Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities / Edition 1

by Martha K. Huggins, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, Philip G. Zimbardo

Overview

Of the twenty-three Brazilian policemen interviewed in depth for this landmark study, fourteen were direct perpetrators of torture and murder during the three decades that included the 1964-1985 military regime. These "violence workers" and the other group of "atrocity facilitators" who had not, or claimed they had not, participated directly in the violence, help answer questions that haunt today's world: Why and how are ordinary men transformed into state torturers and murderers? How do atrocity perpetrators explain and justify their violence? What is the impact of their murderous deeds—on them, on their victims, and on society? What memories of their atrocities do they admit and which become public history?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520234475
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	11/21/2002
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	1450L (what's this?)

About the Author

Martha K. Huggins is Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Sociology at Union College. Her book Political Policing (1998) won two awards. Mika Haritos-Fatouros is Professor of Psychology at the School of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and author of the forthcoming title, The Psychological Origins of Institutionalized Torture (2003). Philip G. Zimbardo is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, author of several books, and 2002 President of the American Psychological Association.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Explanation of Illustrations
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgements

Preface
Introduction

Chapter 1: Violent Lives
Chapter 2: Reconstructing Atrocity
Chapter 3: Locating Torturers and Murderers
Chapter 4: Deposing Atrocity and Managing Secrecy
Chapter 5: Biography Intersects History
Chapter 6: Personalistic Masculinity
Chapter 7: Bureaucratizing Masculinities
Chapter 8: Blended Masculinity
Chapter 9: Shaping Identities and Obedience: A Murderous Dynamic
Chapter 10: Secret and Insular Worlds of Serial Torturers and Executioners
Chapter 11: Moral Universe of Torturers and Murderers
Chapter 12: Hung Out to Dry

Conclusion: The Alchemy of Torture and Execution: Transforming Ordinary Men into Violence Perpetrators

Editorial Reviews

A groundbreaking work. Its conclusions allow us to understand how state-sponsored violence is a social illness, and how easily moral boundaries can be destroyed. Our lesson is to grasp carefully how the technique of transforming individuals into evildoers is a highly rational exercise of constructed hatred, the isolation of individuals, and the blurring of the border between duty and cruelty.

Maria Pia Lara

It's rare enough that people study torturers. It's very dangerous fieldwork, demoralizing material to ponder over, and intellectually hazardous to put it together coherently. These authors do better than this: they come back with a book well worth thinking about. Thinking about torture these days is something we do less and less; one can only hope this book will be an antidote to so much thoughtlessness.

Darius Rejali