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On Violence in History (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,675
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On Violence in History (Hardcover)
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Is global violence on the decline? Scholars argue that Harvard
psychologist Steven Pinker's proposal that violence has declined
dramatically over time is flawed. This highly-publicized argument
that human violence across the world has been dramatically abating
continues to influence discourse among academics and the general
public alike. In this provocative volume, a cast of eminent
historians interrogate Pinker's thesis by exposing the realities of
violence throughout human history. In doing so, they reveal the
history of human violence to be richer, more thought-provoking, and
considerably more complicated than Pinker claims. From the
introduction: Not all of the scholars included in this volume agree
on everything, but the overall verdict is that Pinker's thesis, for
all the stimulus it may have given to discussions around violence,
is seriously, if not fatally, flawed.The problems that come up time
and again are the failure to genuinely engage with historical
methodologies; the unquestioning use of dubious sources; the
tendency to exaggerate the violence of the past in order to
contrast it with the supposed peacefulness of the modern era; the
creation of a number of straw men, which Pinker then goes on to
debunk; and its extraordinarily Western-centric, not to say
Whiggish, view of the world. Complex historical questions, as the
essays in this volume clearly demonstrate, cannot be answered with
any degree of certainty, and certainly not in a simplistic way. Our
goal here is not to offer a final, definitive verdict on Pinker's
work; it is, rather, to initiate an ongoing process of assessment
that in the future will incorporate as much of the history
profession as possible.
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