Overview
Genocide is commonly understood to be a terrible aberration in human behaviour, performed by evil, murderous regimes such as the Nazis and dictators like Suharto and Pinochet. John Docker argues that the roots of genocide go far deeper into human nature than most people realise. Genocide features widely in the Bible, the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and debates about the Enlightenment. These texts are studied in depth to trace the origins of violence through time and across civilisations. Developing the groundbreaking work of Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term 'genocide', Docker guides us from the dawn of agricultural society, through classical civilisation to the present, showing that violence between groups has been integral to all periods of history. This revealing book will be of great interest to those wishing to understand the roots of genocide and why it persists in the modern age.
Full Product Details
Author: John Docker
Publisher: Pluto Press
Imprint: Pluto Press
Dimensions:
Width: 13.50cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 21.50cm
Weight: 0.338kg
ISBN: 9780745325439
ISBN 10: 0745325432
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 20 August 2008
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Reviews
From primatology to ancient Greece and Rome to the Bible, early-modern Europe and the Enlightenment, Docker's profound and original analyses provide a deeply unsettling narrative of the longevity of human practices of group violence. At the same time as The Origins of Violence dethrones regnant frameworks of genocide studies that stress the role of modernity or the state, and invites us to historicise genocide into the very longue duree, it challenges us to recognise the uncomfortable truth that genocidal tendencies remain tolerated, even celebrated, today - and not only in 'developing countries' - whenever they cohere with states' self-images. A Gandhian plea for non-violence that shockingly demonstrates the almost Sisyphean nature of the task. Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History, Royal Holloway University of London This is a most interesting and disturbing book. To begin with, it displays a high level of scholarship in its examination of the ways in which classical historical and literary texts contain both a description and a moral critique of the ancient's world inter-group violence. At the same time, it combines this analysis with a firm commitment to the modern, humanist values of non-violence and internationalism. Sabby Sagall, former senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of East London
"""From primatology to ancient Greece and Rome to the Bible, early-modern Europe and the Enlightenment, Docker's profound and original analyses provide a deeply unsettling narrative of the longevity of human practices of group violence. At the same time as The Origins of Violence dethrones regnant frameworks of genocide studies that stress the role of modernity or the state, and invites us to historicise genocide into the very longue duree, it challenges us to recognise the uncomfortable truth that genocidal tendencies remain tolerated, even celebrated, today - and not only in 'developing countries' - whenever they cohere with states' self-images. A Gandhian plea for non-violence that shockingly demonstrates the almost Sisyphean nature of the task."" Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History, Royal Holloway University of London""This is a most interesting and disturbing book. To begin with, it displays a high level of scholarship in its examination of the ways in which classical historical and literary texts contain both a description and a moral critique of the ancient's world inter-group violence. At the same time, it combines this analysis with a firm commitment to the modern, humanist values of non-violence and internationalism."" Sabby Sagall, former senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of East London"
Author Information
John Docker is Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University. He is the author of 1492: The Poetics of Diaspora (2001), Postmodernism and Popular Culture (1994) and and (with Ann Curthoys) Is History Fiction? (2005).
