Dehumanization Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The paper has been drafted to critically evaluate the heart of darkness and it portrays of Africa and Africans. It has considered Chinua Achebe's criticism of the novel as a means for "dehumanization of Africa and Africans." For the critical evaluation of the assertion different perspective has been taken. The novel has been critically evaluating from the perspective of the Chinua Achebe and other writers. In the later section, the writing of Conrad has been evaluated based on the circumstances and the perspective of that era. Lastly, the assertion has been evaluated based on the period of critics like Chinua Achebe. Reading and evaluating the work of Conrad in the 21 st century is itself a different perspective. When the novel has been published, no critic has pointed out that it's writing to the dehumanization of Africa and Africans. However, in 1902, "An Image of Africa" has been evolved. The critics like Chinua Achebe know that its perspective will be well understood in that period. Though the meaning of the words remains the same the ideas that had been construed from it have to keep on changing based on the period and the circumstances of that era.

- by IAEME Publication
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- Africa, Racism, Dehumanization, African
- by Sabina Cehajic-Clancy
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- Dehumanization, Reconciliation

Full thesis is available through the Cork Open Access Archive, here: https://cora.ucc.ie/handle/10468/12426
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Although the term ‘infantilisation’ is used across disciplines and in different contexts, its meaning is frequently unclear. Where adults are infantilized, are they treated -as- children or -like- children, or merely in some child-appropriate ways? Are they thought of as child-like, or as defective adults, or as children in the bodies of adults? Is infantilisation distinct from paternalism, or only a severe example of it? In this thesis I develop a concept and theory of infantilisation which addresses these questions. Both concept and theory are grounded in empirical studies on the infantilisation of adults in elderly care settings and of physically and cognitively disabled adults (both in care and in the community). I argue that infantilisation is conceptually distinct from paternalism, that it is an inapt conceptualization of any adult, and that the treatments which stem from it are harmful. I conclude that the infantilisation of adults – cognitively disabled or not – is both a social injustice and a conceptual failure.

- by David Lamb
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- Ethics, Applied Ethics, Bioethics, Decision Making

Qualitative research provides opportunities to study bullying and peer harassment as social processes, interactions and meaning-making in the everyday context of particular settings. It offers the possibility of developing a deep understanding of the culture and group processes of bullying and the participants’ perspectives on peer harassment as well. It gives participants opportunities to discuss their own understanding and experiences of bullying in their own words. This article reviews qualitative studies on bullying or peer harassment in school (including some studies in which qualitative and quantitative methods — so-called mixed methods — have been used).

- by Robert Thornberg
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- Sociology, Interactionism, Sociology Of Deviance, Psychology

Within the literature on public opinion, the mainstream framework is that in-group and out-group attitudes are distinct phenomena, especially with regard to racial attitudes. Elsewhere, in the literature on race and nationalism, scholars have concluded that the United States subscribes to cultural, color-blind racism, that has predominantly replaced biological racism. To explain the context in which white supremacy is again a viable political force in American politics, this paper argues that notions of biological racism that predate the Civil Rights Movement remain potent and continue to underlie cultural racism, and that that these out-group attitudes are not independent of in-group attitudes. This paper focuses on a form of dehumanization-simianization, or the depiction of racial groups (in this case African-Americans) as apes, tracing its origins in Enlightenment-era scientific racism, its historical role in shaping U.S. race and class relations, and as its role in defining American citizenship as hierarchical. Moreover, this paper presents evidence of simianization in contemporary political discourse surrounding African-Americans in the United States. The paper seeks to synthesize the literature on public opinion and that on race and nationalism in order to shed new theoretical light on our thinking about the relationship between in-group and out-group attitude formation.

