorities, and people with disabilities, are often seen as animal-like or less than human through dehumanization and objectification. These two opposing forces may be a considered a continuum with anthropomorphism and humanization on one end and dehumanization and objectification on the other end. Although researchers have identified some of the antecedents and consequences of these processes, a systematic investigation of the motivations that underlie this continuum is lacking. Considerations of this continuum may have considerable implications for such areas as everyday human functioning, interactions with people, animals, and objects, violence, discrimination, relationship development, mental health, or psychopathology. The edited volume will integrate multiple theoretical and empirical approaches on this issue.
Author: David Livingstone Smith Publisher: Macmillan + ORM ISBN: 1429968567 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today's headlines "Brute." "Cockroach." "Lice." "Vermin." "Dog." "Beast." These and other monikers are constantly in use to refer to other humans—for political, religious, ethnic, or sexist reasons. Human beings have a tendency to regard members of their own kind as less than human. This tendency has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, and the slave trade possible, and yet we still find it in phenomena such as xenophobia, homophobia, military propaganda, and racism. Less Than Human draws on a rich mix of history, psychology, biology, anthropology and philosophy to document the pervasiveness of dehumanization, describe its forms, and explain why we so often resort to it. David Livingstone Smith posits that this behavior is rooted in human nature, but gives us hope in also stating that biological traits are malleable, showing us that change is possible. Less Than Human is a chilling indictment of our nature, and is as timely as it is relevant.
Author: Publisher: Transaction Publishers ISBN: 9781412834186 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
Is the human species becoming dehumanized by the condition of his environment? So Human an Animal is an attempt to address this broad concern, and explain why so little is being done to address this issue. The book sounds both an urgent warning, and offers important policy insights into how this trend toward dehumanization can be halted and finally reversed.
Author: Mario Mikulincer Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn ISBN: 9781433810114 Category : FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS Languages : en Pages : 440
Book Description
Humans are universally concerned with good and evil, although one person's "evil" can be another person's "good." How do individuals arrive at decisions about what is right and what is wrong? And how are these decisions influenced by psychological, social, and cultural forces? Such questions form the foundation of the field of moral psychology. In trying to understand moral behavior, researchers historically adopted a cognitive-rationalistic approach that emphasized reasoning and reflection. However, a new generation of investigators has become intrigued by the role of emotional, unconscious, and intra- and interpersonal processes. Their explorations are presented in this third addition to the Herzliya Series on Personality and Social Psychology. The contributors to this volume begin by presenting basic issues and controversies in the study of morality; subsequent chapters explore the psychological processes involved, such as the cognitive mechanisms and motives underlying immoral behavior and moral hypocrisy. Later chapters discuss personality, developmental, and clinical aspects of morality as well as societal aspects of good and evil, including the implications of moral thinking for large-scale violence and genocide. The wide-ranging findings and discussions presented in this volume make this work a provocative and engaging resource for social psychologists and other scholars concerned with moral judgments and both moral and immoral behavior.
Author: Maria Kronfeldner Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429960980 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
A striking feature of atrocities, as seen in genocides, civil wars, or violence against certain racial and ethnic groups, is the attempt to dehumanize — to deny and strip human beings of their humanity. Yet the very nature of dehumanization remains relatively poorly understood. The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization is the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary reference source on the subject and an outstanding survey of the key concepts, issues, and debates within dehumanization studies. Organized into four parts, the Handbook covers the following topics: The history of dehumanization from Greek Antiquity to the 20th century, contextualizing the oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in the history of the ‘West’; How dehumanization is contemporarily studied with respect to special contexts: as part of social psychology, as part of legal studies or literary studies, and how it connects to the idea of human rights, disability and eugenics, the question of animals, and the issue of moral standing; How to tackle its complex facets, with respect to the perpetrator’s and the target’s perspective, metadehumanization and selfdehumanization, rehumanization, social death, status and interdependence, as well as the fear we show toward robots that become too human for us; Conceptual and epistemological questions on how to distinguish different forms of dehumanization and neighboring phenomena, on why dehumanization appears so paradoxical, and on its connection to hatred, essentialism, and perception. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, history, psychology, and anthropology, this Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines, such as politics, international relations, criminology, legal studies, literary studies, gender studies, disability studies, or race and ethnic studies, as well as readers from social work, political activism, and public policy.
