The Rise of Organised Brutality: A Historical Sociology of Violence

Challenging the prevailing belief that organised violence is experiencing historically continuous decline, this book provides an in-depth sociological analysis that shows organised violence is, in fact, on the rise. Malesevic demonstrates that violence is determined by organisational capacity, ideological penetration and micro-solidarity, rather than biological tendencies, meaning that despite pre-modern societies being exposed to spectacles of cruelty and torture, such societies had no organisational means to systematically slaughter millions of individuals. Malesevic suggests that violence should not be analysed as just an event or process, but also via changing perceptions of those events and processes, and by linking this to broader social transformations on the inter-polity and inter-group levels he makes his key argument that organised violence has proliferated. Focusing on wars, revolutions, genocides and terrorism, this book shows how modern social organisations utilise ideology and micro-solidarity to mobilise public support for mass scale violence.

Author: Sinisa Malesevic
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 04/03/2017
Pages: 346
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 9.13h x 6.09w x 0.92d
ISBN: 9781107479494

About the Author
Male Evi, Sini a.: - Sini a Male evi is a Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin. His books include Nation-States and Nationalisms: Organisation, Ideology and Solidarity (2013), The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge, 2006), Identity as Ideology (2006), The Sociology of Ethnicity (2004) and the edited volumes Ernest Gellner and Historical Sociology (2015), Nationalism and War (Cambridge, 2013) and Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought (Cambridge, 2007). His work has been translated into Croatian, Persian, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian and Spanish.Malesevic, Sinisa: - Sinisa Malesevic is a Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin. His books include Nation-States and Nationalisms: Organisation, Ideology and Solidarity (2013), The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge, 2006), Identity as Ideology (2006), The Sociology of Ethnicity (2004) and the edited volumes Ernest Gellner and Historical Sociology (2015), Nationalism and War (Cambridge, 2013) and Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought (Cambridge, 2007). His work has been translated into Croatian, Persian, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian and Spanish.