- by Ioana Hulbert
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- Public Opinion, Race and Ethnicity, Nationalism, Dehumanization
- by Hector Reyes Zaga
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- Posthumanism, Cyberpunk, Neoliberalism, Dehumanization

This paper will set out to prove that the modern form of the subcultural movement known as “hip-hop” serves as a human rights practice by first examining the history of human rights development and practice, then analyzing a few iconic moments of hip-hop’s impact in the political sphere. During this discussion, it will become important to understand the mechanisms of dehumanization, how they are addressed by human rights practices, and how Consciousness impacts this interaction. By analyzing historical precedents of dehumanization as a precursor to human rights atrocities, and also precedents of art as human rights critique this paper seeks to establish the precarious position of African Americans in the 21st century and the important role of hip-hop in addressing, combatting, and preventing further human rights violations against them. There will also be a brief discussion on the globalization of hip-hop, leading to its use as an international human rights practice. Finally, this paper will provide a domestic perspective in the wake of the 2016 United States presidential election, and will seek to explain how hip-hop will pave the road forward as the country faces a renormalization of derogatory rhetoric.

- by Anyun Chatterjee
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- Discourse Analysis, Human Rights, Contemporary Art, Dehumanization
- by Chiara Volpato
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- Sociology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Haiti

The process of dehumanization, or thinking of others as less than human, is a phenomenon with significant societal implications. According to Haslam&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s (2006) model, two concepts of humanness derive from comparing humans with either animals or machines: individuals may be dehumanized by likening them to either animals or machines, or humanized by emphasizing differences from animals or machines. Recent work in cognitive neuroscience emphasizes understanding cognitive processes in terms of interactions between distributed cortical networks. It has been found that reasoning about internal mental states is associated with activation of the default mode network (DMN) and deactivation of the task positive network (TPN); whereas reasoning about mechanical processes produces the opposite pattern. We conducted two neuroimaging studies. The first examined the neural bases of dehumanization and its relation to these two brain networks, using images and voice-over social narratives which either implicitly contrasted or implicitly likened humans to either animals or machines. The second study addressed a discrepancy between findings from the first study and prior work on the neural correlates of dehumanization: using a design similar to prior work we examined neural responses to pictures of humans, animals and machines, presented without any social context. In both studies, human and humanizing conditions were associated with relatively high activity in the DMN and relatively low activity in the TPN. However, the non-human and dehumanizing conditions deviated in different ways: they demonstrated more marked changes either in the DMN or in the TPN. Notably, differences between the animal dehumanizing and humanizing conditions were most evident in regions associated with mechanistic reasoning, not in the mentalizing network. Conjunction analysis of contrasts from both paradigms revealed that only one region was consistently more active when participants saw human, a medial parietal region regarded as the central hub of the DMN. These findings provide a neural basis for Haslam&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s distinction between two types of dehumanization, and suggest that the DMN and TPN play opposing roles in creating a sense of moral concern.

- by Anthony Jack
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- Dehumanization, Affect, Brain, Humans

Stigma against fat people permeates every level of healthcare, yet most attempts to reduce weight stigma among healthcare providers have shown only marginal results. Fat studies, a field that rigorously interrogates negative assumptions about fatness, can help social psychologists understand weight stigma by centering the pathologization of fatness as a major contributor to weight stigma at the structural and interpersonal level. A fat studies approach also reorients the normative goal of weight stigma interventions from reducing stigma to eradicating stigma and calls for methods that reject weight stigma’s roots in medicine and medical discourse. Even nuanced and sympathetic models of “obesity” cannot combat stigma that is structurally based in medical authority. We applied these principles to develop a new method of weight stigma intervention: direct contact structured through narrative medicine. In a qualitative pilot study, four medical students and two fat activist community members met for five 2-hour narrative medicine workshops over five weeks. All participants completed focus group interviews about the experience. Interview transcript analysis revealed that these workshops provided a space for depathologizing, humanizing, empathy-inducing, and power-leveling interactions between medical students and fat people, where members of both groups reported benefiting from the experience. We conclude that non-pathologizing approaches to eradicating weight stigma are not only feasible, but both ethically and methodologically necessary.

