A crafted collection detailing western responses to the Balkan War We didn't know. For half a century, Western politicians and intellectuals have so explained away their inaction in the face of genocide in World War II. In stark contrast, Western observers today face a daily barrage of information and images, from CNN, the Internet, and newspapers about the parties and individuals responsible for the current Balkan War and crimes against humanity. The stories, often accompanied by video or pictures of rape, torture, mass graves, and ethnic cleansing, available almost instantaneously, do not allow even the most uninterested viewer to ignore the grim reality of genocide. And yet, while information abounds, so do rationalizations for non-intervention in Balkan affairs—the threshold of real genocide has yet to be reached in Bosnia; all sides are equally guilty; Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia is a threat to the West; it will only end when they all tire of killing each other—to name but a few. In This Time We Knew, Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic have put together a collection of critical, reflective, essays that offer detailed sociological, political, and historical analyses of western responses to the war. This volume punctures once and for all common excuses for Western inaction. This Time We Knew further reveals the reasons why these rationalizations have persisted and led to the West's failure to intercede, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, in the most egregious crimes against humanity to occur in Europe since World War II. Contributors to the volume include Kai Erickson, Jean Baudrillard, Mark Almond, David Riesman, Daniel Kofman, Brendan Simms, Daniele Conversi, Brad Kagan Blitz, James J. Sadkovich, and Sheri Fink.
How could the “Maywand District killings” (or the “kill team” war crimes) have happened? Jeremy Morlock was convicted of premeditated murder, but numerous other “questionable kills” in his brigade, committed by other soldiers in other units in 2010, were never investigated. The brigade commander went by the name Hellraiser, and an internal army investigation revealed that the officers of the brigade were hopelessly confused as to their mission. No one knew if they should obey the chain of command and "do COIN," in other words, "sit down for tea with the village elders”, or carry out Hellraiser’s and the army’s traditional counter-guerrilla doctrine. Hellraiser’s refusal to carry out COIN doctrine led to complete social dysfunction in the brigade. Normal army standards of discipline, drug testing, group cohesion, mentoring, counseling, among other standards, were abandoned. Prof. Mestrovic connects the social dysfunction in Hellraiser’s brigade with Morlock’s crime. He shows that COIN doctrine was treated as a joke in the brigade while a “Strike and Destroy” mentality was dominant. This inside account relies upon an internal army investigation into the command climate of Hellraiser'’s brigade, conducted by Brigadier General Stephen Twitty, along with court-martial transcripts and direct interviews. This book analyzes one war crime incident as an example of the general failure, or refusal, to implement COIN doctrine in Afghanistan.
The 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe occurred in a period when Western intellectuals were involved in a confusing discourse on a number of other dramatic endings: the end of modernity, the end of the century, even the possible end of sociology. Against this backdrop, the authors focus on continuities based on the "habits of the heart" of those who threw off communism in Eastern Europe, contrasting them with Western modes of thought. Their cultural explanation draws on theories of Tocqueville, Durkheim, and others to examine positive as well as negative aspects of the nations that survived communism. While focusing on the Balkans, they also make cautious prognoses for the rest of Eastern Europe.
With a foreword by David Riesman, author of The Lonely Crowd. Introducing a new term to the sociological lexicon: ′postemotionalism′, Stjepan Mestrovic argues that the focus of postmodernism has been on knowledge and information, and he demonstrates how the emotions in mass industrial societies have been neglected to devastating effect. Using contempoary examples, the author shows how emotion has become increasingly separated from action; how - in a world of disjointed and synthetic emotions - social solidarity has become more problematic; and how compassion fatigue has increasingly replaced political commitment and responsibility. Mestrovic discusses the relation between knowledge and the emotions in thinkers as diverse as Durkheim, Baudrillard, Ritzer, Riesman, and Orwell. This stimulating and provocative work concludes with a discussion of the postemotional society, where peer groups replace the government as the means of social control.
