Ordinary People as Mass Murderers : Perpetrators in Comparative Perspectives

Since the 1990s scholars have focused heavily on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and have presented a complex and diverse picture of perpetrators. This book provides a unique overview of the current state of research on perpetrators. The overall focus is on the key question that it still disputed: How do ordinary people become mass murderers?

Now available for the first time in paperback, Ordinary People as Mass Murderers offers a series of essays that explore one of the most fundamental and widely-discussed questions confronted by humanity: how do ''ordinary'' people come to participate in mass murder? Recent scholarship has presented a complex and heterogeneous picture of ordinary perpetrators and shows that no age group, gender, or social, ethnic, religious or educational cohort is exempt from feeding the ranks of mass murderers. This book brings together a mix of established and younger experts to provide a unique and up-to-date overview of the current state of research, much of it previously unpublished in English. Nine contributions and an introduction combine to present complex findings in an accessible format, approaching the topic from a variety of perspectives (history, gender, sociology, psychology, law, comparative genocide) and addressing a number of hitherto unresolved questions. Together they show that our knowledge has moved on considerably since Christopher Browning''s path-breaking Ordinary Men (1992) and they add significant new impetus to contemporary efforts at understanding different forms of genocide.