- by Rachel Fox
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- Obesity, Fat Studies, Narrative Medicine, Obesity Stigma

This article examines the blunt conceptual instrument of dehumanizing American military terms for the enemy in the context of the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terror. I examine language that dehumanizes American service members themselves, who are semiotically framed as expendable. Next, I explore the essentialist, semi-propositional qualities of derogatory epithets for the enemy and the affectively charged, deadly stances they encourage. I examine how generic references to the enemy during training make totalizing claims that risk encompassing civilians in their typifications. And I show that, in the context of war, the instability of derogatory epithets can manifest itself when the servicemember is confronted with the behavioral idiosyncrasies and personal vulnerabilities of actual 'enemies' on the ground. The putative folk wisdom found in generic references to the enemy can thus fall apart when confronted with countervailing experience; in such cases, service members may shift stance by renouncing military epithets.

- by Janet McIntosh
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- Discourse Analysis, Semiotics, Military Ethics, Linguistic Anthropology

Flyer for an event at the University of Maine October 14th, 2020.

- by Derek A Michaud
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- Ethics, Jewish Studies, Dehumanization, Judaic Studies
- by Michael Dover
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- Dehumanization, Exploitation, Microaggressions, Social Injustice

The high prevalence of violent offending amongst gang-involved youth has been established in the literature. Yet the underlying psychological mechanisms that enable youth to engage in such acts of violence remain unclear. 189 young people were recruited from areas in London, UK, known for their gang activity. We found that gang members, in comparison to non-gang youth, described the groups they belong to as having recognized leaders, specific rules and codes, initiation rituals, and special clothing. Gang members were also more likely than non-gang youth to engage in violent behavior and endorse moral disengagement strategies (i.e., moral justification, euphemistic language, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, attribution of blame, and dehumanization). Finally, we found that dehumanizing victims partially mediated the relationship between gang membership and violent behavior. These findings highlight the effects of groups at the individual level and an underlying psychological mechanism that explains, in part, how gang members engage in violence.

- by Emma Alleyne
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- Forensic Psychology, Dehumanization, Delinquency and Gangs, Street gangs
- by Noam Pines
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- German Literature, Jewish Studies, Poetry, Animals and Animality
- by Sarah Chergui
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- Psychoanalysis, Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory

Infrahumanization is a specific attribution error due to the difference in the perception of the ingroup and the outgroup on a dimension of humanity. The subject of the paper includes two quazi-experimental studies concerning cultural conditions of infrahumanization. Ocurrence of the effect of infrahumanization among all the respondents was expected and it was speculated if cultural differences in the intensity of the phenomenon occur. The first study involved 150 people, seventy five of Polish origin and seventy five of Bulgarian origin. The second study involved 120 people, sixty of Polish origin and sixty of Indonesian origin. The hypothesis was partially confirmed. The classic effect of infrahumanization occurred among Polish and Bulgarian respondents, but the effect was stronger among Poles. The classic infrahumanization effect did not occur among Indonesian participants.

- by Anna Ciechomska
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- Psychology, Social Psychology, Attribution Theory, Cross-Cultural Psychology

Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine demonstrate that both classical and existential phenomenology offer analytical concepts that are of crucial pertinence and value to contemporary dehumanization research. They begin by outlining a general account of dehumanization that distinguishes it both from the general operation of objectification and from the violation of autonomy. Rather, they argue, what is essential to dehumanizing acts and practices is a disregard for, and undermining of, the unique singularity of human persons. Moreover, it is proposed that dehumanization ought to be theorized as an intersubjective process that also incorporates how the dehumanizing activity is experienced by the person dehumanized. Two concrete cases of dehumanizing treatment are then discussed in detail: colonial racism and gender hierarchization. The analytical concepts of inferiorization, epidermalization, and emotive projection are introduced to account for some of the specific features of these varieties of dehumanization. The Chapter thus argues that dehumanization is not one unified phenomenon but a pattern of social dynamics that emerges in different guises as relative to specific practical and historical contexts.

