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The Postemotional Bully
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The Postemotional Bully



January 2015 | 136 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

The topics of bullying and hazing have sparked interest and discussion in recent years. Hazing is a crime in the United States, and Western nations have made efforts to stamp out bullying in schools, the workplace, and institutions. However, for the most part, bullying and hazing are ill-defined and lack theoretical perspective. Mestrovic brings classical as well as contemporary social theory to bear on this discussion.

Thorstein Veblen defined the predatory barbarian as the social type, enshrined by modernity, who prefers to use force over peacable means to achieve ends. On the other extreme, Marcel Mauss wrote about the spirit of the gift and its obligations - to give, to receive, and to reciprocate - as the fundamental basis of social life. Yet, he argued that the spirit of modernity was disappearing with the progress of modernity.

Mestrovic traces this fundamental opposition between barbaric force or bullying versus benign obligation that is the spirit of the gift through a host of modernist and postmodernist thinkers and theories. He introduces the concept of the 'postemotional bully' as an alternative to both of these major bodies of social theory. The postemotional bully, as a social type, is fungible, beset by screen-images on media and social media that are isolating, and is at the mercy of the peer-group.

Case studies focus on bullying and hazing, specifically the cases of an American solider who committed suicide in Afghanistan, instances of torture at Abu Ghraib, and the murder of a 23-year-old African-American inmate in a Southern state prison in the US.

 
CHAPTER: 1 THE PROBLEM
Defining bullying

 
Force versus obligation: Revisiting Marcel Mauss’s The Gift

 
The forced gift—the connection to bullying

 
 
CHAPTER 2: MODERNITY AS A BULLY
Auguste Comte: positivism at war with theology

 
Charles Darwin, emotions, and cooperation

 
Durkheim’s application of Darwin’s insights

 
Ferdinand Tonnies on the extinction of community

 
Max Weber on the disappearance of charisma

 
William James and the bullying inherent in vicious abstractionism

 
The Chicago School of sociology and the movement from primary to secondary groups

 
David Riesman and the society of sameness

 
The battle hymn of the lonely crowd

 
The Buffy television series as the Shakespearean drama of the postemotional age

 
George Ritzer and the McDonaldization of society

 
McDonaldization as the postemotionalization of Puritanism

 
Postemotional charisma

 
 
CHAPTER 3: POSTMODERNISM AS NEGATION OF THE GIFT
Deconstruction: tear down, but do not rebuild

 
Decentering: everything and everyone is marginalized

 
The Marxist basis for postmodernism

 
Walter Benjamin: the loss of aura, and simulacra

 
The postmodern theme of disenchantment

 
Truths are cut down to size

 
 
CHAPTER 4: POSTEMOTIONALISM ILLUSTRATED
Revisiting David Riesman and Marshall McLuhan on oral, written, and screen image societies

 
Postemotionalism in Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor”

 
Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground

 
The narrative in the film, Idiocracy, as an example of postemotional society

 
The pharmaceutical control of emotions in The Giver and Equilibrium

 
 
CHAPTER 5: ABU GHRAIB AND POSTEMOTIONAL SOCIETY
The digital photographs, or screen image element

 
The postemotional carry-over of Zimbardo’s theory

 
Postemotional soldiers as “fungible assets”

 
The lawyers as fungible assets, and postemotional law

 
The postemotional smile

 
Holding back emotions, and reliance upon techniques

 
Postemotional manipulation

 
The scripted, postemotional society

 
 
CHAPTER 6: DRIVEN TO SUICIDE BY BULLYING
Immediate desiccation of emotional import

 
Disavowal by Johnny’s parents

 
Postemotional suicide prevention

 
Definition of hazing

 
What is the conduct of corrective training?

 
 
Jury selection: over as soon as it started
 
Racial slurs postemotionalized into nicknames and terms of endearment
 
The social disorganization at the outpost
 
CHAPTER 7: BEATEN TO DEATH
Postemotional groupthink

 
The dysfunctional social system that will not self-correct

 
Postemotional anomie

 
The postemotional panopticon

 
 
CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Sample Materials & Chapters

The Postemotional Bully: The Problem


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ISBN: 9781473907805
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