Cultures under Siege

Interdisciplinary study of collective violence offering insights into darker side of humanity.

Collective violence changes perpetrators, victims, and societies, targetting body, psyche, and socio-cultural order. This collection by anthropologists, psychologists and psychoanalysts, draws on research in many different parts of the world, providing insights into the darker side of humanity, and proposing new ways of understanding the horrors people are capable of.Collective violence changes the perpetrators, the victims, and the societies in which it occurs. It targets the body, the psyche, and the socio-cultural order. How do people come to terms with these tragic events, and how are cultures affected by massive outbreaks of violence? This book is a groundbreaking collection of essays by anthropologists, psychologists and psychoanalysts, drawing on field research in many different parts of the world. Profiting from an interdisciplinary dialogue, the authors provide provocative, at times deeply troubling, insights into the darker side of humanity, and they also propose new ways of understanding the terrible things that people are capable of doing to each other.