Extreme violence and the scholarly community

Bibliographic Data

ID4388525
AuthorsOmer Bartov (0000-0001-7973-7408, Brown University, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume54
Issue174
Pages509-518
Publication date2002-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Social Science Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8701 • E-ISSN: 1468-2451
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-2451.00405
OpenAlexW2111921325
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited19

This article explores the relationship between extreme violence and scholarship. I begin by arguing that the scholarly profession has been complicit in preparing the mindset, providing the rationale, and supplying the know-how and personnel for the perpetration of state-directed mass violence. Hence, I assert, scholarship cannot analyse and explicate modern extreme violence without revising its own paradigms of research and interpretation. I go on to stipulate the need to understand the mechanisms that motivate individual scholars to take part in, or to resist, atrocity. This understanding may facilitate modifications in training with an eye to promoting greater resistance to state-sanctioned crimes. Conversely, I note that the personal experience of individual scholars researching extreme violence has an inevitable effect on their work. I ask whether scholars who were subjected, or subjected others, to extreme violence, have a greater understanding of, and insight into, the phenomenon or are biased to an extent that invalidates their findings? Consequently, I argue, the very notion of objective analysis is undermined when confronting events in which the norms and conventions of ordinary existence are shattered. I conclude with some reflections on the reactions of the scholarly community to international terrorism

Criminology · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Mindset · Phenomenon · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · State (computer science) · Terrorism · Health and Conflict Studies · Law · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · War, Ethics, and Justification

Tools

Open DOISci-HubOpen Access