A01=Russell Hardin
Aristocracy
Author_Russell Hardin
Bias
Burundi
Category=JBFK
Category=JMH
Category=JPA
Category=JW
Category=QDTL
Change of venue
Common good
Communitarianism
Concurrent majority
Conservative Judaism
Consideration
Croats
Cultural hegemony
Defection
Distrust
Epistemology
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ethnic group
Ethnocentrism
Exclusion
Excommunication
Explanation
Externality
Good and evil
Hostility
Ideal type
Impossibility
Impunity
Institution
Insurgency
Jewish guilt
Joseph Townsend
Language policy
Literature
Loyalty
Moral relativism
Morality
Motherfucker
Norm (social)
Obedience (human behavior)
Obscurantism
Opportunism
Pessimism
Political philosophy
Politics
Primitive culture
Prisoner's dilemma
Profession
Racism
Rational choice theory
Rationality
Reasonable person
Religion
Reprisal
Result
Second-class citizen
Sedition
Self-interest
Separatism
Serbs
Solipsism
State of nature
Superiority (short story)
Theory
Thought
Tutsi
Utilitarianism
Venality
Vicarious liability
Voluntariness
Warfare
White Southerners
Yugoslavia
Product details
- ISBN 9780691048253
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 18 Sep 1997
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In a book that challenges the most widely held ideas of why individuals engage in collective conflict, Russell Hardin offers a timely, crucial explanation of group action in its most destructive forms. Contrary to those observers who attribute group violence to irrationality, primordial instinct, or complex psychology, Hardin uncovers a systematic exploitation of self-interest in the underpinnings of group identification and collective violence. Using examples from Mafia vendettas to ethnic violence in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda, he describes the social and economic circumstances that set this violence into motion. Hardin explains why hatred alone does not necessarily start wars but how leaders cultivate it to mobilize their people. He also reveals the thinking behind the preemptive strikes that contribute to much of the violence between groups, identifies the dangers of "particularist" communitarianism, and argues for government structures to prevent any ethnic or other group from having too much sway.
Exploring conflict between groups such as Serbs and Croats, Hutu and Tutsi, Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants, Hardin vividly illustrates the danger that arises when individual and group interests merge. In these examples, groups of people have been governed by movements that managed to reflect their members' personal interests--mainly by striving for political and economic advances at the expense of other groups and by closing themselves off from society at large. The author concludes that we make a better and safer world if we design our social institutions to facilitate individual efforts to achieve personal goals than if we concentrate on the ethnic political makeup of our respective societies.
Russell Hardin, Professor of Politics at New York University, is the author of numerous works, including Morality within the Limits of Reason and Collective Action. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
