Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust

Alvarez, Alex

doi:10.1017/s0145553200017697

Cited by 57 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Massacre becomes analogous to self-preservation, and killing blurs with purifying, sanitising and disinfecting a society of a mortiferious infection. 62 Toxification flags that the perpetrators see genocide as a logical and just method of guaranteeing survival undertaken "by an innocent and injured party." 63 As aptly put by Straus, "particular circumstances can cause people to commit harm they might not otherwise have been predisposed to commit" 64 -I propose that toxification could be the early warning sign that signals such a manipulation of individuals' perception of self-defence.…”

Section: An Emerging Research Agenda: Toxification and An Engagement mentioning

confidence: 99%

'Toxification' as a More Precise Early Warning Sign for Genocide Than Dehumanization? An Emerging Research Agenda

Neilsen

2015

GSP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract.In genocide scholarship, dehumanization is often considered to be an alarming early warning sign for mass systematic killing. Yet, within broader research, dehumanization is found to exist in a variety of instances that do not lead to aggression or violence. This disparity suggests that while dehumanization is an important part of the genocidal process, it is too imprecise as a salient early warning sign. Genocide scholars have acknowledged such a conjecture in the past. This article initiates an embryonic research agenda that offers 'toxification' as a more precise early warning sign for genocide than dehumanization. It contends that while dehumanization signals that killing members of a particular group may be regarded as permissible, a more indicative early warning is one that flags when extermination is considered a necessity. Following a literature review of dehumanization, the purpose of this article is to introduce the idea of 'toxificaton' , and to illustrate how the concept can work in practice, using two twentieth century genocides as examples. Keywords IntroductionScholarship over the last half century suggests that genocide does not manifest without hideously vivid preliminaries: the processes' paradox of contextual uniqueness and "painful axiom of invariance" 1 has yielded a number of early warning indicators that are considered common to genocides.2 Dehumanization-the denial of a person's humanity and his/her ejection from the "sphere of equal moral standing"

show abstract

Section: An Emerging Research Agenda: Toxification and An Engagement mentioning

confidence: 99%

'Toxification' as a More Precise Early Warning Sign for Genocide Than Dehumanization? An Emerging Research Agenda

Neilsen

2015

GSP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Levi, 1981;Eliason and Dodder, 1999;Fox, 1999). It has also been the subject of more intuitive applications including the victimisation of battered wives (Ferraro and Johnson, 1983), genocide and the Holocaust (Alvarez, 1997), organisational rule enforcing (Fershing, 2003) and the management of the ''temporary deviant'' label of pageant mothers in the United States (Heltsley and Calhoun, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why People Don’t Take their Concerns about Fair Trade to the Supermarket: The Role of Neutralisation

2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores how neutralisation can explain people’s lack of commitment to buying Fair Trade (FT) products, even when they identify FT as an ethical concern. It examines the theoretical tenets of neutralisation theory and critically assesses its applicability to the purchase of FT products. Exploratory research provides illustrative examples of neutralisation techniques being used in the FT consumer context. A conceptual framework and research propositions delineate the role of neutralisation in explaining the attitude-behaviour discrepancies evident in relation to consumers’ FT purchase behaviour, providing direction for further research that will generate new knowledge of consumers’ FT purchase behaviour and other aspects of ethical consumer behaviour. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007attitude-behaviour gap, ethical consumerism, ethical decision-making, fair trade purchase, neutralisation,

show abstract

“…Techniques of neutralization have, for the most part, been applied to serious and violent offences (e.g. Brennan 1974;Minor 1980;Agnew 1994;Alvarez 1997) and the research has been biased towards incarcerated or convicted persons. Neutralization theory has not previously been applied to software piracy, and "reasons why such illegal behavior continues to occur are lacking" (Harrington 2000, p. 83 business hours) (Lim 2002); related is the examination of Neumann and Simpson (1997) about bootlegging music.…”

Section: Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ripped from the Headlines: What can the Popular Press Teach us about Software Piracy?

Zamoon

Curley

2007

J Bus Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Technological advances have outpaced the development of laws and norms to govern their acquisition and use. Software piracy is an instance of unauthorized duplication where laws and norms are not agreed upon. Although many articles have been written around the issue of software piracy, few have taken into consideration social and psychological aspects of the process. One barometer of the social environment is media coverage. This paper presents a content analysis (including actual quotes) of the five highest circulating U.S. newspapers 1989-2004 as evidence of the prevailing social environment surrounding software piracy. We classified the rationales for and against piracy using Fiske's (1991) structures for social interaction and found that those who condone piracy mostly evoke authority ranking and market pricing models, whereas those who condemn piracy mostly evoke market pricing models. Furthermore, not all the rationales given for/ against software piracy fit neatly into Sykes and Matza (1957) neutralization framework. Shariffah Zamoon and Shawn CurleyLast Revised: January 31, 2006Page 2 of 50 IntroductionThe development of technologies has outpaced the development of laws and norms that regulate their acquisition and use. The unauthorized duplication of digital products is an instance of this problem. Digital products are information that "can be digitizedencoded as a stream of bits" (Shapiro and Varian 1999, p.3). Digital products are compact, portable, and can be used virtually anywhere. However, the unauthorized duplication of digital products has created a gray area in the ethical landscape, where some condone the practice as legitimate while others condemn the practice as outright theft. Software, as an instance of a digital product exemplifies this situation well.Software piracy is defined as any reproduction of software that is in violation of its licensing agreement. The very term expresses a moral position, that espoused by the software industry. According to this view, piracy is stealing, it is a crime, and it is unethical. This is also the position expressed by the movie industry in ads against downloading films, another digital product. For example, according to Solomon and O'Brien (1991), piracy is blessed with high acceptance among at least some students and, e.g. : "nearly half of the students had never heard a faculty member speak against illegal copying…a quarter of the sampled students had heard a faculty member condone the copying of protected software" (p. 174). The moral ambiguity of software piracy is further highlighted by the research of Strikwerda and Ross (1992), Logsdon, Reid (1994), andGlass andWood (1996) who have shown that piracy is not viewed as an ethical issue by some. Individuals may approach duplication as a preference choice, with no principles, norms, or values being brought to bear on the decision (Glass and Wood 1996).Because there are no agreed upon standards or norms to govern the acquisition and use of software, individuals are left to their own decision-m...

show abstract

Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization and the Holocaust

Cited by 57 publications

References 30 publications

'Toxification' as a More Precise Early Warning Sign for Genocide Than Dehumanization? An Emerging Research Agenda

'Toxification' as a More Precise Early Warning Sign for Genocide Than Dehumanization? An Emerging Research Agenda

Why People Don’t Take their Concerns about Fair Trade to the Supermarket: The Role of Neutralisation

Ripped from the Headlines: What can the Popular Press Teach us about Software Piracy?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About