- by Sara Heinämaa and +1
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- Race and Racism, Feminist Philosophy, Phenomenology, Edmund Husserl

Il presente lavoro si fa carico di questioni che il confronto con il fenomeno del Totalitarismo non può non suscitare nello studioso, oltre che nell'uomo in quanto uomo. Alla luce degli scritti di Hannah Arendt, si analizzeranno il regime e il soggetto totalitario. Secondo l'autrice, sono soltanto due i governi totalitari che si sono dati storicamente, quello nazista in Germania e quello comunista in Russia, accomunati da tratti – quali l'atomizzazione sociale, il bisogno continuo di vittime, l'anti-utilitarismo, l'uso di strumenti come la violenza e il terrore – che risultano indispensabili per la sopravvivenza di regimi di questo genere. Anche la propaganda, marcatamente ideologica e falsa, riveste un ruolo fondamentale nella promozione del consenso, indice della tendenza del Totalitarismo a fondare la propria esistenza sulla menzogna. Il carattere menzognero investe poi la natura stessa dell'uomo, sia di chi aderisce al regime, sia di chi ne è vittima, in un processo di disumanizzazione del soggetto che raggiunge l'apice nel campo di concentramento. Qui, il male assume un aspetto radicale, eppure non manca di stupire, insieme, per la sua apparente banalità. Nell'analisi del fenomeno in questione sarà prezioso inoltre il riferimento agli scritti di Kafka, dove è implicito molto di quello che il Totalitarismo esplicita. Infine, ci chiederemo se esso sopravviva ancora oggi, mostrando il rischio che possa conseguire la vittoria definitiva dietro forme esasperate di Negazionismo.

- by Francesco La Placa
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- Totalitarianism, Communism, Franz Kafka, Second World War

Environmental activist and ardent advocate for children’s rights and well-being, Jamaican laureate of the 2008 Jamaican National Literature awards, Diana McCaulay, published her critically acclaimed debut novel Dog-Heart in 2010. This paper will first focus on the legacy of colonial racism in Jamaica, before addressing the main characters’ quest for identity in a crime-ridden society.

Too little consideration has been given to conceptualizing race within mainstream criminological scholarship. One consequence of this oversight is the existence of a stale debate over the causes of racial disparities in crime and criminal justice outcomes. This article draws upon intersectionality to present an historical analysis of the policing of African Americans. The article argues that the concept of dehumanization helps explain the structural inequalities that produce crime within African American communities and the presence of racism within law enforcement agencies. The discipline may advance research in this area by adopting a constructionist racialization framework.

- by Akwasi Owusu-Bempah (A.O. Bempah)
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- Critical Theory, History, American History, Sociology
- by Bonnie Steinbock
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- Law, Contracts, Ethics, Applied Ethics

Communication decisively impacts upon all our lives. This inherent need to connect may either be soothing or painful, a source of intimate understanding or violent discord. Consequently, how it is brokered is challenging and often crucial in situations where those involved have quite different ways of being in and seeing the world. Good communication is equated with skills that intentionally facilitate change, the realisation of desirable outcomes and the improvement of human situations. Withdrawal of communication, or its intentional manipulation, provokes misunderstanding, mistrust, and precipitates the decline into disorder. This international collection of work specifically interrogates conflict as an essential outworking of communication, and suggests that understanding of communication’s potency in contexts of conflict can directly influence reciprocally positive outcomes.

