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Social Science General

Barbaric Civilization

A Critical Sociology of Genocide

by (author) Christopher Powell

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2011
Category
General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773538559
    Publish Date
    Jun 2011
    List Price
    $125.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773538566
    Publish Date
    Jun 2011
    List Price
    $37.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773585560
    Publish Date
    Jun 2011
    List Price
    $95.00

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Description

From its beginnings in the early twelfth century, the Western civilizing process has involved two interconnected transformations: the monopolization of military force by sovereign states and the cultivation in individuals of habits and dispositions of the kind that we call "civilized." The combined forward movement of these processes channels violent struggles for social dominance into symbolic performances. But even as the civilizing process frees many subjects from the threat of direct physical force, violence accumulates behind the scenes and at the margins of the social order, kept there by a deeply habituated performance of dominance and subordination called deferentiation. When deferentiation fails, difference becomes dangerous and genocide becomes possible.

Connecting historical developments with everyday life occurrences, and discussing examples ranging from thirteenth-century Languedoc to 1994 Rwanda, Powell offers an original framework for analyzing, comparing, and discussing genocides as variable outcomes of a common underlying social system, raising unsettling questions about the contradictions of Western civilization and the possibility of a world without genocide.

About the author

Christopher Powell is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Manitoba.

Christopher Powell's profile page

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