Emotions and Mass Atrocity

The study of genocide and mass atrocity abounds with references to emotions: fear anger horror shame and hatred. Yet we don''t understand enough about how ''ordinary'' emotions behave in such extreme contexts. Emotions are not merely subjective and interpersonal phenomena; they are also powerful social and political forces deeply involved in the history of mass violence. Drawing on recent insights from philosophy psychology history and the social sciences this volume examines the emotions of perpetrators victims and bystanders. Editors Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang have brought together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars to provide an in-depth analysis of the nature value and role of emotions as they relate to the causes and dynamics of mass atrocities. The result is a new perspective on the social political and moral dimensions of emotions in the history of collective violence and its aftermath.