- by Peter Bray
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- Communication, Rhetoric, Terrorism, Conflict

W ostatnich latach nasilają się negatywne zjawiska towarzyszące człowiekowi pracującemu, takie jak zanik więzi międzyludzkich czy niekorzystne zmiany w systemie wartości. Przedmiotem rozważań zawartych w tym rozdziale są zagrożenia występujące w miejscu pracy, ujęte w kontekście menedżerskim i etycznym. Efektywność gospodarowania przedsiębiorstwem w odniesieniu do obszaru zasobów ludzkich wymaga bowiem z jednej strony zastosowania rachunku ekonomicznego w zakresie kosztów pracy, ale z drugiej strony zadaniem m.in. kierownictwa przedsiębiorstw jest sformułowanie polityki personalnej uwzględniającej dostosowanie warunków pracy do potrzeb człowieka. Głównym celem tej pracy jest identyfikacja współczesnych zagrożeń związanych z wykonywaniem pracy w warunkach ukształtowanych „galopującym” postępem technologiczno-informatycznym. Będzie w niej przedstawiona interpretacja pojęcia dehumanizacji i humanizacji pracy oraz omówione zostaną skutki dehumanizacji – zarówno dla pracownika, jak i dla pracodawcy. Drugim celem jest próba nakreślenia sposobów przeciwdziałania i ograniczania wpływu negatywnych zjawisk, takich jak pracoholizm, wypalenie zawodowe czy przewlekły stres.

- by Bernard Binczycki
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- Stress Management, Job Stress (Psychology), Dehumanization, Stress and Burnout

Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny combines traditional conceptual analysis and feminist conceptual engineering with critical exploration of cases drawn from popular culture and current events in order to produce an ameliorative account of misogyny, i.e., one that will help address the problems of misogyny in the actual world. A feminist account of misogyny that is both intersectional and ameliorative must provide theoretical tools for recognizing misogyny in its many-dimensional forms, as it interacts and overlaps with other oppressions. While Manne thinks subtly about many of the material conditions that create misogyny as a set of normative social practices, she does not fully extend this care to the other intersectional forms of oppression she discusses. After touching on the book’s strengths, I track variations of its main problem, namely, its failure to fully conceive of oppressions besides sexism and misogyny as systemic patterns of social practices, as inherently structural rather than mere collections of individual beliefs and behaviors.

- by Nora Berenstain
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- Social Psychology, Gender Studies, Philosophy, Moral Psychology

Several authors have recently questioned whether dehumanization is a psychological prerequisite of mass violence. This paper argues that the significance of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism can be understood only if its ideological dimension is taken into account. The author concentrates on Alfred Rosenberg’s racist doctrine and shows that Nazi ideology can be read as a political anthropology that grounds both the belief in the German privilege and the dehumanization of the Jews. This anthropological framework combines biological, cultural and metaphysical aspects. Therefore, it cannot be reduced to biologism. This new reading of Nazi ideology supports three general conclusions: First, the author reveals a complex strategy of dehumanization which is not considered in the current psychological debate. Second, the analysis of the ideological mechanism suggests a model of dehumanization that is more plausible than other psychological models. Third, the author provides evidence that this kind of dehumanization had psychological consequences and hence was an important feature of Nazi reality.

- by Johannes Steizinger
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- History, Political Philosophy, Race and Racism, Genocide Studies

Recently, discussions regarding how to create a positive school climate where all can be successful has come to the forefront. Healthy schools support student learning, well-being, time, space to be active, and opportunities for social and emotional growth. However, a host of numerous trends suggest that the school climate is becoming increasingly hostile towards students who are from immigrant, LBGTQ and ethnic minority groups. What is often seen as disrespectful behavior towards
these students, is in fact actions that can be more accurately defined as dehumanization. This article overviews the practice of dehumanization, the implications for learning and introduces proactive strategies to promote the success of all students.
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It should be noted that the title "Everyone Matters" is contextualized for the purpose of talking about dehumanization, as dehumanization is not limited to one group of people.