Author: Jennifer Rhee Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 145295741X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 233
Book Description
Tracing the connections between human-like robots and AI at the site of dehumanization and exploited labor The word robot—introduced in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R.—derives from rabota, the Czech word for servitude or forced labor. A century later, the play’s dystopian themes of dehumanization and exploited labor are being played out in factories, workplaces, and battlefields. In The Robotic Imaginary, Jennifer Rhee traces the provocative and productive connections of contemporary robots in technology, film, art, and literature. Centered around the twinned processes of anthropomorphization and dehumanization, she analyzes the coevolution of cultural and technological robots and artificial intelligence, arguing that it is through the conceptualization of the human and, more important, the dehumanized that these multiple spheres affect and transform each other. Drawing on the writings of Alan Turing, Sara Ahmed, and Arlie Russell Hochschild; such films and novels as Her and The Stepford Wives; technologies like Kismet (the pioneering “emotional robot”); and contemporary drone art, this book explores anthropomorphic paradigms in robot design and imagery in ways that often challenge the very grounds on which those paradigms operate in robotics labs and industry. From disembodied, conversational AI and its entanglement with care labor; embodied mobile robots as they intersect with domestic labor; emotional robots impacting affective labor; and armed military drones and artistic responses to drone warfare, The Robotic Imaginary ultimately reveals how the human is made knowable through the design of and discourse on humanoid robots that are, paradoxically, dehumanized.
Author: John Dixon Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521139625 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 346
Book Description
The concept of prejudice has profoundly influenced how we have investigated, explained and tried to change intergroup relations of discrimination and inequality. But what has this concept contributed to our knowledge of relations between groups and what has it obscured or misrepresented? How has it expanded or narrowed the horizons of psychological inquiry? How effective or ineffective has it been in guiding our attempts to transform social relations and institutions? In this book, a team of internationally renowned psychologists re-evaluate the concept of prejudice, in an attempt to move beyond conventional approaches to the subject and to help the reader gain a clearer understanding of relations within and between groups. This fresh look at prejudice will appeal to scholars and students of social psychology, sociology, political science and peace studies.
Author: Paulus Kaufmann Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9048196612 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Degradation, dehumanization, instrumentalization, humiliation, and nonrecognition – these concepts point to ways in which we understand human beings to be violated in their dignity. Violations of human dignity are brought about by concrete practices and conditions; some commonly acknowledged, such as torture and rape, and others more contested, such as poverty and exclusion. This volume collates reflections on such concepts and a range of practices, deepening our understanding of human dignity and its violation, bringing to the surface interrelationships and commonalities, and pointing to the values that are thereby shown to be in danger. In presenting a streamlined discussion from a negative perspective, complemented by conclusions for a positive account of human dignity, the book is at once a contribution to the body of literature on what dignity is and how it should be protected as well as constituting an alternative, fresh and focused perspective relevant to this significant recurring debate. As the concept of human dignity itself crosses disciplinary boundaries, this is mirrored in the unique range of perspectives brought by the book’s European and American contributors – in philosophy and ethics, law, human rights, literature, cultural studies and interdisciplinary research. This volume will be of interest to social and moral philosophers, legal and human rights theorists, practitioners and students.
Author: Paul G. Bain
Author: David Livingstone Smith
Author: Sarah J. Gervais
Author: David Livingstone Smith
Author: 
Author: Mario Mikulincer
Author: Maria Kronfeldner
Author: Jennifer Rhee
Author: John Dixon
Author: Paulus Kaufmann