First Published in 1991, this book attempts to show the relevance of Durkheim’s sociology to the debate on modernity and postmodernism. It does so by examining how Durkheim’s ideas can be applied to current social issues. The author argues that there are striking parallels between the social context of the 1890s, when Durkheim began to publish in book form, and today. The book will appeal to the readers of sociology, as well as the related disciplines of philosophy, psychology, cultural studies and history. It is also intended for anyone interested in the issues and questions that were being raised as humanity approached the end of the twentieth century and the end of the millennium.
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.
This book proposes a new representation of Emile Durkheim, as the philosopher and moralist who wanted to renovate rationalism, challenge positivism, reform sociology, and extend Schopenhauer's philosophy to the new domain of sociology. Above all, it highlights Durkheim's vision of sociology as the 'science of morality' that would eventually replace moralities based on religion.
Blackwater, Abu Ghraib and other scandals in Iraq were presaged by the murderous Operation Iron Triangle in May 2006 when US soldiers were ordered to kill all Iraqis of military age. The soldiers were imprisoned; the officer was merely reprimanded. Mestrovic details the American leadership's fake commitment to the Geneva Conventions and the rule of law, fake due process for defendants, fake goals of promoting democracy, and compulsion to repeat our errors in Vietnam. The Blackwater scandal involved killing unarmed Iraqis in accordance with "rules of engagement" that were apparently similar to the case analyzed in these pages.
This book takes the lid off the confused Western response to the Balkan war. The author raises a series of timely and acute questions about the future of postmodernism and postcommunism.
Anthony Giddens is arguably the world's leading sociologist. In this controversial contribution to the Giddens debate, Stjepan Mestrovic takes up and criticizes the major themes of his work - particularly the concept of 'high modernity' as opposed to 'postmodernity' and his attempted construction of a 'synthetic' tradition based on human agency and structure. Testing Giddens' theories against what is happening in the real world from genocide in Africa to near secession in Quebec, Mestrovic discerns in the construction of synthetic traditions not the promise of freedom held out by Giddens but rather the ominous potential for new forms of totalitarian control.
Almost as soon as Communism fell in Eastern Europe in 1989, Western politicians and intellectuals concluded that the West had "won" the Cold War and that liberal democracy had triumphed over authoritarianism in the world. Euphoria spread with the expectation of a New World Order. Within months, the giddy optimism began to fade, especially in the face of what soon became a brutal war in former Yugoslavia. Why did Serbia choose to replicate many of Germany's methods and aims from World Wars I and II, including ethnic cleansing (read "genocide") and a campaign to establish a Greater Serbia? Sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic, writing with Slaven Letica and Miroslav Goreta, argues that the social and political character of the Dinaric herdsmen--which dominates Serbian culture and politics, even though it is found in all Balkan nations--accounts for the form Communism took there, the fall of Communism, and the savagery and brutality of the post-Communist war. With carefully reasoned analysis, the authors show how sociological theories of social character--propounded by such thinkers as de Tocqueville, Veblen, and Bellah--can shed light on the conflicts in the Balkans, which, according to conventional wisdom, were not supposed to occur when Communism fell. They demonstrate that ancient, traditional ethnic, social, and nationalistic tendencies--"habits of the heart"--of the various people of the Balkans have taken precedence over pressures for democracy in the political and cultural vacuum left by the end of Communism in the region. Unfortunately, the difficulties in the Balkans will persist for a long time to come, and similar conflicts could break out in the former Soviet Union. This thought-provoking book has much new to say about the causes of such ethnic and class conflicts in the region, and the feasibility of policies for dealing with these sores. If democracy is to be achieved in post-Communist East Europe, the authors argue, it must be based on the "good" habits of the heart that coexist there with "bad" or authoritarian social character.
Stjepan Mestrovic takes up and criticizes the major themes of Giddens' work - the concept of 'high modernity' as opposed to 'postmodernity' and his attempted construction of a 'synthetic' tradition based on human agency and structure.
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