How is it possible to acknowledge and confront patriarchal violence within Muslim migrant communities without descending into cultural deficit explanations (they are overly patriarchal and inherently uncivilised) and without inviting extraordinary measures of stigmatisation, surveillance and control so increased after the events of September 11, 2001? In this paper, I explore this question by examining Norway's responses to the issue of forced marriages. I argue that social and political responses to violence against women in Muslim communities have been primarily culturalist. (...) That is, the violence is understood as originating entirely in culture, an approach that obscures the multiple factors that give rise to and sustain the violence. The culturalist approach enables the stigmatising and surveillance of Muslim communities. I approach this argument in two parts. In part one I discuss two important and influential books written by women who identify their concerns as feminist and who lay out the case for considering the problem of forced marriage as a problem of controlling fundamentally unassimilable and culturally inferior Muslims. I explore these works as paradigmatic of the culturalising or culturalist move. In part two, I review a variety of legal initiatives in Norway, first contextualising them as part of a larger European venture to control Muslim populations and then examining what they share conceptually with the approaches in part one. I end with how we might begin to develop an anti-racist response to the problem of violence against women. (shrink)

We discuss some implications of the Holocaust for moral philosophy. Our thesis is that morality became distorted in the Third Reich at the level of its social articulation. We explore this thesis in application to several front-line perpetrators who maintained false moral self-conceptions. We conclude that more than a priori moral reasoning is required to correct such distortions.

Mencius 孟子 is famous for arguing that human nature is good. In this article, I offer a reading of Mencius’ argument which can be evaluated in terms of empirical psychology. In this reading, Mencius’ argument begins with three claims: humans naturally have prosocial inclinations, prosocial inclinations can be cultivated into mature forms of virtue, and the growth of prosocial inclinations is more natural than the growth of their alternatives. I also argue that each of these claims is well supported by (...) empirical psychology. The relevant studies demonstrate, for example, that humans’ prosocial inclinations are not merely products of social conditioning or egoistic concerns; that prosocial inclinations can be cultivated by environmental factors and personal effort; that humans—even preverbal infants—have a natural inclination to prefer prosociality over its alternatives; and that growth in prosociality is positively associated with human health. Finally, I suggest we interpret Mencius’ expression “human nature is good” as a rhetorical tool to capture the totality of such empirically minded claims. (shrink)

This article assesses interactions between American and German eugenicists in the interwar period. It shows the shifting importance and leading roles of German and American eugenicists: while interactions and exchanges between German and American eugenicists in the interwar period were important and significant, it remains difficult to establish direct American influence on Nazi legislation. German experts of race hygiene who advised the Nazi government in drafting the sterilization law were well informed about the experiences with similar laws in American states, (...) most importantly in California and Virginia, but there is little evidence to suggest they depended on American knowledge and expertise to draft their own sterilization law. Rather, they adapted a body of thought that was transnational by nature: suggesting that the Nazis’ racial policies can be traced back to American origins over-simplifies the historical record. Still, the ‘American connection’ of the German racial hygiene movement is a significant aspect of the general history of eugenics into which it needs to be integrated. The similarities in eugenic thinking and practice in the USA and Germany force us to re-evaluate the peculiarity of Nazi racial policies. (shrink)

Even if it is never possible to create a sentient robot that might lay claim to the status of personhood, a convincingly realistic robotic simulation of the human body could alter how human beings act towards one another. This article argues that the human face exerts a powerful influence over interpersonal interaction, creating empathetic connections that limit our capacity to engage in acts of cruelty; an ability to convincingly simulate the human face would detach it from the attribution of human (...) personhood and so encourage a dismissal of its affective charge. This possibility can be understood in the context of existing attempts to inoculate individuals against the appeal of the face so as to facilitate organised killing. (shrink)

This Introduction to Rosenberg’s essay starts with a brief synopsis of his life, then summarises the key arguments of the essay itself before looking briefly at the twin issues of the social base of the fascist parties and the passive complicity/compliance of ‘ordinary Germans’, as the literature now terms whole sectors of the civilian population that were defined by their apathy or moral indifference to the horrors of the Nazi state.

Von der Mehrzahl der Dimensionen kollektiver Identität erkundet diese Arbeit die Identität als rhetorisches Werkzeug. Die Identitätsmarke steht für einen für die pragmatische Effektivität relevanten Fall. Um eine solche Macht zu erläutern, wird ein hypothetisches Modell der Identitätskategorien dargeboten. Dessen Bestandsmodule formen vier Basisdimensionen: Position, Entindividualisierung, Ausschließung sowie kognitive Abschirmung. Eine so deskribierte narrative Identität wird zum Äquivalent der informellen Ideologie . Als konstitutive Rhetorik überführt die narrative Identitätskonstruktion die selbstreferenzielle Tautologie in die Strategien der Diskriminierung, Säuberung und Ausrottung der (...) Anderheitsvertreter. Die Massenvernichtungen des zurückliegenden Jahrhunderts – Totalitarismus, Kolonialismus, Ethnonationalismus – sind Fabrikate des Identitätsparadigmas. (shrink)

This article discusses the identity formation process former right wing extremists go through, during and especially after being involved in an exit program for those leaving right wing extremist environments. Based on an ethnographic investigation (and practice theoretical approach), the article argues that participation in culturally defined worlds – such as the extremist right – develops sensitivities and sensibilities that endure. This enables them to engage in social actions, gain a position and develop a correlated identity, but it is also (...) the reason why it can be very demanding for the individual to leave an extremist environment. Perceived from the position of former right wing extremists, the article considers the challenges involved in (re)integrating into society by those stigmatized by a criminal and extremist past. It explores how individuals leaving a right wing extremist group handle themselves in a new world when their embodied knowledge and habitual responding are no longer appropriate, and investigates the many aspects individuals struggle with years after their engagement, when they do not know who to become and how to act. (shrink)

Of the plural dimensions of collective identity, this paper explores identity as a rhetorical device. The identity tag is a case in point of pragmatic effectiveness. To account for such a power a hypothetical model of identity categories is presented. Its constituent modules shape four basic dimensions: position, deindividuation, exclusion and cognitive shielding. Such delineated narrative identity becomes equivalent to an informal ideology . As constitutive rhetoric , the narrative construction of identities converts self-referential tautology into strategies of discrimination, purification (...) and extermination of exponents of otherness. Last century mass destruction – totalitarianism, colonialism, ethno-nationalism – has been tributary to the identity paradigm. (shrink)