- by Brian Culp
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- Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, Languages and Linguistics, Race and Racism

The aim of this study was to investigate how individuals;who had been victims of school bullying;perceived their bullying experiences and how these had affected them;and to generate a grounded theory of being a victim of bullying at school. Twenty-one individuals;who all had prior experiences of being bullied in school for more than one year;were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of data was performed by methods from grounded theory. The research identified a basic process of victimising in school bullying;which consisted of four phases: (a) initial attacks;(b) double victimising;(c) bullying exit and (d) after-effects of bullying. Double victimising refers to a process in which there was an interplay between external victimising and internal victimising. Acts of harassment were repeatedly directed at the victims from their social environment at school – a social process that constructed and repeatedly confirmed their victim role in the class or the group. This external victimising affected the victims and initiated an internal victimising;which meant that they internalised the socially constructed victim-image and acted upon this image;which in turn often supported the bullies’ agenda and confirmed the socially constructed victim-image. The findings also indicate the possible positive effect of changing the social environment.

- by Robert Thornberg
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- Sociology, Sociology, Sociology, Criminology

- by Robert Thornberg
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- Sociology, Sociology, Sociology, Criminology

- by Robert Thornberg
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- Sociology, Sociology, Sociology, Criminology

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

- by Robert Thornberg
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- Sociology, Criminology, Psychology, Behavioural Science

Blatant dehumanization has recently been demonstrated to predict negative outgroup attitudes and behaviors. Here, we examined blatant dehumanization of Muslim refugees during the ‘Refugee Crisis’ among large samples in four European countries: The Czech Republic (N=1,307), Hungary (N=502), Spain (N=1,049), and Greece (N=934). Our results suggest that blatant dehumanization of Muslim refugees is (a) prevalent among Europeans, and (b) uniquely associated with anti-refugee attitudes and behavior, beyond political ideology, prejudice, and— of particular relevance to the refugee crisis— empathy. We also find that blatant dehumanization of Muslim refugees is significantly higher and more strongly associated with intergroup behavior in the Eastern European countries (especially the Czech Republic) than in Spain and Greece. Examining a range of outgroup targets beyond refugees, our results further illustrate that blatant dehumanization is not purely an ethnocentric bias: whereas individuals across contexts feel warmer towards their group than all others, they rate several high-status outgroups as equally or more fully ‘evolved and civilized’ than the ingroup. Our research extends theoretical understanding of blatant dehumanization, and suggests that blatant dehumanization plays an important and independent role in the rejection of Muslim refugees throughout Europe.

- by Emile Bruneau and +1
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- Islamophobia, Dehumanization, Refugees

Dehumanization is a central concept in the study of intergroup relations. Yet while theoretical and methodological advances in subtle, ‘everyday’ dehumanization have progressed rapidly, blatant dehumanization remains understudied. The present research attempts to re-focus theoretical and empirical attention on blatant dehumanization, examining when and why it provides explanatory power beyond subtle dehumanization. To accomplish this, we introduce and validate a blatant measure of dehumanization based on the popular depiction of evolutionary progress in the ‘Ascent of Man.’ We compare blatant dehumanization to established conceptualizations of subtle and implicit dehumanization, including infrahumanization, perceptions of human nature (HN) and human uniqueness (UH), and implicit associations between ingroup/outgroup and human/animal concepts. Across seven studies conducted in three countries, we demonstrate that blatant dehumanization is: (a) more strongly associated with individual...

- by Emile Bruneau and +1
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- Marketing, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Social Psychology

Paper/Conference Universidad Complutense de Madrid, may 2013.

- by Constanza Nieto Yusta
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- Religion, Ortega y Gasset, Culture, Dehumanization
- by huang xiaqing
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Technology, Social Interaction

This article is derived from a thesis topic presented at the University of Santo Tomas in partial compliance of the requirements for an undergraduate degree in philosophy. In this project, the researcher seeks to elevate the study of dehumanization to a more philosophic discourse, considering that there are very few literature that touch upon the same. Viktor Frankl’s anthropology and his criticism of modern science has been utilized in the formation of a systematic concept of dehumanization, supplemented with the ideas of contemporary theorists on dehumanization, namely Jacques-Phillip Leyens, Nick Haslam, and David Livingstone Smith. In so doing, the researcher has formulated three implications of dehumanization in Frankl’s philosophy – the object, cause, and effect of dehumanization. With this in mind, he concludes that scientific reductionism has contributed to the dehumanization of man, and consequently to the events of mass violence in recent history.

- by Aaron Jan Madarang
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- Dehumanization, Viktor Frankl, Logotherapy, Existential analysis

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought.

- by Maria Brincker and +1
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- Critical Theory, Political Sociology, Social Psychology, Black Studies Or African American Studies

The paper has been drafted to critically evaluate the heart of darkness and it portrays of Africa and Africans. It has considered Chinua Achebe's criticism of the novel as a means for “dehumanization of Africa and Africans." For the critical evaluation of the assertion different perspective has been taken. The novel has been critically evaluating from the perspective of the Chinua Achebe and other writers. In the later section, the writing of Conrad has been evaluated based on the circumstances and the perspective of that era. Lastly, the assertion has been evaluated based on the period of critics like Chinua Achebe. Reading and evaluating the work of Conrad in the 21st century is itself a different perspective. When the novel has been published, no critic has pointed out that it's writing to the dehumanization of Africa and Africans. However, in 1902, “An Image of Africa" has been evolved. The critics like Chinua Achebe know that its perspective will be well understood in that period. Though the meaning of the words remains the same the ideas that had been construed from it have to keep on changing based on the period and the circumstances of that era

- by IAEME Publication
- •
- Africa, Racism, Dehumanization, African

A large part of the contemporary literature on dehumanization is committed to three ideas: (a) dehumanization involves some degree of denial of humanness, (b) such denial is to be comprehended in mental terms, and (c) whatever exact mechanisms underlie the denial of humanness, they belong in the realm of post-perceptual processing. This chapter examines (c) and argues that the awareness of minds might belong to perceptual processing. This paves the way for the possibility that dehumanization might, at least in part, be a perceptual phenomenon, such that dehumanizers visually perceive the dehumanized as exhibiting lesser-than-human minds. It is perhaps unsurprising that the first systematic investigations of dehumanization approached the phenomenon as linked to contexts of war, genocide, extreme hatred, and violence. One guiding hypothesis was that dehumanizers exclude the dehumanized from a moral community of human beings, implicitly conceptualized as displaying distinct individualities and being embedded in caring interpersonal relations. By comprehending the dehumanized as deindividuated entities to which moral norms and considerations of fairness do not apply (Opotow 1990), dehumanizers are able to disengage from moral restrictions and self-sanctions (Bandura 1999).

- by Somogy Varga
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- Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of perception, Social Perception

The aim with the present study was to investigate bystander actions in bullying situations as well as reasons behind these actions as they are articulated by Swedish students from fourth to seventh grade. Forty-three semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with students. Qualitative analysis of data was performed by methods from grounded theory. The analysis of the student voices of being a bystander in bullying reveals a complexity in which different definition-of-situation processes are evoked (a) relations (friends and social hierarchy), (b) defining seriousness, (c) victim’s contribution to the situation, (d) social roles and intervention responsibilities, and (e) distressing emotions. There are often conflicted motives in how to act as a bystander, which could evoke moral distress among the students. Our analysis is unique in that it introduces the concept of moral distress as a process that has to be considered in order to better understand bystander actions among children The findings also indicate bystander reactions that could be associated with moral disengagement, such as not perceiving a moral obligation to intervene if the victim is defined as a non-friend (‘none of my business’), protecting the friendship with the bully, and blaming the victim.

- by Robert Thornberg
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- Sociology, Interactionism, Psychology, Social Psychology
- by Quill Kukla
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- Ideology, Dehumanization, Misogyny